Meet Virginia
If behind every great man there’s a woman, it doesn’t take long for anyone familiar with Stark Industries (NYSE – SIA) to realize that the woman behind Tony Stark is Virginia Potts.

By Angela Carr | 22 August 2008

 

She’s a quiet powerhouse in black Armani and Manolos, the woman who stands between Tony Stark and the rest of the world.  Anyone who wants access to Stark has to go through Virginia Potts, and those of us in the press corps have learned very quickly not to cross her—Pepper Potts has an iron will, appropriate since she has to deal with Iron Man.  At first glance, she might seem to be a glorified secretary, hired more for her model-like beauty than any business acumen.  And like most first glances, this one would be wrong.

Potts never intended to become the personal assistant to the foremost arms manufacturer in the world.  A native of Albany, Potts graduated with degrees in mathematics and business administration from CUNY.   She moved to Los Angeles right before the dot-com bubble burst and found herself working in Stark Industries’ accounting department when she did the unthinkable—found an error in Tony Stark’s math.

She insists that the story is an embarrassing one—Stark finds it amusing to recount how Potts burst into his office, accounting papers in one hand and threatening the security staff chasing her with pepper spray in the other.  “It took a lot of guts to come in my office like that,” Stark says.  “Anyone who was brave enough to challenge my math to my face deserved better than the accounting department.”  He looks sheepish for a moment.  “I don’t know that she necessarily got better, but she deserved it.”  In any case, he immediately offered her the position of personal assistant and promptly assigned her the moniker of Pepper, a nickname that has followed her throughout Stark Industries. 

“I think the most important thing about Pepper is that she stands up to me,” Stark admits.  “And I knew that I needed that.”  Watching Stark is like watching an exercise in charm—charm that Potts seems completely immune to.   I met them at Stark Industries, a day shadowing Potts.  Observing the two of them through the day, Potts responds to Stark’s flippant comments with an easy grace, directing him towards scheduled meetings and making sure that the engineering genius doesn’t get sidetracked.  “He’s like a kitten, sometimes.  If it’s shiny, it catches his attention, and then the entire day is thrown off,” she says, practically dragging him away from a set of blueprints to a budget meeting.  Stark’s rejoinder to that comment is better off not printed; Potts merely rolls her eyes, directs him to the meeting and remarks that the budget meeting is more than enough punishment for his mouthiness.

Potts stays out of public sight, preferring to work behind the scenes.  “There is no Stark Industries without Tony, and to be honest, there are plenty of people out there who could do my job,” she says.  “I don’t really think that I’m all that special when it comes to this job.”

Many would disagree, starting with Stark himself.  “Without Pepper, this place would be a wreck.  I know I give her a lot of grief and trouble, but she keeps things organized and running smoothly.  If I end up working on a project for a week and a half and forget about everything else, I don’t have to worry about my end of things because I know Pepper’s taking care of it.”  Stark’s not the only one who is somewhat in awe of Potts’ organizational skills.  A quick look through Stark Industries’ human resource records indicate that Stark had been through eight personal assistants in nearly as many weeks before Potts burst into his office with corrections to his math.  I spoke to one of those assistants, Lisa Merino, who works for Stark Industries in the New York office.  “She’s a saint,” Merino says bluntly of Potts.   “An absolute saint.”

It’s taken months to get an interview with this saint; in many ways, it would have been easier to get an interview with Stark instead, but Potts prefers her privacy, something she says has gotten harder to hold on to since Stark’s revelation about being Iron Man.  “A lot of people assume things about the two of us,” she says, “and that makes it hard not only to do my job, but for the company as a whole.  Security has become an issue, from paparazzi to terrorists to industrial espionage.  Everyone wants a piece of Stark Industries or of Iron Man.”

It’s not been an easy six months since Stark’s announcement, partly because those assumptions and security are going hand in hand.  Potts has had threats against her life more than once.  While she seemingly brushes them off, Stark takes them seriously enough that it’s hard not to wonder if those assumptions might have basis in fact.  “Pepper’s the closest thing I have to family,” he says.  “If something happened to her—it would kill me.”  But not, one has to think, before Iron Man delivered a swift and irrevocable retribution.

