A Truck Full of Money (26 page)

Brenda was his foundation, his rock, Paul said. Ever since she'd returned for keeps, he had stuck with his antimania drug. After nearly three decades of struggle, the fire was contained. His native enthusiasm, though, was far from exhausted. In an email about Lola, he wrote:

I was born to make this company. :)

Rage against the machine.

He and Brenda planned to marry—privately, but Paul imagined a Shake-the-Lake-size party to follow. They still had the house in Arlington, but had moved downtown to an apartment on the waterfront. One early winter evening there, Paul asked her, “Do you mind if I go out and do Uber for a while?”

“Oh no,” Brenda said. Her smile was droll. “I have no problem with the fact that you find strangers more interesting than me.”

Paul had become a registered Uber driver. He'd done this for research. One plan for Lola was to have its customers rate the services of the travel agents, as passengers rate Uber drivers. Paul thought he ought to find out how it felt to be rated by customers.

Uber drivers use their own cars. Paul had enlisted as a driver for Uber X—the less expensive service; its customers expect to get picked up in a clean but relatively inexpensive midsize car, a Toyota Camry, a Honda Accord. Many of Paul's passengers were surprised to find themselves in the latest model all-electric Tesla with its 17-inch interactive screen in the console, and being chatted up by the driver, who was apt to make the most improbable claims.

A high school student from China and her mother and aunt climb in the backseat. The mother and aunt speak no English. After a while Paul asks the girl if she wants to go to college here in Boston. To MIT, perhaps? She says it is her dream. Paul says, “I teach at MIT.” Does he really? she asks. “I teach entrepreneurship,” he says. “I teach people how to start companies.” He adds, “And I'm driving Uber just for fun.” Who knew what the girl made of this.
Such an interesting country, America.

Being a driver
was
fun. “Kind of putting lots of pieces of my life together,” Paul said. “Cars. Serving people. Talking with people. Learning new technology.” What he liked best was having a stranger in his car, all to himself, for ten to twenty minutes—people who didn't work in technology, people he would never meet otherwise. He was keeping a notebook in which he listed at least one thing each passenger told him. He was doing well as an Uber driver. After forty-nine rides, customers had given him a nearly perfect rating, an average of 4.97 out of a possible 5 stars. Some nights he made as much as fifty dollars.

For Jandi Kidder and Gene Bukhman

My thanks to all the people who let me sit in on meetings, or spoke with me directly, or helped me find my way around the several worlds frequented by Paul English:

Jeremy Allaire, Christian Allen, Suzanne Amato, Bill Aulet, Ko Baryiames, Ben Berman, Mike Bernardo, Tim Berners-Lee, Firdaus Bhathena, Dr. Michael Biber, Robert Birge, Young Chun Blom, Ralf Boeck, Larry Bohn, Kate Brigham, Alix Cantave, Ed Cardoza, Craig Carlson, Mike Chambers, Walter Chick, Cassandra Chipps, Marie Flore Chipps, Jack Connors, Scott Cook, Carol Costello, Joel Cutler, Ophelia Dahl, Bob Davis, Drew Devlin, Marie DiCalogero, Esther Doggett, Dennis Doughty, Sam Dunn, Zach Dunn, Gayle Evans, David Fialkow, Ben Fischman, Melissa Fredette, Sameer Ghandi, Giuliano Giacaglia, Jim Giza, Robyn Glaser, Paul Graham, Steve Hafner, Kristen Harkness, Bill Helman, Reid Hoffman, Zach Iscol, Jonathan Jackson, Lincoln Jackson, Steven Ji, Bill Kaiser, Dr. Andres Kanner, Ben Kaplan, Petr Kaplunovich, Kosmas Karadimitriou, Scott Kirsner, Donald Knuth, Rakshit Kumar, Nicholas Lambrou, Bill Law, Bonnie Levin, Tom Madigan, Joe Mahoney, Jennifer Marotta, Amy Marshall, John Maynard, Todd McCormack, Julie Melbin, Brian Michon, Sidra Michon, Hugh Molotsi, Michael Moritz, Bob Morris, Harry Nelis, Dan Nye, Dr. Jim O'Connell, Rose O'Donnell, Steve Pelletier, Jeff Rago, Bob Rainis, Vinayak Ranade, Steve Revilak, Michael Saunders, Oren Sherman, Gene Shkolnik, Nancy Smith, Raman Tenneti, Adam Valkin, Loune Viaud, Dave Walden, Bill Warner, David Weinberger, Rebecca Weintraub, Michael White, Thomas W. White (architect), Derek Young, Giorgos Zacharia, and Snejina Zacharia.

Special thanks for putting me up in their homes, to Rustin and Randall Levenson, and to Katherine Ellsworth and Pete Petronzio—and also to Alex Attia and Sonia Miranda of the Charles Hotel. Thanks also to my family and for various kinds of assistance to my friends Richard Brown, Stuart Dybek, Ed Etheredge, Miriam Feurele, John Graiff, Jonathan Harr, Pacifique Irankunda, Hanno Muellner, and Kristin Nelson.

I am especially indebted to Karl Berry, Bill O'Donnell, Paul Schwenk, and Brenda White, and also to Paul English's siblings: Ed, Eileen, Tim, Nancy, Dan, and Barbara. I am grateful to Chris Jerome for all her help and counsel, and to Evan Camfield and Derrill Hagood, and I am more grateful than I can say to my editors, Kate Medina and Richard Todd, for what I now realize has been an extraordinary run of generous help and encouragement. Paul English was invariably courteous and forthcoming. I am grateful to him, of course, and also to his hero—and, as he likes to say, chief adviser though deceased—Thomas J. White.

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According to Ming Sun Poon of the Library of Congress, the story called “The Secret Inside the Orange” evolved from the following: “Bajiong Ren.” In < Xuan guai lu > / Niu Sengru; Yang Shengjie, commentator and translator. Lanzhou: Gansu Renmin Chubanshe, 1999, pp. 5–7.

My thanks to Mr. Poon for providing the original, and to Carl E. Kubler for translating it into English.

The Soul of a New Machine

House

Among Schoolchildren

Old Friends

Home Town

Mountains Beyond Mountains

My Detachment

Strength in What Remains

A Truck Full of Money

Good Prose