This is the fourth excerpt from AFTER ON: A Novel of Silicon Valley, which will be published August 1st. The series begins right here.
The board meeting gave them plenty to ponder. So after a quick stop at home after work, Mitchell heads out for dinner at Kuba’s apartment. He and his wife live in Pacific Heights, the most staid and storied of San Francisco’s fancier neighborhoods. Though never a hipster favorite, its finer blocks offer views, space, and urban peace that anyone could appreciate. Of course, it’s murderously expensive. There was a time (it was called “the nineties”) when young people early in their careers could rent roomy PacHeights apartments, or even buy smaller Victorians (if wedded to fellow working yuppies). These days, a one-bedroom can rent for well north of five grand a month if the views are grand and it’s close enough to Fillmore Street. But such squalor is not for Kuba. His top-floor apartment is right on Fillmore with three bedrooms (master bedroom, home office, and “media room”) and jaw-dropping views of the Golden Gate Bridge. His wife’s no sugar mommy (however brilliant, UCSF postdocs are only paid so much). This rather stems from his years at Google, which have made the meager wages of angel-backed entrepreneurship quite tolerable for the Stanislaw household.