 

Afghanistan

It was nearly a year ago when Tony Stark’s convoy was attacked on its way to Bagram Air Base from a weapons demonstration in the Afghani desert.  “It was my birthday,” Potts remembers.  “Turning thirty suddenly didn’t seem nearly as catastrophic as it did the day before.”

Potts describes the three months between Stark’s capture and escape as “a kind of hell.  For the first couple of days, all I could do was sit there, just numb.   Rhodey [Lt. Colonel James Rhodes, military liaison to Stark Industries and friend of both Stark and Potts] called me every couple of hours with updates.  Tony is like family to me—you don’t work for eight years with someone without developing that kind of a friendship and affection for each other—and I was so scared.  I knew what terrorists did to people they captured; we all did.  It was like living a nightmare, in a lot of ways, because we just didn’t know.  I finally had to snap out of it, do my job, and I don’t think I’ve ever done anything more difficult.”

Stark, having escaped his budget meeting, is hovering in the doorway when Potts says that, and the boyish look he so often sports in photos has given way to one of tension and weariness.  He puts his hand on her shoulder.  “I’m sorry,” he says softly.  Suddenly, I get the feeling that I’m intruding on a private moment, and I see why people are make assumptions about the two of them.  They enjoy a friendly camaraderie that goes beyond normal employer-employee relationships; Potts says she doesn’t think that’s unusual.  “We’ve been working together for eight years,” she says.  “I like to think that we know each other very well and can work around each other.  I think part of the reason that Tony had so many other assistants is because they didn’t get him.  Sometimes you have to let him go off on tangents and just clean up the mess afterwards.”

I don’t really get a chance to continue our interview until we are back at Stark’s Malibu mansion; the drive from Los Angeles to Malibu is full of business and friendly banter.  When we get to Malibu, Stark disappears into the basement to give me privacy with Potts. 

During the three months Stark was in captivity, Pepper Potts stepped into a role she’d never intended to take.  “I was so unprepared,” she says.  “I felt like I was filling in a role that I was never supposed to play.  I did what I could, trying to keep up appearances for the sake of the company, and what I couldn’t handle, I shunted over to Obadiah’s office.”

She refers, of course, to the late Obadiah Stane, former partner of Stark’s father, Howard.  Stane’s duplicity in supplying terrorists with weaponry has only recently been revealed in Congressional hearings in the wake of Stark’s superhero revelation, and Potts shakes her head at mentioning him.  “It still seems so wrong.  I depended on him so much, just to make it through those months, trying to do my job and Tony’s at the same time.  And he was behind it all along, while encouraging me to step up and take on Tony’s responsibilities.”

Which Potts certainly did.  She delivered comments for Stark Industries, gave speeches in his stead, speeches she likely would have had input on anyway, and planned benefits.  This was one of the first times the press corps crossed Potts.  When word leaked out that the annual firefighter’s benefit would continue to take place, a CNBC analyst suggested that it was inappropriate to continue to hold the benefit while Stark’s fate remained unknown.  Potts immediately fired back with a comment to the press, reminding them that the 2007 benefit had raised an astonishing 2.2 million dollars for the families of fallen firefighters, matched by Stark Industries, and that Tony Stark would not have wanted to hold up the fundraising efforts on his account.  The analyst who had made the original offending comment was fired by CNBC.  The official reason was differences in opinion; scuttlebutt says that Potts called up the head of NBC.

Potts didn’t just take on many of the duties Stark had performed.  Lt. Colonel Rhodes, the weapons development liaison between Stark Industries and the Pentagon as well as one of Stark’s MIT classmates, had remained in Afghanistan to continue the search for Stark long after many at the Pentagon had given up hopes of finding Stark alive.  Potts temporarily took over some of those duties as well, working with the Pentagon to keep Stark Industries on task.  “It was crazy.  I had all but moved into the mansion, because JARVIS [the artificial intelligence that runs Stark’s mansion] was so much help, I was flying back and forth between Washington and L.A. once a week, and in the meantime, I was just worried sick.”

