The Cookbook Collector (26 page)

“So you don’t win your victories in the forest, but on the ground.”

Leon glanced at Jess as he said, “Nothing with trees happens on the ground.”

Jess traced the smooth edge of the display case with her finger. Despite her resolution in Muir Woods, despite her weeks up north with Leon, she had not overcome her fear of climbing.

“I’ll get you some champagne,” Leon offered Jess in a gentler voice.

“No, thank you.”

George searched Jess’s downcast face as Leon ambled to the bar. He wished he could talk to her alone; take her into a different room without seeming obvious.

“Are you all right?” George asked. That startled her, and he regretted the question. Too intimate. Too concerned. “Could I get you some strawberries?” he amended.

She shook her head and kept gazing at the rare cookbooks under glass.

“Please let me get you some.”

“Please?” She teased gently. “Have you started saying please to me?”

“A rare slip,” he said. “But I did buy the strawberries for you.”

“Why?”

Because I love you, he thought. “Because I owe you,” he said.

“You don’t owe me anything,” she replied in her easy way.

“You know I do. You got me these books.” His voice was low. “You made the deal, Jess.”

“True,” she conceded with a smile.

“Would you like to work on them?”

“Work on them how?”

“We need a descriptive catalog, for one thing. We have to sort the notes and store them separately with records of the page numbers where they were found. Colm started, but I need him at the store, and he’s got his dissertation. I was wondering if you would like to try.”

He opened the glass display case and took out the palm-sized 1814
American Cookery
. The binding had cracked, and he held the book as if it were a fledgling with a broken wing.

“Independence Cake,”
Jess read over George’s shoulder.
“Twenty pounds flour, fifteen pounds sugar, ten pounds butter, four dozen eggs, one quart wine, one quart brandy …”
She laughed softly. “Was this for the Founding Fathers reunion?” She turned the next several pages and found a black-ink drawing on a slip of typing paper, a nude woman holding a round fruit to her mouth. Jess plucked it out and read the collector’s tiny caption:
“Do I dare to eat a peach?”

“Will you?” George asked, closing the book and placing it atop the cabinet.

“Maybe,” Jess said lightly. “Do you have any?”

“No peaches.”

“Oh, well. I can’t ruin this dress, anyway.”

Words he took as permission to look openly at her. The fabric of her dress, gray and wrinkled at first glance, was really silver. No one else would wear fabric like that, rustling with every breath.

“It’s Emily’s,” she said, disproving his idea immediately. She had borrowed the dress from her sister, although Emily thought it was too long on her.

“Will you take the job? Please?”

“Hmm.” Pensive, with just a touch of humor, she said, “I don’t think I like that word from you.”

“I’d pay you more,” George told her. Only half-joking, he declared, “I’d make you curator.”

“Oh, a title,” said Jess.

Why are you hesitating now? he thought. What have you been doing for the past six weeks? He had scarcely seen her at the store. Across the room, George’s friends were clustering at the dessert table like bees. Raj and Colm were discussing William Blake, while Jonathan was holding forth to Nick about how the Nasdaq would rise again. Stealthily, Leon walked among them. George assumed he was casing the joint. George should check Leon’s pockets before he left. Search him and then show Jess the content of her boyfriend’s character. After which George could comfort Jess, and then … he didn’t know what happened next.

Jess said, “I want to know who she was.”

“What do you mean?” George asked.

“The collector’s lover.”

“Why do you assume he had a lover?”

“Well, because—because look.” Jess held up the nude. “You’ve got the evidence right here.”

“You’re missing the point,” George told her. “She wasn’t his lover. That was why he wrote all the notes and drew the pictures.” He took the drawing from her, and his fingers brushed hers. She looked up at him, clear-eyed.
Perspicacious
. She understands, he thought. She knows.

But in the next moment she drew back her hand. “Actually, I think I
would
like a drink.”

As he showed her the way to the bar, he finished his thought under his breath, murmuring, “He didn’t have her, so he drew her instead.”

