Chapter Six

Back in the green room, Ximena was the first person Enzo saw. There were a dozen others there, too. The newly elected governor of California, Gavin Newsom— surrounded by a phalanx of armed guards — rehearsed his speech. A few other tech CEOs, VCs and assorted courtesans stood against the walls, sitting in chairs, doing nothing but staring straight ahead at him. 

Enzo only saw Ximena. 

Her eyes were a two-way mirror.  He could see the pain inside of her. She was standing next to Zenith Harris, the conference organizer, a small, brunette woman with bright-red lips and dark-brown eyes. Zenith looked down at her iPhone and then showed her screen to Ximena. 

As Enzo got closer, Zenith put down her iPhone and walked away. Ximena and Enzo were standing alone. 

“Holy shit, Enzo,” she said seriously. “Zenith asked me to talk to you. Can we go for a walk?” 

“How much trouble am I in?” Enzo asked. 

They left the green room and walked down a long hallway filled with workers, waiters, and support staff. Ximena pulled him through a door that led them into the large, industrial kitchen. 

Enzo braced himself for what was to come. 

“I'm so sorry I couldn’t tell you that Theodore was coming,” she said. “I was going to tell you at breakfast, but then everything got mixed up. I feel terrible.” 

Enzo swallowed uneasily.  

“I thought you said he wasn’t coming,” Enzo replied. 

“His chief of staff texted me overnight,” she said.  “I was going to tell you, but I wanted to give you the ring first. That was the reason I invited you to breakfast. I thought we could talk about the ring, and then I was going to tell you about him coming. I almost threw up when I saw you after you heard.” 

“What does the ring mean?” Enzo asked. “People give rings to each other for very specific purposes, Ximena.” 

Her Apple Watch vibrated, and she glanced down at her wrist. 

“Fuck,” she said sternly. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. It's Bridgette, his assistant. They’re here.” 

“Where?” Enzo asked helplessly. 

“In the green room,” she answered. 

“Come with me,” she said, pulling him by the hand.  

Just then there was a tweet from Anson Karson, movie star turned tech investor with 16.5 million followers:

Minute by minute, hour by hour, Amanda’s tweet started to metastasize. An orgy of reactions and comments poured in. Clever memes followed. The notorious genius of social media algorithms, sensing a viral, event took the audience of 200 conference attendees and multiplied them--comment by comment, suggested post by suggested post--to tens of thousands. Then millions. “For You” feeds were flooded.

Ximena and Enzo walked back to the green room where Dante and Theodore were now sitting, talking and scrolling through their phones. They looked up at Ximena and Enzo. 

Theodore, oblivious to Ximena, was wearing a slim-fitting gray suit and a powder-blue shirt. He always wore the same outfit. It never changed.  

That’s a thing in the Valley.  

Every founder, though they’ll never admit it outright, views themselves as the next Steve Jobs. Every one of them has some version of the uniform: the black mock turtleneck and baggy dad jeans.  Most founders aren't bold and narcissistic enough to wear what Jobs wore. Most. The founder of the world's largest social media company wears a hoodie every day. And now every wannabe billionaire in the Valley wears a hoodie.  

“So, this is the new radical social theorist!” Theodore exclaimed. “Burn the servers. Burn the fucking servers is trending online right now!”  

“Do you have a seat belt?” asked Dante. “You’re going to the viral stratosphere, professor!” 

“You never know,” suggested Theodore. “Maybe he hit a vein. Maybe he knows something we don’t.” 

(Theodore thought he knew everything.) 

“He’s been saying things like that for years,” Ximena said. “No one has paid any attention to him.”  

“Well, not no one,” Theodore said. “Seems like you were paying attention.” 

“Yeah, he went to Stanford with us,” she said. “He was in our class. You were always too busy building Rocket to get to know anyone.” 

“True,” he replied. 

“Thank God!” Dante interjected. “I’m fucking rich because you were an antisocial hermit on the Farm,” he continued. “And I didn’t even have to graduate high school,” he grinned. Dante always grinned like the whole Silicon Valley hustle was a casino game where he had broken all the rules and beat the house. 

