She would give up anything for the power to summon a plague of snakes to venom this man, all of them, to death. Across the room, Martin sees her, cocks an eyebrow meaning, what, she can’t guess. Something on his list. She tries to glare back the sentence Why are you leaving me here, too much for one glare. “I’m trying,” she says. “To learn. To take. Things. As compliments.”

“That’s good,” he says. “It wasn’t like this in tech when I started out. In the beginning San Francisco was the Wild West. Everyone was starting up without starting out. There was a place we used to drink, where we loaded up before going off to ski on weekends, a place untamed, you know? Every week the crowd grew bigger and soon we all read in the newspaper that you-know-who were talking about buying the whole bar, hook and barrel, so they didn’t have to share. I would try to remember everything I eavesdropped and sneak into the bathroom to write it all out on my little new phone …” He continues to talk affectionately about life in certain nearby valleys, and she just stares at things on and near him which hold briefly her fierce and offhand fascination. Someone in this room, she thinks, reads newspapers?

“Have you heard of the Kitsune School?”

The drink, pressed against her face, is not cool enough. “I haven’t heard of anything.”

“He changed the name after his dear departed, which is either nice or creepy, right? I know I sound cynical, but if you knew the troubles I’ve seen.”

“Dear departed what?”

He gives her the frown of Give me a break. “Wife. The mother of his child, and she died in childbirth, if you can believe it or not, in this day and age. The lives of these times, right? She was passionate, everyone says, about early education, so the Vic founded—well, he purchased a school. Then gave money to run it, to her old roommate, a pet project. Ariel Park, she’s over there with those two horribles. Kitsune, named after her. Japanese for fox, as if there isn’t enough—”

It, something, makes her shiver, the pill probably, a shadow over something. “The Vic’s,” she tries, “wife’s name was Fox?”