Unplugged

by Lois Greiman

“Does that mean no?”

  He gave me a palms-up gesture. “J.D. seems like a decent guy. But I don’t know him very well.”

  “We’re not all that lucky.”

  “What?”

  “Listen,” I said, leaning into the conversation, “I know it seems weird. I mean . . .” I shook my head. “I can hardly believe it myself, but my friend is in love with him.”

  “With J.D.?”

  It was hard to admit. But sometimes you just have to suck it up and tell the truth. “Yes.”

  “Oh.” He nodded, as if thinking. “Well, that’s good news for me, then.”

  “What?”

  He laughed, looking relieved. “I thought you were the one who was interested in him.”

  I felt the blood drain from my face, but I held his gaze. “You don’t have to be cruel,” I said.

  He paused a moment then laughed out loud. “What’s your friend’s name?”

  “Elaine.”

  “And she’s . . . three-dimensional, right?”

  “On the other hand . . .” I raised my drink to him. “Cruelty suits you.”

  The waitress with the acceptable hips returned and flipped open a notepad. The name “Grace” was written on the cover in neon orange and circled with childish, lopsided hearts. Grace wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and she looked tired but stoic under the fire of the evening crowd. Ross ordered swordfish with saffron rice. I got a shrimp salad. I always feel virtuous when I order a salad, even if I douse it in enough dressing to lubricate a thrashing machine.

  Ross’s greens arrived. He ate very precisely, cutting his lettuce into bite-sized pieces. But “bite-sized” is really kind of a relative term, isn’t it? He had nice hands. I know I’ve mentioned them before, but he really did. They were lightly tanned, long-fingered. Hands that would . . .

  I put the kibosh on those thoughts and reminded myself why I had met him in the first place.

  “So . . .” I dragged my gaze from his hands. He had plucked a cherry tomato from amongst the greenery and was eating it like a tiny apple. A seed stuck to his bottom lip.

  “So . . .” I said again. My breath was perfectly steady, despite the damned seed. “When was the last time you saw him?”

  He glanced up. “J.D.?”

  “Yes.”

  He canted his head and gave me half a grin. The expression was boyish and charming. Which made me pretty sure he was either gay or married. Or maybe both. They can be both. Don’t ask how I know.

  “You sure you’re not the one interested in him?” he asked.

  I considered saying, “Cross my heart and hope to die,” which made me wonder if I was already getting tanked. To say I’m a cheap drunk would be an understatement of dangerous proportions. Two more ounces and I’d be under the table—or on top of Ross.

  “I mean . . . no offense.” He gave an abbreviated shrug. “J.D.’s got some good qualities.”

  I elevated one brow in his direction. “Such as . . . ?”

  “You seen his car?”

  As a matter of fact, I had. The Porsche and I had once bonded on a zippy little stretch of road between Studio City and Glendale.

  “Yeah, well . . .” I put the thought of his car firmly behind me. “Laney’s been my best friend ever since she warned me I had toilet paper stuck to the bottom of my patent leather shoe.”

  “Laney?”

  “His . . .” I suppressed a shudder. “Girlfriend.”

  “So you’re asking around on her behalf?”

  “She thinks he dumped her. I told her even Solberg couldn’t be that dense, but now . . .” I shrugged.

  Ross scowled, saying nothing.

  “No comment?”

  “Like I said, I just don’t know him that well.”

  “How well don’t you know him?”

  He exhaled heavily and let his shoulders slump. “I’m sorry, I don’t . . . I mean . . .” He glanced away, then caught my gaze in a steady hold. “I really like you.”

  I stared at him, shocked. It seemed sort of early for the breakup speech. I mean, so far there was nothing to break up. But I could hear his next words. You’re a great gal, but we don’t quite click . . . mesh, hit it off. Pick your euphemism for “you’re ugly.”

  I waited, looking dignified. I’d been working on that look for the past seventy-four guys.

  He sighed. “I didn’t want to tell you, but—”

  “You’re gay.” The words sprinted out on their own.

  “What?” He laughed, sounding shocked.

  I almost closed my eyes to block out my own liquor-intensified stupidity. “Nothing. I didn’t say anything. Go on.”

  “You think I’m gay?”

  “I just meant I thought you were . . .” As far as I know there isn’t a straight guy in the universe who appreciates being mistaken for a homosexual, no matter how well they coordinate their shoes with their sweater vests. “Jolly. Happy. You know . . .” God help me. “To be alive.”

  “I’m not gay.”

  “No. Of course not.” There was truly something wrong with me. “What were you going to say?”

  I waited. At the very least he must have a thing about his mother. Who doesn’t have a thing about his mother?

  “I saw J.D. with a blonde.”

  I blinked as my brain cells flopped around like so many beached fishes. “A blond what?”

  “A woman.”

  I let the news soak into my saturated brain. Anger was slowly boiling in my gut. “Solberg?” I asked, just to make sure. “With a woman?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I drew a careful breath. “Who was she?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Was she a dancer?”

  He leaned back a little, as if to put some distance between himself and the woman who might, at any moment, morph into a fire-breathing feminist.

  I eased up. Maybe it was the alcohol that made me a little intense. Maybe it was the fact that I’d grown up with brothers who had never once knocked before entering the bathroom. Yeah, I think I’ll blame it on them. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s not your fault. I just don’t want Elaine to get hurt.” I gave him a cultivated smile. “Where did J.D. meet the blonde?”

  He seemed to relax a little. “We took in a magic show.”

  I sipped my drink, looked casual, and refrained from pouncing.

  “We?” I said.

  “Bunch of us. J.D., Jeff, Hilary—”

  “Hilary Pershing?”

  “Yeah. You know her?”

  “Not really. Were she and Solberg . . .” I fiddled with my napkin, reminding myself not to tear it to shreds and pretend it was the Geekster’s hair. “Were they an item?”

  He shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t know him that well, but I did see them together at the convention one night.”

  “Do you remember when that was?”

  “No. I just assumed they were talking shop. They’ve helped each other out with some projects from time to time, you know.”

  “What projects?” The word “Combot” flashed in bloodred through my mind.

  “Have you ever heard of Insty List?”

  I shook my head. No. But I’d heard of Combot. What the hell was Combot?

  “Well, it’s going to be big when it hits the public. And it’s their baby.”

  “Do you think that’s what they were talking about?”

  He scrunched his face as if thinking. “Could be. But the conversation looked kind of heated.”

  “Heated?” Curiosity shifted toward suspicion.

  “Well, maybe not heated. Maybe . . . animated.”

  I didn’t have time for political correctness. “Did you hear what they were fighting about?”

  “Not a syllable.”

  “But they were fighting.”

  He shrugged.

  I cursed inside. “Were there any other projects they were working on together?”

  “Probably.”

  “Anything special?”

 
He gave me a funny look. “Why do you ask?”

  Past experience suggested that I should never trust anyone with a Y chromosome, but I was in need of a confidant. Could I trust him with the truth? Could I ask straight-out about the disk I’d found in Solberg’s underwear drawer? But sanity prevailed. Men were hardly trustworthy by virtue of attractiveness. In fact, the opposite might very well be true.

  “No reason. How about Black?” I asked, remembering back to my conversation in his office. “Did he and Solberg have any projects together?”

  Ross shook his head. “As far as I know, Black’s strictly administrative.”

  But Black said that he and Solberg had worked well together. Maybe he’d meant it in a vague sense, but it had sounded more personal than that.

  “Do you know of any friends Solberg might be staying with?”

  “Friends?” He looked pensive. “No. Not offhand. He works a lot. Probably doesn’t have time for relationships.”

  “He had time for the blonde, though.”

  “What?”

  “The magician’s . . .” I almost said a word that would have gotten my mouth a fresh washing not so many years back. “Uh . . . what exactly did she do in the show?”

  “Oh. I think she might have been the lady he sawed in half.”

  “Really?” I tightened my grip on the daiquiri glass. “Which half did he leave with?”

  Ross laughed, but the sound was a tad jittery. “I admit I’m a little jealous of J.D. I mean, the man’s a frickin’ genius. Took home the Lightbulb Award three years in a row, but I don’t want to cause him any—”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Pardon—”

  “The magician’s half-a-bimbo,” I said, wonderfully controlled. “What’s her name?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t actually meet her. And there were four of them. Besides, it might have been completely innocent.”

  I gritted my teeth. “They were probably discussing the theory of relativity.”

  He looked sheepish. “J.D. is more into time expansion.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about, but I saw the irony of the situation very clearly, despite the two ounces of rum sloshing around in my system. Here I was with a great-looking guy who wasn’t even gay and we were discussing the Geek God. The idea hurt me somewhere deep inside. Real deep. “How about the magician?”

  He looked baffled for a moment, but he had a quick mind and knew where I was heading. He blew out his breath and settled back in the booth. “Something foreign.”

  “Like François, or more like Juan?”

  “No. Egyptian maybe, or Arabic. I think he wore a turban.”

  “You think?”

  “I may have been a little drunk when I saw the show.”

  I waited.

  “The Magical . . .” He shook his head, thinking. “Martini?”

  “The Magical Martini?” I repeated, dubious.

  He laughed, pushed his salad plate aside, and reached for my hand. His skin felt warm as he clasped my fingers.

  “Listen, I didn’t intend to tell you all that. I just . . . I wanted to see you and . . .” He shrugged. “I’m really sorry.”

  I looked into his eyes. They were Caribbean blue and honeysuckle earnest.

  “It’s not your fault,” I said, finally realizing the truth of it. He was definitely male, but maybe he wasn’t responsible for the faults of the entire gender.

  “No,” he said, and rubbed my palm with his thumb, “but I’m afraid it’s going to come around and bite me on the ass. You know what I mean?”

  I did. I’d been thinking of doing that very thing only minutes before.

  Ross stroked the back of my hand with the tip of his ring finger—which was, by the by, still noticeably bereft of jewelry. “Maybe we could just forget about him for tonight. You know, get to know each other better.”

  My hormones sizzled to attention. He was right. There wasn’t anything I could do for Elaine tonight. In fact, if Solberg had screwed up as badly as I thought he had, there wasn’t much I could do for her at all. Except maybe hire a hit man, unless someone had already taken care of that little detail. The thought made me feel a little squeamish inside.

  “I have a confession to make.” The corner of Ross’s mouth shifted up a notch, and for a moment, possibly for the first time in my life, I considered skipping dinner and dragging him out to my car. “As soon as I saw you walk into Neo, I told myself I was going to ask you out.”

  “You didn’t see me walk in,” I said. “You just caught me when I was about to break into Solberg’s office.”

  He laughed and leaned back slightly. The sound was low and lovely and rumbled through my system, revving up rusty hormones as it went. “You were going to break in?”

  “Laney’s a good friend.”

  “I saw you walk in,” he corrected. “You were wearing a sleeveless blouse and shoes that made your legs . . .” He paused. “Well, I thought ol’ Greg was going to drop his teeth when you smiled at him. I loitered around while you talked to Black, trying to figure out a way to introduce myself.”

  He turned my hand over and stroked my knuckles.

  “I’m glad I didn’t have to staple my tie to my forehead or anything to get your attention,” he said.

  His fingers had moved up my wrist. I swallowed hard and kept my feet firmly planted on the floor. The last time my hormones had been shaken from slumber, I’d found myself straddling a bad-tempered cop like a pit bull on an estrogen drip.

  “Is that how you usually go about it?” I asked.

  “Sometimes I knock over the wastebasket.”

  I gave him a look. He grinned. I felt the effects down to my bone marrow. “I’m a nerd. I’m lucky I can breathe and operate a joystick at the same time,” he said, and grinned so that the corners of his eyes crinkled endearingly.

  I was beginning to salivate. “You sure you’re a nerd?”

  “Want to see my pocket penholder?”

  “Is that some kind of metaphor?”

  “Would I seem too obvious if I said I kept it in my bedroom?”

  It was the closest he had come to an out-and-out proposition. I opened my mouth to respond, but just managed to stop the lascivious suggestion that curled my tongue.

  Instead, I cleared my throat and straightened a little. “So . . . Emery Black,” I said, knees clamped like a librarian at an auto sales convention. “What’s his story?”

  “He’s a zillionaire. Divorced. Runs a tight ship.”

  “What does NeoTech produce exactly?”

  “You have a long lifeline,” he said, tracing the crease in my palm. I kept myself erect, despite the shivery feelings that threatened to knock me flat on my back. “So maybe I have time to tell you.”

  “You guys didn’t create the solar system or anything, did you?”

  He grinned. “Everything but. Neo . . .” He shook his head again. “We produce everything. We improve on even more. The little chips for car engines. The material that makes up contact lenses. Products for Homeland Security.”

  “Stuff for the government?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like . . . weapons?” Maybe Solberg was a gunrunner, I thought wildly, but the idea of him wearing camouflage and delivering AK-47s to grim-faced desperados kind of scrambled my mind.

  “More like stealth listening devices, that sort of thing, I think. But that’s really not my area of expertise.”

  “Is it Black’s?”

  “Black oversees everything. I’m sure he has his hand in that, too.”

  I nodded, thinking back to my conversation with him. “Do you know of anything that’s going on at the end of the month?”

  “Not specifically. Why?”

  “No reason really. It’s just that Black said he was sure Solberg would be back by then.”

  “It was probably just an arbitrary date.”

  Or some sort of babbled platitude to get me out of his office without involving fisticuffs. />
  “Are Black and Solberg close?”

  “Close?” he repeated.

  I shrugged, not quite sure what I was getting at. “Do they like each other?”

  He took a sip of his drink. “Solberg makes a lot of money for Neo. Black likes that. But interoffice relationships aren’t my area of expertise, either.”

  “What is?”

  He winced. “Mice.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He shrugged. “Some guys try to make a better mousetrap. I try to make a better mouse.”

  I blinked at him.

  “The kind that directs your cursor.”

  “Ohhhh,” I said, and he laughed.

  “You don’t have to try to make it sound interesting.”

  “I’m not.”

  He tilted his head. “I really couldn’t be more boring, could I?”

  His eyes twinkled at me. “I’m still awake,” I said.

  “Yeah?” He leaned in a little closer and trailed his fingers up my arm. “Would now be a good time to tell you how beautiful you are?”

  “No time like the present,” I managed.

  He gave me an almost smile. “You’re polished,” he said. “But not cold.”

  Nope. In fact, I was feeling downright flushed.

  “Almost perfect . . .” He caressed my cheek. “But still touchable.”

  Holy crap! I opened my mouth, maybe to say just those words, but at that moment my cell phone rang.

  It sounded very distant but finally managed to permeate my lust-induced haze. I rolled my lolling tongue back into my mouth and tugged my hand gently from his. “Ummm, excuse me.” If it was my mother telling me Pete was parked in my front yard, I was going to slit my wrists with a butter knife.

  I fumbled around in my purse and came up with my trophy. Giving Ross a smile I hoped wasn’t cannibalistic, I flipped it open.

  “Hello?”

  “Don’t say anything.” The voice was hissed and desperate.

  I almost objected.

  “Just listen. You gotta help me.”

  “Who—”

  “The Oaks. Half an hour. Don’t tell anyone. ’Specially not the cops. And don’t trust nobody. It’s life or death, babe. Life or death.”

  The phone went dead. I closed it in numb silence.

  “Is something wrong?”

  I glanced up. I had actually forgotten Ross existed.

  “No. Well . . .” The voice had been Solberg’s. Hadn’t it? Yes. I was sure it was. Maybe. “Actually, yes, there is,” I said.