Allegra Goodman - The Cookbook Collector

“This may be possible.” Oskar delivered the verdict on Jake’s drawing. “This is slightly faster.”

“I don’t think slightly faster is really what we’re after,” Jonathan said. “We want more than incremental improvements.”

Oskar spread his hands. “What you want,” he said, “is not always what you get.”

“Then we need a different paradigm,” said Jonathan.

“A paradigm is not a dime a dozen,” Oskar pointed out.

“I never said it would be easy,” Jonathan said. “We need new products, and we need to start developing them now.”

“You have a proposal?” Oskar’s challenges were all the more potent because they were so gentle, always so bemused. “Tell us!”

And that was the moment of temptation. That was when Jonathan wanted to pull out electronic fingerprinting and say: Look, surveillance is where we should be going. Record every touch on every piece of data, know its security status at every turn. Other companies are starting to pursue this. We need to move into this space too. He knew Oskar would turn toward him, fascinated. He would say, Ah, now this is interesting. And in his pride and his frustration, in the heat of the moment, with Oskar calling his bluff and Jake standing there, and Orion daydreaming in the corner, Jonathan struggled against the impulse to shock them all.

“I see you have not yet decided on your new paradigm,” Oskar taunted Jonathan mildly.

“I do have one.” It was against Jonathan’s nature to turn the other cheek, and yet, once again, he felt Emily near him, and remembered her voice.

“I have to trust you,” she’d told him late that night in his apartment. “I have to, if I’m going to love you.”

He had never known anyone like her. She made his previous relationships seem trivial. It was her unusual strength, the courage of her convictions that drew him to her. She insisted she was nothing like him, but he understood her differently. He saw himself in Emily—not the man he was now, but the man he could be. Sometimes he rebelled against this solemn feeling; sometimes he didn’t want to love her quite so much, and he was secretly, cruelly relieved to leave her in California and return to his less-reflective life apart. He felt unready to give up childish things like rugby and lying and beating the crap out of Green Knight. But he never stopped thinking about her; he never stopped longing for her or anticipating their time together. Being with her was still new for him, her warmth still startling because she was also so reserved. When she kissed him and wrapped her arms around him, she seemed to overcome something in herself, and he knew that he was exceptional in her life as she was in his.

“So when you are ready, please let us know,” said Oskar.

“Oh, I will,” Jonathan said, and he pretended that his phone was buzzing, and left the room.

He wished his phone really was ringing. He had to speak to Emily, to hear her steady voice.

He closed his office door and dialed. Her phone rang and rang again, and each time it rang he missed her more.

“Hello?” Emily answered at last, surprised.

“Did I wake you?” He looked at his watch. It was only seven thirty in the morning in California.

“No, no,” she said sleepily. “I’m up. I’m on the phone with Jess.”

“Do you want me to call you back?”

“No, that’s okay. I think we’re done.”

“You’re never done,” he said.

“She’s making me crazy,” Emily admitted. “Hold on….” When she got back on the line he heard her sigh.

“Where is she now?”

“You don’t want to know,” said Emily.

“Where are you now?”

“In bed with my computer. I have to get up.”

“No, don’t,” he said. “Stay there.”

“It’s getting late.”

“I left Oskar’s meeting,” he blurted out.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He had nothing to confess except a brief opportunistic impulse, and he was not about to upset her by admitting that. The uneasiness he felt required reassurance, not expiation. Perhaps his logic was circular. He followed the circuit nonetheless: He needed Emily to believe in him so that he could believe in himself. Because of this, he did not always tell the whole story about himself, or even about ISIS. That night, when she had pressed him to explain what was wrong with Lockbox, he had lied to her, glossing over the structural problems Orion had discovered, insisting Orion broke the system by willfully abusing code. He lied now, as well. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“You’re not happy.”

“I am happy,” he contradicted. “We’ve got Yahoo!”

“I know, but—”

He interrupted, “I miss your voice.”

“Just my voice?”

“Not just your voice.”

“You have my voice,” she pointed out.

He pulled down the shades. “Keep talking. I’ll imagine the rest.”

“I’m in your arms,” she whispered. “I’m kissing you and I can taste the coffee on your tongue.”

“And then what?”

“Then what! You tell me.”

“I’m kissing your neck,” he said. “My hands are around your waist. I’m lifting up your nightgown.” He closed his eyes, imagining her slender neck, her skin, her breasts. “Take off your nightgown.”

She was quiet.

“Are you?” he whispered after a moment.

She hesitated, and then said, “Yes.”

And he was with her, and he began to forget the meeting. “Please,” he urged her.

“Will you?”

“Yes,” he breathed, and he was not upset anymore. His company was going public within the week. He’d celebrate with her; he could hear her even now. He felt almost, on the verge, soon to be intensely happy. He was no longer lying. What were lies, anyway? Only futures waiting to come true.

Harvard Square glowed with artificial candlelight. Damp air misted the glass doors of Brattle Street Florist with its potted azaleas and glossy-leaved gardenias. Cardullo’s stocked Dutch licorice and Belgian chocolate, Bendicks mints, Walkers shortbread, Turkish delight. Every shop tempted with earrings and antiquities, evergreens and crimson KitchenAids. But the millennium’s end was not altogether jolly. The hungry still hungered, addicts scratched and stole. The season had its somber rites, exams and funerals. Hushed students filed into Houghton Library to view the manuscript of “Ode to Autumn” and puzzle at its wailful choir of loss and consolation.

The market dipped and rose, and rose again, and some speculated that the new economy had limits. It was popular to say, even without believing, that this time might never come again, that it was late in the day. Some said the markets had already peaked, and Wall Street wizards agreed that timing was everything. Therefore, ISIS celebrated its December IPO with equal parts relief and trepidation.

Orion noticed that where there had been banter about boats and cars, bikes and ultralights, now the talk was strictly options and derivatives, wills and trusts. Dave instituted wealth seminars. Lawyers arrived from Hale and Dorr, and consultants visited to discuss charitable giving. Shelter became the byword, replacing speed .

Programmers ridiculed the seminars, but they attended anyway in small groups, gathering in the glass-walled conference room to hear account managers from Goldman Sachs hold forth in suits of navy so dark the color could not exist in nature, except possibly in the deepest ocean, where giant squid inked out their predators. These reps from Goldman were all named Josh and Ethan, and they arrived bright-eyed, cuff-linked, trussed in ties of burgundy, and they were thrilled to answer every question, psyched to help out in any way possible, and honestly happy to talk whenever, because most of all they were about having fun and learning and teamwork and making dreams happen—not just short term, but long term, which was very much what they perceived ISIS to be about. They loved innovation, said Ethan. They lived for flexibility, said Josh. When the lockup ended, they couldn’t wait to innovate with everybody in the company. They worked with your lawyer and your accountant and your bank, but when it came to strategy, they said, Picture, if you will, myself and my colleagues as the quarterbacks of your team. This above all: They loved to communicate. Communication was the key, as in life, because at the end of the day, it was relationships that mattered. It was all about trust—just knowing that your team was there. Bottom line, that’s who they were in private-wealth management—your team, when you were worth ten million or more.