There are a few pictures of Potts during this time, face drawn and pale with stress.  When asked if she’d seen a therapist during those three months, she just laughs.  “Everyone wanted me to go, Obadiah, Rhodey, the girls at work.  I probably needed to go, and I wanted to, but the truth was that I just didn’t have the time.”

“I was afraid she was going to drop from exhaustion,” Rhodes says.  “She’s probably the strongest person I’ve ever met, even more so than Tony.  She kept it together until the day I called her and told her we got him.”

“I sat down and cried for probably an hour.  I couldn’t help it,” she explains, as if anyone would begrudge her that hour of tears.  “I even alarmed JARVIS.”

I asked her why she thought she cried, and she answers with a flippancy that more resembles her employer than the woman I’ve come to know over the last few weeks.  “I hate job hunting,” she says.

 

Iron Woman

It seems a bit out of place to talk about Tony Stark as much as I have in this article, but it’s hard to separate Potts from Stark.  Nearly every aspect of her life revolves around organizing Stark’s.  “Some of my job requirements have gotten a little weird—well, weirder than usual—lately,” she says of Stark’s alter ego.  Adding a second layer to Stark has only made what was already an unenviable job, considering many of Stark’s public and publicized escapades before Afghanistan, even more unenviable. 

“I don’t like Iron Man,” she admits.  “Well, I don’t like the necessity of Iron Man.  I don’t like it when Tony goes out in the suit.  I don’t like what caused Iron Man to have to exist, and I don’t like the fact that he still needs to exist and that Obadiah’s legacy has caused this.”

Stark’s change in personality has been rather public.  The womanizer has had no noticeable companions other than Potts since his return, and while Stark continues to make occasional outrageous statements to the press, he has become quieter, more introspective, and more responsible.  I ask if Potts misses the old Stark, and she pauses.  “I miss some things.  He was more irresponsible then, yes.  But he also smiled.”  She shakes her head.  “I think what he’s seen changed him, and it had to.  But at heart, he’s still Tony Stark.  He still loves his country; he’s just trying to find another way to protect it.”

Potts was responsible for helping Stark protect the country from Stane’s betrayal.  “Tony had sent me to the office to get the information from the ghost drive that showed that Obadiah had been shipping weapons to terrorist factions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.”  What she doesn’t mention is that she, along with agents from the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, went to Stark Industries the night Stark and Stane faced down in the middle of Los Angeles, or that she very likely saved many lives, including Stark’s and her own when she overloaded the arc reactor, shorting out Stane’s version of the Iron Man suit.  “We saved each other that night,” Stark says, taking a long pull from a glass of scotch.  He shakes his head.  “He had every intention of killing her.  Because she knew too much.”

“You do what has to be done,” Potts says.  “And we had to stop Obadiah, because he was killing people.  Directly or indirectly, he was responsible for the deaths of innocent people, of American soldiers—our own soldiers!  He had to be stopped.  And that’s all there was to it.”

Many have questioned the morality of Stark Industries, both before and after it was revealed that Stane had been supplying weapons to rogue nations and terrorists.  While Iron Man’s actions have led to a resurgence in interest and investors in Stark Industries’ future, Stark’s former nickname of “the Merchant of Death” continues to dog both the company and the superhero.

“I never had a moral issue with working for Stark Industries.  I saw the company the same way I think Tony did, as one that supplied the means and materials for our soldiers to protect our country.   If Stark Industries didn’t do it, someone else would, and they might not be as good at designing weapons as Tony is,” Potts says.  “And I would hate to think about someone trying to live on that difference.  But in a lot of ways, Afghanistan has made everyone wake up to what Stark Industries does and how we do it.  Our stock dropped fifty-six points after Tony said we weren’t going to make weapons anymore.  And in a lot of ways, that made me angrier than anything else.  Everyone goes through a point when they’re disillusioned with their country, but when I saw Jim Cramer telling America to sell Stark Industries stock because the company was moving in a more responsible direction?  I was truly angry.”

