Geekus Interruptus (2 page)

Her and Jess.

Marcy was emerging from her arousal-induced
daze.

“Don’t you have somewhere you have to be,
Peter?”

He shrugged and rolled his eyes. Like a
guilty child ready to play hooky from school if she said the word. So,
would
she say the word? Her thighs pulsed, and her vagina dripped. A tiny droplet of
sweat rolled between her breasts, tickling her goosebumped skin.

She’d been so good for so long. Ever since
she’d hooked up with Jess, she’d been true to him. Any time a man approached her,
she gave him the haughty shoulder. Peter had received no encouragement from
her. Nor had any of the other guys in their development. None of the neighbors
thought of her as a possible lay, she was sure of it. She’d been a hundred
percent unavailable.

And now? Was she about to invite Peter
inside her husband’s home, his wife’s body, her deepest, most pleasurable
crevices? Was it time to throw away the last six years of fidelity for a wildly
sinful fuck? And what about Jess? One strange dream and her commitment to him
was over? One dream about her husband, just a subconscious hint he was possibly
unfaithful, and she was ready to do the nasty with another man? A married man?
She had no concrete evidence Jess had ever touched another woman. Yet here she
was, on the tight edge of sucking off their snobby neighbor.

Peter was married to an heiress, a
scary-thin ex-model. The wife was younger, blonder, and richer than Marcy would
ever be. Marcy, on the other hand, would make his head spin in bed. Like she
was exorcising all his poltergeists. Men knew this about her just by looking.
For years, she’d really enjoyed her innate ability to rock a guy’s world. But
that was before Jess.

Jess and her.

“I can make it worth your while, baby,”
Peter said now, his voice low, throaty.

She wasn’t sure, but she figured he was hard
as a rock. A rivulet formed between her breasts, and her knees shook. She felt
like she was on the verge of coming.

How pathetic. Was that all it took for her
to return to her former dirty-girl lifestyle, a vague problem with her husband and
an offer from the suburban sleazeball eight houses down? One lousy dream and
she was ready to launch herself like a sex rocket? Years of good girl behavior and,
like that, she fell right off the wagon, landing on her ass, rolling onto all
fours so she could indulge herself in all her old single-girl tricks. Was that fair?
Shouldn’t she catch Jess in the act before plunging herself full-force onto
someone else’s dick?

Yes, she certainly should. Especially if
she expected to get a decent settlement. If that was where this was heading.

Which, Marcy suddenly realized, was where
she did
not
want things to head. And Peter was married. He was not even
in contention for the role of serious boyfriend or throw-it-all-away lover.
Besides, what was good for the goose was not necessarily good for the gander.
Or vice versa, Marcy wasn’t sure. What she
was
sure of was this: Peter
needed to stop tempting her with his bedroom eyes and lusty come-on voice, or
she would come right there in the driveway and forever hate herself.

She backed away, shaking her head. This
wasn’t going to be easy. Doing the right thing never was.

“Aw, come on, Marcy. Please? Don’t be like
that, baby.”

He was begging now. Marcy had always loved
it when they begged. All those years when she was single, she’d made guys get down
on their knees. They’d plead with her, and she’d happily relent. Indulge their
fantasies by wearing some bizarre French maid outfit, crotchless panties, a
Rastafarian wig. They’d look at her with wide eyes as they handed her a brown
paper bag containing contraband like ben wa balls, a spiky harness, silk scarves,
extra-large dildos. Whatever they needed from her, the kinds of things
girlfriends wouldn’t do. She’d loved mindless sex with men who wanted her for
her body, men who appreciated what her body could do to them.

Mindless sex and wild one-night stands had
been her passion. How had she ended up the desperate wife of a geek who didn’t even
desire her?

Marcy’s stomach lurched. She turned away
from Peter and focused on gathering up the newspaper, retrieving the scattered sheets
from the driveway.

“You have the perfect ass,” Peter said. “What
I wouldn’t give to plow that furrow.”

He was desperate now. She could tell by the
way his trite commentary had turned wistful. He was losing steam. Less confident,
deflated. She did have a nice, round butt, but, really, his compliments were
coming from another place now. This was desperation talking.

Which she’d always loved. She’d loved it
when they were so hot for her they couldn’t keep their hands off. When they had
to touch every inch of her soft skin. When they had to have her, now, no matter
where, no matter what the risk. Yes, here, now, in the garden shed with the
landscaping crew out front weed-whacking the walkway. Yes, now, in a friend’s
bedroom with postered walls reverberating from a raucous house party downstairs.
Oh, yes, here and now, in the back seat of the car, in the bushes at the park,
in the men’s room at the neighborhood tavern. Oh my God, they had to hit it,
right now, right here, right this minute!

