Allegra Goodman - The Cookbook Collector

“Wait,” Orion said. “Molly?”

Fully clothed, she lunged for the bed and seized her pillow. Gone again.

“Aren’t you going to take off your shoes?” Orion tugged at one shoe and then the other. Her legs were dead weights in his hands. He reached around her waist, unbuckled her belt, and unzipped her pants. “Ouch,” he murmured. Her belt had cut into her soft stomach and left red marks. He tried to unbutton her blouse, but she clung to the pillow, and he couldn’t get it off. “I give up,” he said.

The dressertop was strewn with bills and mail, bank statements from Fleet. Orion didn’t bother opening them. Despite his huge equity in ISIS, he had, of course, no money to speak of in his account. Molly’s damp towel lay in a heap on the floor. She had good reason to avoid inviting her parents up to the apartment.

Orion scanned his e-mail. Seventy new messages, two from Jonathan. Subject: URGENT. Message: Get your butt over here now. His cell phone rang again. He didn’t have to look. His bike had a flat, and he knew he should get moving if he was walking to Kendall Square. He stuffed his computer into his backpack.

“Okay, Molly, I’m going.” He bent down over her curly head. “Bye.”

She turned, her face tender with sleep. When she reached out and wrapped her arms around him, she was warm, her skin smoother than the silky blouse that she was wrinkling. Her eyes opened. Her lips parted, and he was about to kiss her, when suddenly she spoke. “Get milk,” she said.

“Where the hell have you been?” It was uncanny, as if Jonathan had been standing in front of the elevator the whole time. He played laser tag like that, appearing suddenly, bearing down on you.

“I was having brunch,” Orion said.

“Brunch?” Jonathan echoed, as if he’d never heard the word before. Lou was right, Orion thought. Brunch when you’re old.

They were walking through what had recently been the second-floor wilderness of the company. At one time, Jonathan and Orion had played a form of indoor badminton here, but new cubicles had been installed to pack more programmers together. There were private offices here as well, for Aldwin the CFO, and Jonathan the CTO. Jake was the chief programmer. Only Orion wasn’t chief of anything. That had been his choice. They’d offered him some sort of vice presidency, but at the time, the whole thing had sounded too ridiculous, like aspiring to Communications Minister of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. Of course, Orion had been wrong about this. ISIS was a cash-rich powerhouse, no fictional Grand Duchy. The CFO and CTO were, in fact, piloting the company, along with Dave, who was much given to navigational language, along with Mission Statements, foam-core credos posted throughout the building like slogans from Orwell’s Ministry of Love. We are a community. We value excellence. We believe in the capacity of each individual to make a difference ….

Jonathan marched to the conference room, while Orion followed slowly, looking in on the programmers, who were writing Lockbox 2.0. Clarence was typing away, as were Umesh and Nadav, and there was the new girl, Sorel. He was always conscious of her, working among the guys. She was tall, long-limbed, lithe, and kept a guitar under her desk. She wore odd black clothes and she had fair skin and strawberry-blond hair almost as long as his. She had the palest eyes he had ever seen; he wasn’t sure of the color—they were like water.

Her first day, Mel Millstein had brought her in and introduced her in his fussy way.

“Let’s welcome Sorel Fisher. I’m sure everybody here will do their best to help her feel at home.” He’d pulled out a swivel chair. “This is your desk,” Mel told Sorel.

“Thanks very much,” she said, and Orion had been surprised by her English accent.

“What’s your name again?” he’d asked after Mel left.

“Sorel,” she said. “Like the plant.”

Her accent was wonderful, and her voice as well, which was lower than you would expect, and at the same time a little breathy. Sometimes Orion talked to her, just to get her to say words like corollary , which she pronounced with the stress in the middle, a little bump and then a rush of speed at the end: “corollary.” She glanced at him quizzically now as he passed by.

“I’m going to the conference room,” he told her with mock gravity.

“Oh.” Sorel suppressed laughter as she turned back to her computer. “I won’t be seen talking to you, then.”

He knew everyone would see him with Jonathan, however. The conference room cut right into the open-plan programmers’ space, and the walls were glass, another of Dave’s brilliant ideas.

Jonathan and Aldwin perched atop the oval table with the Globe strewn before them.

“I’ve been getting e-mails all morning from investors,” Jonathan informed Orion.

“About what?”

“About this.” Jonathan shook the newspaper at Orion.

“You cite Richard Stallman as your hero,” Aldwin said.

“I happen to admire Stallman’s ideas about sharing information.”

“Not now, you don’t,” said Jonathan. “Not one week before our IPO.”

“Are you really that nervous?” Orion asked.

Aldwin folded his hands on his knee. With his baby face and mild manners, his well-groomed curly hair, clean clothes, and matching socks, he seemed, literally, best suited of the founding four for corporate life. Jonathan was the star, but Aldwin was Dave’s favorite. Everyone knew that. Of course the idea of Dave’s favor was strange, to say the least. The four of them had hired Dave, and at the time, Jonathan had privately conceded Orion’s contention that Dave wasn’t particularly bright. “You do see that we’re in business?” Aldwin asked Orion now.

“ISIS is not the local branch of the Free Software Foundation,” Jonathan said.

“You do see how our investors are hoping to make money here?” Aldwin continued.

“Free Software is free as in freedom,” Orion retorted. “Not free as in free lunches. I never said I don’t want to make money.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Jonathan exploded. “We are selling a proprietary security system. You are going to reporters, scaring our investors, talking about giving stuff away.”

“I never said anything about giving stuff away. I mentioned Richard Stallman’s name.”

“He’s a nut case.”

“He happens to be a visionary,” said Orion, “and I find his questions very interesting. Like, when you think about it, the whole notion of intellectual property is an oxymoron. How can you own something intangible? It’s like, you can’t own souls, can you?”

“Are you trying to make me angry?” Jonathan asked.

“Maybe you should take your name off our patents,” Aldwin suggested.

“I said I admired him. I never said I wanted to be him. Jesus.” Orion turned away from the CTO and CFO, once his closest friends, and he looked through the glass wall at the programmers in their cubicles. Several guys were crowded around Sorel’s desk. Had she got the new high score in Quake III? She was keeping her head down. “I happen to have my own ideas,” Orion murmured. “I have my own opinions.”

“Your ideas are—occasionally—great,” Jonathan told him. “Your opinions suck.”

Orion sighed and turned back to listen to the rest of the tirade.

“Aldwin and I have been in Mountain View all week,” Jonathan continued. “Jake is still in London. We are taking care of customers and signing partners. We are preparing for the biggest IPO of the year. The three of us have not been home. We have not had brunch. And we do not want to come in here and find that you, with your two million shares, have been …”