The Cookbook Collector

“It’s the new version, 2.0, not the one we’ve shipped,” Jonathan reassured Emily and Molly. “The original Lockbox that everyone is using out there is totally fine.”

“What did you do?” Emily asked Orion.

She felt Jonathan tense. He pulled his legs away from hers under the table.

“The new code is buggy,” Orion said.

But Jonathan contradicted. “It was ready until you broke it.”

“If it was breakable,” said Orion, “then obviously it wasn’t ready.”

“There’s testing code and there’s fucking with it.”

“There’s solid work and wishful thinking,” Orion said. “You can’t tell clients you’ve got stuff ready when you know it isn’t ready.”

“I tell them what we will have ready, if everybody does his job,” said Jonathan.

“I’m talking about reality,” said Orion, “not some myth of magical security solutions—”

“Oh, come on, you guys,” Emily interrupted.

“Yeah, really,” Molly said.

Emily chided, “This is the same debate we have all the time between programmers and marketing. Do you think you’re so unusual? We broke something just a couple of weeks ago, and now it’s crippled.”

“Broke what?” Curiosity trumped aggression. “You’re building something new. What are you building?”

“It’s not public yet,” Emily replied.

“What is it?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Yes, you can,” Jonathan wheedled.

“Well, I won’t.”

“We have ways of making you talk,” he teased.

“She’ll never tell you.” Orion spoke lightly, but his words suggested his greater knowledge of Emily, and their older friendship—and once again he angered Jonathan.

“I’m tired of your predictions,” Jonathan said quietly.

“You don’t have to listen,” Orion pointed out. “Usually you don’t.”

Jonathan was toying with his half-filled champagne flute. The glass looked so delicate in his hand that Emily reached across the table and placed it safely next to hers.

“You didn’t have to fight with him,” Emily told Jonathan in the car.

“He started it,” said Jonathan.

“What difference does it make? You should know better.”

They drove up Mass. Ave. with its multicultural holiday lights: shooting stars and stylized dancers. “He’s irresponsible,” Jonathan declared.

“Why? Because he disagrees with you sometimes?”

“You wouldn’t defend him like that if he worked for you.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh, I know you.”

“Well, I don’t attack my friends in restaurants.”

“I didn’t attack him.”

“I thought you were going to break his glass and stab him with it.”

“Hire him at Veritech,” said Jonathan. “Seriously. We’ll pack him up in Bubble Wrap and ship him. We don’t want him.”

“But you might need him.”

“For what? Talking about our products?” Jonathan was indignant again. “Next thing I know, Green Knight comes up with a security system just like ours.”

He amazed her. He was all energy, and all competition. She was driven to succeed, but her idea of success was focused, pure, and self-defined. Jonathan’s idea was annihilating his rivals. Even now, he wove through traffic, muscling his way into one lane and then another, shaving seconds off the drive to Somerville.

“We’re very different,” she said.

He smiled. “No, we’re not. You just like to pretend we are.”

“Why would I pretend?”

“Because you’re a girl.”

“What do you mean I’m ‘a girl’? I talk like a girl? I throw like a girl?”

“Yeah. Exactly. You throw like a girl.”

“Take it back.”

“No.”

“Take it back.” She tickled him under his arm, and the car swerved. “Sorry! I’m sorry!”

“You could wait for a red light,” he pointed out, but waiting was difficult.

When they got to his apartment, Jonathan left the lights off. His roommates, Jake and Aldwin, were away for the long weekend, leaving their bikes in the living room, a shadowy obstacle course Jonathan didn’t bother navigating.

“Now take it back,” said Emily, even as he took her in his arms.

He pressed against her in the entryway. “No,” he said. “You want to win as much as I do.”

“It’s not a race.”

“You know it is. It’s a race to patent first, and ship first, and file first. You and Veritech are already winning, so you pretend you don’t compete.”

“If I do race at times,” she said, “I’m not part of some demolition derby, trying to win at all costs.”

She was so beautiful, lecturing in the dark. He unbuttoned her coat and slipped her sweater off. He stroked her slender arms, and lifted her silk camisole, even as she scolded. Her moralizing was sweet, irresistible as words whispered in a foreign language. Her voice caught as he kissed her neck, and his hands traveled down, caressing her breasts, spanning her waist.

“The question is what sort of race you want to run,” she said, “and what sort of standards you set for yourself.”

He liked the way she tried to finish her thought, even as he took her nipple in his mouth. When he knelt before her, and he pulled off her skirt, and rolled down her thick winter tights, she couldn’t talk at all, but sighed as his tongue, hard and wet, pressed into her. She was warm, and she wanted him—her fingers dug into his shoulders. He’d behaved badly at dinner, but she was hungry anyway.

“You’re no different from me,” he whispered.

Yes, I am, she thought, even then, even at the edge of pleasure. Didn’t she believe in him? Of course she did. She wanted to. She longed for him. She ached for him, and when they lay down together on his unmade bed, she wrapped her legs around him. If she laughed at his impatience, she was impatient too.

Later, much later, when they’d had almost enough, he lay on his side, looking at her with his head resting on his arm. He was a direct lover, but he could be tender too.

She turned toward him, and they lay so close that when she spoke, her breath was the same as his. “Here’s the difference between us,” she said. “I trust my friends.”

“Not true! You don’t even trust me.”

Emily knew he was thinking about Veritech. “That’s something else.”

“Why?”

She hesitated, and then she said, “Because other people are involved.”

“Other people?” he scoffed, and he was right. Where were those other people now? What did they matter? She and Jonathan were a world unto themselves. When he touched her and stroked her face, all the longing of the past weeks eased. Or did it? Even as they kissed, she missed the kiss before, and the one before that. How strange the way every moment contained and at the same time hollowed out the last. She thought she should be satisfied, but she wasn’t. Why? Because she could not dissolve herself. She wanted to forget herself with him, and give herself to him. No you don’t, she told herself. You don’t want to give yourself to any man. But she did. She wanted