But that was then. Before she’d found Jess.
Before she’d married. Married a man she would fucking kill if he did such things
with somebody else.

“Let’s not do anything we’ll regret,” Marcy
said, her arms full of newspaper. It was so messed up she would rather throw it
away than try to straighten it out.

“What you’re going to regret is not letting
me cram my giant hard-on into your wet pussy.”

Peter revved his ultra-luxe engine and
backed out of the driveway. Then he shot off with an angry squeal of radial
tires on hot asphalt.

Marcy went into the house and locked the
door. She was glad she hadn’t fucked up and had sex with the neighbor. She
could wait for a better offer, find a single guy, someone anonymous she wouldn’t
have to see at block parties. Besides, she wasn’t ready. This wasn’t the time
to get herself a lover. Not yet. It was too early in the game for that. She had
to think ahead, analyze the situation, use strategy, figure out what the best
move would be.

First, she needed to determine whom Jess
was seeing. She pictured her husband, his long fingers delving into the silken
vulva of a lanky blonde. The vision made her double over in gut-wrenching pain.
She held the newspaper wad to her abdomen and squeezed her eyes shut. It hurt
to think of him touching another woman, suckling her perky breasts, rubbing his
smooth hands across her cool, lean flesh.

Marcy’s stomach wrenched a few times and
she experienced raw stabs of gut pain. She had to breathe through her mouth
until the pangs subsided. When she felt a little better, she went into the
kitchen and tried to compose herself. As she bunched up the messy newspaper and
stuffed it into the garbage can under the stainless steel sink, she kept picturing
the woman in the dream. Her whitewashed face, colorless eyes, pale hair.

Scandinavian, Marcy imagined, and cold as a
snowball. The perfect match for her emotionless husband. Her cheating spouse.

Marcy suddenly remembered a cheesy
television advertisement she’d seen one night after watching the movie of the
week. The ad was for a local shop that specialized in spy equipment. Out of the
depths of her sexual frustration and emotional confusion, a brilliant tactical
plan bobbed to the surface.

She hurried upstairs to change her damp
underwear.

Geeks Are Us

She drove quickly
toward the outskirts of town in her BMW convertible. Her hair whipped about her
head; the sun splashed on her bare face and arms. It was a beautiful day.
Listening to Adele wail at top volume should have calmed her nerves, but it didn’t.
Maybe she needed to take up meditation. And hot room yoga.

Marcy wondered how this could be happening
to her. Jess was the ultimate geek, so the situation she found herself in shouldn’t
have been possible. Geeks were like Jews; they mated for life. Didn’t they?

Marcy hadn’t been the least bit interested
in geeky men before she met Jess. But, once she’d fallen for him, she’d
discovered how reassuring geek love could be. Or so she’d thought.

Jess Margate wasn’t your average geek. He
was a certified genius. The real deal, a wow whiz kid, an IQ beyond the beyond.
He was Super-Nerd, so different from her in so many ways. So smart he was on
another planet, one that spun faster than hers. But he was incredibly decent. Kind,
when he remembered to be. Attentive, when he had nothing else going on.

Before Jess came into her life, Marcy knew
a few geeks. Guys who were content on a Saturday night to be rewriting a
computer program. Or solving Heisenberg’s uncertainty equation or something.
That’s why she’d never fallen for one of them before Jess came along. Geeky
guys just weren’t her type.

When she met Jess, he was still a virgin. A
real late bloomer sexually. He’d made it through the usual rounds of day-to-day
bullying during grade and middle school without dumbing down, without going
bad. Which explained why, senior year in high school, he became the Boy Most
Likely to Succeed—but not with the chicks. Totally awkward, gawky, not
cool. Big glasses with dark frames, pale and bony. No sun, no exercise, too
much time in the basement creating algorithms for software design companies and
financial investment firms. Jess breezed through college with honors,
graduating
magna cum laude
. But without a single hot date on his resume.

In his early twenties, however, Jess
finally decided enough was enough. He wanted some action. He went for long runs
every morning, sculpting himself into a lean and mean man-machine. He got some
color to his complexion and started wearing tinted contacts. He had his smile
whitened and grew out his hair, which he got in the habit of tossing back with
a casual shrug. Women began to check him out.

Around this time, geeks in general enjoyed
a widespread image boost. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg.
Go ahead,
laugh,
geeks were saying.
I’ll be your boss one day
. The attitude
had shifted overnight. Suddenly, the smartest guys in the room had magnetic
appeal for women. Women everywhere said to themselves,
You know what? We
like them nerdy. High IQs make us
hot.

