Zoetrope: All-Story Extra

    They drove from Palo Alto to Woodside without speaking. Claudia sat with her body angled away from her husband, gazing at the hills that tumbled back from the highway. She’d grown up in Canada; she was used to deep green tones in the landscape, not this West Coast yellow, this dusty shade of thirst. Twisting the band on her finger, she glanced at Damon and thought (not seriously, just to know the door was always there): I could leave him.
    Last weekend she’d taken a shuttle flight to LA to visit a girlfriend from college. What she hadn’t told Damon was how, just before she left, she’d slipped off the rings that signaled her as Claimed and stored them both in the keepsake box on her dresser. She and Janine hit the clubs: reckless, gleeful, like in the old days. As if—in this early spring of 2000—they weren’t staring down thirty and what lay beyond, as if they still had nothing to lose. Claudia tossed back tequila and flirted without shame. There had been one man in particular—barely more than a youth—with silky black hair and cinnamon skin, and a loose-limbed grace unleashed on the dance floor. She took it no further than that. But, oh God, to feel the snap and heat of brand-new physical attraction, wired with that sense of mystery, possibility. It was the smoke-and-mirrors game of desire, and she missed it. She’d been so good at it.
    She glanced again at her husband. He was scowling. He was thinking about work, she knew, or possibly the vintage Porsche, in the shop with a busted alternator for the third time in seven months. He was a tall man—Claudia was five-ten herself and had never dated anyone shorter than six feet—and a big one, broad-shouldered in his blue Armani shirt. His dark hair was thinning back from his forehead; his hands on the wheel were large and square-palmed. She thought of her own hands, the way she’d spread them on the glossy surface of an LA bar, studying her long, tapered, ringless fingers as if she’d never seen them before. Her hands had always been a good feature.

    And then they were on a narrow road that went high and winding into the hills. Damon finally broke the silence between them, pointing out the houses of prominent Silicon Valley executives: "That’s Jack Harlan’s," he said, "That’s Kevin deRocca’s." Multi-million dollar sprawls of Spanish or colonial design glimpsed through trees, gates, and thick protective hedging.
  They stopped in front of one of these gates; Damon unrolled the window and punched a sequence of numbers into the intercom system set within the redbrick wall. There was a sputter of static, and then a man’s amiable voice, "Damon, that you? And the wife?"
  "And the wife," Damon said, grinning at Claudia for the first time that morning.
    "Come on in, you guys."
    "These are nice people," Damon told her, as the wheels churned over gravel. "But watch out for Tyler. He’s harmless, I think . . . but watch out for him."

    Welcome to the home of Tyler and Laura O’Connelly. A rambling two-story Mediterranean, with a small collection of cars in the driveway and a long narrow pool in the backyard, set in pink tile. Laura came out to meet them, a yellow dog springing at her heels. "You must be Damon," she said. "You must be Claudia." Ritualistic kisses on the cheek were exchanged. Laura was smaller and darker than Claudia, brown hair clipped back from a tanned and angular face, belly swelling out beneath a powder-blue cotton dress. She was five months pregnant. Hammered-metal earrings swung at her throat. "The place is chaotic," she said. "We just moved in a few weeks ago and we’re still—Yes, Sammy. You’re a good boy, Sammy." She grabbed a ball from between the dog’s jaws and lobbed it into the backyard. The dog barked twice and went galloping after it.
    Claudia heard the slap-slam of a screen door. As Tyler O’Connelly stepped off the terrace towards them, she looked at him and thought: Oh my.
    He was an inch or so taller than Damon and fitter and leaner; he was dressed in a way that looked out of place amid the light-colored polo shirts, button-downs, and khakis that defined the fashion sense of Silicon Valley. He wore black slacks, a black, loose-knit sweater that exposed a tanned reach of collarbone. Brown hair fell over his forehead; his eyes were brown and warm, as he greeted Damon with a handshake and then turned his attention to Claudia. He looked like a combination of Hugh Grant and the brooding artsy types she dated before Damon. "I’ve heard so much about you," he said with delight, and then before she knew it she was enfolded, his arms crushing her against his chest as if they were long-lost relatives. He smelled yummy and expensive.
    "Really," she said dubiously, disentangling herself from his arms and glancing at Damon.
    Her husband looked at them with a small, wry smile.
  "The car," Tyler said, turning back to Damon. Lean, boyish energy crested off him in waves, "c’mon, my man, let me take you for a ride in my new baby—" He held up keys, jangled them, and grinned.
  Damon had mentioned the car over lunch. He was eager to see it. Some kind of Jaguar, some new sleek style that Tyler had picked up the other week. As the men moved away, Claudia turned to Laura, who was smoothing the dress along her belly. She had an expression on her face that Claudia recognized as wistfulness, loneliness, and perhaps a hint of condescension: Boys and their toys.
    "Would you like a tour?" Laura said, and Claudia followed her inside, the yellow dog trotting behind.

