Devil's Plaything Read Online Free PDF Page A

shoulder-length, light brown hair bounces when she walks, like in a shampoo commercial. In grad school, she’d appeared on the cover of Wharton’s catalogue, holding a chalice from a triathlon she’d won, and smiling sheepishly as if to say: yes, it’s that easy.
    Friends introduced us a year ago. I immediately wondered if my romantic taste buds had at last been revived. Then, a month ago, Pauline and I had a “carnal run-in.” That’s what I’ve deemed the feverish sex in her office. Afterwards, I promptly withdrew my emotions and (briefly) telecommunications access, uncertain what our tryst meant—particularly to my essential source of income.
    Seemingly bemused, she sent me a list of “100 great excuses for not getting entangled,” including: (#17) Kissing involves germs, and (#44) Stability leads to boredom and death and (#100) You’re a class-AAA commitment phobe.
    For now, I’m just Pauline’s employee, one who is deeply conflicted about my feelings for the boss.
    But I realize something more concrete about her when I arrive at the Medblog office to check out the mysterious package: Pauline is missing.
    The office is located in the South Park neighborhood, near the San Francisco Giants ballpark. This is a dot-com ghetto and gold rush territory. Founded as a housing development 150 years ago, its upgraded townhouses now serve as home to the wide-eyed frontierspeople of the Internet. Backed by venture capitalists, they operate a new generation of publishing, technical, and software companies. They also consume their weight daily in quadruple nonfat caramel lattes. The area oozes with an old-West optimism fueled by recent MBAs who think the only problem with Google is that its founders didn’t think big enough.
    Medblog resides in two small rooms in the back of a Victorian turned four-company office. I walk down a tiled hallway, and through a small window inset in Medblog’s door, I see the lights are off.
    I knock. No answer. I try the handle. The door is open. I poke my head inside.
    â€œPauline?” I ask.
    No answer.
    I run my hand along the inside of the cool, smooth wall to my right. I find the light switch, and I flip it on.
    Along the wall opposite me is a doorway to back rooms flanked by built-in floor-to-ceiling shelves made of dark-stained wood, covered with books, mostly medical texts and how-to-succeed business tomes. Along the left wall sits a beautifully refinished antique oak desk, topped by neatly stacked papers and a sleek metallic iMac computer. The screensaver shows a mother chimp cuddling a baby, a photo Pauline took a couple of years ago in Tanzania.
    A second desk stands along the right wall. Hardwood floors stretch between the desks, partly covered by a handsome area rug woven with orange, brown, red, and yellow squares. I detect a manufactured crisp scent, lemonish, doubtless a tribute to Pauline’s slightly obsessive commitment to having the place cleaned regularly.
    All-in-all, this modestly appointed office is the 21st-century newsroom. And it is the bane of the traditional newspaper and magazine empire, which have relatively gargantuan cost structures and things like printing presses and full-time employees with health-care benefits.
    And it is devoid of Pauline.
    I close the door and walk to the back rooms. I find no Pauline in the bathroom, nor in the data closet filled with racks of servers and hard drives that process and store Medblog’s data.
    I return to the main room and pull out my phone. I call Pauline. I get voice mail. I text her: “Where r u?”
    I balance a prickling of panic with a reality check. The fact that the door of the office was left unlocked could well mean that Pauline has gone for a moment to get something from her car. Or that she’s gotten us a drink or had some other fanciful impulse. That would be more like her than not.
    Or, after the events of the day in Golden Gate Park, it is