No one bore the brunt of that anger more than Jim Cramer directly, who got a personal call from Potts.  “She’s a firecracker, that one,” Cramer says.  “And no one could tell whether or not Stark Industries was going to be able to keep going.  Was the company really going in a new direction or was it an effect from post-traumatic stress?  We didn’t know.  Hell, we still don’t know, not really.”

Potts dismisses Cramer’s concerns.  “Jim’s original assessment was based on business purposes only; he doesn’t know Tony Stark and couldn’t see how Tony could design anything but weapons—but Tony’s just as good at designing airplanes or computer systems or robots as he is weapons, things that can promote peace.  There’s a market for those products too.”  As for now?  “Iron Man, was, and is, I think, the answer to a problem.  Tony saw a problem and came up with a solution for it.  In typical Tony Stark style, it was a solution no one else would have thought of.  It’s not a manifestation of post-traumatic stress.  It’s just a manifestation of the way Tony’s brain works.”

Assumptions

Having worked with Tony Stark for over eight years, Potts knows well how his brain operates.  What’s equally interesting is the way Stark knows how Potts operates.

My conversation with Potts is interrupted first by a crash downstairs in Stark’s workshop and then by JARVIS, the artificial intelligence that runs Stark’s house, a computerized Alfred to Stark’s Batman with a voice like Paul Bettany.  Her assistance is requested downstairs, along with an ice pack.

Potts’ brief absence lets me take in the spare living room, if it could be called a living room.  I get the feeling that this part of Stark’s home is for show; there are only a few touches here and there that show that this part of the house is used for more than a decorator’s showroom.  A baby grand has music spread across the top, a concerto by Salieri, while Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” is neatly stacked on the bench.  On the low coffee table are scattered a few magazines, mostly science-related, but peeking out of the stacks of Popular Science and Scientific American (all of which have been marred with bright red ink in an engineer’s hand) is the bright pink cover of a out-of-date issue of Cosmopolitan.  It’s one that I recognize almost immediately; in fact, it’s the issue that spawned the idea for this piece when Cosmopolitan named Virginia Potts a Fun Fearless Female.

Potts sees me flipping through the magazine when she returns, rolling her eyes.  “You’d think he’d learn not to test flight stabilizers in the house.”  She’s surprised to see the Cosmo in my hands.  “Was that up here?”

At my affirmative, she rolls her eyes again before sitting down.  “Tony.  I think he was more excited than I was about it.  He called me Fun and Fearless for a week afterwards.”

I ask Potts if she reads Cosmo, but she shakes her head ruefully.  “I used to, but I barely have time to catch the episodes of Burn Notice I manage to TiVo.”  She gestures to one of the taglines on the cover that boldly states “Ten Guaranteed Ways to Get a Good Man,” unfortunately placed underneath the tagline for her Fun Fearless Female nod.  “Perhaps I ought to, though!”

It’s the segue into her personal life that I’ve been looking for, but it’s not the wealth of information I’d hoped.  “I haven’t had a date in a year and a half,” she says.  “God, that makes me sound pathetic.  You can totally advertise that I’m in the market.”

There have been a lot of assumptions that she and Stark are together; an insinuation by Vanity Fair reporter Christine Everhart that Potts slept her way to her current position is at the center of a libel suit by Stark Industries against CondéNast.  Potts hardly wants to comment on Everhart, instead saying, “If I slept with Tony, I wouldn’t be here.  Tony loves women—I think his track record speaks to that.  But a respect that goes further than a simple chivalry because of gender is something else.  I don’t think that I would be able to do my job effectively if Tony and I had the kind of relationship the tabloids wish we did, because I would no longer command the respect I need from him to be his assistant.”

They admittedly would make a good-looking couple.  When I saw them at the Susan G. Komen benefit in Los Angeles, they seemed to evoke the classic days of Hollywood; Stark was dark and handsome in a tuxedo that would befit James Bond, while Potts glided across the floor like a modern-day Grace Kelly, all beauty and decorum. 