21

J
onathan was calm when ISIS rose to nine, and still confident when the shares retreated to five fifty. Those who whined and fretted only irritated him. Scared-straight venture capitalists did not impress him now any more than they had back in 1998 when they pleaded with Jonathan to take their cash. Where did they get their ideas about the new economy? From magazines? He did not bother reading publications like
Fast Company
, or
Wired
, or
Forbes
. So-called business cycles bored him. The news, whether paper or electronic, meant little as far as Jonathan was concerned. The news was already old. Weekly, daily, hourly, anything called news was already archival.

He understood that in this world there were news reporters and news makers, investors and innovators. Watchers and world beaters. In each case he took the active role. He did not know economic theory; he knew computers. He did not meditate on trends; he eyed the future. And so, at George’s party, when he talked to Nick, he spoke with perfect equanimity. “The strong survive, man,” he told Nick, and by
strong
he meant “Those with new technology.”

While Emily saw falling share price as a sad decay, a postlapsarian decline from larger, rounder numbers, Jonathan came to view the fall as opportunity. “Buy now,” he told anyone who asked, and he began to buy back shares himself, convinced of his company’s resilience.

In April when ISIS sank to four, Jonathan called a meeting. Dave, Aldwin, Oskar, and Jake gathered in Oskar’s office.

“Where’s Orion?” Jonathan asked.

“I’m not sure he came in today,” said Jake.

“No, I saw him,” said Aldwin, just as Orion walked through the door and took his seat in the corner.

“Okay,” said Jonathan, and then paused as Orion opened his cream soda. “Let me tell you what’s happening.”

“Cisco bought us,” Orion said, and for a second everybody froze in shock. “Just kidding.”

No one laughed.

“Anyone else want to take a guess?” Jonathan asked icily. Nobody spoke, so he continued. “It’s time for a paradigm shift. We are going to develop a new security product for electronic fingerprinting of every view and touch on a piece of data. We’re going to call this service Fast-Tracking, and we’ll sell it to every security client.”

“How would this work?” Dave asked.

“Look, with ChainLinx we encrypt transactions to safeguard the purchaser. Fast-Tracking is really a data-protection and surveillance tool for the vendor.” He stepped up to the board and began to draw the new scheme in green ink.

What did Eli Whitney feel when he arrived in America with plans for the cotton gin? What were Francis Cabot Lowell’s emotions when, from memory alone, he built a scale model of the Cartwright weaving machine? Elation? Mastery mixed with trepidation? Jonathan felt entirely himself as he played his card, the secret Emily had revealed to him eighteen months before. He was not copying detailed plans, but developing his own. Nor was he attempting to replicate an existing project at Veritech—for Emily had told him in no uncertain terms that electronic fingerprinting was a project that she would not pursue. Ever since that conversation, Jonathan had plotted his own course—a new product for ISIS, a new initiative for programmers, and, most important, a breakthrough to present to analysts and shareholders.

During the Industrial Revolution, memorizing machine parts might have been essential. In this Computational Era, the concept alone, the whispered idea, launched a thousand chips. Jonathan’s mind was quick and infinitely flexible, his timing uncanny, his presentation transformative as he made over electronic fingerprinting into new market share. He was not mathematically creative like Jake or Oskar, but he had an acquisitive intelligence, and when he appropriated an idea, he improved it, until his own version not only surpassed, but obliterated its source. Indeed, he no longer recalled electronic fingerprinting except with nostalgia, as he remembered other conversations with Emily, her head on his chest, her bare back under his hand, her thigh against his thigh. Her puzzling confidence became a gift. Her revelation shifted in his mind to inspiration. And Emily herself—he worshipped her. She was his muse. If he did not tell her about this meeting, if he neglected to mention his new plan for ISIS—Well, soon he planned to tell her this and everything.

