Geek Charming

by Palmer, Robin

  “So go buy something,” I suggested.

  “I already did. I bought a new bag. A brown one for late fall. It’s so cute—it’s got little silver—”

  “I’m sure it’s great but I’m about to go into a house call,” I said as I walked up the steps to Mrs. Spivakovsky’s duplex. I had quickly learned that if given the chance, Dylan could go on for hours about a bag or a pair of shoes. “Can I call you afterward?”

  “Fine.” She sighed.

  I rang the bell and a moment later Mrs. S opened the door wearing one of her many housecoats (this one had hearts on it) and a pair of the dead Mr. S’s fake leather slippers. “Joshie! You come save the day!” she said as she let me in. The Spivakovskys had lived in the same apartment since they arrived from Russia in the 1960s. And it looked like something from the sixties—daisy wallpaper in the Formica kitchen, green shag carpeting, a long wood console that, in addition to holding a TV, also housed a record player.

  She hugged me to her, and I immediately broke out into a sneezing fit due to all the perfume she wore. “Hi, Mrs. Spivakovsky,” I said, grabbing for a tissue from a cat-shaped tissue box. There was a serious animal motif going on in the apartment—cats, dogs, pigs, cows. The thing was, she had told me in one of our many talks over baklava that other than Gorky, she was terrified of animals. Apparently, back in Russia there had been an incident with a goat.

  “Gorky!” she yelled. “Come look who’s here to see you—it’s your best friend Joshie!” Maybe it was because Gorky was so small, but somehow he didn’t trigger my animal phobia.

  Gorky came trotting into the room wearing a cone on his head and started barking nonstop. He always barked nonstop when I was around.

  “His allergies are that bad, huh?” I asked. Like me, Gorky had allergies. Unlike me, they affected his eyes instead of his lungs and he spent all day swiping at them.

  She nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. He still keep trying to scratch his eye. I think the cone makes him very sad because now he can’t play tug-of-war with you and the stocking.”

  “Yeah, that’s too bad,” I replied. Not. Usually Gorky would come out with one of Mrs. S’s nylon knee-high stockings in his mouth and drop it at my feet. There’s nothing more disgusting than a nylon stocking covered with dog drool. “So what’s the problem today, Mrs. S?” I asked, as if I didn’t already know.

  She clucked her tongue and led me to the dining room, pushing me down into a chair that was still covered with plastic. “Always working, Joshie. First we visit, then you work!” she said, pushing the plate of baklava toward me.

  I picked up a piece and popped it in my mouth. “Mmm . . . delicious.”

  “But no eat too much,” she said as she patted my stomach. “Girls your age like two liters.”

  “Huh?”

  She smacked my stomach. “Two liters. Muscles.”

  “You mean six-packs?”

  “Yes, yes. Women my age, no so much care. We just want them not drop dead like Mr. Spivakovsky did, God rest his soul. Soooo . . . Joshie . . . what’s going on with the girls?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing.”

  She sighed. “My only wish before I join Mr. Spivakovsky is to see you with a nice girl. Did you call my friend Mena’s granddaughter?”

  “The one with the body brace for her scoliosis? No, I think I lost her number.” I got up and started to make my way toward the desk that was set up in the corner of the living room. “I think I need to make another stop after this, so we should probably look at the computer now. I found the problem,” I called out to her. This was our usual routine.

  “Already? You so good at this, Joshie. What is it?”

  “You need to turn the power button on,” I announced.

  She came waddling over and squinted at the now-glowing button. “I thought I did.”

  Just then my phone rang and I looked down at the screen to see that it was Dylan again.

  “Hey, I’m still here,” I said when I picked up. “Can I call you in a few minutes?”

  “Okay, I’m rethinking the bag now. If you were me, would you go with a bag that was in the brown family, or something that was more . . . I don’t know . . . tan? Because I’m so blonde, I think the brown is a more dramatic contrast, but then again—”

  “Um, Dylan? I’m still working. Can we talk about this later?”

  “I guess so.” She sighed. “Hey, do you want to go to Du-par’s for dinner?”

  “Sure. I’ll meet you there at seven,” I said as I hung up.

  “Joshie, not that I was overlistening or nothing,” said Mrs. S, even though she had been, “but I couldn’t help but notice that was a girl you just talk to.”

  “Yup. You’re right. It was,” I replied.

  “So?” she said, with her hands on her hips.

  “It was this girl Dylan that’s in my documentary.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “She a movie star? Does she have drug problem?”

  “No, Dylan’s not a movie star. Sometimes she acts like she’s one, but she’s just a girl in my school,” I replied, making my way over to the glass of milk Mrs. S had set out for me.

  “And she your girlfriend? Or just girl who is friend?”

  “Just girl who is friend.”

  “Why not make her girlfriend, then?” she asked. “Is she pretty?”

  “Yeah, she’s really pretty.”

  “And nice? Is she nice?”

  “I didn’t think so at first, but, yeah, she’s nice. In her own special way. And generous. Very generous.”

  Mrs. S looked confused. “So she’s pretty, nice, generous—what’s problem, then?”

  “Other than the fact that she has a boyfriend?”

  She sighed and put her hand to her head. “Oy. You don’t tell me that part, Joshie. That part not so good.”

  “I was going to say other than the fact that she has a boyfriend, there’s another girl I like better.”

  “This girl have boyfriend?”

  “Nope. No boyfriend.”

  “So what’s problem, then?”

  “The problem is . . . well, there is no problem. The problem is me, I guess. I’m just too scared to ask her out.”

  Mrs. S took my hand in both of hers, which were as soft as tissue paper. “Joshie, life go very fast. You must ask her out. It’s no fun being alone—believe me, I know.” She pointed at Gorky, who was bumping into things as he made his way around the room with his cone. “Yes, I have Gorky, but he’s no match for Mr. Spivakovsky. I know it seem like all he did was watch chess on TV, but we had good life together. And now he’s gone.” Her faded blue eyes started to fill with tears. “Joshie, please, like sneaker commercial used to say—‘Just go for it.’”

  “You mean ‘Just do it’?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Just do it.”

  I don’t know if it was that in that moment I realized that like Mr. S, Mrs. S wasn’t going to be around forever, or if it was that I was sick and tired of being a wimp, but I was suddenly filled with the same kind of motivation I had felt the night I had put together my proposal for the documentary for USC. Mrs. S was right—it was time to just do it. And I would just do it. At Lisa Eaton’s party. That is, if Amy showed up. And if she didn’t show up . . . well, then I was off the hook and I could go back to being the Guy Who Never Takes a Chance When It Comes to Girls.

  chapter nine: dylan

  It was good that someone—i.e., Josh—was getting attention from the opposite sex, because I sure wasn’t. Ever since Asher had called that day that I was getting ready to go to Josh’s for dinner, things had officially gotten weird between us. Like I said, after two years together, I was well aware of the fact that life wasn’t going to be one continuous magic movie moment, but he was taking longer and longer to return my texts. Plus, on the rare occasions over the last few months that we did get together, it was almost as if he’d do anything not to be alone with me. In the beginning, all he had wanted was to be alone with me making out, and it was me who had to k
eep insisting we go do activities where we could talk and get to know each other, like shopping and eating. Call it woman’s intuition or whatever, but I just knew that something was up, which was why I had sent him a text the night before saying we needed to talk. But when I asked him at lunch that day why he hadn’t responded, he said he never got it. I was willing to buy that, since Mercury had recently gone retrograde, which, according to all the astrology sites, means that all sorts of mix-ups happen in terms of communication and electronics. But then I overheard him talking to Brandon Moglen about a text that he had gotten from him last night. Which made my woman’s intuition say, “Okay, something very fishy is going on here” even louder inside my brain.

  But what freaked me out even more was the fact that when I really thought about it, I wasn’t sure that I even wanted to be with Asher anymore. Granted, he was gorgeous; and, sure, we were a no-brainer since he was the most popular guy and I was the most popular girl, but over the last month, being blown off all the time and the fact that we never talked about anything important had seriously started to bother me. I might not be the smartest person at Castle Heights (that was Ashima Patel, whose entire family had gone to Harvard) but that didn’t mean I didn’t read at least the headlines of the top news stories on the Yahoo home page and like to discuss them at length (especially the ones that had to do with the stars that were in rehab). That’s one of the things I liked best about Josh—he was interested in my opinions. Even if he tended to talk about movies way too much, he wanted to know what I thought about them. Sure, I hadn’t seen most of the ones he brought up because a lot of them had subtitles and were in black and white, but, still, it was nice to be asked for my thoughts.

  The problem was that if I broke up with Asher, not only would I not have a date for Fall Fling, which was in three weeks, but seeing as it was already the middle of fall, every guy worth going with to the prom in May was already taken as well. I guess if I wanted to, I could have gotten a boyfriend at another school—maybe I could have even tracked down Michael Rosenberg, who hadn’t seen me since I had become a blonde and got my deviated septum fixed—but dating someone at a different school was almost like being in a long-distance relationship. I knew that those were so hard from having watched Lola get her heart broken by a guy in New York she had met on Facebook.

  My woman’s intuition had also told me that french fries would help me stop obsessing about what I should do, and since Lola and Hannah don’t eat carbs, that left Josh. I was compulsively checking my Sidekick to see if Asher had returned my We really do need to talk text when Josh arrived. Every time I had seen him over the last few days I had to take a moment to congratulate myself at how talented I was at this makeover stuff. It would be a lie to say that he was hot, but as I watched him make his way across the restaurant, stopping to say hello to some of the regulars, he could definitely pass for middle-of-the-cafeteria cool now.

  “I’m so glad we got you that green hoodie,” I said as he sat down. “It really brings out the color of your eyes.”

  He smiled. “That’s funny—someone else just said the same thing.”

  “Who?”

  “Just . . . someone,” he replied, starting to blush.

  “Are you going to tell me who?” I asked.

  He picked up the menu and hid behind it. “There’s so much to choose from—do you know what you’re going to get?”

  I pushed the menu down. “I guess that’s a no.”

  “It’s no one you know . . . anymore,” he said.

  “Fine,” I huffed. I was glad that my ability to highlight people’s highlights wasn’t going unnoticed, but I couldn’t help but feel a little left out. If he was going to get compliments, I should be able to share in them. It was my doing, after all. If my own boyfriend wasn’t going to give me compliments, I needed to get my fill of them somewhere else—even if they weren’t necessarily about me. Compliments once removed are still compliments.

  “So what’s going on with your crush?” I asked a few minutes later as he ate his burger and I picked at my salad with balsamic vinaigrette—I had convinced Du-par’s to start offering it to those of us customers who were calorie-conscious. Mimi, our waitress who looked like she had probably been working there since the place opened in 1939, gave me a look when I asked for a double order of french fries, but whatever. I liked to think that contradicting myself like that was part of my appeal. “Did you see her today?”

  He nodded as he dipped a fry in the yummy ketchup/ mayonnaise combination he always put together.

  “And did you talk to her?” I asked, dipping my own while stealing a glance at my phone. No text.

  He nodded again.

  “And did you ask her if she was going to the party?” I asked, grabbing a handful.

  Another nod. When it came to movies and computers, Josh could talk for days, but when it came to talking about this mystery girl? Forget it—he turned into a mute.

  “Well, is she?” I asked, looking at the phone. Still nothing.

  “She doesn’t know. Maybe.”

  “Well, did you say something like, ‘You should go—it would be nice to get to know you better’?”

  He turned so pale you would’ve thought I had suggested that they go to Vegas that weekend and get married at one of those drive-thru chapels. “No. I said that if she did end up going, I’d probably see her there.”

  “Okay,” I said, “obviously we’re going to have to do a crash course in how to talk to girls because at this rate you’re not going to get a date until you’re forty.” As Mimi waddled by, I grabbed her arm. “Mimi, we need your help. Sit with us for a second.”

  Mimi wasn’t big on working hard, so I didn’t have to ask her twice. “Ahh . . . that feels good,” she said as she plopped down next to me in the booth. “My bunions are killing me.”

  “Now, Josh, I want you to pretend that Mimi here is your crush and I want you to have a conversation with her.”

  “Awww—I like that. No one’s had a crush on me in a long time,” Mimi said.

  Maybe it was the wart on the right side of her nose, or the fact that up close, her white beehive had a bluish tint to it, but Josh looked like he had just swallowed an undercooked fry.

  “Go on,” I said. “You’re an artist—you’re supposed to have a good imagination.”

  “I’m not sure what the point of this is,” he replied.

  That was the thing about guys—they always had to be able to see the point of something. It drove me nuts. “The point is that this way I’ll be able to coach you.”

  “I’m assuming that you’re not going to let Mimi get back to work until I agree to do this.” He sighed.

  “That’s okay—I got time. It’s almost time for my break anyway,” said Mimi, who I could have sworn had just come back from her break since she reeked of cigarette smoke.

  “Just give it a try,” I said, shaking my phone in case something was wrong with the vibrating thingie that was preventing me from getting any texts.

  Josh sat up straight in his seat. “Hi, Mimi,” he mumbled.

  “Okay, Rule number 432: no mumbling,” I said. “You want to project confidence when you talk to a girl—like you have no doubt that she’s been waiting her entire life to be asked out by you. Plus, you don’t want her to think you’re doing it just so she’ll lean forward so you can look down her shirt. Oh, and try to throw in a compliment right away if you can.”

  “Hi, Mimi,” he said loudly, as if he were the worst actor on earth. “You look very nice today. I like that pig brooch you’re wearing. The rhinestones make it very elegant.”

  Mimi and I looked at each other. “You’ve got your work cut out for you, kid,” she said.

  “Tell me about it.” I sighed.

  As the manager walked by, he gave Mimi a dirty look. “I think I gotta get back to work,” she muttered.

  “Thanks for your help,” I replied as she walked away. I turned to Josh. “Okay, Rule number 512: assume that the person you�
�re talking to isn’t hard of hearing and that English is their first language. Just try to be natural.” Maybe I should become a director. Or better yet, maybe I could become a makeover/dating coach and write a best-selling book and end up on Oprah and then teach a course at the Learning Annex. Forget just focusing on Castle Heights—geeks all over the world should be given the opportunity to take advantage of my knowledge!

  “Okay, okay, natural, be natural. I can do that,” he said as he sat up straighter. He was close to hopeless with this stuff, but the way he was trying was really sweet. Geeky, but sweet.

  To help him out, I gave him a big smile, the kind I usually reserved for the rare occasions when Asher and I were hanging out alone.

  “You have a really great smile,” he said quietly, responding with one of his own.

  I could feel my face getting warm. I hadn’t realized that when Josh looked at someone, he really looked at someone. Asher, on the other hand, was usually looking at his phone or the television when he looked at me. “Thanks,” I said. “Dr. Fleischman, my orthodontist, was voted Best Orthodontist three years in a row by Los Angeles magazine.”

  “How was that?” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “The compliment. It didn’t come off too smarmy, did it?” he asked, a worried look on his face.

  I felt like someone had dumped a glass of ice water on me. So he had been acting. Of course. I knew that. “Oh. No. It was good,” I said. “Very believable-sounding.”

  “Cool,” he said, relieved. “So what do I do after that?”

  I sat up straight and fluffed my hair. “Well, then you just . . . keep being natural. Be yourself.”

  “That’s it? That’s the secret to talking to girls? Just act natural and be myself?” he asked doubtfully.

  “Well, yeah.” I shrugged. “But be your real self—the self you are when we’re hanging out and you’re talking about Woody Allen or Quentin Tarantula—”

  “Tarantino,” he corrected.

  “Whatever. Him. Be that guy—the guy who, even though he’s really nice, also knows that he deserves to take up space on the planet just as much as the next person.” By this time he had taken out a pad and pen was taking notes. “And—”