Today was a very special day. With a bit of string pulling, Maher managed to book a last minute table at Eleven Madison Park to celebrate the good news with Ella.

     Once they were seated at the table, Maher took her hand, and unable to hold in his excitement, he blurted out, “Ella, I have some news!”

     “Obviously very good news,” Ella teased, oblivious to the awe-inspiring scenery.

     “Very good,” Maher confirmed, squeezing her hand. She looked so beautiful and Maher felt like the luckiest guy in the world to be sitting beside her, he had seen all the appreciative gazes as they walked to their table.

     “Well,” he said. “Remember all those nights of me grinding my teeth and mumbling in my sleep?”

     “Oh, yes,” said Ella with a giggle. “Papple was not very pleased about that. Said he had to stay up rubbing your jaw to make the sounds stop and that his little arms are not meant for that sort of manual labor.”

     “Well, he could use some bulking up on those arm muscles,” retorted Maher with a laugh. “Did you know Marlon has him lifting weights now? For each piece of fruit he eats he has to barbell it ten times before putting it in his mouth. Pisses the little guy off!”

     “Oh he is so silly, baby! But do tell me your news, Maher!” Ella exclaimed. “I can’t wait to hear!”

     “Well, The Pineapple Express is going to have its first closing next week. . ..”

     “Oh my goodness,” said Ella. “So soon? Were you able to raise the target fifty million you were hoping for? And by the way, I still can’t believe you named your fund that!”

     “Well, that is actually part of the reason for the celebration,” he said. “We exceeded that and are at one hundred and fifty for the first close!”

     Ella’s jaw almost dropped to the floor. That was an unheard of amount for a venture capital fund these days, especially for such a young manager with no track record.

     “Want to hear something else that’s pretty funny?” Maher continued.

     “What?” Ella managed to say.

     “We owe it all to the Pineapple!”

     Ella laughed. “In what way?”

     “Well, remember how I was trying to find some apps so he could learn things on his own while we were away at work?”

    “Yes,” said Ella. “But what does that have to do with renewable energy?”

    “I changed gears on the fund concept,” he said. “The market for renewable energy start-ups was just so saturated--I was a drop in a bucket! Plus, I’m not entirely crazy about the industry’s total reliance on substantial government subsidies to keep them afloat.”

     “Okay . . .,” said Ella, still confused.

     “Well, I just wasn’t loving the field,” continued Maher, “and I was getting so desperate because I left my job at Goldman to pursue this, and it felt like a big flop. Then, after I did all that research about machine learning teaching apps, I really started to think that there could be a huge upside to the market. If it worked for Papple, who wouldn’t it work for?”

     “So your fund is geared to educating pineapples?” Ella teased.

      “Kind of, actually!”

     “Well cheers to an educated pineapple!” Ella said, raising her glass.

      “I can cheers to that,” he replied, kissing her gently.

      “On a much smaller scale, while we are celebrating, I also have some great news,” Ella said, her cheeks flush from the excitement.

     “Tell me!” said Maher.

     “Okay, well remember how I told you that I wanted to become a mentor?”

     “Of course,” he said. “And you would be an excellent one!”

     “Well, I got matched!” she said, speaking a mile a minute. “To this lovely young girl whose parents immigrated from Pakistan. Her name is Eshal and she loves to draw and she loves stuffed animals and she wants to become a doctor or a nurse when she grows older! She’s so perfect, Maher!”

    “That’s amazing, Ella! When do you get to meet her?”

     “Well, she lives all the way in Harlem so we were planning on meeting next week. I was going to send a car to go get her and her mom so we could explore some of the boroughs and maybe go to the museum or something.”

     “I’m so proud of you, Ella,” Maher said, his heart brimming with pride at the girl beside him. Her warmness and her generosity were just some of the many endearing characteristics that Maher admired so much.

     “You know what else? I turned down my first assignment yesterday in anticipation of the weekend. I didn’t want anything ruining my first meeting with Eshal,” said Ella, and then, with a devilish grin, “and it felt so damn satisfying!”

     “Well you are working over a hundred hours a week,” said Maher. “Unless they’re trying to kill my baby, I think they need to ease up a bit!”

     “But here is the thing,” she said, in a rather contemplative tone. “What surprised me most was that I didn’t get in trouble for it. The world didn’t halt and no one got mad at me.”

     “Ella, I don’t mean to patronize but I can guarantee you that your male colleagues have been pushing back since the beginning.”

    “I know,” said Ella. “I just needed to learn on my own I guess.” Ella looked fondly at her handsome boyfriend and couldn’t have been happier.

     From across the room, hiding behind pot of flowers, Papple smiled enormously. He snapped a picture to send to the others and then hopped down from his perch to head back home to Maher’s apartment for the night. Ella was clearly in good hands. Maybe Marlon had a party or something going on he wondered, doing a little Pineapple Shake as he headed out of the revolving doors of the restaurant and out into the New York City streets.