Tyler was thirty-five now, Damon four years younger. They were two of those strange creatures the area specialized in: the young self-made multimillionaire, so passionate about what they did that the money came as almost an afterthought, a way of keeping score in the big-stakes game of high tech. Both men had been here from nearly the beginning, when people were still coming out for the ideas and the freedom and not so much the money. Tyler had rejected Wall Street for a VC firm on Sand Hill Road. He struck gold when he invested in a now-prominent search engine. Damon had dropped out of his Stanford grad program to found, grow, and finally sell an online auction house; the two men had been aware of each other, finally doing business together on Damon’s second company.
This was more or less how Claudia understood it. The world of Silicon Valley was still a bit vague to her, despite the fact she now found herself married to one of its young princes. Before Damon, the whole scene had been akin to another planet. Her own day-to-day world was confined to San Francisco: the Union Square art gallery where she worked, the North Beach and Filmore Street hang-outs she frequented alone or with friends. She had watched the new terms flesh themselves into being: the "dot.com yuppies" flashing down the 101, one hand on the wheel of their convertibles as they chatted on cell phones and the "marketing bunnies" in their fitted jackets, fresh from college, usually blonde, starry-eyed. It was the world of high tech, bleeding up from the peninsula and into the city, but it didn’t have anything to do with her. Her friends were artists, writers, grad students, wannabes; they worked as waiters or bartenders or bookstore clerks or temps. They did not talk about tech stocks or IPOs. They didn’t give a damn.

    Damon had picked her up at a Tragically Hip concert, a Canadian band playing at the Fillmore. He’d struck her as a little out of place—towering over the rest of the audience, not quite sure how to move to the music, a little too neat and well-dressed despite his attempts to be properly, artfully tousled. She might have blown him off except it was the Hip, and she’d had several beers. She was feeling really good, and then—and this was the kicker—he turned out to be Canadian himself, not only familiar with Toronto, where she’d gone to university, but the network of small towns where she’d grown up. Buckhorn, Bancroft, Lakefield, Fowler’s Corners, Pickering—she listened in sheer amazement as the names rolled off his tongue like silver coins. Those names, and the music that backdropped their conversation, invoked a nostalgia: motorcycle rides on the back of her father’s Harley, camping trips to Algonquin Park, glimmering icy winters, and the slow, wild, earthy emergence of spring.
    She looked at Damon and thought: Home.
    They fought on the first date. They clashed in so many ways, differing opinions on everything from the American class structure to the death penalty to bilingual education to public funding of the arts. They were both stubborn and used to winning and neither was capable of backing off, even when the argument got increasingly drunk, heated, and personal. It ended on a street corner, when he made some offhand remark that got her so furious she took a swing at him. He staggered back from the contact, not in pain so much as surprise at the pain. "Man," he said, looking at her with a startled expression, as her own anger broke apart in horror and mortification and apology. She realized then that he was impressed. That this entire date, which had been catastrophic in so many ways, had impressed him. "That was pretty good," he told her, one hand on his chest where she’d struck him.
    The next day he sent her two dozen long-stemmed roses. The card read, I like the fire in you. Boyfriends had criticized her in the past for being arrogant, competitive, for being smarter or more talented than they were. With this man, she realized, it would never be a problem.

This was what Claudia had learned: you couldn’t be a pretty woman marrying a wealthy man without the both of you being automatically suspect. You were marrying for money and he was marrying you for the way you looked on his arm. The actual particulars of you, your man, and your relationship seemed to crumble in the general force of the cliché; it was as if concepts like love and passion couldn’t exist in the face of such inequalities, such obvious trade-offs.

