Read About Face for Free Online Page A

end of the corridor opened. I glimpsed another world behind it, a severe world of clean, rectilinear lines, of chrome chairs and polished granite. A woman stood silhouetted in the door. She had come out to watch us. Her legs were jacked up on a pair of pumps sharp enough to open a letter. With her padded shoulders, she cut a figure far more formidable than Rupert. From the position of her office and the way she watched, I sensed she was the boss. And she had the power to back up every threat Rupert had made.

4
    Men handle humiliation in different ways. Rod, cowed though he was by Rupert, did not appear more troubled on the way back to his house than he had been on the way down. My surmise, after a week of working with him, was that the pecking order in which Rupert operated was not one Rod recognized. The tokens of status by which most men judged one another held little inflection for Rod. He saw them as merely that, signs in a system: He himself, as a master of codes, floated above it all, decrypting the systems, not so much to manipulate them as to comprehend the nature of code itself. The algorithms he designed performed a kind of magic on obstinate databases, unlocking new and unexpected insights hidden within them.
    What bothered me so much, then, about Rod’s meek submission to Rupert? Was it his failure to stand up for himself, or the fact that, hamstrung from defending him, I had to submit as well?
    I let my steam burn off a little before I started putting questions to him. I kept it basic. “How do you feel, Rod?”
    â€œI’m disappointed,” he said. “They really don’t know where Alissa is.”
    â€œWhat about the way Rupert pushed you around?”
    He shrugged. His voice was calm and resigned. “It’s his area of expertise. What could I do? He’s got the control key.”
    â€œI think we should go straight to the police.”
    â€œNo. That option is closed. If we do that, everyone will know Alissa was an . . . associate.”
    â€œRupert was bluffing,” I said. “He doesn’t want the publicity any more than you do.”
    â€œHe wouldn’t publish it in the newspaper. Just a few well-placed calls and I’m a laughingstock. You know how people are.” Here was one social convention he recognized, if only in recognizing that others recognized it: It’s not cool to pay to have a girlfriend. At least not through a middleman.
    â€œIs that how Rupert forces you to keep using the service? And can keep raising his rates on you?”
    â€œThat’s their method,” Rod said. “But it’s different for me—I wanted to see Alissa. She wanted to see me, too. So she said.”
    â€œAnd you did have unauthorized visits, like Rupert claimed.”
    â€œYes. Alissa started them, but that’s beside the point. Rupert’s still got me for violating the contract.”
    â€œI’m sure we can get around that.”
    â€œThe language is airtight. When I signed it, I thought the chances it would come into play approached zero. But it’s not what Rupert can do to me I really care about. It’s what he’d do to Alissa.”
    We reached his shady Belmont street a few minutes later. He methodically pulled the car into his driveway, made sure it was straight, put on the brake, and locked the doors after we got out. This time he said to the front door, “Open, dammit.”
    I expected Rod to start his habitual pacing and compulsive putting away of things. Instead, he sat down at the kitchen table. I sat across from him. He gripped his knees and looked up at theceiling. He did this often, as if absorbed in a screen in the corner of his eye. The real action was on the screen, and you were a bit of flickering distraction that happened to be in the room. He called it “deep hack mode” when he was working.
    â€œAlissa’s unique,” he said at last. “She plays a unique role in my life. I