Emily had promised to leave Veritech in June. She and Jonathan talked endlessly about finding an apartment in Cambridge, or simply buying a house. They had a real estate agent, and no price limit. Therefore Jonathan felt just right as he diagrammed his new Fast-Tracking system on the whiteboard. At last he was getting to the crux of the matter—the new technology that ISIS needed. He loved Emily, and he thanked her silently, although he did not mention her name in his visionary presentation. There was no need. There was no time. Oh, life was sweet.

Dazzled, the others watched Jonathan unveil his new plans. Always a little slow, Dave asked about the legal and ethical implications of the idea, while Jake and Oskar leapfrogged ahead with technical questions.

“Now this is interesting,” Oskar said, bestowing his highest praise.

As for Orion, he felt hopeful for the first time in months. Instead of lecturing about release dates, and talking up ISIS products, Jonathan was presenting new ideas. Instead of trying to shut down criticism, he was encouraging debate. In the past he’d sacrificed quality for speed and talked incessantly about market share. Now he proposed building a new system from scratch. Orion saw the plan opening, blossoming like fireworks trailing sparks and smoke in the night sky. They would tag and trace every touch on every piece of data, capture and collect what had been ephemeral. What possibilities for research! What challenges for new analysis! He understood the idea immediately, and the scribbles on the whiteboard were not scribbles to him, but poetry. The design Jonathan unveiled was that elegant.

Aldwin asked, “How will we staff this? Start a new group?”

“Yeah,” said Jonathan. “But we’ll keep the project confidential. No analyst or investor input! And we need somebody to spearhead it.”

“I will!” Orion surprised himself with his alacrity. “I’d like to,” he amended.

Jonathan smiled. It was not his fault that his smile looked so mischievous, that his blue eyes sparkled and the corners of his mouth curled as though anticipating some particularly delicious meal. He had always known his old friend would come around. Turn away long enough, and people think you have forgotten them entirely. Show your displeasure, and first they hate you, and then they despair, and finally, scarcely acknowledging it to themselves, they miss you. Change the game again, to see if they follow. The best ones can. The smart ones always do.

“You would have to leave what’s left of the Lockbox group,” Jonathan told Orion. “Would you be willing to do that?”

God, yes, Orion thought. “Definitely,” he said aloud.

“Maybe we could work something out,” Jonathan said. “I think that you’d be great.”

Such faith in him! For long months Orion’s efforts had been ad hoc, troubleshooting substandard code. But to start up this new Fast-Tracking venture, to head his own group, design and build a system to his own standards—to work with autonomy! The idea thrilled him. Orion was moved by Jonathan’s trust, and his gesture to restore their friendship. Jonathan had not given up on him; Jonathan still saw him as one of the founders.

“You would report directly to me,” Jonathan told Orion, “so I can keep an eye on you.”

Orion chose to take this as a compliment. He took this, as intended, as a formal job offer, and he nodded in agreement. He accepted.

Perhaps in the old days, men built their reputations, and then their fortunes. Orion had made his fortune first. He had not designed algorithms like Oskar and Jake, or established administrative systems like Dave and Aldwin, or sold Lockbox and ChainLinx to the first clients as Jonathan had, flying all night to charm his way into Disney and CNN when he was still a graduate student with one suit. Too diffident, too dreamy, too cautious, too much a programmer, Orion was worth over twenty million dollars even in this depressed market, but he had not been well employed. He did not sit on the executive board. He was not vice president of anything. Heading a new group, he would step up. He had a chance to justify his wealth, to prove that his success was more than accidental, to become a self-made man.

Meet me downstairs,
Orion e-mailed Sorel as soon as he returned to his desk.

“I’m right here.” She was standing behind him, watching him type.

“What happened?” she asked him as they waited for the elevator.

“Shh!”

She looked at him questioningly.
“What?”