    Laura took her on a double-layered tour: the house as it was now and as it would be once the architect and interior designer were done with it. "The kitchen will be extended out to here and there will be these wing-like walls opening into the space beyond . . . I can’t really envision it, but that’s what the architect says . . . The French doors will be lifted taller so you can stand here and have a good view of the backyard . . . isn’t it a beautiful backyard?"
    Claudia agreed to the beauty of the backyard, its cultivated spill of bougainvillea and lilac.
     "And this bar will be replaced by the home theatre equipment," Laura continued," and on the other side of it we’re going to build an antique, old-fashioned bar with wood and brass . . . "
    She followed Laura up the curving staircase, through spacious rooms where sunlight poured through tall windows and doors opened out onto a sweeping terrace. "It’s a four-bedroom house," Laura said, as the dog thrust his head beneath Laura’s hand and she petted him absently, "so I decided we’ll have three kids. One for each extra bedroom." She grinned, but there was something too tired in her face or voice to deliver the joke properly. Faint lines etched themselves into her forehead as she talked, and her mouth had a determined set to it: Claudia thought of pioneers in the wilderness, clearing the woods, conquering nature. Laura seemed equally determined to conquer this house, to change and conform it to her standards. Your standards or your husband’s? Claudia wanted to ask her. She wanted to ask her other things as well. What was your pre-nup like? Is all the money on his side, all the power? Is it your world too, or are you just living in it? Women here owned so little in comparison.
    She thought of Tyler’s voice cackling out of the intercom: That you, Damon? And the wife?
    ". . . about?"
    She suddenly realized that Laura had interrupted her ongoing monologue to ask her a direct question. Claudia smiled and said, "I’m sorry, could you repeat the question?"
    "I said you looked worried," Laura said. "Is everything all right?"
    "Oh. Fine." She scratched a sudden itch on her forehead. "I was just wondering . . . what do you do?"
    "I was in PR," Laura said. "But I’d taken some time off—even before the pregnancy—to reassess things, figure out what it was I really wanted to do."
    Claudia nodded, unsurprised. It was her experience that the wives of men like Tyler quit their jobs in order to find themselves. Claudia pictured them drifting from room to room, calling out, Honey, have you seen my real self? You didn’t move it without telling me, did you?
    "You look preoccupied," Laura said, and smiled. She had a good smile.
    "Oh . . . I’m sorry. I’m just a bit light-headed. Haven’t eaten in a while."
    "My fault," Laura said. "I’ve been boring you to tears, I know, rattling on like this . . . "
    "It’s a big project. Renovating a house like this."
    "Yes. It’s this massive, messy, consuming thing. I mean, in the end it will all be worth it, of course, but . . . " Laura glanced around, as if suddenly unsure where she was.
    "It’ll be absolutely exquisite," Claudia said. "It’ll be a dream house."
    Laura waved a hand, as if dismissing it. "Tyler told me you have your own art gallery in San Francisco."
  Claudia grinned. "That’s pushing it," she said. "But that’s the goal."
    "Do you paint?"
    "Yes."
    "Are you ever tempted to quit your job and paint full-time?"
    "I like my job," Claudia said. "I enjoy painting, but I’m not sure I really have a . . . a true talent for it. I’ve got an eye for discovering others . . . That’s my talent, I think."
    "You’re lucky, then," Laura said. "You know what your talent is." She tucked hair behind her ears. "So how often do you see Damon these days?"
    "He wants to take his company public by fall at the latest," Claudia said. "So it’s kind of crazy. Most days we manage to meet for a late dinner and then he goes back to the office. Comes home at one or two in the morning."
    "At least you know he doesn’t have the time or the energy for an affair."
    Claudia lifted her eyebrows. "I guess," she said.
    Once, at a dinner with friends a few months ago, the subject of infidelity had come up and Damon looked squarely across the table at his wife. You know I would never cheat on you, he said quietly. You know that, don’t you?
    Work, not sex, was the ruling principle in Damon’s life; one reason why he and the Valley were such a perfect fit for each other. When Damon and Claudia went away, be it New York or St. Bart’s, then the obsession eased its grip and his libido came back like a prodigal child, and they had sex like any normal couple their age. Back in the Valley, it was as if the company demanded all of his energy, all of his passion, leaving nothing left over for a hungry young wife. How do you take it? her friends often asked her, meaning the hours, his intense preoccupation, the stress he brought home like a dark cloud of bees round his head. It was one of the most popular questions, perhaps second to, Why aren’t you buying a leather jacket a day and driving a Porsche or something? Why aren’t you all dripping in diamonds and shit?
    "I’ve got a solitary streak in me," Claudia said now, without fully realizing that she’d launched into her answer to a question that Laura hadn’t asked. "I like having my own space, my own life. I would only marry a man who would let me have that. So Damon and I are well suited, I think."
    Laura was eyeing her with skepticism. "I hate it," she said. The words had a force behind them, as if they’d been building for a while and only now released. "In fact, I despise it. Tyler’s promised to ease up on the workload when the baby comes, but to tell you the truth I’m not sure he can. I just don’t think it’s in his nature. So—" She looked away abruptly, touching her fingers to her mouth.
    "So," Claudia said awkwardly. "So. So where does that leave you?"
    Laura smiled and reached down to pet the dog.
    You had to be careful in a house like this, Claudia thought but did not say.
    So many rooms in which to lose things. So many rooms in which to get lost.