“Where have you been published, Enzo?” asked Theodore. 

“Mostly just essays and blog posts,” he replied. “I co-wrote some research studies with some colleagues. And I’ve got a book coming out at the end of the summer.” 

“Oh, so this whole thing today was about you promoting your new book on social media?" Theodore asked. “Clever.” 

“No, not really,” he replied. “I was just asked to talk about ethics and technology. I say these things every day in my classes.” 

“Take the credit when it's good, professor,” Dante said. “You’re going to get the blame soon enough.” 

Theodore turned and faced the corner of the room by the back exit. He made eye contact with his chief of staff, and she immediately moved in his direction. “Bridgette, what are we going to do for the rest of the week?” he asked. 

She looked at her iPhone. 

“We’ll be here until 2 p.m. Then we are flying to the south of France. We have a stopover in New York for refueling,” she replied. 

“Let's stay overnight in New York. I have some business I need to deal with,” he said. 

Enzo noticed Ximena lower her eyes and look away. He didn’t understand why. 

“Dante, you want to go to the Côte d’Azur with us?” Theodore asked. “Check with Jessica?” 

“Hard yes,” he replied. “My wife slash girlfriend loves the beach.” 

“Do you want to ride in our plane?” Theodore said. 

“We have ours,” Dante replied. 

“Why don’t we take mine? It’s bigger,” said Theodore. “Can your plane just follow ours there?” 

“Sure,” Dante said. 

(Yes, they were going to fly two private planes halfway around the world.) 

Enzo still couldn’t quite figure out the expression on Ximena’s face. Whatever she was feeling at that moment was shrouded in a cloak of secrecy even he couldn’t crack.   

“Professor, what are you doing this week?” Theodore asked.  

“Going back to Palo Alto,” Enzo replied. “The semester just ended. I need to grade a bunch of papers and get a few things organized.” 

“Well, it’s summer break. Why don’t you come with us to the south of France?” he said. “Ximena, you’re okay with that, right? I mean you guys are the real friends here.”  

Ximena knew better than to miss a beat. 

“Of course, if Enzo is free, then yes, of course,” she said. “You probably don’t have proper clothes.” 

Theodore interrupted her.  

“Let’s get a photo together. Me, Ximena, Enzo,” he said. “Bridgette, can you take this photo?”  

Enzo stood with Theodore on the left and Ximena on his right. It was over fast.  

He turned back to Bridgette and handed her his phone.  

“Bridgette, send these photographs to creative. Tell them to come up with a catchy description and post it on Instagram,” he commanded.  “Also, find out where Enzo can go shopping near our place in lower Manhattan tomorrow,” he directed. “Sounds like we’re all good. Enzo, you can ride with Ximena to the airport in the motorcade. I have calls to make on the way. Dante, we'll meet you at the airport, too.” 

Theodore turned back to Bridgette and had her dial one of the extra phones she carried for his next scheduled call and walked out of the room. 

Dante leaned into Enzo and chortled, mischievously. “He’s a douche, but he’s a genius. He was looking at your Q score right after you gave that speech. You’re trending online,” he said. “You’re being followed and retweeted and shared with velocity. He can see it coming."

“See what's coming?” Enzo asked.   

“You’ll be insta- world famous by the end of the day, he knows that,” Dante replied.   

“Okay, so why is he asking me to go with you guys?” Enzo asked. 

“The fastest way to get invited to something in Silicon Valley is to shame them publicly,” he said, laughing a little harder.  “Before you know it, everyone in Atherton and Menlo Park and Palo Alto will be offering you stupid amounts of cash to come and insult them and call them unethical assoholes at summits and board room talks. These guys--lord knows there aren’t many fucking women in these rooms--will stroke their chins, count their money, and find your critiques very interesting. But Theodore had you first,” he continued. “It's about status when you have all the money in the world.” 

“And then what?” Enzo asked. 

“Nothing will fucking change at all. Nothing stops the money-making machine in the Valley. Not the markets, not the governments, not the consumers,” he added. “But you’ll make a little fortune on all this,” he concluded abruptly, looking down at his phone and starting to text. “See you at the airport, professor.”