The Perfect Wife

Still, she seemed happy enough. And Tim—whom none of us would have considered a natural father—seemed happy, too. When Danny started walking, Tim even brought him to work on family days, proudly going from meeting to meeting with Danny’s little hand in his. There were pictures of Danny and Abbie on his office wall. His assistant, Morag, said he even remembered their birthdays.

Which was why, when the Jaki thing happened, many of us were surprised. Jaki was a curvy blonde with a nose piercing and short bleached hair. She wore tight dresses that emphasized her figure, and it was rumored she had a social media account on some obscure platform that showed a great deal more. Her weekends were spent clubbing and partying, and she never missed Coachella or Joshua Tree or any of the other big festivals; they were as fixed in her calendar as Thanksgiving or Christmas were in ours. And she was fun. Right from the start, if there was a birthday or a promotion to celebrate, Jaki was there at the center of things, ordering rounds of drinks, announcing shots, planning where we were going next, and talking nineteen to the dozen. She was very easy to talk to, or rather to listen to, because she leapt from subject to subject in a torrent of thoughts, opinions, reactions.

Tim seemed to like chatting to Jaki. We thought maybe that was because he didn’t really enjoy socializing, and being around her meant he’d never be stuck for small talk. But gradually we noticed it wasn’t just at the big social events. They hung out in the bagel room together. They chatted in the parking lot. And then there was the night of the Crunchies, the annual awards show run by the website TechCrunch at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House. A resurgent Scott Robotics was up for several accolades, including Best Technology Achievement, while Tim was nominated for Founder of the Year. The firm booked out three large circular tables, eight to a table. Tim, Mike, and Elijah wore tuxedos. The women wore cocktail dresses—even Jenny, whom no one had ever seen in any kind of dress before. The invitees were a mixed bunch. The men were Tim’s favorites, or those who had contributed most and worked the hardest (three categories that, it had to be said, were almost indistinguishable), while the women had possibly been selected with more of an eye as to how stunning they would look in those dresses.

Abbie wasn’t there that night. She was looking after Danny, and besides, with the obvious exception of Mike and Jenny, wives and husbands weren’t invited.

The evening was pretty successful. Against competition like that, to get two runner-up awards was incredible. Tim didn’t see it that way, of course. Tim liked to win. It particularly rankled with him that Microsoft’s HoloLens had beaten us to Best Achievement.

“It’s a game system,” he kept repeating. “It’s a fucking toy. How is that going to change the fucking world?”

By the time we’d moved on to the after-party, though, he was feeling more cheerful. Senior people from Silicon Valley’s most successful companies—Apple, SpaceX, Google—kept coming over to congratulate him. When the after-party closed at eleven-thirty, Tim was ready to go on somewhere else.

What happened next remains a matter of conjecture, even to those in HR who might be assumed to know the whole story. What was not in dispute was that something happened between Tim and Jaki in a hotel room, a hotel room that both parties entered consensually, but that the way it happened left Jaki feeling cheap and used and taken advantage of.

As ever in these situations, a general view emerged, but it was fluid. Many of us were shocked, or pretended to be, that Tim had been in a hotel room with a woman who was not his wife, although those who remembered pre-Abbie days—Drunk Karen and, it now seemed from the rumor mill, quite a few others—were not entirely surprised. But within a few hours, lurid—and quite possibly fictitious—rumors began to circulate. Jaki had initiated oral sex, with certain conditions, and these Tim had ignored. Or: Jaki had initiated oral sex, and Tim had taken that to mean consent to various other acts, too, some of them demeaning. Or: They’d had intercourse, during which Tim had taken off the condom she had asked him to wear. Or: After they slept together, Jaki had cried, and Tim had called her a slut. The euphemism disrespectful was increasingly being used, although, frustratingly, it was hard to pin down just what it was a euphemism for.

Our own moral judgments fluctuated somewhat, depending on who we were talking to and how passionately they had taken up a position on the matter. That is to say, of course Jaki had a right to have her boundaries respected. But still, those were some pretty startling boundaries. And no, this was surely not about shaming women for being sexual, or saying that whatever happened between two adults was always the woman’s responsibility. Unless, of course, you happened to feel strongly that it was, in which case maybe you had a point.

In any case, the upshot was that Jaki left the company, generously recompensed and having signed a nondisclosure agreement. Nobody felt good about that. But if Tim left there would be no company, and besides, the facts were still unclear.

Just to be on the safe side, we gathered, anyone in HR who was privy to the paperwork was made to sign an NDA as well.

The next time Abbie brought Danny to visit Tim at work, we scrutinized the three of them to see if we could discern any change in the way they were with one another. There was none, of course. Tim still clearly adored his wife and child to bits, just as he always had.

67

“All rise,” the court officer says.

There are about twenty people in the courtroom, gathered in little tribal clusters. Tim, Pete Maines, and you. John Renton and a phalanx of young male lawyers in sharp black suits and dark ties. Elijah and Mike from the company, along with a female lawyer in her own version of the black suit. And on the other side of the aisle, like separate bride’s and groom’s families at a wedding, the legal team representing the Cullen family. Lisa isn’t with them. You’re sad about that. You were hoping that if you saw each other face-to-face, you might be able to resolve this between the two of you.

There are journalists, too—half a dozen allowed into the courtroom, plus a throng more outside, along with several TV vans.

After the judge is seated, there’s a lot of housekeeping stuff about discovery and depositions and countersuits. Finally the judge says, “I understand a revised offer of settlement has been submitted.”

One of Renton’s lot stands up. “Correct, Your Honor.”

“And that it has been provisionally accepted?”

It’s Lisa’s lawyer who stands to answer. “Subject to further ratification by family members, Your Honor.”

You turn to look at Tim. This is good news, surely? But he looks mystified.

“Do you want to summarize the proposed terms for the court?” the judge asks briskly.

“Your Honor,” Renton’s lawyer replies, “our objection to the plaintiff’s order was that it would have involved the destruction of a valuable prototype, the intellectual property of Scott Robotics. However, we have no objection to the erasure of specific personal data currently loaded on that prototype that may or may not have been the copyright of Abigail Cullen-Scott.” He glances down at his papers. “In effect, we will retain the prototype, and the prototype’s sentience, but not the data. This will allow Scott Robotics to refocus on its core business of providing automated salesclerks to the retail sector.”

You can’t take it all in. What does it mean? You want to tell them to stop, that you need to ask some questions, but the judge has already turned back to the family’s lawyer. “Well, Ms. Levin?”

“So long as all the personal data is erased, and we can verify that, we accept in principle, Your Honor. A settlement fee has also been agreed. That will be donated to a charity for the education of people with autism.”

Tim’s lawyer, Pete Maines, is on his feet. “Your Honor, this proposed deal comes as news to us—”

“As I understand it, Mr. Maines, your client is neither plaintiff nor defendant in this matter,” the judge interrupts. “Whether this settlement has been communicated to him is not a matter for this court.” He nods at the others. “How long will this all take, Ms. Levin?”

“We hope to have everything agreed to by the end of the day, Judge.”

“And how long to carry out the technical work?”

“Forty-eight hours at the outside, Your Honor,” the company lawyer replies. It’s the first time he’s spoken.

“Very good.” The judge nods. “It seems a trial can be avoided.”

“There is still the issue of where the prototype should be kept in the meantime,” Renton’s lawyer says. “We request that the court either incarcerate it or order it into the custody of the major shareholder.”

The judge scowls. “I can’t incarcerate property, only people. And I see no reason why a shareholder should be responsible for it, when it’s already in the possession of a company employee.”