He wriggled uncomfortably, tugged at his jacket cuffs and then his seat belt. I wasn’t sure why he was so tense. He’d already met my mother. She hadn’t eaten him.
“We’re going to be early,” he said.
“Yes.” If you were early, you could check out exits, and crowd choke-and vantage-points before you had to settle down. You could scan the clientele, get a feel for who might do what. Except that when we parked by the massive totem outside Ivar’s Salmon House and went in, my mother and Eric were already at the far side of the enormous room at a table cornered by two picture windows, sitting drenched in the westering sun that poured across Lake Union and turned their chardonnay to bottled summer, but they rose with such glad smiles, such open shoulders and wide hands, that I smiled, too, and felt a jet of the same joy I’d experienced that afternoon.
I walked to the table slowly, absorbing the vaulted space, the forty feet of native canoe suspended from the roof beams, the rounded faces of the Inuit and Aleut servers—not unlike the Sami in the north of Norway and Finland—the deep reds and creams of painted native carvings on the walls. Even the music sounded Sami, too, which made sense when one considered the fact that Alaska and Siberia were separated only by the narrow Bering Strait. The smell of salmon did not fill me with horror.
They had thoughtfully left the two chairs facing the best view, which meant I had to sit with my back to the door, but if I turned in my seat slightly I could watch reflections in the window. There were three possible exits.
We all sat as though we meant to stay: shoulders down, feet flat, back relaxed. To start, everyone but me ordered the clam chowder. I opted for the green salad, on the theory that if I could manage fruit, I should be able to manage green leaves. The chowder arrived first. It smelled like pale, thick brimstone. I swallowed. When my salad came, I found that if I avoided the cheese, it would be edible.
We talked of our day. I told them about aikido, about Petra obviously thinking it was a stigma to work with another woman, about the joy of falling at speed.
Dornan talked of his morning, lunch at a French bistro downtown, the growing franticness of the film production. “Time is getting short. They only have another four days on their star’s contract, and she wants to leave before that. The director is threatening to go, too, and take the stunt actor with him.” Eric wanted to know who the star was, and he and Dornan talked happily about favorite TV shows. My mother and I smiled at each other, and I realized that I was quite relaxed.
We talked of Eric’s day at Spherogenix and then Encos, the companies’ focus on bioengineering specific immune-system proteins. He sounded urbane and relaxed, but it was clear he was passionate on the subject.
“You’re a scientist?” Dornan said.
“I have an M.D., but I don’t practice.”
“Why is that?”
He paused. “I was twenty-five. I was a doctor. Patients would put their lives in my hands and trust me to help them. I found myself unwilling to play God. I don’t mind playing business but people’s lives… I was afraid.”
I had been wondering why he didn’t practice, and Dornan had simply asked.
“Are you still afraid?” he said.
“No. Or at least I don’t think so. Plus I’ve come to see that negotiating development licenses ultimately affects many people’s lives. It’s different, though. Doing so at one remove.”
The difference between squeezing someone’s warm neck with your hands and launching a smart bomb from two miles up. I nodded.
“Plus,” he said, “I get to have lunch with all the big-shot investors, mostly famous CEO-type people.”
Else laughed. “But what he really likes is the people the famous CEOs attract.”
He smiled at her, then at me and Dornan. “I admit it. I like the shallow glitz.” And he and Dornan talked about the relationship between celebrity and big business, and when the conversation morphed back into a discussion of what was going on with Seattle biotech, I watched a cormorant airing its wings on one of the dock pilings.
“But of course a lot depends on a proposed South Lake Union real estate development project.”
I focused. “Real estate? How does that tie into biotechnology?”
“One of the city’s major developers is trying to get various concessions from local government—a spur from the proposed light rail line, relaxed commercial/residential zoning, and so on—in order to essentially create a biotech hub on the lake’s south shore.” I tried to visualize the area: the northern edge of downtown, then I realized that those were probably its lights shining across the water. “If he succeeds, then half the people I’m talking to would relocate, at favorable lease rates and certain city and county-level tax breaks. But in order to assure those favorable terms, they would in turn have to make concessions, commitments to employment levels, diversity quotas, environmental controls, and so on.”
Something in my brain began to tick.
“Naturally, all this affects pricing and long-term product viability, which are my major areas of concern.”
“So if the city’s getting less tax money, why is it a good thing?” Dornan said.
“Hubs are good because they attract other businesses. Like, for example, software nexuses in Silicon Valley and here in Seattle.”
“Coffee,” Dornan said, nodding. “Tully’s, Starbucks, Seattle’s Best.”
“Exactly.”
“Also beer and tea and chocolate,” he mused. “Seattle’s Best Chocolate, Dilettante, Fran’s, Red Hook, Stash, Tazo—though those might be Oregon, now that I come to think of it.”
All delivery mechanisms for nice, respectable drugs; all things that would get a Scandinavian through the winter.
“That’s the way it seems to work,” Eric said. “Once an industry perceives that the business climate is favorable, that the employee base has the right education, that others will travel to a particular city in order to take employment there, then it will relocate. Others follow.” He made a rolling motion. “It snowballs.”
“Ah.” Dornan nodded wisely. “Fashion.”
Eric laughed. “Of course. Though they’d hate to admit it.”
The cormorant launched itself from its perch and flew out over the water.
“Zoning,” I said. “Is it hard to change?”
“Not as hard as it should be,” my mother said.
“It depends,” Eric said, with a glance at her. “There are some good arguments for keeping zoning flexible. But perhaps there’s a particular reason you asked?”
“My warehouse.” My mother looked at me. Dornan looked at his wineglass and sighed. “I was thinking of selling it, only now I discover that that’s exactly what someone wants.” And I explained what I believed had been happening. “This morning I found out my agent has run off, and taken my files and a few others with her. Her assistant tells me that she’d been negotiating to purchase several properties along that stretch of the Duwamish, all industrial property. Only he couldn’t figure out why, who she was negotiating for, or who would be interested in it. So I was just thinking, maybe she’s found a way to change the zoning. How would she go about that?”
“City or county council vote. Most of the time they just rubber-stamp the recommendations of a zoning committee chaired by one councillor and half a dozen civil servants. They will usually indulge in a pro forma public meeting before formulating their recommendations. For high-visibility issues, though, the individual councillors will make up their own minds. That is, they’ll let interested parties make it up for them by means of campaign contributions, promises of future development dollars, and public and behind-the -scenes support for the councillors’ pet projects.”
“Buying votes—that simple?”
“Pretty much.”