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OSIRIS on the wall behind her desk, without embarrassment.
    He supposed none of this was surprising, since she had originally wanted to be an actress. That was a profession that Father had always warned him about. The story of how she came to Silicon Valley, fresh from UCLA, was never clear to Timothy. There’s a certain decorum required when a forty-seven-year-old man interviews a girl half his age. He can’t seem too interested – especially when an EEOC lawsuit might drop from the sky like a vengeful Thor’s hammer. Which was a shame, because the few details he did extract from her seemed interesting. Something about her father dying when she was twelve, an acting career that didn’t pan out, a spur-of-the-moment road trip north with a drug-addled boyfriend – who now apparently had disappeared into the Bay fog – and then, finally, an afternoon spent at the Stanford Coffee House, where the Kid had met her and suggested she come in to Osiris for an interview.
    But however she got to Osiris, the important thing, as far asTimothy was concerned, was that Tricia was very pretty, and very unencumbered, and the sharp prickles of sexual energy he felt when seeing her each morning made the drive to the office exciting, and enlivened otherwise dull days.
    Timothy turned to her.
    She held up a pink phone message pad. ‘There were a few calls while you were in your meeting,’ Tricia said. She tore off the top sheets. ‘Tran called. He’s not coming in today. He’s running behind at another client, so he’ll come on Monday.’ Tran was their part-time computer consultant. He came in once a week to spend a few hours fixing all of the damage Timothy had managed to create in the preceding seven days.
    â€˜Good,’ Timothy said.
    â€˜Pinky Dewer called,’ she continued. ‘He said it was nothing important; just checking in.’
    â€˜Great,’ Timothy said. As Pinky was the largest investor in Osiris – and now the largest money-loser – it was vital that Timothy have no contact with him until Osiris could fix the yen situation. He didn’t want to have to lie about how things were going. So that meant he would need to accidentally misplace Pinky’s message, perhaps under a pile of papers on his desk. Or maybe straight into the trash.
    â€˜I’ll take that message.’ He reached across her desk and tried to snatch the papers from her hand. She held tight. His fingers grasped hers. She raised an eyebrow.
    â€˜And,’ she said, ‘one more. Your wife called.’
    Timothy lowered his hand. He tried to keep his voice neutral. ‘Oh?’
    â€˜She reminded you about Friday. About Big Sur.’
    He and Katherine had been planning a long weekend at the Ventana Inn to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary. Originally she had wanted to spend two weeks in Hawaii, but somehow, with a wink and a smile and just the right soothing words, he had managed to talk her down to just three days a mere ninety miles away.
    If yesterday Timothy was ambivalent about the trip, today he was dreading it. Certainly, he loved Katherine. He couldn’t imaginebeing without her. But just because you love someone doesn’t mean you want to be locked in a rustic cabin with them for three days. When had anniversary celebrations become misdemeanor sentences?
    He already knew how the trip would play out: three days of hurt looks and quiet barbs, of forced smiles and trying to be the husband he knew he ought to be, but couldn’t. And now, on top of it, there was the small detail that his hedge fund was tottering on the verge of ruin, that his entire reputation and career depended on whether a gaggle of Oriental men in Tokyo woke up in a good mood.
    Tricia said: ‘She said don’t forget to bring your work home tonight. You’re leaving tomorrow.’ They would be driving down to Big Sur on Friday, and then Timothy would take a