“You won’t believe this …,” he told her in the elevator, but just then someone else joined them. Somebody from Marketing,
ALOK
on his badge. Orion could not keep track of the new hires anymore, nor did these recruits know him. Could they have any idea, for example, that Orion had named their company over beers in Somerville so many months ago? Jonathan said then that he wanted some kind of acronym for “Internet Security System,” and Orion had remembered his fourth-grade unit on Egyptians and his report on Isis—baker, spinner, weaver, daughter of the Earth and sky. This new guy, Alok, had no idea. There were no historical inscriptions at ISIS, no steles recording early triumphs. No hieroglyphs with bird-headed vulture capitalists and the four founders arrayed like boy kings on the elevator’s smooth gray walls.

The doors parted, and Orion ushered Sorel through the lobby with its mobile of oblong mirrors, and its revolving doors of thick, rubber-edged glass.

Into the fresh spring air they hurried, away from ISIS. Sorel thought he wanted to buy lunch at the deli at One Kendall Square, but Orion saw too many ISIS worshippers there. He ushered her into the furniture store Pompanoosuc Mills, vast and airy, filled with handcrafted Shaker furniture—or rather the kind of furniture Shakers would have built if they had softened on celibacy and simplicity and fashioned bunk beds and glass-fronted china cabinets.

Sorel followed him to the back of the store where they admitted to the saleswoman that they were just looking, that they would indeed let her know if they had any questions about woods or pricing, and settled down together, pulling up two spindle-backed chairs to a cherry dining-room table.

Orion said, “Jonathan’s got a new plan.”

“He needs one.”

“Just listen!” Orion watched her face as he told her. He watched the way she sucked her lower lip, appreciating the new scheme immediately, savoring the news.

“You must be joking!”

“Wait. There’s more. I’m going to be the team leader of the Fast-Track group.”

“You?”

“What’s wrong with me?” He was a little offended. “Don’t you think I can?”

“Of course you can. I just wonder why Jonathan likes you now.”

“I think … it’s just … we go way back,” Orion struggled to explain. “I think when you go that far back with someone, the friendship never disappears completely, and sometimes, eventually, the relationship regenerates.”

“Like a starfish growing a new arm,” said Sorel.

“Don’t you think sometimes it works that way?”

“I don’t trust him, I’m afraid.”

“You don’t know him as well as I do,” said Orion.

“That’s why I’m in a better position to judge.”

“You’re a cynic,” he said.

“Probably.”

“I think with some people you have shared a history, and it’s very deep.”

“He says one kind word. You turn to mush.”

“Kind word? He’s giving me this huge new project.”

“The project sounds brilliant—if you can pull it off.” Sorel tilted her chair back. “I’m afraid he’s setting you up.”

“No,” Orion said. “He wouldn’t do that. This new group is real, and he wants me to run it. He’s finally found a way to use me.”

“That’s just it.”

“Sorel!” He turned on her in exasperation.

“Sorry.”

“You would make a good spy,” he said.

“Why?”

“You don’t trust anybody. You wear black overcoats. You admit you like disguises.”

“I don’t disguise myself from you.”

“No?” He turned toward her, and captured her hand in his. “Then why is your phone number unlisted?”

“Why did you try to find my phone number?” she asked, puzzled. “I only use my cell.”

“And why do you disappear all the time?”

“What do you mean, ‘disappear’?”

“You don’t show up, and I have no idea where you are.”

“I don’t have to tell you where I am. I’m touring!”

“Where are you touring? Davis Square?”

“I have a career.”

“You mean The Chloroforms? That’s your career?”

“You don’t think programming is my career, do you? I came here to be a performance artist and study physics. You don’t think I’m going to start rallying round ISIS and all that.”

“I’m sure you were perfectly happy with ISIS when you sold your stock,” Orion said, thinking of Sorel’s little house.

“Look, I’m the consistent one,” said Sorel. “I’ve always said ISIS is my day job. You’re the one obsessed with Jonathan. He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. You’re always looking for affection, even when the relationship is frayed. Even when it’s broken.”

“Let’s leave Molly out of this,” said Orion.

“You always do.” Sorel pushed her chair back from the table. “ISIS is a case in point. So is Jonathan. You’re loyal to everybody. It’s a shame, really, that I’m …”

“That you’re what?” Orion asked.

“So fond of you.”