Growing Pains

Decision By a Hair

What Jones would decide to do shouldn't have been a mystery to anyone at the company--that is, not after he cut his hair. When Jones announced that he was going to cut his hair, betting pools sprang up. He would do it. He wouldn't do it. He had dark-brown, wavy hair that hung past his shoulders. His hair was a chick magnet in nightclubs, a badge of solidarity among the creative staff in the studios. He had worn his hair that way for 11 of his 27 years. Getting shorn was a major life decision for him. It wasn't just a haircut--it was an amputation.

The process went in stages. First, he got his hair cut to a shorter but still-long length. Then he had it shorn to its current, more fashionable, dress-for-success length. A stylist once said to him, "You could get $12 an ounce for this hair." Jones likes to make his decisions in stages, but he doesn't stall forever. Eventually, he decides. His hair is short now. He decided to become a new person when he cut his hair, and from that, a whole series of other choices and decisions became inevitable.

Learn As You Go

At Vodar, a small, chic club in Santa Monica, Jones has one last after-hours career mission to complete. He needs an alternative to THQ. He needs to know that if he wants to, he can choose to stay in Los Angeles so that he can continue to see Krista. He needs to have the opportunity to choose--if only so that, if he goes to Vancouver, he won't feel that it was forced upon him. Within THQ, he has no options other than Vancouver, so he must find his options elsewhere. Paradoxically, he has to flirt with infidelity in order to be true to THQ.

Vodar amounts to a standing bar, a few banquettes, a sheet of water trickling down a tiled mosaic behind the bar, a large painting of a face that bears a striking resemblance to the Shroud of Turin, and nothing but a red lightbulb above the front door. Jones is sitting with a fellow video-game producer and a young, wealthy executive from another game company. Essentially, this meeting is a job interview. Maybe there's something for Jones at the other company. Maybe not. Even at midnight in a club, rubbernecking at women, Jones is hard at work.

"We're delaying our IPO," the executive says. "It's a lousy time to go public."

"Do you have any openings in acquisition at your company?" Jones asks him.

"I couldn't pay you enough," the executive says. The answer is a kind way of saying that Jones isn't 'acquisitions material.'

"I don't know if I want to move to a new company just for another producer spot," Jones says.

The executive leans over and whispers to Jones, pointing to a pair of women at the bar. "They're clocking us," Jones says in response.

"See if you can get them to come over," the executive says.

It's a qualifying assignment, a way for Jones to prove himself worthy of being hired at the company. Jones orders drinks and has them delivered to the women. Sure enough, the women approach--the executive leans over to Jones and says, "That's what I call business planning"--and chairs are commandeered. Everyone sits around the table. One of the women has dark hair; the other is blond. The blond is a producer for Fox. The brunette is a television reporter for NBC 4 in Los Angeles. As Jones flirts with the reporter, he puts his hands together, palm to palm, in front of his lips, and leans toward her. The questions that he asks are the same ones that he is asking himself about his own life at THQ.

Think back. Of all the stories that you've done, which one was the most . . . which one made you happiest?" he asks. "Which one are you most proud of?"

"I guess it would be the one in Palm Springs," she answers. "They have seasonal workers, migrant workers, who come up and work in the fields. I did a story that showed their lives against the standard of living in Palm Springs."

"What is it that drives you?" he asks. "What is it that you would really want to do?"

It's the thorniest, most central question in Jones's life right now. "I used to want to work for one of the newsmagazines," she says. "Dateline. Do more in-depth stories. But I'm pretty happy doing what I do now."

"I grew up in a house that had a lot of video games," the Fox producer says. "We had an actual arcade game right in our house."

"I don't like video games at all," the TV reporter says.

"I don't watch the evening news at all," Jones says. "I'm bored with the news." The two grin at each other. Jones's options seem to get more various with every hour of his life. Life just gets more mysterious, as if it were a game in which the closer you get to winning, the harder the rules become to discern. But Jones is a quick study. He learns as he goes. Easy to learn, hard to master.

"So that's what drives you? Keeping people informed?" Jones asks the TV reporter again.