Geek Romance: Stories of Love Amidst the Oddballs

by Grayson, Kristine

  From the back, Roz unloaded the oldest camera she had found and set it on its tripod in the middle of the street. If her luck continued, she might be able to keep some of the photographic equipment. She hadn’t lied about her abilities there. She was a very good photographer, when she got the chance to practice her trade.

  As she was adjusting the curtain on the back of the camera, she watched the lens as Harold brought Jack out of the jail. The sheriff followed, carrying a shotgun, but with the muzzle pointed toward the street.

  Harold hadn’t put Jack in leg irons—maybe the sheriff didn’t have any—but Harold did have a Colt pointed at the center of Jack’s back.

  “Make it fast, Mrs. Driscoll,” he said.

  “All right.” She stood and walked over to them. “Let me position you so that the camera doesn’t see you at all.”

  Harold nodded, clearly having been through this before. She moved him so that his body was as far from Jack’s as possible. Harold kept the gun trained on Jack. She pulled Harold a little to the left.

  “Hmm,” she said. “Maybe this’ll work after all.”

  Then she reached into her pocket and removed both pistols, shoving one against Harold’s chin and pointing the other at the sheriff.

  They both looked stunned.

  “Try something,” she said to them, “and Harold won’t have a face.”

  “Tell them to drop the guns, Roz,” Jack said.

  “I was getting to that,” she said, annoyed.

  “Roz?” the sheriff asked. “I thought you were Abby Driscoll.”

  “Your mistake,” Roz said, pushing the gun even harder against Harold’s chin. “And do drop your weapons. You know how unstable we women are.”

  Harold dropped his gun. Out of the corner of her eye, Roz saw it fall. Jack crouched, grabbing for it, at the very moment the sheriff fired. The mule brayed nervously, but didn’t move. The bullet missed Jack—the third great stroke of luck.

  She didn’t want to think about it. She’d lose her nerve.

  “Now, what did you go and do that for?” Roz cocked the hammer on the gun under Harold’s chin. Sweat dripped off his face. “I’m so sorry, Harold, but your friend the sheriff here wants you dead.”

  “Put the rifle down,” Harold said.

  Jack was holding Harold’s gun in his handcuffed hands. He pointed it at the sheriff.

  “Rifle down,” Jack said. “I’m not a delicate flower like my wife. I will shoot you.”

  Lies. Jack had never hurt anyone. He stole, scammed, and charmed, but he never killed.

  “And if you kill my husband,” Roz said, “this delicate flower will blow Harold’s brains all over main street.”

  The sheriff’s rifle clattered onto the wooden sidewalk.

  “Now what?” Jack asked softly.

  “The wagon, darling,” Roz said.

  “It’s attached to a mule,” he said.

  “So am I,” she said, not looking at him. “Sometimes the arrangement works.”

  He cursed and sloshed toward the wagon.

  “I don’t suppose you have keys to his handcuffs,” she said to Harold.

  “No.”

  “Well, then,” she said, “I’ll simply have to shoot them off later.”

  “Roz!” Jack sounded angry.

  She grabbed Harold by the front of his shirt and pulled him toward the wagon. When she reached the wagon, she braced one hand against it.

  Jack was sitting on the wagon, reins in one hand and the gun, still pointed at the sheriff, in the other. He was twisted awkwardly because his hands were still bound together at the wrists. “Roz, hurry.”

  She wasn’t about to hurry. If she did this wrong, they were as good as dead.

  “I will shoot you, Harold,” she said, “but I don’t want to today.”

  With that, she shoved him backwards at the same time she hooked one foot behind his knee and pulled his leg out from under him. The mud, which had given her and Jack trouble all day, finally worked in her favor. Harold landed with a splash.

  Roz swung herself onto the board and clucked at the mule—

  —who didn’t move.

  “Told you,” Jack said. “There’s got to be some good horses nearby.”

  The sheriff was reaching for his rifle and Roz shot the wall above his head.

  The second gunshot scared the mule and it leapt forward with surprising speed. The wagon, balanced better with Jack up front and the camera gone, managed to move with the mule. If they didn’t get stuck, they would be home free.

  “We don’t need the damn wagon,” Jack said.

  Roz was peering behind them, ready to shoot anyone that followed. “We need to get something out of this godforsaken town.”

  “They’ll find us fast with this thing.”

  “No, they won’t,” she said. “I have a plan.”

  People were pouring into the main street, which was disappearing behind them. Harold was standing and calling for his horse.

  “You always have a plan,” Jack said.

  She couldn’t tell if he was making fun of her or not. “If I hadn’t had one today, you’d still be in that damn jail. I’m the one that saw that photo gallery in the stupid bank and I’m the one who figured out how to use it. It was easier than I thought. I thought I was going to have to pretend to be a traveling photographer, but thanks to the damn daughter—”

  “Roz,” Jack said. “I’m grateful.”

  No one was following them, yet, but the road was getting treacherous. Roz glanced over at him, saw the fondness on his face which was getting even muddier thanks to the gobs of goo being kicked up by the mule.

  “Really?” she asked.

  “Really,” he said. “But we do need to dump the wagon.”

  She sighed. “I want the equipment.”

  “Photography equipment is too bulky. I tell you that in every town. It’ll mark us—”

  “I know,” she said. “At the next crossroads, we jump.”

  “What?” he asked. “That’s your plan? Jumping off a moving wagon?”

  She nodded, debating whether or not she should tell him about the fresh horses and buckboard she had actually paid for with the last of their money and had hidden that morning before she had come to rescue him.

  Then she decided against telling him. He’d have to trust her.

  “I don’t like your plan,” he said.

  “You didn’t like my plan yesterday either, so you didn’t listen and look where it got us.”

  He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I owe you, Roz.”

  “I know.” She leaned over and kissed him. He tasted good.

  “Roz,” he said against her. “I’m driving.”

  The crossroads was just ahead. She recognized it. She looked behind them. Still no one. But Harold and that sheriff would be coming soon.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “I always am,” he said.

  “Good,” she said, “because we’re getting off here.”

  She shoved him toward the edge of the wagon. He dropped the reins and she didn’t pick them up. The mule was doing fine on his own—he didn’t need to be whipped in the butt for encouragement.

  “Jump!” she said to Jack.

  He did, and she followed. The mud was harder than it looked, knocking what little wind she had right out of her.

  Jack, as usual, seemed just fine.

  “Damn corset,” she said when she could.

  “I’ll help you out of it,” he said, reaching for her blouse.

  “Not here,” she said. “There’s a stream just down this road. We clean up there, and then get out of here.”

  “Think they’ll come this way?”

  “Not for a while,” she said. “They’ve got a photographer to free and a photographer’s wagon to follow. Besides, we’re not heading that way. We’re going east.”

  “East?” He peered at her.

  She gave him her best smile, even though she was muddy and tired and out
of breath. “I want my photography studio, and to do that, Jack, you gotta go where the people are.”

  “Who ever heard of migrating east?” he asked, but she could tell he wasn’t averse to the idea like he would have been just the day before.

  She brought her hands up and thoroughly kissed his dear, muddy face. When she was through, she said, “We’ve been doing things your way long enough.”

  “And it’s worked out fine,” he said.

  “If you think fine is broke and homeless.”

  “But a photography studio,” he said. “Who would go to a female photographer?”

  “Harold Adams.”

  “You just proved my point.” Jack raised his hands slightly, and stared at the handcuffs. He sighed. “I don’t want to go straight.”

  “Who said anything about going straight?” she said and got to her feet. “Now let’s get out of here.”

  “You’ll have to tell me the plan,” he said as he stood.

  “Why?” she asked. “It always works out better if you don’t know.”

  “I’m not that bad,” he said.

  “That’s a matter of opinion, Jack,” she said as she led him down the road toward their fresh horses and new wagon. In the distance, she could hear the mule braying. She smiled at hers, happy to have him back.

  They’d go straight. But she wouldn’t tell him that yet. One thing at a time.

  After all, planning ahead was the key to knowing Jack.

  “Knowing Jack” by Kristine Grayson was first published in 2010 by WMG Publishing

  Artistic Photographs

  Kristine Grayson

  “She looks like trouble,” Roz Donnelly whispered as she dragged the heavy box of glass photographic plates across the floor of her studio, narrowly avoiding the overstuffed sofa she had placed near the fringed lamp.

  Her husband Jack peeked through the red velvet curtains. “So?”

  Roz slapped his fingers and he dropped the curtain, turning to face her. He was tall, his muscles rope hard, and his body lean from too many years on the back of a horse. His brown hair brushed against his collar—new and perfectly starched for the first time since she’d known him—and his brown eyes held a trace of humor in them.

  “Jealous?” he asked, leaning into her.

  “Of that baby?”

  He shushed her. “That baby might hear you and leave.”

  Roz shook her head. “That baby has a plan, Jack, believe me. And we’re probably its victims.”

  “What are you afraid of, Roz, my darling? Afraid I’ll trade you in for a younger model?”

  He was so close, she could smell the tobacco on his clothing. It mixed with the scent of her own specially made soap, and something undeniably Jack. Ever since she had met him, she had been under his spell.

  “If she’s the model, you wouldn’t last a day,” Roz said. “She may be ten years younger than I am, but she’s older in spirit.”

  He ran his thumb along her jaw, sending a shiver through her. “My cynic.”

  She knew he felt the shiver; his eyes crinkled as he held back a smile. But she didn’t want him to feel as if he had an advantage. “That cynicism has saved you a hundred times in the last ten years. You should respect it.”

  “Oh, I do,” he said, this time letting the smile out. “But I wonder why it appears now.”

  “This city has decency laws, doesn’t it?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “The law is not something I specialize in, darling.”

  “You should.” She bent down and tugged at the box of glass plates. It weighed as much as she did, and she could use his help, but she wasn’t going to ask for it.

  She glanced up. He was peeking through the curtain again.

  “Well?” she asked. “Will she be artistic enough?”

  He ignored her sarcasm. “I don’t think the decency laws matter anyway. No one has applied them to photography.”

  “It’s only a matter of time, thanks to you,” Roz muttered, but she did so with a smile. Her husband’s schemes had allowed her to own this photography studio for two years—the longest they’d been in one place since they got married.

  He hadn’t said a word about moving on. But Roz was starting to feel restless. He disappeared for weeks at a time, following one scheme or another, but she had to stay to take portraits of people she didn’t even like.

  Somehow she had a hunch there was more to photography than spending her days in a musty studio, even if it did have a secret and shady side.

  A side the young woman in the other room had somehow figured out.

  Roz had a feeling about this girl, a feeling she didn’t like. Jack had a feeling too, and he liked his. Roz couldn’t tell what part of his anatomy he was thinking with. She knew her husband well enough to know that, while he never touched any other woman, he didn’t mind a long healthy look.

  “We’ve got to hurry,” he said, letting the curtain drop one final time. “The girl’s getting cold.”

  “I suppose you know that for sure,” Roz said, pushing the box all the way into the corner.

  “As a matter of fact, I do.” He grinned at her. “So let’s move it, Rosalind.”

  “Then pick up the damn box,” she said. “I can’t move it any farther.”

  He bent down and lifted it as if it weighed nothing. “I thought you would never ask.”

  He kicked the curtain open with his foot and stepped into the small theater they had built in the back of the photography studio. The theater did not hold an audience—there was no room for seats or aisles. Instead, there was floor space wide enough for several cameras, all set up at strategic angles.

  The stage itself was narrow, and even though there were curtains behind it, the curtains opened onto a wall. The theater had no windows, and the front curtains were the only way into this area.

  Roz had insisted on double curtains with openings in different parts so that no one would stumble onto this back area. The curtains themselves were part of a formal furniture grouping in the main part of the studio and to date, one year since they’d added in the theater, no one had discovered it.

  Roz waited a moment before going in. She had to be in the right frame of mind to confront her artistic subjects. Usually when she took photographs, she asked questions, drew people out. When she took her art photographs, she never even learned the subject’s name.

  It was easier to deny that she had done anything if she had no idea who she was photographing.

  Finally, Roz pulled the curtains apart. She let the curtains swish closed behind her before she looked at the girl. The girl was clearly an adult, although she was no more than twenty-one. She was full-breasted and wide-hipped with enough heft to suggest wealth. Her eyes were big and brown, her mouth curved in a slight smile. She hadn’t put on the drape that Roz had left for her, and Jack had been right—the girl was clearly cold.

  “Cover yourself up,” Roz said, nodding at the drape.

  “I thought the point was to take nude photos,” the girl said.

  “The point is to take artistic photos,” Roz said through gritted teeth. That some people found the artistic photos erotic was not her problem.

  The girl did not move toward the drape. She stood there in all her goose-pimpled glory, staring at Jack, almost daring him. He, bless him, was ignoring her and not because Roz was in the room. He didn’t like contrary females.

  Then Roz frowned. That wasn’t entirely accurate—he did like Roz—but he claimed he hated her contrary nature, even though it had gotten them out of a thousand scrapes.

  Roz checked out the first camera. Jack continued to hold the box of plates, waiting for her to tell him what to do with them. She could have let him continue to hold them until he complained, but she wasn’t in the mood to torture him, even if he had brought her the girl.

  “Set them next to this camera,” she said, “and then get me the other box of plates beneath the developing counter.”

  “Roz, this is enough plates—”
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  She turned toward him, nearly knocking the camera. “We’re taking three kinds of photographs—daguerreotypes, portraits and Talbotypes. They require different plates.”

  And different papers and different cameras and different skills, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.

  “Why so many?” the girl asked.

  “Some for us and some for you. It was part of our deal.” Then Roz squinted at Jack. “You told her about the deal, right?”

  He nodded and looked at the girl for confirmation. She nodded too, even though Roz had a hunch the girl had heard nothing about the different types of portraits before now.

  The girl walked to the edge of the stage. She hung her toes over the lip. Her toenails had turned blue. She didn’t look seductive or even comfortable, although she was trying.

  Jack gave her an uncomfortable glance and hurried out of the theater.

  Roz stuck her head through the first camera’s curtain. The girl looked even more provocative when framed by the lens.

  Time to talk to the girl and make sure Jack had followed the rules. Even though Roz was taking artistic photographs, she wasn’t one of society’s predators. She never took destitute women and photographed them—at least not on purpose. Jack had brought one or two in early on, but Roz had figured out early what he was about. Most of those women were malnourished and therefore too skinny for art photography.

  Men didn’t like to fantasize about women so skinny their breasts had sunken into their chests. Men liked women who were big in front and in back, women whose flesh jiggled as they moved. Roz never fit in that category either—her life (mostly on the run) had left her slender and muscled—the antithesis of modern beauty.

  “So,” Roz said, “Jack didn’t make any agreement with you.”

  “He said we’d settle it later.”

  Roz clenched her right hand, but kept it hidden behind her thick black skirt. What he had meant was that Roz would settle it later—and apparently he had been right.

  “Are you paying us?” Roz asked.

  “No,” the girl said. “He said that would take care of itself.”

  And that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, was what Jack called an agreement. Roz shook her head.