It was at this exact tipping point in the
cultural consensus of opinion on high-tech sexiness that Marcy Buenaventure
first turned blurry eyes to Jess Margate. In the midst of a crunky party, where
she’d already had a bit too much to drink. Her most recent fling had ended in a
flame-out; she’d kind of liked the guy, but not enough to stay with it for more
than a few months. Marcy was feeling old, tired of easy sexual conquests that,
in the long run, meant nothing. She was standing by the keg, trying to change
the double Solo cup in her hand back into a single, when Jess stepped up.

He introduced himself and began telling Marcy
about the software he designed. She didn’t understand much of what he said. His
words made her head spin on its axis. But she could tell the guy knew his
stuff. Impressive. He mentioned persistent venture capitalists, lunch dates
with CEOs, interviews with online journals. It was all geek to her, but oddly
aphrodisiacal.

Marcy decided she wanted this guy. She was
attracted to his intelligence and challenged by his disinterested innocence, his
half-attention to what she was saying, the way he looked through her while
texting someone.

“A guy I work with,” he explained in
defense of his rudeness.

And Marcy believed him. Because all Geek
Guy
did
was work. He’d been so busy nerding his way to the big time, he
hadn’t had a chance (or an opportunity, like the one Marcy planned to offer him)
to discover the joys (and miseries, although she wouldn’t, of course, tell him
about those) of sex.

Marcy was drunk, but not too drunk to think
about her future. She could see Jess there, in her future, working a lot, but
loyal to her, reliable. She asked him to walk her home, and he held her hand
the whole way. She could still remember how that felt, his thin hand, cold and
hard, like packed snow.

When he followed her up the steps to her
second-floor apartment, she made sure to sway her hips in an alluring manner. She
brewed a pot of dark-roast Colombian while he looked over her bookcase. He said
with a grin, “I read this,” and held up a book left behind by one of her many
ex-boyfriends. A worn copy of
Eros and Civilization
. Jess was such a
nerd. But appealing, and something about him screamed long-term.

Marcy stood by the kitchen counter while
Jess sipped her coffee and explained the difference between meta and beta. Or something
like that. She nodded her head, but she wasn’t paying attention, not really.
She was focusing on his lips, which were nice, coral pink, and plump. Virginal.
After a decent interval, she threw herself at him and suckled his mouth. He
submitted with a guttural groan.

Marcy slipped out of her cotton dress, then
helped Jess slide out of his khaki pants and hooded sweatshirt (
de rigueur
for geeks). His boxers were striped. His penis was the perfect size, so she
took it into her mouth, like a popsicle. He pulled out quickly, saying, “I’m
going to come if you do that.”

Now she was a hundred percent
sure—Jess’s lips were not the only virginal part of his body. Marcy
shivered as he ran his chilly hands across her breasts, but she was excited,
wet, and ready for him.

She stood up and, taking him by the hand,
led him to her unmade bed. He was tender and gentle, and she came once before
he did. His lovemaking was nice. Not wild, not crazy-making, but sweet. Very
sweet. He slept with his arm draped across her shoulder.

When Jess admitted to Marcy, over scrambled
eggs and wheat toast, “That was my first time,” she acted shocked. He told her
how he’d studied a sex manual, something clinical he’d ordered online. So he
would be prepared when the opportunity arose.

“How’d I do?” he asked.

Marcy said it had been immensely
pleasurable, emphasizing the word
immensely
. Jess’s gray-green eyes lit
up.

“I want to do it again,” he said.

So they did.

Whenever Marcy recalled their first few
months together, she remembered days (and nights, endless nights) in her
apartment. Sometimes they went to the movies or cooked dinner together, but
mostly they made love. It was sweet, really. Very sweet. He always slept over
afterward.

Marcy developed strong feelings for Jess,
but these feelings mostly had to do with their future together. Would he stay with
her? Would he agree to meet her girlfriends, family, ex-boyfriends? Would he
remember her birthday, the anniversary of their first meeting, her middle name?
Would he stay interested in her? Would he actually make a commitment?

Jess said he had feelings for her too, but
those feelings mostly had to do with his work. Would she interfere with his
long hours and intense schedule? Would she place demands on him he didn’t want
to fulfill? Would she forgive him when he forgot her girlfriends, family,
ex-boyfriends, birthday, anniversary, middle name? If she could cope with his
idiosyncrasies, he would indeed remain interested in her. And, eventually, he
promised, he would offer to make a commitment to her.

He was true to his word.

