19

Only Abigail’s calm mediation, Luisa’s and my promises that we’d try to act like reasonable adults and the suggestion that we make a quick detour to pick up some nicotine gum convinced Peter it would be safe to get back on the road. I’d never seen him throw a tantrum before, even one as relatively mild as his had been. A perverse part of me enjoyed learning what it to took to push him over the edge, but I knew better than to tell him that.

Fortunately, we didn’t have much farther to go. Signs started popping up for Redwood City and Atherton, followed by Menlo Park and Palo Alto. We were going a couple of towns south of Palo Alto to Santa Clara, just past the “Googleplex” in Mountain View and Yahoo!’s Sunnyvale headquarters. Sunnyvale was part of Silicon Valley, so the vale was legitimate, and the weather here was definitely sunnier than in San Francisco, but it seemed to me that only a person who either had something to hide or a reckless need to tempt fate would name a place Sunnyvale.

We pulled off the highway just before ten, letting Abigail guide us the few remaining miles. The buildings we passed looked like those in any recently built American office park, but the signs out front bore the sort of playful names specific to start-ups run by people barely out of their teens, and the cars in the parking lots indicated which buildings’ inhabitants had already struck Internet gold and which were still toiling away in the hopes of a future payoff. Igobe’s pre-IPO parking lot held more of the latter type, but there was a gleaming black Lamborghini parked in a reserved space in the first row.

“Looks like the Igster’s in the house,” said Peter, pointing out its vanity plate, IGSTER1, as he steered into a nearby slot reserved for visitors.

“And it looks like his employees are being alienated from the fruits of their labors,” said Luisa, observing the lesser cars in the lot and chewing furiously on a wad of Nicorette. As a general rule, she considered gum tacky, but she’d been willing to make an exception for the sake of Peter’s nerves, and her mood had made a dramatic turn for the better once she unwrapped the first piece. It was too bad there wasn’t a gum replacement for Diet Coke.

“Iggie’s been having a hard time holding on to talent,” Abigail told us as we left the car and headed toward the entrance. “A lot of start-ups around here don’t pay much, but they are generous with stock options, so if the company does well and goes public, the options can be worth a lot. There are more than a few janitors and mail clerks who’ve made millions that way. Iggie’s tightfisted with everyone but himself, and he’s been stingy not only with salaries but with the options, too. It’s making it difficult for him to hire the best people, which is one reason why Igobe’s still using Leo’s original software designs, but it’s going to be a problem when he needs to start work on the next generation’s software release and updates.”

Yet another thing it was good to know before I committed my firm to handling the Igobe IPO. The more I heard, the more I wondered if it would make sense to cancel tomorrow’s meeting altogether, whether Iggie was a kidnaper or not.

In front of the building, purple flowers planted in a circle of green grass spelled out Igobe’s name in its trademark bubble letters. It was hard to imagine Winslow, Brown with such a logo, much less spelling it out in tulips-the firm generally stuck to a dignified sans serif font that didn’t require watering-but Silicon Valley culture had little in common with that of a white-shoe New York investment bank, save a fascination with money. Once the automatic glass doors of the entranceway slid apart with a muted swoosh, the differences became all the more striking. We stepped right into a vast open-plan work space that looked as if it had been lifted whole from a satire of dot-com era excesses. Twenty-somethings dressed in geek-hipster chic zipped around on scooters, while others flopped on brightly colored beanbag chairs or chatted in front of glass-fronted refrigerators stocked with an array of designer beverages. The decorator who had outfitted Winslow, Brown’s headquarters in dark paneling, Persian rugs, and wing chairs would have fled, shrieking in terror, if the scene hadn’t given him a coronary first.

Only one other person besides us didn’t seem to fit right in, but she wouldn’t have fit in at Winslow, Brown, either. Across the expanse of carefully distressed polished concrete sat a reception desk made from molded purple plastic, and behind the desk and its collection of lava lamps sat an older woman with frizzy gray hair, red-framed glasses and a purple visor stitched with the Igobe logo. Even though she was of average weight, she was wearing a muumuu patterned in a neon-shaded floral print that made me think with newly discovered affection of the pink dress hanging in the closet back at the Forrests’ house.

“Just shoot me now,” said Abigail, freezing inside the entrance.

“What’s wrong?” asked Peter.

“I can’t believe it. She’s still here.”

“Who’s still where?” asked Luisa.

But before she could respond, the woman behind the desk emitted a noise that sounded like a curdled yodel and would have put Camilla Gergen to shame. “Yoo-hoo! Biggie!”

Abigail blanched, something I’d thought only happened in books. “Twice in twelve hours,” she muttered, and for a moment I thought she was going to retreat back through the sliding-glass doors. But then she squared her shoulders and strode forward.

“Hello, Phyllis,” she said politely. “I didn’t realize you were still working here.”

So this was the tree from which Iggie had fallen.

“Of course I’m working here. My baby needs me! But we weren’t expecting you for another couple of hours, Biggie,” said Phyllis in a tone that managed to grate, scold and condescend in one fell swoop. “Igor’s scheduled in back-to-back meetings until noon. You know how busy he is. And we thought you were coming alone. Who are your little friends?”

I hadn’t been called anyone’s “little friend” since the third grade. “This is my boss, Peter, and his fiancée, Rachel,” Abigail said. “And this is my friend, Luisa.”

Judging from the way Phyllis set her lips, outlined in coral pencil a shade darker than her lipstick, she wasn’t even remotely pleased to see us, which seemed unfair. We were clean and neatly dressed, and we’d all managed to plaster amiable meeting-someone’s-mother expressions on our faces. I might not be looking my best, but Luisa was beautiful even when cranky and chewing gum, and Peter had the sort of unassuming good looks that always made me worry people thought he could do better when they saw us together.

But it was Luisa, standing closest to Abigail, who was the source of her displeasure, notwithstanding her resemblance to Salma Hayek. Phyllis gave her the once-over and sniffed before turning back to Abigail. “Dr. Grout is right. This is just a phase you’re going through, Biggie. You’ve probably been watching too much of that Ellen DeGeneres person. I know it’s all the rage right now, but you and Igor are so well matched. You really shouldn’t let fashion dictate your choice of life partner.”

“Yes. I blame it all on Ellen,” said Abigail in the mild tone I was learning she reserved for sarcasm.

But sarcasm was lost on Phyllis. “Igor needs someone to be the woman behind the man. You were perfectly suited for that, Biggie. And it’s so much healthier when people play their proper roles in a relationship. Even Dr. Grout thinks so. There’s nothing as fulfilling as maintaining a happy household. Taking care of others is really the very best work a woman can do.”

Abigail opened her mouth, probably to debate her proper role and just how happy her household with Iggie had been, but then she closed it, apparently recognizing how futile any attempt at debate would be. “Could you let Igg-I mean, Igor know I’m here?” she asked instead.