“You mean your page?”
“You said everything was going so well.”
“It was going well. Now you want to pull the plug on nine months’ work!”
“Could you stop blaming me for just a moment?” she retorted. “Could you just step back and consider what I’m saying?”
But he would not step back. “What you’re saying is totally defensive,” he told her. “You want to protect what Veritech has, and you won’t try anything new. Meanwhile the market is changing and you lag behind. We’re leaders now. Do you think that will last? Not if you’re afraid of innovation.”
“I’m not afraid of innovation,” she told him. “But we have to think about our direction.”
His face reddened. “Our direction means we’re going somewhere.”
“I don’t understand why you won’t listen to me,” she said.
“What? Do as you say? Obey you? Did you think you could manage me? Was that your idea? Why don’t you listen to me, for once? Or do you think I’m too young?”
Emily spoke quietly, although she didn’t feel quiet. “I thought I’d found a framework for you to pursue your work in keeping with Veritech’s goals.”
“I’m not interested in your frameworks, or your goals.” Alex clicked his BMW keys, and she saw the lights flash on and the driver’s seat adjust and the convertible top fold back like origami.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m leaving.” Alex got in the car and slammed the door.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m leaving Veritech.”
“Wait—”
“I’m tired of waiting.” He gunned his engine.
“Contractually, the work you do here stays here,” she reminded him. “Remember that.”
Like an angry teenager—no backward look, no seat belt, Alex roared away. If Emily could not contain him, he would take his brilliant, conspiratorial ideas elsewhere.
That was the frightening part—his dark imagination. Alex was so smart and irresponsible. It was obvious to Emily that bundling spyware with storage services was morally wrong. Why was that not obvious to him? It was obvious to her that she had encouraged his research, but never endorsed electronic fingerprinting as a product. Why then did he accuse her of leading him on? He was always projecting past the simple truth, sending her flowers, for example, after a Veritech party, where she made the mistake of dancing with him. But he’d behaved better the past few months. He had not e-mailed her excessively, or waited for her in the halls. She’d thought he was over his infatuation. Now, she sensed the situation was much worse. His voice, his stance, his eyes were threatening. What if he drove back again and found her? He had never hurt her, but for the first time, she began to feel that he might. The parking lot was well lit, and full of cars, but what had she been doing, fighting with him there, alone? She retreated to her Audi, and locked the doors.
She checked the time and dialed Jonathan on her cell. It was just after ten at night back east. “Hi,” she said, “it’s me.”
“Hold on,” he said. “Let me get inside my office.”
“I told Alex we weren’t going forward with fingerprinting.”
He didn’t answer for a moment.
“Are you there? Jonathan?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” he said.
“I feel terrible,” she said.
“Why? What did he do to you?” Jonathan asked sharply.
“He didn’t do anything specifically to me. He said he’s leaving.”
“Good.”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you ‘don’t know’?”
“I don’t know if I can let him go. It would be such a loss,” she said. “A tremendous loss.”
“What—the fingerprinting stuff?”
“No. I mean Alex. The surveillance project is all wrong for us.”
“Okay.” Jonathan wasn’t just relieved. He was delighted, liberated from the weight of Emily’s proprietary secret. He had been so careful for so long, and now he felt that electronic fingerprinting was practically in the public domain. “Forget fingerprinting, and tell Alex to fuck off and die.”
She laughed a little. “Oh,” she said, “I wish it were that easy.”
“It can be,” Jonathan told her.
“I wouldn’t let him have his way,” said Emily.
“Of course not.”
“And he absolutely could not accept my point of view.”
“Sweetie, he’s a shark. He’s not going to change course, ever. Why are you surprised?”
She was surprised because she was Emily, and she did not share Jonathan’s frank assessment of coworkers as losers, whiners, bozos, sharks. No, she imagined people were rational and courteous, as she was, and when they proved otherwise, she assumed that she could influence them to become that way. Dangerous thinking. When she was truthful, she expected to hear the truth. Reasonable, she expected reasonable behavior in return. She was young, inventive, fantastically successful. She trusted in the world, believing in poetic justice—that good ideas blossomed and bore fruit, while dangerous schemes were meant to wither on the vine. She had passions and petty jealousies like everybody else, but she was possessed of a serene rationality. At three, she had listened while her mother sang “Greensleeves” in the dark, and she’d asked: “Why are you singing ‘Greensleeves’ when my nightgown is blue?” Then Gillian had changed the song to “Bluesleeves,” and Emily had drifted off. Those songs were over now, Gillian long gone. Despite this loss—because of it—Emily was still that girl, seeking consonance and symmetry, logic, light.
18
“What’s that noise?” George asked.
“I have no idea.” Jess strained her ears to hear an odd trilling in the distance.
“Is that a cell phone?”
“Oh, it must be mine.” Jess jumped up. “Sorry.” She tripped over Sandra’s cat, and he snarled in outrage as she ran to the entryway where she and George and Colm had left their coats and bags. The outside pocket of her backpack glowed. “Hello? Hello? Hi, Emily. No, I didn’t lose it. I forgot I had it.” She held the phone too tightly and it beeped. “Could I call you later? I’m working…. Yes. It’s a huge project and we’re on deadline! Why are you laughing? Do you think I’m joking?” Jess looked back at the pair of camping tables George had set up in the living room. The tables were piled with folios and quartos arranged by language and by century. Colm was carrying in more books from the kitchen. “Seriously, I can’t talk,” Jess said. “I’ll call you later.”
They had just two more days to appraise the cookbooks. Colm and Jess were carrying and sorting, and George was typing in titles on his laptop. Conditions were difficult. Sandra hovered. Colm was allergic to the cat. They couldn’t wear shoes in the house, so they padded around in thick socks. In January Sandra seemed to skimp on heat. Colm wore a vest over his button-down shirt, and a tweed jacket on top of that. George wore a thick black pullover, and Jess a giant brown cardigan with a red knit hat pulled down over her ears. George had to suppress a smile the first time he saw the hat.
“What?” Jess demanded.
“Nothing.” George tried not to look at her.
They worked long hours like a sequestered jury, deliberating at the tables with copious evidence before them. There were eighteenth-century German cookbooks with fold-out diagrams of table settings, plates and platters arrayed like planets, little dishes orbiting larger courses. There were cookbooks small enough to fit in the palm of the hand, and others gargantuan, so that George used special foam book cradles to hold them open and protect their bindings. To assess these volumes was to consider tastes both delicate and omnivorous, to view exquisite illustrations like the French engravings of dessert spoons, or grotesque—like the plate in Le Livre Cuisinaire of tête de veau en tortue, a savory tart garnished with red crustaceans, a still life with claws and tentacles and beady eyes. The task would have been daunting even without the collector’s bookmarks, notes, and clippings; his menus on scrap paper, where he drew up imaginary feasts with inky thumbnails of partridges and steaming puddings: Pudding boiled, pudding of cream, pudding quaking, pudding shaking … Often as the collector wrote, his firm hand grew tremulous. His print would wobble, and his notes burst into erotopoetic menus, as recitative lifts into song: