Geek Romance: Stories of Love Amidst the Oddballs

by Grayson, Kristine

  “You can borrow the laptop,” Stuart said a bit too eagerly.

  Ray turned that smile on Stuart, who almost fell out of his chair.

  “Thank you,” Ray said.

  “Any time,” Stuart said. “It’s my pleasure. Really. To have you touch—”

  “Stuart,” Bethanne said, “don’t you need that laptop for work?”

  “No, not if I’m at my desk.” Then he flushed. “Which is where I’m going right now.”

  The receptionist looked at Ray, then at Bethanne, and finally she stood. “I should probably get some Post-Its from supply.”

  Bethanne could see the Post-Its on her desk from across the room. “Stay,” she said. “I’m sure Ray’ll be busy until we leave for dinner.”

  “And after,” he said distractedly, tapping a key as he scanned the material.

  And after. Bethanne would normally have been heartened by those words, but now. Because she knew he wasn’t speaking about dessert or aerobics. He was talking about the profiles on the screen.

  She sighed and walked back to her office, reminding herself all the way that he had come here to find the right date. Not any date. The right date. And what man, when faced with a willing applicant pool, took the very first volunteer?

  Except that he had taken the very first volunteer. The question wasn’t taking her. It was whether or not she was right applicant, not just the first available one.

  And he was clearly going to go through each and every one of those profiles to make sure he hadn’t made a mistake.

  ***

  She was able to keep it all in perspective—Ray, the aerobics, the profiles, the crashed server, the drooling women (and some men)—until the maitre d’ at the restaurant Ray had chosen let his arm brush Ray’s shoulder as he put the menu into Ray’s hands.

  The restaurant was exclusive, the interior dark and romantic, the table a private one in the back. They had been taking turns paying for dinner. On this night, it was Ray’s turn. He had chosen the restaurant, and if she hadn’t been so on edge, she would have loved the choice. The tablecloth was long enough that she could slip off her shoe and slide her bare foot along his thigh without anyone else noticing.

  But the moment the maitre d’ left, Ray brought out the stupid laptop and opened it.

  Bethanne slammed the damn thing shut. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m looking over the applicants,” he said, frowning slightly in confusion. “I’m a bit overwhelmed at the sheer volume.”

  She stared at him. His eyes widened. He was clearly puzzled, dammit.

  “I suppose we should be talking about what to order,” he said slowly. “My mistake.”

  “What do you think we’re doing here?” she asked.

  “Dinner?” he said slowly as if he were no longer sure.

  “The last few nights we’ve had lovely dinners,” she said.

  He nodded and looked a little relieved.

  “And lovely desserts,” she said.

  He relaxed against the chair.

  “And even lovelier after-dinner…celebrations,” she said.

  He smiled.

  “So why are you now trolling for a date?” she asked.

  He put a hand protectively over the laptop, as if she were going to take it from him. “I…um…paid for it?”

  “So?” she asked.

  “I’m…curious?”

  “Clearly,” she said.

  “I…um…didn’t realize we had a commitment,” he said.

  She rolled her eyes. “The least you could do is not look at that crap in front of me.”

  “Why?” he asked. “You generated the crap.”

  “You did,” she said. “With your lovely face, and your ‘I like to spend as much time in the sunshine as I can’ profile. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Except designing the whole system,” he said.

  “I didn’t design it,” she said. “I bought it, and I run it, and I didn’t think you needed it any more.”

  The light left his face. The room became noticeably darker.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m here on a fact-finding mission.”

  She knew it. He was too good to be true. He worked for the competition, and he wanted to see how well Eros (dot) com functioned. Well, clearly the place didn’t function well in the presence of beautiful men.

  “Fact-finding,” she said flatly. “So tell me, who are you really?”

  “Um,” he glanced around as if expecting someone to save him. But apparently the maitre d’ or the waiter or whoever was supposed to come over next had the sense to stay away. “My real name is Phoebus Apollo, but it’s not inaccurate to call myself Ray since I am the God of Light nor is it wrong to call me Greco, which is just a word for Greek, which I am—”

  “Phoebus,” Bethanne said, ignoring everything else he just said (mostly because she didn’t understand it). “Who the hell names a kid Phoebus?”

  “My dad.” That was a whole new voice. It sounded like a trumpet blaring and it came from the chair to Bethanne’s left.

  A man was sitting there, a man she hadn’t noticed before. He was attractive in a he-man kind of way—broad forehead, high cheekbones, cruel lips. The romance novels she used to read (before Larry) would have called him an Alpha male.

  Now she just thought of men like that as dangerous.

  “Who the hell are you?” she snapped.

  “I’m—ah—Phoebus’s brother, Ares, although I prefer to be called Mars, even if they did name a red planet after me. The Romans knew how to respect manly men instead of—”

  She slammed her palms on the table, shutting him up. “What is this all about?”

  “Ah, my fault actually.” Ares looked at Ray—Phoebus or Apollo or whatever his name was—and then shrugged. “I found your little website and thought Eros (dot) com had something to do with the Greek Gods. I was hoping someone set up a dating service that catered to us.”

  “He thought it was a porn site at first,” said Ray. (She couldn’t think of him as Phoebus. That was just wrong. No man that attractive should be called Phoebus.)

  “But I scrolled around,” Ares said, “and I thought maybe it might actually help us find, you know, someone to pass the time with.”

  “Actually,” Ray said, “he bet me that the site couldn’t handle people like us.”

  “And,” Ares said, “it turns out that I’m right.”

  “What?” Bethanne asked.

  “Look,” Ray said, taking her hand. She snatched it back. He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Our father slept with everything that moved, pretty much from the time he dethroned our grandfather—”

  “Father Time,” Ares said, making Bethanne wonder if he was completely there.

  “—actually, our grandfather was named Chronus, but that’s neither here nor there. The important thing is that Dad slept with anything female and fathered—what, Ares, maybe a thousand children?”

  “Who counts?” Ares said.

  “And we decided long ago that we don’t want to be like him, but it does lead to a lonely life, especially in a family as long lived as ours, and we were hoping when we saw your site—”

  “He was hoping when he saw your site,” Ares said.

  “That you could help us all find the right person for right now. That way we wouldn’t have to come down from the mountain very often and we wouldn’t have to interrupt our real work and we wouldn’t have to—”

  “Real work,” Bethanne said.

  “He likes to tell people that he pulls the sun across the sky with his chariot,” Ares said, “but really he just controls the light as it filters through the atmosphere. No one has believed that chariot thing since, what, ‘Pollo, Copernicus?”

  Ray glared at his brother. “We don’t discuss Copernicus.”

  Bethanne had never discussed Copernicus, mostly because she had no idea who he was. And she wasn’t going to ask.

  “You came to my office as a bet?” she
asked Ray.

  He shrugged a single shoulder.

  “You used us?” she asked.

  “It turned out better than I’d hoped,” Ray said.

  “Idiot,” Ares said. “She really wants to know if you used her.”

  The man with the cruel mouth was right, but she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of saying so. Still, she didn’t add anything because she really wanted to hear Ray’s answer.

  Ray glanced at his brother, then back at her, then back at his brother again. “You know,” Ray said under his breath, “I’d almost believe your kids were here.”

  Ares grinned at Bethanne. “I call the little buggers Terror, Trembling, Panic and Fear. Although it’s not fair to call them little any more. They’ve taken over so much of the world.”

  She blinked at him, not certain if he was joking. He didn’t seem like a man who was joking, and yet every word out of his mouth was unbelievable. And where did he come from? She hadn’t seen him arrive on his own.

  “I’m sure ‘Pollo mentioned them because he’s feeling all of those lovely emotions. My sister Eris should have shown up. You know her as Discord. She would have loved this conversation.” Ares’ grin wasn’t a kind one. His eyes were as cruel as that mouth of his.

  “I didn’t use you, Bethanne, seriously,” Ray said. “When I arrived, I was hoping I’d find a woman to keep me company for the next sun cycle.”

  “I was keeping you company,” she snapped.

  “I know,” he said, “and I appreciate it. But I’m not all that great with English, and when you said that we would talk about dates and marketing and mentioned dinner, I thought you meant dates and marketing and work, not a relationship.”

  “Then what was that all night stuff?” she asked.

  He shrugged again. “A delightful work experience?”

  “Oh, for godssake,” she said.

  “Which God?” Ares asked.

  “I hadn’t had time to see if any of the women are appropriate,” Ray said to Ares. “I just started looking through the files….”

  “And that’s all the looking you’re going to get.” Bethanne snatched laptop away from him. “You perpetrated a fraud. Both of you. I’m going to fire whoever checked out your background.”

  “Don’t do that,” Ray said. “I got one of the muses to write me something pretty. Really, it’s mostly true. I am a well known poet and musician. I invented the flute and the lyre—”

  “I doubt that,” Bethanne said. “You didn’t invent the liar, but you certainly are an adept one. Either that or you’re both stone-cold crazy. Which comes back to fraud again. And fraud negates our contract, which no longer gives you the right to look at these profiles or anything else to do with our site. Got that, Ray?”

  “Apollo,” he said softly. “I hurt your feelings. I didn’t mean to. I was just—”

  “Save it,” she said. “And don’t ever bother us again.”

  Ares sighed. “You know, for someone who doesn’t want to be like Dad,” he said to his brother, “you sure know how to piss off women.”

  “Stop,” Ray said to Ares. Then Ray stood. Somehow a spotlight illuminated him, making him the brightest (most beautiful, astounding, gorgeous and spectacular) thing in the room.

  Bethanne worked at ignoring him.

  “You want me to take care of her?” Ares asked. “We could go for a tiny little interpersonal war or something larger—like a conflict between internet agencies—or something even large, maybe on the scale of Iraq.”

  “I said shut up,” Ray said. Then he reached out a hand to Bethanne. “Bethanne, please. I’m apologizing.”

  “That’s not going to make things better,” she said. Although she was having trouble walking away from him.

  “What can I do to make things better?” he asked.

  How many men had asked her that question before? How many of them had asked her that question after screwing up her life?

  “Just leave me alone,” she said tiredly, and walked away.

  She resisted the urge to look back at him. She really didn’t need to. The mirrors in the hallway leading to the kitchen reflected his afterglow.

  The man did seem to have control of the light somehow. Or maybe handsome men just figured out how to use light to their advantage.

  She had no idea. It was safer to believe he and his brother were crazy. They used Eros (dot) com and now she would pay for it.

  Halfway back to the business, she remembered she hadn’t eaten dinner. She ordered a pizza—extra thick, extra cheese and extra pepperoni—and made sure it would arrive shortly after she did.

  Which it did.

  She ate the entire thing alone, while she composed the letter she had to send to all the new subscribers. Before she sent it, she called her investigative team, her legal advisor, and Rachel into the office.

  She fired the investigative team for failing to do their job. (“Pretty men do not get a pass at Eros (dot) com,” she said, but even she knew she was speaking about the future, not the quite recent past.) She put Rachel on probation for making the decision that Bethanne herself might have made if she had been in the office that night.

  And she listened to her lawyer’s doom-and-gloom predictions, most of which came true. Like the class action lawsuit, not just from the new subscribers (all of whom got their money back—if they asked for it of course), but from some old ones claiming fraud as well.

  Bethanne’s lawyer had to meet with some ambulance-chasing class action attorney and show him that Eros (dot) com was a victim of fraud as well. Which wasn’t hard when someone actually investigated the information that Ray Greco had provided the company.

  Why hadn’t they investigated that properly? The class action ambulance chaser had asked.

  Fortunately, that particular ambulance chaser had been female (as had the arbitrator overseeing everything) and Bethanne’s attorney took the risky option of showing them the security tapes.

  The naked security tapes.

  Of Ray Greco a.k.a Phoebus Apollo a.k.a. the Greek God waiting outside Eros (dot) com.

  No one questioned the security procedures. Both women asked for the recording to be replayed more than once and later, the ambulance chaser asked for a copy, which she did not get.

  The class action suit evaporated. Unfortunately, the memory of Ray Greco did not.

  Bethanne herself spent too much time on the internet reading translations of Homer and Ovid. She bought Edith Hamilton’s mythology books, and got angry every single time she saw Apollo presented as the God of Truth.

  That alone should have made her Apollo a fake Apollo. But he looked a lot like the statues she saw reproduced online (and some in touring shows when they hit the local museum). And then there was that glow of his…

  In the end, it didn’t matter. Pretty men, men who used, simply didn’t belong at Eros (dot) com. She had a few fun nights with a con artist. That’s how she ended up filing the Event in her mind.

  And she did get a new slogan out of it for Eros (dot) com. Not “We find you the right date,” but a twist on Geeks Bearing Gifts. Now Eros (dot) com’s slogan read: We Prefer Geeks Bearing Gifts.

  Because she did. She really and truly did.

  “Geeks Bearing Gifts” by Kristine Grayson was first published in The Trouble With Heroes, edited by Denise Little, Daw Books, November, 2009.

  Name-Calling

  Kristine Grayson

  Such a simple decision, really, and yet it held her up. She couldn’t say she would marry Van unless she knew what she would do about her name.

  LizBet leaned back on the brown leather desk chair and stared out the wall of windows. Her office was in one of the tallest buildings in Portland, not quite on the top floor, but close enough. She could see the Columbia River and beyond to the mountain ranges narrowing into the Willamette Valley. Her desk, shiny oak, still smelled as woodsy as the day she bought it. Van had once teased her that she bought her furniture because it smelled good, not because it
looked good.

  She doodled on her Palm, the Mac humming on the credenza to her side. Mrs. Van L. Lyndale. Elizabeth Lyndale. Elizabeth Lyndale-Hayes. Mrs. Elizabeth Hayes. Elizabeth Hayes-Lyndale. She drew little hearts over the “I” in her first name, just as she had done in middle school, and made the period after “Mrs.” Into a small flower. Then she sighed and erased it all, and glanced at her brag wall for reassurance.

  Her undergraduate degree from Vassar read Elizabeth Hayes, and so did the sign on her desk. She was just beginning to get a reputation, and the reputation came under the name Hayes. If she dropped it, she would have to start all over again.

  Van had said he wouldn’t mind if she kept her name, and the statement, in the middle of a romantic dinner at her favorite restaurant near the river, had left her feeling unsettled. Even though she had expected the proposal, she hadn’t thought of the name thing until that moment. And instead of the resounding “yes” she had planned, she had smiled weakly and had asked a chance to think it over.

  She put the Palm away and returned to the notes she had been studying for the deposition she had at three.

  She would have to decide—and soon.

  ***

  LizBet canceled lunch with Van, pleading a heavy caseload, and instead called her sister, Maggie. They met at a coffee shop near LizBet’s office. The shop had rickety tables and alternative music, old signs announcing Grunge Rock concerts, and posters of the Beats that probably dated from the late fifties. At the counter, LizBet ordered a double espresso and a croissant sandwich heavy on the veggies and herbed cream cheese, then took a table near the rain-streaked window to wait for her sister.

  Maggie was a dressmaker who lived near Lewis and Clark College in an apartment as funky as the coffee shop. She made a marginal living full of occasional windfalls, and she spent her free time thinking about things. She hadn’t gone to college; she said, at age twenty, that she still had time to review that decision later.

  She was fifteen minutes late. She bustled into the shop, raindrops glistening on her red and orange hair. As she hurried to the counter, she waved at LizBet, and while she ordered, she pulled the multicolored tasseled scarf that was supposed to protect her from the rain off her shoulders, and tied it around her waist. Her simple black shirt and skirt suddenly became an ensemble as fresh and personal as LizBet’s suit was corporate.