Geekus Interruptus (3 page)

You’re doomed, Marcy. You’ll lose
everything, and guess what?
You’re guilty too.
You’ve been bad many times in your life. Whatever
made you believe you
deserved a good man anyway?

The deafening thunder did not help her mood
either. Just as the rain dumped down with a loud
whoosh
, she scurried
into the house. In defiance of her cramping belly, Marcy headed straight for
the liquor cabinet.

~~~

Poor Marcy, right? Who hasn’t behaved
badly, then cleaned up her act and been so very good for so very long, only to
be punished—weeks, months, even years later? It happens to the best of
us. Just when we least expect it, our virtues are no longer rewarded, and our
former vices are outed and revenged. Payback time comes for us all.

Marcy is no different than you or me. Her
guilty pleasures may have differed from ours, but otherwise, she’s just like
us.

Spy in the House of Love

The following
weekend, while her husband was holed up (
holed
up
, that was a
good one) in his home office, Marcy went to work on the James Bond bit. She set
up the recording device in Jess’s Jag, tucking it carefully way up under the
driver’s seat. She positioned the volume as high as possible. If he farted on
his way to work on Monday, she thought with a mirthless giggle, her eardrums
might explode.

Jess spent the entire weekend doing
whatever it was he did behind a closed office door. When she paused outside to
listen, the only thing she could hear was this occasional little
ping.
 
Like the sound of a small metal ball
dropped on a tile floor or a weird kind of alarm clock. But she couldn’t detect
him talking to anyone. She heard no long phone calls with hushed voices. He was
strangely quiet in there.

At dinner Sunday night, Jess ate quietly,
his eyes downcast. He pushed his boiled red potatoes around with a fork and avoided
the broccoli casserole entirely. A thick slice of roast beef (rare, the way he
liked it) sat untouched, bleeding into a pool in the center of his dinner
plate.

“How’s work going?” Marcy asked.

She was hesitant to chatter about her day
like she usually did, for fear of blurting out her recent spy activities or
demanding he tell her what the fuck he was up to. Her nerves were on the edge
of something. A dangerous something that could easily blow her cover. So she
tried to make small talk and found herself unable to ask her husband a single
leading question about his recent work. Like,
How’s the X account?
 
Or,
Did you complete the Y
software
design?
 
Over the last year or
so, she hadn’t taken much interest in the details of Jess’s work life. And it
showed.

“Slow,” he replied. “Maybe I’m over the
crest.”

He stabbed an innocent chunk of potato and
brought it to his mouth before setting it back on the plate where he seemed to think
it belonged.

“What crest? What’re you talking about?”

He looked at her, or maybe through her.

“What I mean, Marce,” he said slowly, as if
talking to a dimwitted child, “is when you hit a certain age, you no longer come
up with worthwhile innovations. Your brain is incapable of making the connections
required for new leaps in design. In the field of mathematics, this brick wall
to creativity can appear by the time you turn thirty. I’m afraid software
engineering’s a young man’s game.”

She laughed but stopped abruptly when she
realized he was serious. Cresting at thirty? It seemed a ridiculous concern for
a brilliant man like Jess.

“I’m not kidding, Marce. And there’s plenty
of scientific research on brain development to back up what I’m saying. I’ve got
maybe ten years left, then I’ll be fully over the hill. While the youngsters
fresh off their post-docs take over the world.”

He popped a potato chunk into his mouth,
then thought better of it and spit into his linen napkin. Geeks had the worst table
manners. She’d had to learn to live with it.

Marcy reached for his hand and covered it
with her own.

“I’m sure you have plenty of genius left in
you, darling,” she said.

In fact, she had no doubt. The idea he was
washed up at thirty-one was nonsense. Was it this sort of crazy thinking that had
propelled him into the arms of another woman? Was he suffering from decaying
self-esteem, bizarre geek phobias, some sort of engineer’s block?

An idea formed in her mind. Wouldn’t hot
sex with his devoted wife help boost his deflation? Couldn’t the old in-and-out
be a kind of cure for his work-related depression?

She stood up and posed, pushing her breasts
and ass into pre-coital position, moving her hips back and forth, swaying gently
just beyond his nose. Jess continued to stare blankly at his bloody beef.

Marcy sucked in her breath. She hated being
turned down. It was totally humiliating. But Jess seemed to be in need of a
good fucking. Maybe she could win back his attention using the old tricks. She
swallowed her pride and prepared for action.

Slowly, loudly, dramatically, she unzipped
her tennis skirt, daring him to glance over. His eyes drifted to her hips, then
up to her face. Marcy smiled, licking her lips and pouting as she dropped the
little, white skirt to the floor. She thrust out her chest and, quickly now,
lifted her tight, white T-shirt over her head. No bra, no panties, recently
waxed, glistening with coconut oil, and doused liberally with Truth or Dare.
She walked to him, watching as he stared glumly at her approach.

“Maybe this will make you feel young again,”
she said, taking his index finger and sliding it inside her. “After all, you’re
only as young as I feel.”

He snatched his hand away like her vagina
was on fire. Pushing his chair back, he retreated rapidly. His face reddened from
anger or arousal. Or something else, something more threatening to their
future.

“You never take me seriously, Marcy. You’re
like a blowup Barbie doll. My brain is turning to mush after so many years of this,
this . . . this total lack of stimulation.”

Marcy laughed. Since when was slipping it
to your wife over a homemade roast beef dinner
