Unplugged (2 page)

“I have a sinus problem,” Larry said, apparently by way of defense.

“So you can’t put your Kleenex in the wastebasket?” His wife’s tone had risen to drill sergeant decibel. I glanced from one to the other like a Wimbledon spectator.

“You leave the orange juice out every damned morning. You don’t see me making a federal case of it.”

“That’s because you don’t give a crap!” she countered. “I could leave dog doo-doo on the counter and you’d just march off to work like everything was sunshine and roses.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he said, his voice rising. “I’ve been bringing home paychecks twice a month for twenty-two years. You think I’d do that if I didn’t care? You think I give a damn how many floor grinders Mann’s rents out per week?”

“Yeah, I do,” she said, cheeks red and eyes popping. “I think you care more about floor grinders than you do about me.”

The room fell into abrupt silence. I refrained from grinning like a euphoric orangutan. The first half an hour had been the conversational equivalent of pabulum. But this . . . this was something I could sink my teeth into.

Fifteen minutes later I was ushering the Hunts out the front door. They still looked less than ecstatic, but they had agreed to try a couple of suggestions. He would pick up after himself on a regular basis and she would make him breakfast on Tuesdays and Sundays.

I waved congenially, then turned with a sigh and slumped into one of the two chairs that faced the reception desk. My receptionist was behind it. Her name is Elaine Butterfield. We’d bonded in fifth grade, agreeing that boys were stupid and stinky. In general terms, I still think they’re stupid. But sometimes they smell pretty good.

“Want to pick up some Chinese?” I asked.

Elaine stuffed a file in the cabinet and didn’t turn toward me. “Can’t,” she said. “I have an audition tomorrow morning.”

Elaine is an actress. Unfortunately, she can’t act.

“So you’re not going to eat?”

“Chinese makes my face puffy.”

Elaine’s face has never been puffy in her life. At ten she’d been pudgy and buck-toothed; at thirty-two she’s gorgeous enough to make me hate my parents and every fat-thighed antecedent who had ever peed in my gene pool.

“What are you auditioning for?” I hadn’t heard a single hideous line in several days, which isn’t like my Laney. Usually she spews them around the office like pot smoke at a Mick Jagger concert.

“It’s just a little part in a soap.”

“A soap opera?” I asked, managing to shuffle straighter in my chair. “You love soap operas. They’re steady work.”

“Yeah, well . . .” She shrugged and stuffed another file. “I probably won’t get the part.”

“Laney?” I tried to see her face, but she kept it turned away. “Is something wrong?”

“No.” She was fiddling through the V’s. The only file left out was Angela Grapier’s. Elaine has an IQ that would make Einstein look like a shaken-infant victim. I was pretty sure she knew Angie’s name came before “Vigoren.”

I stood up. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m just tired.”

“You don’t get tired.”

“Do too.”

“Laney,” I said, rounding the desk and touching her shoulder. She turned toward me like a scolded puppy.

“It’s Jeen.”

I blinked, unable to believe my eyes. Her face
was
puffy. And her nose, flawlessly shaped and perfectly pored, was red. “What?” I said.

“It’s . . .” She shook her head. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it. I just—”

“Jeen?” I parroted, but then the truth dawned. For a few weeks now, she’d been dating a myopic little geek named Solberg, to whom I’d had the bad manners to introduce her. It had been patently cruel on my part, but I’d been in a bit of a bind. Some people call him J.D. I could only assume his real name was Jeen, since Elaine isn’t vindictive enough to think of such a nasty nomenclature on her own. Unfortunately, the same obviously couldn’t be said of his parents. He was short, balding, and irritating, but he had a cushy job at a place called NeoTech, and a really kick-ass car. “What about him?” I asked.

She shrugged, but her eyes were still puppy-dog sad.

“What about him?” I asked again, and suddenly I was imagining the worst. “He didn’t . . . Oh God, Laney! He didn’t touch you, did he?”

She didn’t answer.

Anger exploded like firecrackers in my head. Some people think I have a bit of a temper. My brother Michael used to call me Crazy Chrissy. But he’d earned every purple nurple I ever gave him. “Damn that nerdy little troll!” I cursed. “I warned him not to—”

“No.” Elaine shook her head, scowling. “That’s not the problem, Mac.”

I winced. Dear God, did that mean Solberg
had
touched her? Did that mean she’d liked it? Did that mean the world was crumbling beneath my very . . .

“Damn it, Laney,” I said, quiet now with awful dread. “He didn’t hit you, did he?”

“Of course not.” She lifted her bottle-green gaze forlornly to mine. If I weren’t a raging heterosexual I would have begged her to marry me on the spot.

I relaxed a little. “Then what’s the problem?”

“He just . . .” She shrugged again. “He hasn’t called me, that’s all.”

I waited for the bad news. She wasn’t forthcoming. “And?”

She gave me a disapproving glance as she shoved the Grapier file somewhere in the XYZ group.

“I haven’t heard from him much since he left for Las Vegas.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. I remembered her telling me about NeoTech’s esteemed presence at a big-ass technology convention. J.D. was supposed to be some kind of geekmaster there. I should have been paying more attention, but I’d been trying to deal with a few issues of my own. My septic system, for instance. It had been installed sometime before the Miocene Epoch and kept threatening to spill its venom down the hall and into my antiquated kitchen.

Then there was my love life. Well, actually, there wasn’t.

“He’s probably just busy,” I said.

“We were supposed to go to the grand opening of EU last weekend.”

I shook my head, not understanding.

“Electronic Universe,” she explained. “State-of-the-art-electronics store. The only one in the country, I guess.”

“You can go next weekend. It’ll probably still be open.”

She glanced down at her hands. “I don’t care that we missed it, of course. I mean, if you’ve seen one gray piece of plastic, you’ve pretty much seen them all, but . . . he was really looking forward to it and . . .” She shrugged as if to dismiss the whole situation. “He’s been gone almost three weeks.”

“Well . . .” I began, then, “Three weeks?” It hadn’t seemed like nearly that long since I’d seen the little Woody Allen look-alike. “Really?”

“Seventeen and a half days,” she said.

I winced. She’d been counting. A girl has to be pretty loopy to count.

“You said it was a really big deal,” I reminded her. “He’s probably just tying up loose ends. That sort of thing.”

“He said he’d call every day.”

“And you haven’t heard from him?”

“I did at first. He phoned every few hours. And e-mailed. Sometimes he’d fax me.” She gave me a watery smile. “Left text messages with little hearts.”

Yuck. “Uh-huh,” I said.

“And then . . . nothing.” She shrugged, glanced at the desk, and shuffled a few papers around. “I don’t even know if he won the Lightbulb.”

“The what?”

“It’s an industry award. He was really jazzed about being nominated when he left, but now . . .” She cleared her throat. “I think he met someone else.”

I blinked. “Solberg?”

“He was in Las Vegas,” she said, as if that explained everything. It didn’t. She continued as if she were lecturing a retarded duckling. “There are more beautiful women per capita in Vegas than in any other city in the world.”

“Uh-huh.”

She scowled a little. Somehow it didn’t create a single wrinkle in her rice-paper complexion. I would hate her if I didn’t love her to distraction. “It’s tough to compete with a hundred topless girls juggling armadillos and breathing fire.”

“Armadillos?” I asked. I couldn’t help but be impressed. Those armadillos are tough.

“He’s got a lot going for him, Mac,” she said.

I kept my face perfectly expressionless, waiting for the punch line. It didn’t come. “Have you heard him laugh?” I asked.

She gave me a sloppy little grin. “He sounds like a donkey on speed.”

“Whew,” I said. “Then we are talking about the same guy.”

She tilted her head in a kind of unspoken censor. “I’ve dated a lot since moving out here, you know.”

I couldn’t argue with that. Laney got marriage proposals from guys who hadn’t yet exited the womb.

“But Jeen . . .” She paused. I didn’t like the dreamy look in her eye. “He never once bragged about how many push-ups he can do or how fast he can run a mile.”

“Well, that’s probably because he can’t do—”

She stopped me with a glance, which was probably just as well. Sometimes tact isn’t my number one attribute. I’ll let you know when I figure out what is.

“I don’t even know his astronomical sign,” she said.

“He’s a Scorpio.”

“You know?”

Sadly, I did.

“Laney,” I said, taking her hand and trying to think of a nice way to inform her that her boyfriend was a doofus, “I know you like him and everything. But really—”

“He’s never tried to get me into bed.”

My mouth opened. Solberg had propositioned
me
approximately two and a half seconds after I’d first met him. I would like to think that’s because I’m sexier than Elaine, but apparently I’m
not
brain-dead, despite the five days and twenty hours since my last cigarette.

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“No.”

“Does he call you Babe-a-buns?”

“No.”

“Stare at your chest till his eyes water?”

“No.”

“Pretend he stumbled and grab your boobs?”

“No!”

“Wow.”

She nodded. “I thought he really cared about me. But . . .” She laughed a little, seemingly at her own foolishness. “I guess he just wasn’t interested. You know . . .
that
way.”

I raised a brow. Just one. I reserve two for purple extraterrestrials with wildly groping appendages. “We’re still talking about Solberg, right?”

She scowled.

“Geeky little guy? Has a nose like an albatross?”

Now she just looked sad, which made me kind of ashamed of myself, but really, the whole situation was ridiculous. Solberg would sell his soul for a quick glimpse of an anemic flasher. He’d probably auction off his personal computer to hold hands with a woman of Elaine’s caliber. And she actually
liked
him. What were the odds?

“Listen, Laney, I’m sorry. But really, you don’t have to worry. Just call him. Tell him you . . .” I took a deep breath and tried to be selfless. “Tell him you miss him.”

“I did call him. In Vegas.”

It was my turn to scowl. Laney generally doesn’t call guys. All she has to do is play the eeney-meany-miny-mo game and snatch a suitor off her roof. “No answer?” I asked.

She cleared her throat. Emotion clouded her eyes.

“Laney?” I said.

“A woman answered.”

“A woman? Like . . .” It was inconceivable. “Someone like one of us?” I motioned between us. “Human?”

She wasn’t amused.

“Well . . .” I chortled. “It was probably housekeeping.”

“Housekeeping?”

“Or . . .” I was floundering badly, but my faith in Elaine was undaunted. “Maybe it was . . . his great-aunt come to visit her favorite . . . nerd nephew.”

She looked away. Were there tears in her eyes? Oh, crap! If there were tears in her eyes I was going to have to find Solberg and kill him.

“Did you ask who you were speaking to?” I asked.

“No. I . . .” She shook her head. “I was so surprised. You know. I just asked if he was there.”

“And?”

“She said no.”

“That’s it?”

“I was . . . I don’t know.” She shrugged, looking unsettled as she chased a few more papers across the desk. “I called back later.”

“Yeah?”

“No answer.”

“Did you leave a message?”

“On his cell and his home phone.” She glanced at the desktop again. “A couple of times.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, reeking sincerity. “But I’m afraid the answer is obvious.” She raised her gaze to mine. “Our dear little geek friend is dead.”

“Mac!”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Listen, Laney,” I said, squeezing her hand, “you’re being ridiculous. Solberg is wild about you. He probably just got delayed in Vegas.”

“He probably got
laid
in Vegas.”

I stared. Elaine Butterfield never uses such trashy language.

“Maybe I should have . . .” She paused. “Do you think I should have slept with him?”

I refrained from telling her that would have been a sin of biblical proportions. There’s a little thing called bestiality. I was sure even Jerry Falwell would think it made homosexuality look like petty theft by comparison.

“Elaine, relax,” I said. “I’m sure he’ll be back in a couple days. He’ll bring you tulips and call you Snuggle Bumpkins and Sugar Socks and all those other disgusting names he comes up with.”

“Angel Eyes,” she said.

“What?”

“He calls me Angel Eyes.” She raised the aforementioned orbs toward me. “Because I saved him.”

“From what?” I hated to ask.

“From being a jerk.”

Holy crap. If I had never met this guy I might actually like him. “He’ll be back, Laney,” I said.

She drew a careful breath. “I don’t think so, Mac. I really don’t.”

I laughed. “You’re Brainy Laney Butterfield.”

“I’m trying to be practical about this.”

“Elaine Sugarcane. No Pain Elaine. The Sane Lane.”

She gave me a look.

“Butterfeel?” I suggested. “Nutterbutter?”

“I hated the last one most,” she said.

“Yeah.” Middle school had been a challenge. “Simons was a creep of major proportions.”

She nodded distractedly. “He
could
rhyme, though. Which is about all you can ask of—”

“A WASP whose brain is bigger than his balls,” I finished for her. It was a direct quote from my brother Pete. I’ve always been afraid he meant it as an insult.