Empty Nests (2 page)

A grinning kid who didn’t look nearly old enough to be in college ran up to him. “Mr. Juarez?”

“It’s Gabe.” He held out his hand.

The kid took it eagerly. “David Garcia. It’s really an honor to meet you.”

“Thank you.” Gabe yanked his hand away. The kid was never going to make it in business if he didn’t work on his handshake. He made a mental note to add that somewhere in the lecture.

“If you’ll follow me? We’ve got you all set up.”

The lecture hall was one of the older ones with pull-down chalkboards and seats upholstered in ’80s avocado green. A few posters on the wall announced it was part of the English Department. That made sense. Business departments usually had better-outfitted classrooms. Luckily, there was a projector. There were also five dozen eager young faces watching his every move. He’d once had that look.

Someone had arranged a campus Tech Services guy to be on hand to help set up the presentation. Gabe might have been at the top of a technology giant, but he was glad for the assistance. He could never get his laptop to talk to projectors. They seemed to hate him. While that was being dealt with, he did a quick mental review of his lecture, deciding to put in a bit about handshakes at the beginning of the networking segment.

“Your system’s ready to go.”

“Thank you.” Gabe looked over the Tech Services guy. He always tried to remember something about everyone he met, even in passing, in case they became important one day. White, thirtyish, brown hair, average height—nothing particularly exotic but pleasant-looking, and Gabe’s laptop was talking to the projector in record time.

He settled himself at the lectern and cleared his throat. “Good afternoon, everyone. Please forgive my appearance. I just got off a plane from Japan. And here’s a word of advice right off the bat. Whenever you can, get the Japanese to come to you instead of you going there. The local sake is an absolute killer, and you will be expected to drink it for the honor of your company. All night long.”

That got a laugh.
Lesson two
, Gabe thought,
always start with a laugh.

Gabe clapped his hands together. “Now, thank you for coming. My name is Gabriel Juarez, and this is everything I know about business.”

G
ABE
HAD
glanced over his notes on the drive from the airport. It was a three-lecture series, all standard stuff about continuing education, and getting internships and feet in doors. It was a talk he could give in his sleep and possibly had been until his mouse froze. He wiggled it a few times, then poked a couple keys. Projectors hated him.

“And this is why I’m on the money side and not the tech side.” That got a chuckle.

The Tech Services guy came down from one of the back rows. “The projector in here has a habit of locking up every kind of laptop,” he said quietly. “It’s not just yours.” He pushed a few buttons in sequence, first on the laptop keyboard, then on the projector’s control panel. There was a
beep
, a
whorl
, and then everything was back to normal.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.” The Tech Services guy went back to his seat, presumably to wait for another lockup. Luckily, when that lockup came, it was on the last graphic. The Tech Services guy came back down and worked his magic again. Gabe wrapped up his talk, fielded some questions, shook some hands, then waited for the room to clear out.

“And you have no idea why it does that?” Gabe asked. His laptop had already been shut down, disconnected, and slipped back into its case.

“Nope.”

Gabe looked up. The logo on the underside of the ceiling-mounted projector belonged to his company, but it was from a decade earlier. At that age it was well out of warranty, past any service contract, and almost certainly hadn’t had any kind of software upgrade in years.

“I’ll send out an e-mail to someone in hardware support. If it’s a known bug, there might be a patch. Though I may get the response in Klingon.”

The support guy laughed.

“It’s happened!”

“I’m not surprised.”

Gabe held out his hand. “Gabe, by the way.”

“James.” James had a good handshake, strong but not overly so.

“James. Thanks for the rescue.”

James’s face twitched into a quick, polite smile. “Part of the job.”

“Are you going to be around next week?”

“Most likely, unless the server room catches on fire.”

Tamyra discreetly slid up to Gabe’s side. “James, this is the world’s finest PA, Tamyra Dorsey. Tam, this is James… um.”

