Geekus Interruptus (4 page)

Jess pressed pause and sat back in the
chair.

He looked up at her and said, “Marcy, meet
Ian.”

She leaned over his shoulder. The man on
the screen was grizzled, hunched, older than Jess. A big, hairy guy. Not
attractive in any way. He appeared to be cradling something in his hand. Jess
zoomed in to enlarge the image.

Ian was holding a chess piece. A white
queen. The chess piece was smooth, cool, impassive—like the pale, blonde
woman in Marcy’s dream.

Jess laughed softly. “Ian and I play chess
three times a week. At my office. When we’re supposedly working late. Instead,
we get together and play chess. Sometimes for money, sometimes naked. Which
means just for fun.”

He looked up at her, smiling sheepishly. “Ian’s
wife doesn’t like it when he’s not selling shoes, which is what he does for a living,
or home fixing the plumbing, or mowing the grass. I figured you wouldn’t like
me playing chess all the time either. But the thing is, Ian and I . . .”

He paused, then grinned.

“We’re in love.”

Her heart stopped. She felt the absence of
a steady pulse, the pulse of her life. The room darkened around her.

In that black hole moment, Jess added, “With
the game.”

Sputtering with relief and shock, Marcy
didn’t know what to say. Chess? He’d been playing
chess
? And lying to
her about it? What a total nerd!

“I didn’t think you’d understand why I want
to hang around with some old Russian guy and play a board game for hours at a time.
So I pretended I was doing other things. So I wouldn’t have to try to explain
how I feel.”

“How you feel? About what?” Marcy managed
to say.

Her throat was like flypaper. Her legs felt
rubbery.

“Chess,” Jess responded.

His eyes sparked, and his voice rose, like
he was about to break into song.

“I love it. Always have, ever since my dad
taught me to play when I was like five or six. I was good, Marcy. I could beat
the adults, so my parents got me a tutor. They let me play in tournaments. I
worked hard at the game until I was professionally ranked. Seventeen-fifty,
that’s my national rating. Which is pretty damn close to master level. Or so we
amateurs like to tell ourselves.”

He stood up and eased by her. “Shouldn’t I
turn off the oven?”

She nodded and sank onto the desk chair.
Chess? All this worry had been about him cheating on her with a bunch of pawns
and rooks?

His back was to her as he fiddled with the
stove and continued to explain his love affair. With chess.

“Marcy, chess is so awesome. It’s the
ultimate high. It’s intense. I get the biggest charge out of playing in
tournaments. It’s so damn tough, and so intellectually stimulating, you can’t imagine
the rush. All your brain cells are activated, and you sweat like a pig. While
sitting absolutely still for four, five, eight, ten hours. At a weekend tournament,
you can rack up twenty or more hours of chess. It’s fantastic.”

Which explained the way he smelled when he
arrived home. Not reeking of sex, but rank from the tension of competition and
high-stakes mental exertion. That was the odor: the garlicky smell of nervous
sweat.

He leaned against the stainless steel stove
for a moment, then moved away from the heat.

“As a kid, I won a few local tournaments and
traveled to some out of state. I entered as many as I could afford, even in
college. But I stopped playing around seven years ago. Because I wanted to
focus on my career, on establishing myself as an engineer and entrepreneur. And
then we met. And I wanted to focus on you.”

He smiled at her, even though Marcy was
sure she was just a big blur in his eyes. She looked away, embarrassed. What if
she’d gone ahead and fucked Peter? What if she’d left Jess, filed for divorce?
Over a misunderstanding about his lifelong secret passion. For chess, of all
things.

Jess continued, “I wanted to make
us
work, Marce. And I knew I had to really focus my energy if I wanted to make us some
serious money. Because that’s what you wanted.”

Marcy’s mouth dropped open. She couldn’t
believe he’d say such a thing. As if becoming filthy rich had been all her
idea. But she clamped her lips together and nodded, allowing him to continue.

He inserted the bottle opener in the
Prosecco she’d selected from the wine cooler an hour before.

“This is the thing about chess. It’s
incredibly time consuming. Hours disappear while you sit there like a statue,
brainstorming for the best move, looking for the traps waiting for you,
weighing all the tactics you could try, examining each of the avenues available
to you. You have to expand your mind so you can imagine the move after the move
after the move after the next move you make.”

He yanked at the cork until it popped free.

“And you have to study the game in order to
improve. You have to study
a lot.
“ He bent to smell the cork. “These
days, unlike when I was a kid, you can study chess with computer programs. And
you can play online. Anytime, day or night. So that’s what I’ve been doing.”

Cork in hand, he thumbed over his pale
shoulder in the direction of his home office. “In case you’ve been wondering. I’ve
been playing chess on a website that matches you up with players from all over
the world. It’s awesome, Marce.”

While he poured the sparkling wine into two
crystal glasses, she recalled the clock-like sounds she’d heard emanating from his
office. Digital timers, for when your turn to move a chess piece had ended. How
geeky the whole discussion had become. They were talking about chess moves
instead of an illicit love affair. Which explained why her legs had stopped
shaking and her pulse had slowed. Her stomach, however, still roiled.