Marcy loved her husband, but this was geek
love. Not her usual brand of wild, passionate, intensely sexual love. She’d assumed
theirs was a forever love. A committed, rational form of true love.

A miscarriage earlier in the marriage had
led to a brief depression on her part, but otherwise their love for one another
had seemed to bring them both a contented sort of joy. She’d willingly given up
the untamed side of her nature, and she’d thought this was a kind of unspoken
guarantee. A promise their marriage would last. Because if she remained
faithful, she would have nothing to worry about. Geek love ensured fidelity. Or
so she had believed.

Time danced on, and Marcy and Jess kept having
okay sex, and he made a giant pile of money with some accounting software he
designed. After he pulled in another truckload of dough on an investment
algorithm, they moved to the suburbs. The two of them picked out a stone house
hidden behind tall hedges. Lovely songbirds flitted overhead, darting from
maple tree to maple tree. Life was good, or at least good enough.

~~~

When Marcy passed by the small sign for the
storefront she was seeking, she slowed the car. As soon as she could, she eased
into an open parking space. As she walked back to the Spyware Shop, located in
a squat brick building that also housed a high-end hairdresser’s and a label-only
vintage clothing place, she pondered what she would tell the clerk behind the
counter. Their suburb was small, wealthy, gossipy. If she admitted she wanted to
catch her husband in the act, the clerk might blab about it to someone who knew
them. She needed a reasonable excuse for purchasing miniature tape recorders
that looked like pens or key chains and a tiny video camera. Spy equipment for
personal use, miniature digital devices like the ones featured in the TV ad.

The clerk turned out to be discreet,
apparently uninterested in her plans for the stealth products he had to offer.
A short, rotund fellow in an impeccable oxford shirt and pressed slacks, he
gave the impression he was there to serve her needs, not to interrogate her
about why she wanted to conduct undercover work. He led her to the recorder section,
where an array of small gadgets lined the glass display case.

“We’ve got a sale going on today. You’re in
luck,” he told her without once checking out her breasts, which were now tucked
away under a fluffy sweater vest. “Voice-activated mobile recorder with forty
hours of audio recording power. Reception’s professional quality. On sale for
one ninety-five.”

“Can you show me how it works?” Marcy
asked.

Two hundred dollars to catch your spouse
en
flagrante
? What a bargain.

“It’s quite simple, really.” He
demonstrated by pressing two control buttons. “You set it up, turn it on like
this. When it’s on, his voice will activate the recording feature. As soon as
he stops talking, the file’s complete. You can use it under the driver’s seat of
a car. When he’s driving, the sound may be bad. But if he’s parked, you’ll hear
everything nice and clear.”

Marcy felt like saying,
Who says the
person I’m spying on is a man?

But she knew it was silly to pretend. Why
else would a woman like her be shopping at a place like this?

“May I suggest one of our covert cameras as
well?”

He led her to another glass case and
removed a black box the size of his thumb. After showing her the clip used to
attach the miniature camera to clothing or a briefcase, he demonstrated the set
up. “The cam-stick has a pinhole lens situated just above the clip. You get
twenty-four hours of recording space on an eight gig micro SD memory card. This
is usually adequate time for . . .”

He left the sentence unfinished.

“How much?” Marcy asked.

Whatever he said, she would pay it. In
cash, of course. It would defeat her purpose if Jess discovered Spyware Shop purchases
on their next Amex bill.

On the way home, Marcy felt both sick to
her stomach and eager to get started with the equipment. If Jess was cheating,
she would soon discover the truth. And she would be able to prove it. She’d
play back the tape for him, show him the video. She’d hammer him with the
evidence of his betrayal. Then she would feel justified in her fury. But the whole
thing was making her ill. Just thinking about hearing and seeing him with
someone else caused her stomach to writhe.

When the sun disappeared behind a deep
hedge of dark clouds, Marcy pushed up the visor and blasted Adele. We almost had
it all, all right. Then
he
fucked it all up.

An endless circle of bothersome questions
ate at Marcy, causing further gastric distress. So what if she could prove her geeky
husband was a philanderer; what good would that do her? What would she do after
confronting him? File for divorce? Have a fling with someone just to get
revenge? Call up her old boyfriends and indulge herself in mindless sex with
available man after available man?

By the time Marcy pulled into her driveway,
she had to press one hand against her roiling gut while clasping the shopping bag
(unmarked and as discreet as the salesman) in her free hand. She was trying her
best not to cry. Dark clouds had taken over the sky, pierced occasionally by
jagged lightning strikes. In her current state of psychological anguish, the
threatening weather seemed like a message from the gods.