lacking
in stimulation?

When she kept on snickering, Jess blurted, “I
mean
mental
stimulation, Marcy.
Intellectual
stimulation.”

Her mood darkened. Oh,
that.
 
She’d never been good at providing
cerebral challenges. Her forte was erotic activation.

Jess stood up and threw down his napkin,
letting it land on the bloody roast. Now Marcy would have to use stain remover.
This pissed her off. He was so selfish. How dare he turn up his nose at her
carefully prepared dinner? And did he think he was just going to walk away from
her now? Insult her by refusing to partake of her primped and powdered,
perfectly tanned and toned, totally naked flesh?

When he headed out of the dining room,
obviously intending to hide himself in his office, she made an offensive move.
She attacked, lunging at him, tackling from behind. They fell together onto the
cold hard floor with a grunt (his) and a scream (hers).

“You motherfucker! How dare you insult my
food, my body, my brain! I ought to kill you. I think I’ll fuck you to death,”
Marcy yelled.

She was out of her mind, flailing her arms,
kicking, writhing on top of her husband, who was attempting to buck her off his
back without hurting her.

“Calm down,” he said in a muffled voice,
his face mashed against the Italian marble.

“No! I’m tired of calm. I want wild.”

Then she screamed again, thrusting her
pelvis against the wrinkled back of his yellow polo shirt until he bellowed
like a rodeo steer. She eased up on him, but only enough so he could roll over
onto his back. He stared up at her. His face was unreadable, but his dick was
unquestionably hard.

When she felt his fingers on her spine, she
stopped rutting on his chest and dove for his mouth. Eventually, he kissed her back.
Reluctantly, then forcefully. And soon enough, he had her buttocks tight in his
hands, and he was driving himself into her with a deep, thrusting rhythm she
hadn’t enjoyed for some time.

She enjoyed it for less time than usual
however.

Maybe it was the weeks of celibacy, maybe
it was the anger at being ignored and possibly betrayed, but something snapped inside
her head, and Marcy lost it. Geek sex with Jess had always been a quiet, sweet
affair, a tender conjoining of her juicy twat with his ropy penis, bolstered by
a lot of adolescent kissing and cuddling. Some women go for that kind of comfy
sex, but Marcy wasn’t one of them. She’d gone along with Jess’s romantic approach
to their coupling because she loved him. She’d wanted to please him, keep him.
Now, however, she wondered if she should have shown him what she was really
like much earlier in their relationship. She’d been afraid she would scare him
off. Now she didn’t give a shit what his reaction might be.

She pulled away, pressing against his chest
with her palms until he stopped thrusting.

He lay flat on the floor. “What the hell,
Marce?”

She shook her head, then rocked herself
against his solid cock until she came with a shudder and a groan. Then she
licked her index finger and stroked herself, still rubbing against his thick
cock, until she came a second time. God, that felt good. She was ready for
another one,
la pièce de résistance
, but as soon as he began to pump
again inside her, Marcy pulled away. She laughed when she saw the look on his
face as she stood up.

His forehead was covered in sweat. Splayed
out on the dining room floor, his plaid boxers down around his knees, her
husband displayed the biggest boner she’d seen in years. He looked like a confused
teenager caught in the act of
Playboy
ing.

“Where’re you going?” he whispered.

“I want you to lick me until I tell you to
stop,” she said, dropping down into a squat so she was positioned right over
his head. “Do it.”

His soft tongue entered her soaked vagina
like a butterfly seeking pollen. It flitted here and there while her orgasm
built itself into a delicious climax. When she grabbed his head and yanked up,
he lapped her juices and sucked them hard. She came with a bloodcurdling yell.
God, she’d needed that.

She stood up and walked away.

“What’re you doing, Marce?” His voice
sounded weak, vulnerable.

“I’m teaching you a motherfucking lesson,
that’s what,” she answered with her back to him.

Then she sat down at the table and began to
eat his untouched dinner.

“I’ll do you, but only if you tell me what
a great cook I am,” she said between forkfuls of broccoli casserole. “I will
come back and finish you off, I’ll blow your geek head off, but only if you tell
me how smart and sexy you think I am.”

“You’re nuts,” Jess said, his erection wilting.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Marce.”

“I’m tired of being your geek whore,” she
said.

He was pulling up his underpants, shaking
his head. She’d said whore, but it wasn’t what she’d meant. What she’d meant was
she was tired of being his geek love.

She slept on the living room couch. The
velveteen itched, but she needed to be downstairs, ready to act. She had to be
sure she was up and around before Jess came down in the morning.

Geek Love

First thing Monday
morning, Marcy clipped the camera onto Jess’s briefcase, crossing her fingers
he wouldn’t notice it there. The device was really small, but, if you looked
carefully, you couldn’t help but see it. She’d felt good, sticking it to him
like that on the dining room floor. Now she’d catch him in the act with the other
woman. Then he’d know why she’d turned against him. And he’d have to admit he
deserved it.

She was in the driveway retrieving the
newspaper when Jess walked out the front door.

He gave a wolf whistle and called out, “There
she is, my sweet-ass geek whore.”

He grinned and waved as he jumped in the
Jag. Weird. The guy seemed awfully bouncy for somebody whose wife had slapped
him down, then ditched him for a night on the couch.

He had the briefcase next to him on the passenger
seat. As he drove past, he blew her a kiss. Marcy snorted and shook her head.
She would never understand this man. Never.

~~~

Jess was whistling when he walked in the
house after work, briefcase in his hand and a gleam in his eye. He kissed her
full on the mouth while scooting his free hand between her thighs.

“Umm, I do like your new style, my little
geek whore,” he said. “Maybe we can finish where we left off last night.”

The day had been unbearably hot, so Marcy
was wearing a short rayon shift with nothing underneath. She laughed, but her
heart wasn’t in it. Why wasn’t he pissed off at her? Then she caught a whiff.
His sweat smelled vulgar, like an Italian restaurant relying on garlic rather
than finesse. He reeked of someone else, someone exotic. Had he spent time
today with the other woman?

Marcy’s stomach double-dipped, taking a
rollercoaster ride toward nausea. She swallowed hard, consoling herself with
the knowledge she could now check to see if her suspicions were correct.

Relieving her husband of his leather case,
Marcy said, “I’ll put this away while you go freshen up. We have some things to
attend to before dinner.”

She handed him a tumbler of scotch and
motioned to the stairs. He grinned and bounded up to the master suite,
whistling tunelessly.

The dirty motherfucker! How could he get it
on with her on the floor, riding her like a fucking rodeo bronco, then canter
off, straight between the legs of somebody else? How could he cheat on her,
then come home expecting a saucy round of make-up sex with his devoted wife?
Marcy’s head felt so hot she was sure she was emitting steam. Thank God for the
Spyware Shop.

When she heard Jess turn on the shower, she
slipped out the front door. The dusk was gradually darkening, and a crescent moon
hung low in the sky. A bird circled the telephone wires at the end of the
driveway, settling at last on the flat top of a creosote-soaked pole. It was
too dark to tell if it was her friend the horny cardinal.

Inducing a loud bleep, she unlocked Jess’s
car with the remote. Squatting gingerly, she groped around under the driver’s
seat. The recorder was gone! Marcy peered into the gloom of the back seat and
stifled a scream.

The digital recorder lay on the floor
behind the driver’s seat. Fully exposed! Had Jess noticed? Did it activate like
that while he was driving? Or had he discovered the gadget and tossed it there
himself?

Marcy snatched it up and dashed up the
front walk.

Back inside, she headed for Jess’s
briefcase. Miraculously, the little box was still clipped in place. Hopefully,
the camera had worked its spy magic and now held some information she could use
to get a better position in this game they appeared to be playing.

At her laptop in the kitchen alcove, Marcy
popped in the memory card for the audio. While she listened to the whirr of blank
tape, the whoosh of the upstairs shower reassured her she was alone. For the
moment. But she knew her time was limited to the fifteen minutes her husband
would need to wash off the smell of his pizza parlor girlfriend. Her hands were
shaking so much she had to clasp them together.

When Jess’s deep baritone filled the room,
Marcy lurched in her seat. She was at the built-in desk she used to do the
household bills. If he walked into the kitchen, that would be it. He’d know what
she was up to. They’d have to have it out right there, right then.

Listening to her husband’s prerecorded
voice, Marcy realized she was shaking all over. What she was about to hear
would change the course of her life. This was a turning point in her marriage
to Jess, and she felt scared. Scared to death. She did not want to lose Jess.
He was her life, her future. She loved him. He was a geek, but he was
her
geek. She wanted him to always be her geek.

Shaking her head to clear it, Marcy
reminded herself to suck up, be brave, face the facts: he was a liar, a cheat,
a home wrecker. Time to accept the truth and get on with her life. She lowered
the volume and leaned in to listen.

Apparently, Jess was on his cell phone,
talking with someone. She could hear what he was saying but the conversation
wasn’t making any sense. It was all geek to her. Plus, she couldn’t hear a word
from whomever he was speaking to because of traffic noise.

An ambulance screeched past, someone
honked, and Jess yelled, “Fuck you too, grandma.” And then, “Stupid women
drivers.”

Except for the all too common driving
commentary, Jess’s voice was muted. His phone conversation was garbled, most of
it impossible for her to decipher.

“You see how Nakamura played the
(something)? Like a seventeen hundred. But then he pulled it off. With that
(something or other), no less.”

Beep beep. Whoosh. Screech. Honk.
 
More swearing.

“I know. Tonight should be interesting. I
love when Gata (something something something).”

Marcy relaxed. Were they discussing
business associates, financial investors, jai alai? No matter, the conversation
sounded blessedly nonsexual.

“The usual time? We going naked?”

Shit.
 
Her stomach rolled, and her heart dropped
in with a hollow thud.

“I’m ready for you too, baby. Today’s the
day we (something something something, and something else, probably something very
vital). Yeah, you too.”

Her pulse was pounding in her ears when she
heard her husband say goodbye. Then the recorder stopped. The first file had
ended.

There was more, but that’s when the distant
sound of their all-surround multi-head shower stopped. Marcy knew she had no time
to download the micro memory card from the camera and watch whatever had been
recorded. She was keenly aware her husband would, at any moment, lope into the
kitchen, smelling of oatmeal soap. With a towel around his waist and her
missing panties on his mind. But she couldn’t stop now. She absolutely had to
see whom his
baby
was and what they were going to do when they got naked
together.

She traded out the SD card and
double-clicked on the icon. The file from the camera took a minute to download.
Marcy could hardly stand the wait. Had the gadget worked? She fast-forwarded
until the digital readout hit six p.m. Where was her husband every night from
six to eight? Working late like he claimed? Or in a love shack he’d secretly
rented in the city? Maybe in some luxury suite at the Marriott or the Ritz? Or
on his back in some young chick’s penthouse apartment, ganja-fueled dorm room,
or second-floor walkup?

She could hear him padding around on the
oak flooring upstairs, still whistling some pointless tune. Her bones felt hollow,
light, as if she might fly off the chair and float away into the summer night.

When she opened the file, the screen filled
with a hazy image. What a shitty camera, she could barely make out anything in
the picture! This pissed her off so much she wanted a refund. Then something
adjusted, either her eyes or the camera, and she could make out the lines of a
large desk. Jess’s desk. In the background were the diploma-filled walls of his
office in the city. The silver-edged back of a framed photo, probably the one
of the two of them in Rome on holiday two years earlier. Back when she loved him
and thought he loved her.

