Chapter 10
Ore
Chuck was sitting at the end of an obnoxiously long table, wearing a short-sleeve shirt with pink pineapples on it. Ore wondered if she should comment on it. It seemed like the sort of thing people wore so that other people had to acknowledge it. She decided against it; she was keen not to get caught up in ‘the game’ of Chuck Regas, and besides, she had little faith she’d be able to conjure up the sort of slanted compliment required.
The other thing she noticed immediately was that he was alone.
‘Apologies, Chuck, I had a hard time finding my way.’ Ore was slightly out of breath.
Chuck frowned ever so slightly as he looked up from his plate of pancakes. ‘Oh, I sent Vicky to fetch you. Did she not escort you up?’
Ore didn’t want to get anyone into trouble. ‘No that’s right, she did knock on my door, but I was running super late so …’ She hoped he wouldn’t notice that she hadn’t exactly answered the question.
He did. ‘That’s not what I asked,’ he said, and Ore was taken aback by the forcefulness in his voice, though he spokequietly. For a moment they held intense eye contact. Ore was determined not to be cowed. Eventually his face cracked into a shallow smile, and he gestured to the seat opposite him.
She smiled brightly back at him. ‘Well here I am, anyway!’ she chirped, settling into the space where a plate and cutlery were laid out. She felt slightly shaken by the exchange, though she was not about to show it. As she spooned a heap of granola into a bowl, it occurred to her that perhaps he had planned it that way. To set her on the back foot, despite the breezy setting – this was an interview after all.
‘Did you sleep well?’ Chuck asked between two mouthfuls.
‘Perfectly, thank you – the room is beautiful.’ Ore took a sip of orange juice.
‘I hate to be that crass American, but your accent really is delightful. Whereabouts in the UK are you from? I spent a couple of years living in Jersey about a decade ago and I used to love popping over to the mainland.’
‘I was brought up in Margate, and then my mum and I moved to London when I was a teenager.’
‘Margate? I’m afraid I don’t know where that is – near the coast somewhere?’ he asked lightly.
‘Yes, that’s right, but my dad is American, and I was actually born in the States …’ She was aware that she was not supposed to be the one answering the questions, but she’d started now. ‘And after I finished my undergrad in London, I went to Columbia for journalism school, and then stayed in New York after.’ She took a bite, and felt the weight of the silence through the loudness of her chewing.
Chuck didn’t seem to mind it. He wasn’t jumping to fill the void with words that might reveal him. He was proving a moreworthy adversary than she’d anticipated. ‘But anyway, that’s more than enough about me; what about you? You’ve never granted an interview of this kind. As far as I know, you’ve only ever spoken to the press about your work, so why now?’
Chuck sighed loudly and placed his fork down. Ore felt as though she was about to get a rehearsed response. A young man in navy shorts and a polo emerged from the French doors behind Chuck with a cafetière in one hand and a small jug in the other. Nobody said a word as the coffee was poured and Chuck gave only the slightest dip of the head to indicate wordlessly that he did in fact want cream. Ore followed suit with a shake of the head and the man disappeared without further acknowledgement.
Chuck continued seamlessly. ‘I’ve been running Pagonis for a decade now and we’ve come an unbelievably long way, from a start-up in my father’s garage in Oklahoma, all the way to the two-thousand-strong workforce we have today scattered over Silicon Valley.’ She was right: he’d obviously been prepped by Agatha.
‘And as we go into this new phase, away from software and into hardware, I think it’s important to take stock of how far we’ve come.’
‘When you say “we”, what do you mean by that?’
Chuck laughed, and then in a tone that reeked of faux modesty he replied, ‘Well, I guess it seems a little unfair to say that I did this all on my own. I’ve got a great team behind me.’
Ore resisted the urge to roll her eyes. ‘But you’re the founder, you’re the CEO, ultimately the success of Pagonis is mostly your doing.’
He smiled, sincerely this time, and Ore made a mental note. Flattery was an effective strategy.
‘So how far have you come? Tell me a little about how you got from that garage to well …’ she held up her hands and looked around ‘… all of this?’
Chuck reeled off the predictable backstory. How he had come from nothing, was born and bred in Oklahoma, worked hard and eventually got into MIT on a scholarship. It was all stuff she already knew, public knowledge that was accessible on his Wikipedia page, nonetheless she took notes diligently. She wanted him to think that she was hanging on to his every word.
Occasionally, when she hadn’t jotted anything for a while, he would glance down at her pad as he spoke, and she would dutifully scribble something like:he is still speaking, and yet he is saying nothing. He was too far away to read what she was writing, but he would smile a little smugly each time, apparently believing he’d said something of note.
Both cups of coffee were cold by the time Chuck had arrived at the ‘end’ of his story. He leant back and took a sip, wrinkled his nose, and then set his cup back down.
‘So are we done?’ Chuck asked. Ore had only actually asked that one question. The rest of the time had been spent on his spiel.
‘Just a couple more things I’d like to ask you.’ Up until that point Chuck had been making a point of looking relaxed and accommodating. Now he stiffened, visibly unhappy that she was planning on doing some actual journalism.
He looked down at his watch emphatically. ‘Um, sure, but I have a very important call in half an hour so we’ll need to wrap in the next fifteen.’