    They heard the thrum of a car engine, and then doors opening, slamming shut, the baritone of male laughter.
    "The men," Laura said, as if announcing it, and they went down to meet them.
    Both men were flushed with exhilaration. Damon almost looked relaxed. He grinned at Claudia and reached out for her hand. She was startled and touched by the gesture.
    "Wine!" Tyler declared, ducking into the kitchen. "There must be wine! We must imbibe!"
    Laura followed him, and Claudia heard the soft clink of wine glasses, the hollow sucking sound of a bottle uncorked. Damon murmured in her ear, "They paid eleven million for this place. Tyler told me in the car."
    Claudia whistled. "I figured," she said. "As soon as she told me they had an acre and a half—as well as the house—" Talking in lowered voices so neither Laura nor Tyler would hear them, Claudia felt the rush of conspiracy, felt their bond reassert itself. She moved in closer to Damon and he slung his arm around her shoulders, and for a moment everything felt warm and good between them.
    She turned to look up at him. She thought of the cinnamon-skinned youth she’d danced with at an LA club; she thought of Tyler, stepping off the front porch and coming towards them, lean and rangy and grinning. She thought of that night at the Filmore: the taste of beer in her mouth, the crunch of peanut shells beneath her boots, when Damon was still a stranger to her. Smoke and mirrors. Illusion. But perhaps not as fragile as she’d come to suspect. "When was the last time we had sex?" Claudia said.
    Damon put a finger to his lips, tilting his head to remind her of the couple that might be within hearing range.
    Claudia didn’t care. "Six weeks? Has it been that long?"
    "Honey, we’ve been through this." He had the wary look of a man on defense. "You know what it’s like for me now. For the company. We have to close out this round of financing and—"
    "Right."
    "You know what my goals are, you know what’s at stake for me—"
    "Right."
    "How much I’ve invested in this company." An edge crept into Damon’s voice. "You want a house like this, right? A life like this? It’ll be yours. I swear to God, it’ll all be yours, but in the meantime I have to take the company forward. The company has to be my first priority. So don’t—"
    "I never said," Claudia muttered. She was surprised by the teeth in her voice. Her mind flashed to Laura, the way she’d glanced around her as if in bewilderment, as if this house of hers was a foreign country and she had only just realized. "I never said I wanted a house like this."