Their trip to Italy had been so incredible.
They’d had such a wonderful time, wandering the narrow winding streets,
stopping at friendly little bistros for tiny cups of espresso and warm pastries,
crystal goblets of robust Barolo, an endless supply of house Chianti served in
funky juice glasses. Their lovemaking had been continuous, the windows open to
the busy markets below, the sky a buffed blue. She’d gotten pregnant on that
trip. They’d both been so excited about their future.

None of it had worked out as she’d hoped.

The video was black and white and about
fifty shades of gray. Marcy braced herself, expecting the worst. Porno starring
geek guy? And prom queen, sugar baby escort girl, Miss Denmark, a sassy coed
with a passion for other women’s husbands? Her stomach twisted itself into a
double knot.

On the screen, the door opened and someone
fuzzy entered the office. Marcy’s heart raced, and her belly flipped. She would
have barfed right then, but her insides were so empty she felt like she’d been
vacuumed out. Evacuated of all substances other than pain.

“What’re you watching?”

Marcy jumped so high she tumbled out of the
chair. Recovering, she squared her shoulders, pressed the pause button, and
turned to face her husband.

His lovely eyes were less green and more
gray, their natural color when lenses were not in place. Without contacts, she doubted
he could see enough on her computer screen to grasp what she’d been up to. So
she could have stood up right then, lifting her cheery yellow dress over her
head, welcoming her husband into her arms, enfolding him in her embrace. She
could have opened herself to him and taken him deep inside. She could have
rocked him until he came with a scream of marital, coital exuberance. She could
have made her husband happy. That would have been the best defensive strategy.

But she didn’t make that move. Instead,
Marcy pressed the play button and said, “Explain this, motherfucker.”

On the screen, the blurry visitor moved
toward the camera. The person was holding a canvas case, a bag the size and shape
of a valise for a musical instrument. A bag that might contain a clarinet or
saxophone, something windy, long, and thin. Since there was no sound to
accompany the video, the person wavered in an alternate universe like a silent film
star. Were there sex toys in there, a short leather whip, tickler feathers, a
set of fur-lined handcuffs?

As the small suitcase was unzipped and
propped open in front of the camera lens, Marcy and Jess watched the close-up
of a pair of moving hands.

Big, hairy hands.

The kind of hands that would have to belong
to a big, hairy man.

Marcy gasped.

“What the heck? You filmed us?” Jess’s
voice was filled with awe.

He’d been leaning over her shoulder,
squinting and frowning. Now he reached over to press the stop button.

He turned on her and yelled, “That’s
unbelievable. You have no right!”

Marcy wiggled out of the chair. Her heart
rate was in the danger zone, her voice quivering when she yelled back at him.

“I have every right! I’m your wife!
Something’s wrong,
very
wrong. I had to find out what it was. I need to
know what’s happening to us.”

She stopped, gasped for breath, then
blurted, “Look me in the eye and tell me there’s nothing going on.”

He looked her in the eye. “Oh, Marce. You
don’t even know me, do you?”

He was wearing nothing but a fluffy white
bath towel wrapped around his narrow waist. His hairless chest did not ripple
with muscle, his flat belly did not display a six-pack of rock-solid abs. He
squinted at her, trying to see her expression through the haze of his myopia.
The man was right. She didn’t know him, would never know him.

They were standing so close she could smell
him. The garlicky odor filled her head and made her dizzy. And, to make things worse,
he suddenly started snickering.

The chicken she’d been roasting with
sun-dried tomatoes, artichokes, onions, and olive oil, was filling the room
with a competing, distinctly Venetian aroma. Still chuckling, Jess sniffed at
the air for a moment. His smile widened.

“You’re cooking my favorite—” he
began.

But Marcy jumped in and trounced him.

“Shut the fuck up! Don’t you dare change
the subject. What the—”

Before she could finish, he grabbed her
shoulders and moved her aside so he could plop down into the chair in front of
the computer.

“Make sure the chicken doesn’t burn. I’m fast-forwarding
so you can see what I’ve been up to. Maybe you’ll calm down once you see
exactly what I’ve been doing after work.”

While he fiddled with the keys, Marcy stood
her ground, watching the blur of high-speed images rush by on the screen. Fuck
the chicken, she wasn’t going to miss one second of video! Even if she had to
watch her husband having sex with a big, hairy man, she was going to keep her
eyes glued to the little movie she’d made of his secret life.