“I understand why people think Tony and I are together,” she says.  “We spend more time together than most married couples, and that has made it hard to have a relationship of my own, I’ll admit.  I’d like to have a family some day, but right now, this is so important to me.  Tony’s doing good things; the company is doing good things, and I want to be part of it.”

If the brilliant, wealthy and handsome doesn’t do it for Potts, men might wonder what does.  She laughs.  “Someone who loves music.  I’d love to learn to play an instrument one day.”

When I point out the music on the piano, she looks over her shoulder.  “It’s odd, but I’ve never heard Tony play.  I know he does, because the music on the piano changes, and I have the piano tuned three times a year.”  She’s not the only one who finds it odd; Potts’ life is so intertwined with Stark’s that finding where one ends and the other begins is difficult.  That Stark has either deliberately or inadvertently kept this to himself for all these years is hard to believe.  Potts smiles at this comment.  “I don’t think Tony’s ever seen one of my paintings either.  If he has, he certainly didn’t pay enough attention to it to ask.  And sometimes it’s nice to be able to go home and put on some ratty clothes and just be for a while.  No meetings, no phone calls, just me and a canvas.  It’s personal and private, and that’s kind of rare around here.”

The fact that it’s private and personal is the reason I don’t ask to see one of her paintings; I can understand the need to have something simply to yourself.  “Tony and I have never been impersonal,” she says.  “There may be a formality between us, but it’s never been impersonal.”

Stark agrees.  “I like to think that if Pepper, God forbid, ever decided to leave, she and I would still be friends.  There’s that saying that a friend will loan you bail money, but a real friend will be beside you in jail going ‘Damn, that was fun.’  Well, a real friend is the one who gets up at three in the morning when she has to be up at five to come untangle your sorry ass from whatever situation you’ve gotten it in.  A real friend is one who picks up the dry cleaning for the woman that spent the night and ushers her out the door without fuss or humiliation, who gets your drunk ass home without making a fool out of you, who cleans up your mess when you do something stupid.  A real friend is one who comes to meet you when you get out of three months in hell.  Rhodey brought me home.  Pepper was there to make it home.”  He pauses.  “I wouldn’t know what to do without her.  And that’s not just because I don’t know my social security number.  She keeps me on track.  And she couldn’t do that if she was just an assistant.  You have to be a friend for that.”

The issue of Cosmopolitan on the table is Stark’s, and he quickly confesses to having put the magazine out the night before.  “A lot of people see Pepper as a power player.  All they see is the suit and the clipboard and the Blackberry, and they don’t see the person underneath.  And that bothers her in a lot of ways.  She was really tickled when they named her a Fun Fearless Female, because that gave people a chance to see her as the dynamic person she is.  That’s why she finally agreed to this interview when she really wanted to just forget about it all.  So many people got the wrong impression of her because of that article in Vanity Fair, and this is a chance to set the record straight.”

The Vanity Fair article hurt Potts personally, questioning both her personal and professional attributes.  “Tony managed to keep me from seeing the magazine for about four hours before I finally escaped and bought a copy,” she says. 

“I came upstairs and she was reading that damned magazine,” Stark says.  “There was nothing I could do, of course, because she would have to read it eventually, but I wanted to rip Christine Everhart to shreds.  She was sitting in the kitchen, right there,” he gestures to where I’m sitting with my back to the door, “and she didn’t even know I was there.  She finished reading, got up, threw it in the trash and turned around to go back to work like nothing had happened.  I guess she was going to wait until she got home before she let it out.  And then she apologized.  To me!”

There’s a dark intensity in Stark’s eyes when he says this.  “I told her she was an idiot.  I won’t let anyone hurt any of my employees.  In any way.”

 

Dangerous Games

It’s late when Potts finally packs up to leave Stark’s house.  I’m staying behind to interview Stark about her, and we’ve settled in to speak when Potts reappears, arms crossed over her chest and a disapproving look on her face.  “Hand them over,” she says to Stark.