    They moved to a nearby Italian restaurant with high-beamed ceilings and abstract paintings on the walls. Tyler and Damon dominated most of the conversation, talking business. But at some point even they had had enough of it and they shifted into small talk, gathering in the wives. They talked about the price of local real estate, a popular topic of late. "There was an article in USA Today about that," Claudia said. "About how teachers and police officers are being squeezed out of the area because they can’t afford to live here."
    "I wonder sometimes about raising a child in this kind of environment," Laura said suddenly. Tyler looked at her, a little surprised. Laura dabbed her mouth with the napkin and said, "It’s such a bubble reality, here. So affluent and pretty and high-tech and safe. I don’t want my child thinking everyone drives a BMW and has constant Internet access and platinum credit cards . . . " She glanced around at them, her voice trailing off. Her eyes looked a little lost, unfocused: possibly the wine, thought Claudia, who was feeling rather unfocused herself, and then realized that Laura was drinking carbonated water.
    Damon added his own thoughts to the conversation. Bored, Claudia looked round the restaurant. The hostess walked passed their table several times. She was a pretty Indian woman in a tight silk skirt and black wrap top. Claudia noticed Tyler’s eyes following her, lingering on her, openly checking her out; she met his eyes, and he grinned at her and gave a little shrug, as if to say, Can I help it?
    The conversation shifted to the dating scene in Silicon Valley and how thankful they all were not to be a part of it. "My male friends say how impossible it is to meet women here," Laura was saying, "and how impossible the competition is, because of all the—to quote one guy—all the ‘dudes with coin’ unquote."
    Tyler and Damon swapped grins, as if to congratulate each other on being dudes with coin who had both landed babes. Laura saw this and kicked Tyler under the table; he exploded into laughter.
    " . . . and then my female friends," Laura continued, "talk about how most of the guys here are just physically unappealing, you know. Nerdy. No social skills. And that the guys with looks and charm are constantly fought over and so they treat women badly because they know they can get away with it. So I’m wondering, all these women who are complaining about how they can’t get dates, and all these men complaining about how they can’t get dates, why don’t they just go out on a limb and try dating each other?"
    "No one’s ever good enough," Tyler said. "Think about it. People come here from different parts of the country, different parts of the world, chasing something that doesn’t exist yet. Chasing a dream, an idea, a vision. But as soon as you take that wonderful, magical, perfect idea and give it shape and form, that’s when all the fuck-ups begin. Why should relationships be any different?"
  Laura opened her mouth to reply to this, but then the waitress came by with the bill and the conversation was abandoned.
  Outside, in the parking lot, Tyler offered, "You guys can stay at our place tonight if you don’t want to drive back. Feel free."
    "No," Damon said, grinning, "that’s all right. We wouldn’t want to take advantage."
    "Jesus Christ, Damon. Take advantage! Take advantage!"
    "I’ve got to get back," Damon said. "I’ve got an early meeting tomorrow."
    "Tomorrow’s Sunday," Laura said.
     "So?"
    "All right then," Tyler said. He understood about early meetings. "It was good to see you. Take care."
    They said their good-byes. Laura and Claudia kissed cheeks, promised they’d go out sometime for coffee. Tyler shook hands with Damon. He hugged Claudia good-bye, ducking his head to whisper in her ear. She felt his wine-scented breath on her cheek.
    Claudia stepped back and looked at him. "Thank you," she said formally.
    In the car on the way home, Damon was silent. Claudia leaned her head against the window glass and dozed. At some point she must have drifted more deeply into sleep because suddenly she was back on the dance floor with the man with the black silky hair and the loose-limbed way of moving; only this time they were alone, everyone else having conveniently departed. The man moved in closer—closer—and then suddenly he was kissing her, his tongue warm in her mouth, they were tumbling down onto the dance floor and fumbling with buttons and belt buckles and bra straps—
    "Claudia," Damon said.
    Her eyes snapped open. She felt a hot flush of guilt and confusion and then a stabbing relief. Just a dream, thank God, just a—
    Damon said, "What did Tyler say to you?"
    "Sorry?"
    "When he hugged you good-bye. What did he whisper to you?"
    "Oh . . . " Claudia fiddled with the strap of her seatbelt. She sighed and blew hair out of her eyes. "He said I was the most beautiful woman he’s seen in a long time, and he just wanted me to know."
    "Christ."
    "It wasn’t meant as a prelude to anything," Claudia said. "He was just delivering a compliment. Trying to charm me."
    "Huh." He mulled this over for a moment. "Do you think he’s been faithful?"
    "No. And I think Laura knows it."
    "But she must have known what she signed on for when she married him. I mean, she knew the advantages he offered her in exchange for—"
    "I don’t think so," Claudia said. She was annoyed. She tapped her fingers on the dashboard. "I don’t believe that saying, you know. Not that I ever did or anything, I just never gave it much thought."
    "What saying?"
    "‘It’s just as easy to love a rich man as a poor man,’" Claudia said. "It isn’t easy to love anyone."
    She could feel his eyes on her in the darkness of the Jeep.
    "I think that’s the general point," he said.
    "When we get home, you’re going to make love to me."
    He lifted a hand from the steering wheel and snapped off a salute. "Yes ma’am."

    It was a hungry, dreamy kind of sex, made a little unreal by the lateness of the hour and the darkness against the windows and the wine in her system. He was deft and attentive, and she was impressed by how well he had learned her body: where to touch, how to touch, how to vary the rhythm. When she climaxed, she pressed her nails in the skin of his shoulder blades and very slowly and deliberately raked them down the full length of his back. He gasped and hissed in pain. "Hey," he said, pulling back from her. "Hey."
    She grinned at him.
    For a moment they stayed like that, just looking at each other, as she felt the liquid warmth of him slide down across her thigh. He touched her face.
    "I love you," he said. "Deeply. You know that, right?"
    "Sometimes."
    He kissed her and rolled off the bed. She turned onto her side and propped her head on her hands, feeling naked and languid. She thought of Laura in the house. She thought of the tour along their property lines, Tyler pointing out the big ancient oaks, the vegetable garden, the rise of hill where their property ended. "Look how gorgeous it all is," he’d said. He spread his arms as if trying to take it all in. "I can’t believe I live here. It just takes my breath away." And Claudia had imagined him thinking, but not saying, And it’s mine. I own this. It’s mine, every bit of it.
    As Damon passed through the slant of light coming in from the hallway, Claudia noticed with satisfaction the lines she’d scratched down his back, thin and red and angry. She’d gone deeper and harder than she’d intended. As if sensing her thoughts, Damon went to the mirror on the back of the door and angled his body so that the scratch marks were reflected back to him. "Holy shit," he said, but there was a touch of awe in his voice.
    Mine, Claudia thought, and closed her eyes.