Redse came from a troubled family, and Jobs shared with her his own pain about being put up for adoption. “We were both wounded from our childhood,” Redse recalled. “He said to me that we were misfits, which is why we belonged together.” They were physically passionate and prone to public displays of affection; their make-out sessions in the NeXT lobby are well remembered by employees. So too were their fights, which occurred at movie theaters and in front of visitors to Woodside. Yet he constantly praised her purity and naturalness. As the well-grounded Joanna Hoffman pointed out when discussing Jobs’s infatuation with the otherworldly Redse, “Steve had a tendency to look at vulnerabilities and neuroses and turn them into spiritual attributes.”

萊德斯來自一個問題家庭，喬布斯跟她分享自己被領養的痛苦。“我們都在童年受到傷害，”萊德斯回憶說，“他對說，我們都生錯了地方，正因如此我們才屬于對方。”他們充滿激情，也喜歡公開表現他們的感情；他們在NeXT大堂親熱的場景，很多雇員都記憶猶新。他們吵架也同樣公開，在電影院，在伍德賽德的訪客面前，都曾發生過。然而他常常稱贊她的純潔和自然。他還賦予她各種各樣的精神特質。我們后來討論喬布斯對超凡脫俗的萊德斯的癡迷時，就像直言不諱的喬安娜·霍夫曼所說的那樣，“喬布斯會把柔弱和多愁善感當做一種氣質。”

When he was being eased out at Apple in 1985, Redse traveled with him in Europe, where he was salving his wounds. Standing on a bridge over the Seine one evening, they bandied about the idea, more romantic than serious, of just staying in France, maybe settling down, perhaps indefinitely. Redse was eager, but Jobs didn’t want to. He was burned but still ambitious. “I am a reflection of what I do,” he told her. She recalled their Paris moment in a poignant email she sent to him twenty-five years later, after they had gone their separate ways but retained their spiritual connection:

當喬布斯1985年被排擠出蘋果時，萊德斯跟他去歐洲旅行，陪他在那里療傷。某晚，在塞納河的一座橋上，他們浪漫多于嚴肅地爭論著一個想法：留在法國，也許永久地定居在那兒。萊德斯很渴望那樣，但是喬布斯不想。他很受挫但依然野心勃勃。“我做的正是我想做的。”他告訴她。他們后來分開了，卻一直保持著精神交流，25年之后，她在給他的一封令人心酸的郵件中追憶了在巴黎的那一幕。

We were on a bridge in Paris in the summer of 1985. It was overcast. We leaned against the smooth stone rail and stared at the green water rolling on below. Your world had cleaved and then it paused, waiting to rearrange itself around whatever you chose next. I wanted to run away from what had come before. I tried to convince you to begin a new life with me in Paris, to shed our former selves and let something else course through us. I wanted us to crawl through that black chasm of your broken world and emerge, anonymous and new, in simple lives where I could cook you simple dinners and we could be together every day, like children playing a sweet game with no purpose save the game itself. I like to think you considered it before you laughed and said “What could I do? I’ve made myself unemployable.” I like to think that in that moment’s hesitation before our bold futures reclaimed us, we lived that simple life together all the way into our peaceful old ages, with a brood of grandchildren around us on a farm in the south of France, quietly going about our days, warm and complete like loaves of fresh bread, our small world filled with the aroma of patience and familiarity.

1985年夏，我們在巴黎的一座橋上。陰天。我們倚在光滑的石欄上，看著綠色的水從橋下流過。你的世界破裂了，停滯了，等著你選擇方向再重新安排。我想逃離過去遇到的一切。我試圖說服你跟我一起在巴黎開始新的生活，拋下我們過去的自我，體驗別樣的人生。我希望我們可以穿越你那破碎的世界黑暗的深淵，走出來，隱姓埋名，重新開始，過簡單的生活，我為你做晚餐，我們可以每天廝守，就像孩子玩一個美妙的游戲，沒有任何目的，只為了游戲本身的快樂。我多希望你能先想一想再大笑著說，“我能干什么呢？我已經把自己槁得沒人敢用了。”我多希望在我們被冷酷的未來俘虜之前，在那一刻的猶豫不決中，我們選擇了一直過那種簡單的生活直到我們平靜的晚年，在法國南部的一個農場，兒孫鐃膝，盡享天倫，日子像新鮮出爐的面包那么溫暖充實，我們小小的世界里彌漫著耐心和熟悉的芳香。

The relationship lurched up and down for five years. Redse hated living in his sparsely furnished Woodside house. Jobs had hired a hip young couple, who had once worked at Chez Panisse, as housekeepers and vegetarian cooks, and they made her feel like an interloper. She would occasionally move out to an apartment of her own in Palo Alto, especially after one of her torrential arguments with Jobs. “Neglect is a form of abuse,” she once scrawled on the wall of the hallway to their bedroom. She was entranced by him, but she was also baffled by how uncaring he could be. She would later recall how incredibly painful it was to be in love with someone so self-centered. Caring deeply about someone who seemed incapable of caring was a particular kind of hell that she wouldn’t wish on anyone, she said.

這段戀情起起伏伏持續了5年。萊德斯討厭住在他簡陋的伍德賽德房子里。喬布斯聘請了一對曾在潘足斯之家餐廳（ChezPanisse）工作的時髦的年輕夫婦擔任管家和素食廚師，而他們讓她感覺自己像個外人。她有時會搬出來到她自己在帕洛奧圖的公寓居住，尤其是在她跟喬布斯的一次大吵之后。她曾在通向他們臥室的走廊墻壁上寫道：“忽視是一種虐待。”她為他著迷，可是也因為缺少他的關心而困擾。她后來回憶，愛上一個如此以自我為中心的人，那種痛苦令人難以置信。深深地關心一個似乎沒有能力關心別人的人，那是某種地獄般的感覺，她不愿任何人去體驗。

They were different in so many ways. “On the spectrum of cruel to kind, they are close to the opposite poles,” Hertzfeld later said. Redse’s kindness was manifest in ways large and small; she always gave money to street people, she volunteered to help those who (like her father) were afflicted with mental illness, and she took care to make Lisa and even Chrisann feel comfortable with her. More than anyone, she helped persuade Jobs to spend more time with Lisa. But she lacked Jobs’s ambition and drive. The ethereal quality that made her seem so spiritual to Jobs also made it hard for them to stay on the same wavelength. “Their relationship was incredibly tempestuous,” said Hertzfeld. “Because of both of their characters, they would have lots and lots of fights.”

他們的不同體現在很多方面。“在從殘忍到仁慈的坐標軸上，他們分別接近相反的兩極。”赫茨菲爾德后來說。萊德斯的仁慈體現在從大到小很多方面：她總是給街上的流浪漢錢，她做義工去幫助那些（像她爸爸一樣）患精神疾病的人，她努力讓麗薩甚至克里斯安跟她在一起都感覺很舒服。她比其他任何人都更多地說服喬布斯要多陪伴麗薩。但是她沒有喬布斯那樣的野心或進取心。這種讓她在喬布斯眼里與眾不同的不食人間煙火的特質，也使他們很難保持在同一頻段上。“他們的關系充滿了風暴，”赫茨菲爾德說，“由于他們的個性，他們會有很多很多爭吵。”