Stark, for one, adopts a boyish look of pure innocence.  “Hand what over, Potts?”

“The spark plugs to my car,” she says.  “You have them in your pocket—and don’t try to lie about it.  JARVIS already gave you up.”

“Your car needs a tune-up, Potts,” Stark says lightly.  “You’re lucky I didn’t take the engine to pieces, honestly, because it needs it.”

“You took the engine to pieces last month,” Potts answers.  “My car does not need another tune-up, nor does it need new spark plugs.  Give them here.”

Stark remains unaffected by her sternness.  “Pepper, just have Happy [Hogan, Stark’s chauffeur and head of security] take you home.  And you know, if he happens to check out your apartment, that’s fine.”

“I sent Happy home early tonight,” she says.  “It’s his mother’s seventieth birthday, and I thought my car would be in one piece so I could get home.”

“Seventy?”  Stark asks.  “Wow, should we send something, cause that’s a milestone.  I mean—“

His attempt at deflection is quickly passed over.  “Tony.”

I offer to drop Potts off at her apartment, but Stark’s emphatic “No,” resounds before I can finish.  Suddenly, I’m no longer there as the two of them lock gazes in a silent stand-off.

“Either give me the spark plugs or tell me what’s going on,” Potts says flatly.  “And you might as well confess now, because you know I’ll get it out of JARVIS later anyway.”

“Tattletale,” Stark mutters under his breath, but it’s obvious he’s been beaten.  “It’s really nothing, Pepper, just a thing—“

“What kind of thing?” she demands.  He hedges until she finally bursts out with his full name in frustration, like a mother fed up with a child who won’t behave.  “Anthony!”

The thing is a threat that SHIELD forwarded to Stark, feeling that it was credible enough to warrant attention by Iron Man.  It’s not unusual for Stark to get threats; Potts receives them as well, though she says threats aimed at her are usually from stalkers obsessed with Stark.  This one is different, however, because this one is someone trying to get to Iron Man through the people he’s closest to.

Potts finally sighs.  “We’ve had this discussion before, Tony.  You can’t protect me from everything—“

“But I can try,” he insists.  “Pepper, these people aren’t joking around.”

“I can protect myself, or do you forget the self-defense classes you signed me up for?” she asks.  Stark Industries regularly offers self-defense lessons for their female employees and includes training in martial arts, survival, and firearms. 

 “Yeah, well, I thought the same thing until someone blew up the Humvee I was riding in,” Stark shoots back, and Potts visibly flinches.  “Just—humor me on this, Pepper, please.  Call Hogan and have him come get you.  I pay him enough that he should not be terribly inconvenienced—“

“He’s in Palm Springs,” she says.  “And no, I will not let you call Rhodey and have someone go check out the apartment.  I’ll sleep in the guest room tonight, and I swear to God, Tony, if you do this to me again, I will schedule you for budget meetings for a month.”

“Pepper—“ he begins, but she cuts him off with a prim “Will that be all, Mr. Stark?”

Stark sighs, and nods, giving the accustomed response that signals the end of the conversation.  “That will be all, Ms. Potts.”

Potts disappears, and Stark turns his attention back to me, his eyes resting on the electronic recorder sitting on the table.  “Did you get all of that?” he asks.  At my affirmative, he sighs.  “I think she’d walk into hell itself if she took a mind to.  I’m trying to get her to move closer, or at least into some place that she owns herself so I can take care of security.”

Colonel Rhodes has also received threats related to his work with Stark, but not nearly as many as Potts or Stark himself.  “Thing is, Rhodey’s got the entire Air Force behind him,” Stark says.  “While Pepper can run faster in four inch heels than I ever would have though possible—“  he doesn’t finish his sentence, but I can see the thoughts flicker across his face, and they aren’t scenarios that please him. 

“You can’t let these things affect your life,” Potts says.  “If I let people change the way I live my life, then they win.  They’re terrorists—that’s what they are.  They are trying to make me afraid.  And you know what?  I am afraid.  But I’m not going to let that stop me from doing what I want to do.”

