Empty Nests (4 page)

“That must have been intense.”

James sipped his coffee. “No regrets. I’ve got a great kid. He’s going to Stanford on a baseball scholarship. Early admission.”

“I went to Stanford.” Something Gabe took no little amount of pride in.

James beamed with obvious pride of his own. “It’s better than we ever hoped for. I was happy when the state schools started sniffing around.”

“Tell him to avoid Dr. Moncrieff’s freshman World History class. The man is a million years old and a hyperactive lunatic. But he teaches some obscure subject for the grad students, so they won’t get rid of him.”

“I’ll pass that along.” James’s phone trilled again. He peeked at it. “Damn.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh, we’re in competition with the tech support guys up the hill at Lawrence Livermore Labs. Every time a Nobel Prize winner forgets their login password, it’s two points. One point if they leave the Caps Lock key on. They just had a particle physicist forget his password while the Caps Lock was on. It puts them ahead for the week.”

Gabe laughed but knew full well he’d done it himself a time or two. “It’s only Wednesday. I’m sure you can catch up.”

“We’re usually ahead. We’ve got more winners in different disciplines.” Gabe took another sip of coffee. “Oh, I saw you on the cover of some glossy magazine the other day. Silicon Valley’s most eligible?”

Gabe felt his cheeks burn. “If I could find some way of suing over that, I would. It’s bad enough I’m on that list every damn year, but they always leave the word ‘gay’ out of the profile, so I spend a month chasing away women in short skirts and low-cut tops.”

James looked briefly startled, then smoothed to neutral. Gabe was proud he’d gotten his sexual orientation into the conversation without an “Oh, by the way.”

“Maybe you should write a letter to the editor.”

“I’d be better off getting Tamyra to write it. She’s much better at getting my rants to sound polite.”

“Yes, I am.” Gabe turned to find Tamyra standing behind him. “What exactly are you ranting about?”

“The most eligible list and the fact that they keep leaving out the most important bit in the ‘looking for’ section.”

“I’ll write something polite for you, but we need to get going.”

“We also need to write
another
memo to the sixth floor. James here saved my bacon
again
today, because the patch meant to fix the projector instead nearly killed my laptop.”

“I’m sure you can put the fear of God into them, but we need to get going.”

He turned to James. “Sorry.” He was honestly enjoying having coffee and a conversation with someone he wasn’t working a business deal with.

“It’s okay.” James stood. “I have to get back too. Thanks for the coffee.”

Tamyra wiggle her eyebrows at Gabe with a slight question on her face. “Oh, you think I could get your card in case I get an answer about the projector before next week?”

“Sure.” He pulled a standard employee card from his wallet. Gabe recognized the number as the one that went to the Help Desk, but there was a personal university e-mail on it.

“Thanks, see you next week.”

James gave a little smile and walked off.

“Awww.” Tamyra grinned at him. “You are so cute when you’re trying to flirt.”

“I wasn’t trying to flirt. I was making conversation.”

“And that really pathetic attempt to get his number was…?”

“A really pathetic attempt to get a number. But,” Gabe cut into Tamyra’s next comment, “he’s actually gay this time.”

“I’m very impressed. Congratulations. We do need to get you back to the office, though.”

“In four o’clock traffic?”

“In four o’clock traffic. It’ll give you plenty of time to catch up on your messages.”

A
BLOOD
pressure cuff squeezed Gabe’s arm while he was trying to text. It was not the best way to spend a Friday morning.

“Put it down and stop moving, or I’m going to start over.”

Gabe put his phone down and leaned back in his chair. Dr. Gowda
tsk
ed. “Sorry, we’ll have to try again.”

“Are you sure?” Gabe hated getting poked by his doctor, even if it was in the comfort of his own office.

