Andy Hertzfeld and a few others later speculated that Powell had been scheming to meet Jobs. “Laurene is nice, but she can be calculating, and I think she targeted him from the beginning,” Hertzfeld said. “Her college roommate told me that Laurene had magazine covers of Steve and vowed she was going to meet him. If it’s true that Steve was manipulated, there is a fair amount of irony there.” But Powell later insisted that this wasn’t the case. She went only because her friend wanted to go, and she was slightly confused as to who they were going to see. “I knew that Steve Jobs was the speaker, but the face I thought of was that of Bill Gates,” she recalled. “I had them mixed up. This was 1989. He was working at NeXT, and he was not that big of a deal to me. I wasn’t that enthused, but my friend was, so we went.”

安迪·赫茨菲尔德等人后来推测，鲍威尔是有意安排了跟乔布斯的相遇。“劳伦人很好，但是她可能会算计，我想她一开始就锁定了他。”赫茨菲尔德说，“她的大学室友告诉我，劳伦收集有史蒂夫的杂志封面，发誓说她一定会遇到他。如果史蒂夫真的被算计了，可真够讽刺的。”但是劳伦后来坚持说不是那么回事。她去参加那个讲座只是因为她的朋友想去，而且她都有点儿搞不清要见的人长什么样。“我知道演讲人是史蒂夫·乔布斯，但我脑子里想的是比尔·盖茨她回忆说，“我把他们搞混了。那是1989年。他在NeXT工作，对我来说他还没什么大不了的。我热情不高，但是我的朋友想去，于是我们就去了。”

“There were only two women in my life that I was truly in love with, Tina and Laurene,” Jobs later said. “I thought I was in love with Joan Baez, but I really just liked her a lot. It was just Tina and then Laurene.”

“我一生中真正爱过的只有两个女人，蒂娜和劳伦。”乔布斯后来说，“我原来以为我爱琼·贝兹，但我其实只是很喜欢她。我爱的，只有蒂娜和劳伦。”

Laurene Powell had been born in New Jersey in 1963 and learned to be self-sufficient at an early age. Her father was a Marine Corps pilot who died a hero in a crash in Santa Ana, California; he had been leading a crippled plane in for a landing, and when it hit his plane he kept flying to avoid a residential area rather than ejecting in time to save his life. Her mother’s second marriage turned out to be a horrible situation, but she felt she couldn’t leave because she had no means to support her large family. For ten years Laurene and her three brothers had to suffer in a tense household, keeping a good demeanor while compartmentalizing problems. She did well. “The lesson I learned was clear, that I always wanted to be self-sufficient,” she said. “I took pride in that. My relationship with money is that it’s a tool to be self-sufficient, but it’s not something that is part of who I am.”

劳伦·鲍威尔1963年出生在新泽西，很小就学会了自立。她父亲是海军陆战队的飞行员，是在圣安娜一次坠机事件中牺牲的英雄；他当时在引领一架受损的飞机着陆，两机相撞后，他坚持飞行避开居民区，而没有及时跳伞逃生。她母亲次结婚，结果那个男人是个酒鬼和虐待狂。但她母亲觉得自己不能放弃这段婚姻，因为她没有经济来源养活一大家子人。有10年的时间，劳伦和她的3个兄弟只好忍受着家里的紧张气氛，循规蹈矩，自己解决问题。“我学会了一个很明确的道理：永远要自立。”她说，“我为此而骄傲。我跟金钱的关系是，它是实现自立的一种工具，但是它不是我这个人的一部分。”

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, she worked at Goldman Sachs as a fixed income trading strategist, dealing with enormous sums of money that she traded for the house account. Jon Corzine, her boss, tried to get her to stay at Goldman, but instead she decided the work was unedifying. “You could be really successful,” she said, “but you’re just contributing to capital formation.” So after three years she quit and went to Florence, Italy, living there for eight months before enrolling in Stanford Business School.

从宾夕法尼亚大学毕业后，她在髙盛做固定收益交易策略师，接触数目巨大的资金，为公司作自营交易。她的老板乔恩·科尔津（JonCorzine）想说服她留在高盛，可她最终觉得这份工作没有启发性。“你可以变得真正成功，”她说，“但你只是在为资本的积聚作贡献。”因此3年后，她辞职去了意大利佛罗伦萨，在那里住了8个月，然后来到了斯坦福商学院。

After their Thursday night dinner, she invited Jobs over to her Palo Alto apartment on Saturday. Kat Smith drove down from Berkeley and pretended to be her roommate so she could meet him as well. Their relationship became very passionate. “They would kiss and make out,” Smith said. “He was enraptured with her. He would call me on the phone and ask, ‘What do you think, does she like me?’ Here I am in this bizarre position of having this iconic person call me.”

他们在周四共进晚餐之后，她邀请乔布斯周六到她在帕洛奥图的公寓来。凯特·史密斯开车从伯克利赶来，装作是她的室友，这样就也能见到他了。她回忆说，他们的关系充满激情。“他们又是接吻又是亲热，”史密斯说，“他为她着迷。他会打电话问我，‘你看怎么样，她喜欢我吗？’我处在多么奇特的位置啊，这个偶像级人物居然会这样给我打电话。”

That New Year’s Eve of 1989 the three went to Chez Panisse, the famed Alice Waters restaurant in Berkeley, along with Lisa, then eleven. Something happened at the dinner that caused Jobs and Powell to start arguing. They left separately, and Powell ended up spending the night at Kat Smith’s apartment. At nine the next morning there was a knock at the door, and Smith opened it to find Jobs, standing in the drizzle holding some wildflowers he had picked. “May I come in and see Laurene?” he said. She was still asleep, and he walked into the bedroom. A couple of hours went by, while Smith waited in the living room, unable to go in and get her clothes. Finally, she put a coat on over her nightgown and went to Peet’s Coffee to pick up some food. Jobs did not emerge until after noon. “Kat, can you come here for a minute?” he asked. They all gathered in the bedroom. “As you know, Laurene’s father passed away, and Laurene’s mother isn’t here, and since you’re her best friend, I’m going to ask you the question,” he said. “I’d like to marry Laurene. Will you give your blessing?”

1989年的新年前夜，他们3个人一起去伯克利，到名厨爱丽丝·沃特斯（AliceWaters）开设的餐厅潘尼斯之家就餐。同行的还有乔布斯的女儿丽萨，当时她11岁了。晚餐上发生的某件事引起了乔布斯和鲍威尔的争吵。他们各自离去。鲍威尔留在凯特·史密斯的公寓过夜。第二天早上9点钟，有人敲门，史密斯打开门，乔布斯站在那儿，手中拿着他采的一束野花。“我能进来见见劳伦吗？”他说。她还在睡着，他走进卧室。几个小时过去了，史密斯等在客厅里，没法儿进去拿衣服。最后，她只好在睡衣外面披了件外套，去毕兹咖啡店（Peet-sCoffee）买了些吃的。乔布斯直到午后才从卧室出来。“凯特，你能来一下吗？”他问。他们都聚到卧室里。“你知道，劳伦的爸爸已经去世了，劳伦的妈妈也不在这儿，既然你是她最好的朋友，我就来问你吧。”他说，“我想娶劳伦。你会祝福我们吗？”