“Maron.” James held out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

“James saved my bacon today by magically unfreezing my laptop.”

There was another flash of a polite smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Not magic, just practice.”

“Yes. I
will
write a memo about that.” Gabe turned to Tamyra. “I take it we need to get going?”

“Sorry. Work and four o’clock traffic beckons.”

J
AMES
SURVEYED
his domain. A dozen computer workstations, threadbare carpets, no windows, and a lot of Dilbert cartoons. He looked over his team, consisting of the people who just happened to get thrown at him because they wanted to work certain days of the week and would likely not be around for more than a year or two because they still had real futures ahead of them. Except maybe for Dave. Everyone was present, and everything was quiet. He figured he had about a minute before a phone rang again. He unclenched his jaw and took a long deep breath, letting it out slowly, trying to prevent extreme irritation from bursting into full-out anger.

“Hey!” he barked. “Everyone look at me for sixty seconds. Dave!” He raised his voice. “Music off!”

Dave pulled out his earbuds.

James lifted an e-mail printout, crumpled from where he had been gripping it too hard, and tried to focus on remaining calm. “There have been complaints coming down from up high and landing on my desk recently. Apparently this team has an attitude problem.” There was much groaning and rolling of eyes. “And there it is. I fully understand that the faculty and staff we service are occasionally morons, despite having alphabet soup after their names. And I know many of the students are intellectual snobs and spoiled brats. However, the faculty and staff have the power to make our lives difficult, and student tuition is what pays our salaries.”

There was a fresh collection of groaning and eye rolling.

“Enough!” James snapped, crumpling the paper again. “I let all of you get away with a shitload in here. I let you sneak off-shift early when you have to be somewhere. I turn a blind eye to longer-than-standard lunch breaks. I let you burn university bandwidth on YouTube because I do it too. Hell, I haven’t even fired Dave yet.”

“Why would I be fired?” Dave asked through a mouthful of something sticky.

James ignored him. “But out there, you need to start behaving a little better. I’m not saying you have to kiss ass or lick boots. I’m not even talking about service with a smile, but at the end of the day, they are the
Upstairs
and we are the
Downstairs
, so let’s cut back on the raw sarcasm. Can everyone do that for me? Please?”

Everyone nodded and mumbled assurances, though no one looked pleased.

“Thank you.” James dropped the printout in the nearby recycling. “Now get on to whatever you were doing while pretending to work.”

G
ABE
’
S
ONLY
desire was to go home and sleep in his own bed for at least twelve hours. Instead he was at his desk, still feeling the aftereffects of the sake. There was a quick knock at his office door, and Frank popped his head in, his mass of red hair leading by almost a second.

“Hey, there. Feeling better?”

“Not really.”

Frank’s face split into the large grin Gabe had long ago learned to fear. “Well, I’ve got something that’ll cheer you up.”

“Why do I doubt that?”

Frank dropped a glossy local industry magazine on the desk. There was a publicity still of Gabe on the front, but it was the five words under it that terrified him.
Silicon Valley’s Most Eligible Bachelors
.

His gut dropped. “No.”

Frank yanked it away before Gabe could throw it across the room. “And guess who’s number one this year.”

The whine that came from Gabe’s throat made him sound like an overtired toddler. He sincerely wished he could throw a tantrum, then take a nap.

Frank flipped open the magazine, the giant grin not leaving his face. “Gabriel Juarez. CFO. Makes shitloads of money. Oh look, they lied about your age. Took off a good five years. Too bad they couldn’t take it off your face!”

Gabe grabbed for Frank, but he danced out of the way. “You love the outdoors. You cook. You can cook?”

“I can fry an egg,” he snapped.

“And you’re looking for someone special.”

Gabe put his hands together as if in prayer and squeezed his eyes shut. “Tell me. Please, Frank, please for the love of God, is the word ‘gay’ anywhere in there? Or queer? Or ‘is really not interested in boobs, so please don’t send pictures of yourself in a low-cut dress with your résumé’?”

“Sorry, no.”

Gabe slumped back in his chair. It was bad enough he had made the list the last five years; being at the top just made him feel pathetic. The fact that he would now have to spend a month fighting off half the eligible women in the industry was not improving his overall mood.

“I have got to get off that list.”

“Speaking of getting off—”

“No,” Gabe said instantly.

“You haven’t even heard what I’m going to say.”

“Answer is still no.” He’d learned the hard way, when it came to Frank, it was best to start with no,
then
listen to what he had to say.

“My second ex-wife’s second cousin. Nice guy. Good-looking. Young but not too young.”

“Remember what happened the last time you set me up with someone?”

“That was a freak accident.”

“So they keep saying.”

“Come on. You need to get out of your condo. Celebrate a little.”

“Do you know how much work I have?” He grabbed a random folder and flipped it open, hoping Frank would get the point and leave him alone.

“Do you know how large a team you have? Delegate a little. Relax.”

“I am fine.”

Frank placed his hands flat on the desk and leaned in. His breath smelled like ham and cheese Hot Pockets. “You are one of my oldest friends, and I’m saying this as a friend. I worry about you dying alone in the Old Executives’ Home. Everyone needs someone, and since you are incapable of finding a nice guy, I will find one for you.”

Gabe wondered how Frank’s third marriage was going, because he only seemed to get interested in Gabe’s love life when his own was falling apart. And Gabe really wasn’t in the mood to hear it. Not with the evil sake still rotting in his bloodstream.

“I am perfectly capable of finding a nice guy.”

“I mean a
real
nice guy. Not your idea of a nice guy, which is easy, pretty, and possessing the personality depth of a damp washcloth. Or, you know, a complete asshole.”

A jolt of anxiety and anger shot threw Gabe. His heart began to race, and the edges of the folder crumpled under his grip. Frank usually had better taste than to bring up that particular ex or any part of that entire situation for any reason.

“And what do you suggest I look for?” Gabe all but snarled.

“Someone who’s not an asshole, for one. Someone who might look at you instead of your bank account. Someone who is independently functional and willing to call you on your shit. Someone you might consider taking a day off for. Sane, balanced, responsible, nice to you, not an asshole. I think I mentioned that last one.”

“And your second ex-wife’s second cousin meets all these qualifications?”

“Hell no. But he’s pretty, will certainly put out, and until we get you someone nice, we should at least get you laid. Puts you in a way better mood.”

There was a point in nearly every conversation with Frank where Gabe had simply had enough and threw him out. This was it.

“Out.” He pointed at his door.

“Just think about it.”

“Now.”

K
EYS
RATTLED
in the apartment door as James pulled the tuna casserole out of the oven.

“I’m home,” Dylan called out.

He heard the
thump
of baseball gear and schoolbooks hit the floor by the door. “How was practice?” he asked as soon as Dylan got into the kitchen.

“Fine.” Dylan reached over James’s shoulder and tried to pull a bit of the crusty edge off the casserole dish, burning his fingers a little. James had long ago accepted the fact that his son would tower over him. And he would revel in the classic blond-and-blue looks inherited from his mother. At least the towering strength would put him through college.

“How was work?”

“Mostly had to sit through a special business lecture because the projector keeps locking up laptops.”

“Interesting lecture?” Dylan set a couple of old plastic plates on the two-person table that took up nearly half the kitchen.

“Wasn’t really paying attention.” He’d spent most of the lecture on his phone, trying to beat his personal best in
Nibbles
.

He stabbed a large serving spoon into the casserole and moved it to the table. Dylan inhaled about half of it without much more conversation. As much as James was worrying himself sick over sending his son off to university come September, it would do wonders for the grocery bill.

“So,” Dylan started as he scraped the last of the noodles from his plate. “Remember that conversation we were having about the new AP English teacher?”

“If you pull a piece of paper out of your pocket right now, I will never forgive you.”