 

Going Forward

It’s two weeks later when I catch up with Potts, and by extension, Stark, again.  She looks frazzled, her normally perfect appearance marred by dark circles under her eyes.  “It’s been a bad week,” she says. 

Stark disagrees.  “It’s been a fantastic week,” he says.  Iron Man has made several public appearances in Afghanistan and Iraq, supporting American efforts to contain a resurgence of terrorist activity.  More than that, Stark confides, SHIELD and the FBI have caught the man responsible for sending threats to Potts.  “He’s going away for a very long time.”

Meanwhile, Potts is handling the rest of the press corps over Stark’s missions, trying to avert any PR disasters before they happen.  Despite having her press pass to Stark Industries yanked, Christine Everhart has managed to secure a place in the briefing Potts gives.  The libel suit was thrown out in court, but Stark insists that it was more to make a point than to accrue damages—and the point was made, as Everhart’s status as correspondent has been downgraded to a staff writer at the magazine.  Everhart is pointedly ignored by Potts until Everhart asks a particularly crass question: “Ms. Potts, how many people did you have to sleep with to get Stark Industries to sue Vanity Fair?”  It’s a question that will be the final straw and get Everhart fired from Vanity Fair, but Everhart is here, now. 

As a group, the press corps are seen as little better than scum.  We also protect our own, so in some ways it’s a surprise when the hisses start from the back of the room towards Everhart.  Potts may be notoriously difficult to get past, but she’s never treated the press with anything less than respect; they like her and won’t let an unprovoked attack go unpunished.

Everhart’s planning a tell-all book about Stark Industries; it will be released this fall.  Potts is not looking forward to the consequences of that.  “People will believe what they want to believe, and these questions are going to come right back up again.  At least we’ll have a bit of a break between now and then—I hope.” 

In the meantime, Stark Industries continues the search for a new CFO, and until that time, Potts is helping Stark handle the burdens of both jobs.  Rumors abound about who will be the new CFO, some pointing to a possibility that Lt. Colonel Rhodes may retire from the Air Force and join Stark Industries in this position.  I suggested that Potts might be an appropriate choice.  “Absolutely not,” she says, fixing Stark with a look that clearly states that he better not even think about taking the suggestion seriously.  “I’m not qualified.”

I ask Potts if this was what she had dreamed of doing with her life, becoming a personal assistant to Stark and seeming putting her own life on hold.   “No.  I dreamed of starting my own business one day, getting married, having a baby of my own, and I thought that I’d have all of that by now.  I think if I dwelled on it, I might get upset about it, but no one ever ends up where they thought they would be.”  She looks over her shoulder—Stark is chatting with an engineer further down the hallway.  “And in some ways, I do have what I wanted.  I’ve got a good job, and I’m helping run a company.  I’m challenged.  And sometimes I think Tony’s a boss, a husband, and a kid all rolled up into one.  There’s a family here.  It’s untraditional, but it’s a family.”  She smiles.  “That’s all I can ask for.”

Stark finally catches up with her, and he seems to be paying especially careful attention to her answer to my last question—is Potts happy?

She takes a moment, and I see her look over her shoulder at Stark.  Her answer is directed more at him than at me.  “Yes, I’m happy.”

And if Pepper Potts is happy, so is Tony Stark, if the grin splitting his face is any indication.  “Come on,” he says.  “Let’s go home.”

They wish me goodbye, disappearing out to where Hogan waits with the car.  The future is not going to be easy for Pepper Potts; the Christine Everharts of the world will continue to take aim at her, as will every terrorist seeking a way to take a shot at Iron Man.  Stark Industries will continue to need both her business acumen and her ability to manage Stark.  Stark himself will continue to rely on her for her assistance and her friendship.  She will go from crisis to disaster, leaving peace and calm in her wake.  And in her own words, “I wouldn’t want my life any other way.”

Angela Carr is a NEWSWEEK correspondent in Los Angeles.