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than I thought.”
    “Brody, it’s not about time,” Mike said, “it’s about the change in synergy. I’m surprised you didn’t notice.”
    “Up yours.”
    “HR’s going to have to schedule another sensitivity-training retreat for us if you don’t shape up.”
    Brody rolled his eyes. “Promise you’ll shoot me if that happens.”
    “I would, but I’ve already got someone lined up to shoot me.”
    Downstairs, there were already several dozen people gathered, talking mostly in their work groups, though some ventured laterally across department lines. At the keg Mike drew Brody a cup of beer, then gestured with his head that he was going to try to get to the food. Brody moved to the wall. The beer was thin and foamy and almost tasteless: terrible but in its own way also delicious. He drank half of it in a few gulps, liking the way it felt both warm and cool as it spread through him.
    “Brody Mackay, how goes it?”
    He turned and there was Russ Conklin, holding not beer but, as was his custom, a bottle of Odwalla carrot juice. Russ was short and muscle-bound and perfectly bald, his head shaved where hair still grew. He was Oiron’s founder and CEO, not to mention Brody’s boss, but Brody went way back with him, to when they’d been in side-by-side cubes at Wells Fargo twenty-odd years ago. Long after they’d both moved on, Russ had tracked Brody down at another start-up and sold him on Oiron in a five-minute phone call. Actually, Russ had sold Brody on Russ, and it had turned out to be a very good buy.
    “Just fine,” Brody said. “And yourself?”
    “Very well. Give me the ten thousand foot on your conversation with Harker.”
    Harker was the head of I.S. Solutions, a small software company with some very clever algorithms for the detection and blocking of the latest sniffer devices. Brody’d spent an hour on the phone with him that morning, working out the details of a licensing agreement.
    “He’s sending it to his legal guy on Monday,” Brody said.
    Russ raised his juice bottle in a toast. “What I like to hear.” He took a swallow and said, “So what are you up to this weekend?”
    “Not much. How ’bout you? Cycling to Santa Cruz? Parasailing at Stinson Beach?”
    Russ smiled. He’d gotten divorced two years ago, and since then he’d been incredibly active, departing from his workaholic ways for weekend scuba trips, helicopter skiing in the Canadian Rockies. He was also dating like crazy, though Brody suspected he was lonely; it was only after his divorce that he’d begun sending e-mails time-stamped at 3:00 a.m. The witching hour, the hour of Ambien and cable TV.
    Brody’s phone rang, and he pulled it from his pocket, saw it was home.
    Russ clapped his shoulder. “I’ll let you get that.”
    Brody stepped away from the crowd and watched as Russ moved to a group from sales. He answered.
    “Is it crazy there?” Liz said.
    “Not particularly. We’re having our Friday kegger. How’re things there?”
    “Fine, but we have a wrinkle for North Beach tonight. Joe’s game got moved to eight a.m. tomorrow. I’m thinking we should put it off.”
    “Eight a.m.?”
    “I know.”
    Actually, Brody enjoyed early morning soccer games; that wasn’t the issue. He said, “Joe doesn’t want to go?”
    “Well, he didn’t say so. But you know we wouldn’t get home till eleven or so. He’s got to be at warm-ups at seven.”
    “True.”
    “So don’t you think?”
    Brody considered. Of course it would be best for Joe to get a good night’s sleep, but he and Liz had a history of differing on whether or not best mattered all that much. In the grand scheme of things, how important was it for a thirteen-year-old boy to play a soccer game under optimal conditions? When Brody was a kid playing Little League, his parents had barely known when he had a game, let alone made sure he got enough sleep the night before. This was tricky ground, though, because he didn’t want to seem like—he