She made her way to the refrigerator in the back of the kitchen and pulled out a carton of yogurt. But as she began to peel off the lid, her fingers faltered and her eyelids squeezed shut. What was she going to do about her mar-riage? Far too many times, Sam felt like the enemy, like another person for her to please, another person with an invisible checklist of qualities she had to live up to.
He shot through the door, wearily shoving his right hand through his short black hair. "Susannah, you're going to have to get on Marketing again. I'm sick of their bullshit. They either have to buy into the Wildfire-and I mean total commitment-or they can take their asses over to Apple. They're like a bunch of goddamn old ladies…"
She let him rant and rave for a while. Tomorrow he would undoubtedly storm the Marketing Department and throw one of his famous temper tantrums. Then she would have to clean up after him. Sam was thirty now, but in many ways he was still a child.
He collapsed into one of the chairs. "Get me a Coke."
She went over to the refrigerator and pulled out a can from his private stock. The top hissed as she popped it. She set it in front of him, then bent forward and brushed his mouth with a soft kiss. His lips were cool and dry. After he had been speaking to a group, she was always surprised that they weren't red hot.
She began to knead the tight muscles of his shoulders with her thumbs. "Why don't we take off early Friday night and drive down to Monterey? There's an inn I've been hearing about. Private cottages, ocean view."
"I don't know. Maybe."
"I think it would do us both good to get away for a while."
"Yeah. You're probably right." Despite his words, Susannah knew that Sam didn't really want to get away. He fed off the furious pace of the company. Even when he was at home he was thinking, working, lambasting people over one of their seven telephones. Sometimes she thought that Sam was trying to outrun life.
Her hands grew still on his shoulders. "It's a good time of the month. Full moon, baying wolf, ripe egg."
He pulled abruptly away from her. "Christ. Don't start the baby shit again, all right? Just don't start. You can't even find time to help me look for that new Oriental rug for the dining room. How do you expect to take care of a kid?"
"I don't like picking out rugs. I do like children. I'm thirty-one, Sam. The clock's ticking. SysVal is going to have on-site child care by the end of the year. That'll make a big difference to me and the rest of our female employees."
As soon as she had spoken, she wished she hadn't brought up the child-care issue. She had given him an excuse to divert their conversation from the personal back to the company, and she knew he would take advantage of it.
"I don't know why you act like this child care thing is all signed, sealed, and delivered. I'm not backing you, and I don't think Mitch will, either. It's not a corporation's responsibility to take care of its employee's kids, for chrissake."
"It is if the corporation wants to hang onto its female work force. I'm going to fight you on this one, Sam. I'll take it right to the Board of Directors if I have to."
"It wouldn't be the first time." He rose abruptly from his chair. "I don't understand you anymore, Susannah. You seem to fight me on everything."
It wasn't true. She still believed that of all of them, Sam had the truest vision of what SysVal could be. Because of him, the company had never been loaded down with hierarchies. The organization was fluid, lean, and profitable.
"I don't know, Susannah. You've changed. And I'm not sure it's all for the better." His eyes skimmed down over her clothing. He didn't like it when she wore jeans. He hated her shorter hair. If he overheard her swearing, he staged a major confrontation. She had finally realized that a big part of Sam wanted her back the way she had been when they had first met.
"Sam, we need to spend some time together without telephones ringing and people showing up at the front door. We have some problems we have to work out, and we need time alone to do it."
"You're turning into a broken record, you know that? I don't want to hear about it anymore. I've got enough on my mind without a load of crap from you."
"Excuse me. Uh-Sam?"
Mindy Bradshaw walked into the kitchen in such a gingerly fashion that the floor might have been covered with rattlesnakes. She was a thin, anemic-looking blonde, with baby-fine hair that fell like a veil over the sides of her face.
Mindy was one of the most recent additions to the New Product Team. Although she was bright, she lacked self-confidence and was frequently at the receiving end of one of Sam's more humiliating public tongue-lashings. Several times in the past few weeks, Susannah had seen her running from a meeting in tears, not exactly the behavior Susannah wanted to see from the company's minority female work force-a group of which she was fiercely protective. Despite Sam's abuse, however, Mindy continued to hang on to his every word and gaze at him as if-at any moment-he just might levitate.
Sam was obviously relieved at the interruption. "Yeah, Mindy, what is it?"
"Pete and I wondered-That is-"
"Christ, Mindy. Start all over, will you? Walk into the room like you own it for a change. Stand up straight, look me in the eye, and tell me to go to hell if you feel like it."
"Oh, no," she said breathlessly. "It's just-Pete and I have been crunching some numbers. We have some ideas about pricing on the BDI that we want to go over with you."
"Yeah, sure." He pitched his empty Coke can into the recycling bin and left the room without a backward glance.
Susannah walked listlessly back toward her office. These past few years had turned her into a fighter, but she didn't know how to fight this. On impulse, she took a detour that led to the east wing of the building. Maybe Yank was still working in his lab. Sometimes when she was rattled, she liked to drop in there and spend a few minutes with him. They seldom talked, but being with Yank was soothing. She enjoyed the quiet patience of his movements, the steadiness of his eyes when they actually focused on her. His presence settled her.
And then she hesitated. She wasn't going to get into the habit of using other people as a crutch simply because she couldn't solve her own problems. She returned to her office and flicked on her Blaze III. The light began to glow on the screen. For a moment, she regarded the machine with a mixture of love and bitterness. And then she lost herself in her work.
Long after midnight that same evening, Sam eased naked into the hot tub. The house that rose behind him was a stark ultramodern structure with a roof line that jutted at sharp angles like bats' wings against the night sky and held eighteen solar panels to provide energy. He and a team of architects had worked on the design for nearly a year, and it had taken another two years to build. Everything was the best. The interior held free-form couches upholstered in white suede and jagged-edged tables chiseled from rock-crystal selenite. The deck was made of marble and sculptured black granite. Rigidly geometric furniture constructed of cold-rolled steel glimmered faintly near the perimeter of the hot tub. The hot tub itself, made of black marble, was the size of a small swimming pool.
He had settled into a ledge contoured to fit his body. Although he was tired, he couldn't sleep. As the inky water swirled around him, he gazed down at the lights in the valley below and pretended that they were stars and that he was hanging upside down in the universe. He let himself float, concentrating only on the surge of the waters and the feeling of rushing through unexplored space.
He had more money than he had ever dreamed existed. He could buy anything he wanted, go anywhere, do anything. But something was missing. The water sucked at him and he raced deeper into space. Find it, a voice whispered. Look around you and find what's missing.