Geek Mafia, Rick Dakan [books that read to you .TXT] 📗

she wasn’t actually perfect at all. For now though, Paul ordered another round of drinks and watched her chat with the manager. He seemed dubious at first, in a hurry to get ready for the noonday rush. But she charmed him over quick, and then handed him a pair of shakers to look at. He smiled a few times and laughed loud enough for Paul to hear from across the room when she pointed to some apparently funny idiosyncrasy about the pepper Mariachi. They chatted a few more minutes before shaking hands and parting ways with a smile.

She stopped midway between the manager and the bar and pulled a cell phone from her pocket. She moved it about the room trying to get a signal and then dialed it. She talked for a few minutes and shut the phone before coming back over to Paul, dusting her hands in the universal sign of accomplishment. “Done and done.”

“Good work. He seemed to go for it pretty quick,” said Paul.

“Oh, the guys are always easy, especially restaurant managers. They usually don’t give a damn. As long as he’s not a slave to some corporate overlord who decides décor or some crazy shit like that, then it’s usually cool.” She sat back down next to him again and downed the last of her drink just as the next round arrived. “Actually, he claimed to have remembered me from somewhere – although he didn’t know where. Whatever. He said yes, and that’s all the matters.”

“You are pretty memorable.”

“You think so? I dunno, maybe you’re right.”

“Trust me, you definitely make a memorable first impression.”

She raised her glass to toast him. “Yep, that’s what your mom said last night anyway.”

“Really,” Paul said, feigning indignity, “Wow, I can’t believe my mom said that.” He paused for dramatic effect. “After all, she was so tired after working your mom over, she said she fell right asleep when she got home.”

Chloe laughed, more because Paul had played back at her than because what he said was funny. She adopted a British accent for a moment. “Well played old chap, well played.” Then, voice back to normal, “You’re all right Paul. Most people wouldn’t pull the Mom card that fast. Especially if they knew me and knew my mom died of breast cancer last year.”

Paul was horror stricken. Was she serious? She couldn’t be serious right? He started to apologize. “Oh, that’s…I’m sorry. I…”

“I’m just fuckin’ with you, kiddo,” she said, laughing. “No worries. Mom’s fine and livin’ large in the suburbs.”

Paul laughed along with her, although his had a tinge of nervousness that he tried to conceal. Who the hell was this woman? Still, he’d decided he officially had a crush on her now, and he wasn’t about to let a bizarre sense of humor dissuade him from a much-needed distraction. So what if she made jokes about her mom dying of cancer? At least she was making them to him.

“You know, Chloe, you’ve got a pretty fucked up sense of humor,” Paul said. “I like that in a woman.”

“Hold your horses there, sport. Let’s not get into what you like inside women yet – we just met after all.” This sudden sexual spin on his comment conjured up a couple of graphic images he couldn’t have ignored even if he’d wanted to, which he didn’t. 

Chloe stared at Paul for a long moment with something he hoped was attraction, or at least interest. Then her phone buzzed and she looked briefly at the display screen before turning her gaze back on him. “Paul, have you had lunch yet?” she asked.

“No, not yet,” he said, liking the direction things were headed now.

“Well, I skipped breakfast and, quite frankly, I’m feelin’ a bit more buzz from these drinks than I’d expected. I need to get some food in me.” 

“You want to get a table?” Paul asked, motioning towards the restaurant section.

Chloe dropped a wad of bills on the bar as she stood up. “This place? No fucking way. It’s over priced, under spiced slop.” She walked right past Paul towards the door and he struggled to sweep up his sketchbook and belongings as he followed her.

“We’re going to my place.”

CHAPTER 2

Chloe’s house reminded Paul of a cross between a used bookstore, a computer repair shop, and a college dorm. A wall of bookcases dominated the living room, each shelf crammed with two, sometimes three layers of books, videotapes, CD’s and DVD’s. More stacks of books and magazines stood in every corner. Paul was certain they would have taken over all the other flat spaces as well, were it not for the half-assembled computers and three dusty old monitors occupying the coffee table, end tables, and everything in between. The only semi-open spaces were the two couches that faced each other from across the room. A large red and black checkered blanket covered one of them, while the other was cracked but still serviceable brown leather. Thrift store purchases both, Paul thought. 

“The computer stuff belongs to one of my roommates,” Chloe said. “She’s always fiddling with those things to get better performance or whatever. The books are mostly mine or my other roommate, Kurt’s. Come on into the kitchen and we’ll rustle up a sandwich.” 

Paul followed her back into the open kitchen area, which (given that he was ostensibly here to have lunch) he was relieved to see was clean. There was clutter in there certainly, but no dirty dishes or leftover foodstuffs appeared in evidence. Along the left wall was a cheap, plastic patio table with long wooden benches on each side and miss-matched chairs at either end. Newspapers, books, and a laptop occupied most of its surface area, but the end closest to Paul seemed clear enough to see actual use as a place for dining.

“Is peanut butter ok?” she asked, motioning him towards one of the chairs.  

“Sure,” he said and sat down at the table. As she started to prepare a couple of peanut butter sandwiches on white bread she said, “So, tell me Paul, why are you getting fired tomorrow?”

“I’m not really entirely sure,” he said, although this was a stalling tactic. He knew pretty well why he was getting fired; he just didn’t quite know how to put it into words. It’d only been a couple of hours since his high school friend and CEO had told him what was happening. “I mean, they gave me reasons, but they’re not really reasons. They’re not things I did wrong.”

“What does that mean? They didn’t like your looks?”

“Yeah, basically,” said Paul. “More to the point, they didn’t like the look of how I was doing things. What I mean is, I’m not a tech guy right? I’m an artist and a writer. I’m used to working at home and scribbling away and meeting my deadlines. So when I helped start this company, I figured it would be mostly the same. I figured I’d sit in my office and do my work and hit my deadlines and go to my meetings and all that.”

“But you didn’t do that?” asked Chloe as she placed a plate with a sandwich in front of him and went back to the refrigerator.

“No, that’s exactly what I did, which was part of the problem.” 

“Do you want a beer or a coke or something?” she asked.

“Coke’s fine.”

Chloe brought back two cokes and set them down on the table before taking a seat next to Paul. “So, wait. How was doing your job a problem?”

“I don’t work like a programmer,” he said. “I don’t sit and draw or write for twelve or fourteen hours at a stretch like they program. I can’t do it. My brain is done long before then. Four hours of writing in a day and I don’t have anything left to say. There’s nothing there. Alternately, I can draw for about twice that long. Sure, I can do more – a lot more if there’s a deadline or it really needs to be done, but then I’m wiped. I’m no good for anything for the next few days.”

“And your buddies at work thought you were slacking off because you weren’t putting in the same kinds of hours,” she said. “Basically, they fired you for being a lazy clock-watcher. That’s the only reason?”

“Well, that, and the fact that I probably pissed a whole bunch of them off even though I didn’t mean to.”

“Yeah, well, that’d do it. What were you doing to make everyone hate you?”

“I don’t think it was everyone – just some of them. To be honest, I don’t have a reputation for listening to other people’s ideas.” Paul stopped her before she could comment, “And yeah, yeah, that would be bad if it were true, but really it’s not. I do listen to other people’s ideas. I like to listen to them. But if the ideas aren’t good, I’m not going to use them just to make people feel good.”

“Besides,” he continued, anger creeping into his voice. “They hired me for my ideas. The game itself was my idea, based on my comic book. And of course I listened to other people’s thoughts. But I had the vision and, I can tell you this for sure, no one else there had anything remotely resembling a vision.”

She’d nodded, her expression sympathetic. “Ok, Paul, I think I get the overall picture. In a nutshell, they fucked you over.”

“Yeah,” he said. Saying it all out loud to her made had him angry again. Angry at what they’d done to him. Angry and betrayed and…

“I do have one question though,” Chloe said, interrupting his angry reverie. 

“Shoot,” he said.

“You’re talking in the past tense, like you’ve been fired already, but earlier you said you’re getting fired tomorrow. What’s up with that? Most people I know who get fired are shown the door right away. Why wait twenty-four hours?”

“Oh, I thought I explained that,” said Paul. “They can’t fire me. I mean, they can’t just walk in and tell me to leave. I’m one of the founders. I own nine percent of the company and I’m on the Board of Directors. They have to actually vote me out.”

“Really?” said Chloe, a spark of renewed interest in her voice.

“Yep. Like I said, this whole project – the whole reason for this company – was my idea.”

“So the vote hasn’t happened yet right?” she asked. “How do you know you’re going to get voted out?”

“Well, there are only five of us on the board and the others all told me today how they’d vote. They wanted to have a meeting right then and do it, but I’m entitled to twenty-four hour’s notice and I said I wanted it.”

“Why?”

“I dunno really. I was just so shocked. I had no idea they were even thinking about doing something like this. Really. No idea at all. And I’m sort of prone to doing rash things – you know, getting angry and stuff. I knew if I went into a meeting right then I’d blow up. I might hurt somebody or get in more trouble. Some part of me was smart enough to say ‘hey, just get out of here.’ So that’s what I did.”

“That makes sense,” she said. “I’d for sure have yelled and screamed and broke something. Or someone.” 

“Those feelings came later – once I was in my car.” Paul looked down at his sandwich. This job, this company, had been his big break, his chance to do something that tons of people would