“I could just diagnose you as thirty seconds away from a stroke. Which you may very well be, but I’d like to double-check.” Gabe closed his eyes and tried to quickly meditate his blood pressure lower. When the cuff loosened, his doctor made another
tsk
ing noise. “One-thirty over eighty-five. That’s a bit high. If I keep seeing numbers like that, you are going on a low-sodium diet. You should be cutting down on your caffeine as it is.”

“If you take away my caffeine, I will switch to hard drugs. I’m serious. It’s either coffee or cocaine.”

Dr. Gowda ignored him. “You also need to get more than six uninterrupted hours of sleep a night. I do not like the direction your last blood workup was pointing. You need more good sleep.”

“I’d love to, but the funny thing is the world is round, and that means it’s not daylight at the same time everywhere.” Gabe knew he was short on sleep if he slipped into heavy sarcasm before noon.

“Do you want to try the Temazepam again?”

“God, no.”

Dr. Gowda looked into his ears, then up his nose. “Have you been taking the vitamins I prescribed you?”

“Tamyra slips liquid vitamins into my morning latte and tries to cover the taste with sugar-free caramel syrup.”

“You would be dead without that woman. Lift your shirt.” Gabe pulled up his shirt and winced as the icy stethoscope was pressed to his chest. “And breathe.”

Gabe used to get poked and prodded by a doctor maybe once a year. But once the company started netting eight figures, lawyers and insurance companies got curious about his health.

“Your lungs sound fine. Any more migraines?”

“No, but I haven’t had to deal with my extended family lately.”

Dr. Gowda scribbled some notes into his file. “Speaking of family. My nephew has just moved in from Bangalore. Very nice young man. Studying neurosurgery.”

“If he’s studying neurosurgery, then he has even less time to date than I do, but if I need a full brain transplant in a decade, I’ll keep him in mind.”

“I thought I’d give it a try. Now that he’s out of the country, and out from under his parents, he’s looking to date properly.”

“I wish him luck on that front.” Gabe’s computer pinged as an e-mail notification popped up. He looked at the subject line and smiled. It was something he thought he might actually want to read.

J
AMES
WAS
trying to phrase an e-mail to a department head in a way that wouldn’t get him fired when the phone on his desk rang with a little light, saying a call was being put through to him. That meant Dave wasn’t on the main desk.

He let it ring a couple of times. Most calls James
wanted
to hear went through to his cell phone. “Hello, James Maron, Technical Services.”

“Hi, this is Gabe Juarez. I’m calling to tell you I got a message back about that projector locking up.”

“Really?” James tried to push down a burst of excitement. That damn projector was a chronic irritation, and no one was willing to cough up the money to replace it since it
technically
still worked.

“Sorry it’s not major news. I was told I needed to find out the exact make and model.”

Of course
, he thought with an internal sigh. “I guess I can get one of the maintenance guys up there with a ladder.”

“Can you just check the documentation?”

James stared at the wall of manuals and documentation that had only been organized since his promotion. The relevant documents were probably balancing a desk somewhere in the English Department. “Finding a ladder would be easier than finding the documentation.”

“Oh, well, I can give you my e-mail if you manage to get someone up there.”

“Sure.” James grabbed a pen. It was nice having someone actually trying to help.

“GabeJ at TechPrim dot com. That’s my lower traffic e-mail, so it shouldn’t get lost.”

“Great, got it.” James half wondered if lower traffic meant personal e-mails or more important ones. “I’ll try to get those numbers for you.”

“Thanks. Oh, how goes the password stupidity?”

James grinned. That had been the bright spot of his day. “We’re trying to work out a whole new scoring system. We had an economist who turned the Number Lock off and couldn’t figure out why the cursor kept jumping to other fields whenever he tried to type in his password, which is required to have a number in it. And he never bothered to try the numbers on the top row.”

Gabe’s laughter rolled down the line. “That has to be at least four points.”

“At least.”

G
ABE
RUBBED
his fork between his fingers and considered stabbing himself in the neck. His date, Marcel, was pretty enough, but that was about as far as the attraction went. He was nattering on about some reality star Gabe had never heard of getting married to some other reality star. He was pretty sure he was smiling and nodding at the right moments, but with every passing moment, the fork option was looking more and more appealing.

His phone chirped, and he quickly grabbed it. Being CFO of a giant, multinational organization with offices and clients all over the world made for great excuses when faced with nightmarish dates. He had used the line “Sorry, there’s a crisis in the Chennai office I just have to deal with” on more than one occasion.

He’d received an e-mail but somewhat unusually, it was on his nonwork account. He apologized to his date as he tapped the message open. It was from James and contained all the pertinent numbers for one of their projector systems. He apologized to his date again and quickly typed a reply.

It’s 8 on a Friday night. Please tell me you didn’t just climb off a ladder?

He hit send and motioned for his date to continue, then realized his date hadn’t actually stopped talking.

A minute later there was another chirp.

No, but am working late. Sorry if I’m interrupting anything.

Gabe smiled.
Just the date from hell. Or at least purgatory. Don’t worry about it.

Gabe looked up. His date was still talking, but now he was speaking to the waiter. He slowly plotted his revenge against Frank for this one.

T
HE
WHOLE
apartment rattled as James slammed the door on the worst Saturday night in memory, his ears still ringing. He pulled off the nice jacket he’d been stupid enough to put on. He’d known picking up that phone and making that call had been a bad idea. Every date he’d ever been on in his entire life had been some level of bad idea, and it wasn’t as if there had been many.

Dylan came out of his room.

“Things not go well?”

James tried not to grind his teeth. “If you even
think
to set me up with anyone ever again, I will ground you for the rest of your life, I swear to God. I will remove all your car privileges. I will send you to live with your mother!”

James knew that last one was a threat he’d never actually carry out, but the last time it had been used was when he’d found a dried-out joint in Dylan’s room.

Dylan raised his hands. “Okay. I promise I will not try to set you up with anyone else but—”

“No.” It came out as a full shout. “No. There are no buts in there. No buts. As long as I put the roof over our heads, my word is final!”

G
ABE
BARELY
glanced over the group of students he was supposed to be inspiring. The truth was he could sum up the secret to his success in three sentences: work your ass off, have no social life, and manage to get two genius übernerds with no business savvy as roommates.

Gabe continued his talk on the importance of face-time networking, especially when considering work in emerging markets.

He finished up, fielded some simple questions, took a few resumes, and waited for the room to clear. He looked up at the ceiling-mounted projector, then at James.

The second attempt at a software patch had frozen everything as quickly as the first. Gabe wasn’t entirely surprised. The memo that had come with the patch explained they hadn’t supported that particular bit of hardware in years, and it wasn’t designed to talk to the newer systems. And Gabe always had the newest. The whole incident was becoming a little humiliating.

“I am going to write another memo. It will be to PR, explaining why it would be a very good thing if TechPrim kindly donated a new digital projection system to the UCB English Department.”

“I’m sure it will be most welcome.” James bit his lower lip. It looked like he was trying not to laugh. There was a bit of comedy in the whole situation even if Gabe felt like he was the punchline.

“If you’ve got time, I think I owe you another cup of coffee.”

“I can squeeze out a few minutes for that.”

G
ABE
ACCEPTED
the latte and black coffee from the same girl who now had neon pink-and-orange spikes in her hair. He took a sip. “So, where did you study?”

James snorted into his drink. “Study? I studied at good ol’ Contra Costa College, where I got a two-year computer science certificate on government money. Dylan was five by then, and I really needed a job. Started entry level here.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

Gabe was surprised. He was familiar with CCC, and while it was a perfectly fine community college, he had certainly not expected it as James’s place of higher education. “I asked because you seem to know your way around a half-dead computer pretty well.”

“Really smart people are really good at screwing up their computers. I get a lot of practice fixing them on the fly.” James looked down into his coffee, obviously uncomfortable with the turn in the conversation.