Jess handed her a full glass of wine, and
she took a long draw on it.

“Honey, I resisted the desire, then I gave
in to it. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be deceptive. I didn’t want to hurt you.
I just wanted to follow my passion.”

She could relate to that. Who couldn’t? She
made herself swallow the wine.

Jess continued. “I just wish you played.
Chess, I mean. You’d understand me better. And I’ve been thinking. We’ve done
well, we’ve got savings, maybe we could relax a bit. I really don’t have to
keep working so hard. We could spend a good portion of our time traveling. To
chess tournaments. London, Paris. Saint Petersburg, Budapest. St. Louis, Las
Vegas. Rome! Think of what we could share.”

He watched her for a reaction to all he’d
revealed. His eyes glistened. He wanted her to play a role in his geek fantasy.
Which was so much better than replacing her with a Swedish model. Marcy had no
interest in chess. None. But she understood why his fantasy of indulging his
passion for chess included her. Or could, if she were open to it.

Marcy placed her glass on the desk next to
the laptop.

“My belly aches,” she said. “It’s been
bothering me a lot lately.”

Jess smiled.

“Really?” he said.

He sounded excited.

“Is it the same as last time?”

“What last time?”

How irritating he could be so amused by her
discomfort. Marcy cupped her abdomen. The wine had tasted weird, vile.

“When you were pregnant, remember? It
stated with a stomach ache, a real belly buster. Then the nausea. You were super
emotional too. Unstable, actually.”

He said this with a straight face.

“Me, unstable? I certainly don’t recall
that.”

They both smiled. Marcy reflected on what
she’d felt like during the brief time she’d been pregnant. That short period in
her life was vague, as blurry as the image of Ian and his white chess queen
still frozen on her computer screen.

She’d been happy though. She did remember
that.

Jess walked over and picked up her wine
glass.

“I’ll drink this. Just in case.”

When he lifted the glass to his lips, she
reached for him. With a deft tug, she loosened the towel around his waist. It
dropped to the black and white tile floor.

Jess placed the empty wine glass on the
desk and cupped his hand under her chin. He tilted her head up so she could see
his eyes. His beautiful green-gray eyes.

“I’m sorry I don’t treat you with more
respect. I’m sorry I don’t always make love to you the way you like it. But the
other night, I remembered how damn hard I fell for you. Your wildness, your sexy
love for me. I’m still crazy about you, Marcy Buenaventure Margate.”

When Marcy looked ahead a few moves, she
didn’t see herself playing chess with her husband. But she did see the two of
them traveling together, making love in hotel rooms between sightseeing jaunts.
Jess could indulge his passion for chess while she indulged some of her own, dining
out and shopping in some of the most exciting cities in the world. When she
envisioned their future, she saw Jess teaching their children to play chess. She
saw them both showing their little ones the tactics that work in life and some
of the best moves to be made. And, when she pictured the rest of their lives,
there was no place in it for flings with other people. Only trust and fidelity.

Marcy stood up and hugged her husband. For
good measure, she made a point of thrusting her hips against him while she kissed
his soft pink lips. He stuck his tongue deep in her mouth and swirled it
around, his hands fondling the crack in her ass.

“You’re not over the hill, baby,” she said.
“Not by a long shot.”

“Right now, I do feel like a younger man,”
he told her. “Except for the bruises on my back from your fuck tantrum last
night.”

She laughed, and he patted her rear
possessively. Like he meant it. Like he was promising more to come.

“Do you want to eat first, or should I just
mount you right now?” she asked.

He pointed at his erect penis. “The food
smells delicious, my geek whore. You are a great cook, my smart and sexy wife.
But I’m afraid dinner will have to wait. I’ve been walking around with blue
balls for twenty-four hours now. I need you, Marce.”

As Marcy reached for her husband, the smell
of roast chicken filled her head like a pesticide bomb. She gulped, trying not
to throw up. She was pregnant, all right. But nothing was going to stop her
from making love to her geek. And nothing ever would again.

~~~

Geekus Interruptus: it can happen to the
best of us. In this post-postmodern, super high-tech digital age, you can so easily
make a wrong move. In the blink of an eye, the flash of a breast, the click of
a mouse, you can find yourself checkmated. Imploding an awesome game with a
terrific opponent, and for the stupidest reasons. Due to a weak strategy, lack
of foresight, or the use of dumb tactics. Blunders made simply because you don’t
understand what makes the other guy tick.

In our nanosecond society, today’s lovers
need to be savvy, aware, cognizant of the facts. Geeks are the new gods, and
their love is oh-so-good. But our gods are not like us. They don’t think the
way we do. Geeks have their own set of rules, their own guilty pleasures.

So you might want to keep Marcy’s story in
mind as you make your way through the complex world of contemporary love. Take
some time to think ahead, figure out if you would be happy with a geek lover.
And if you do find yourself in geek love, remember what Marcy learned about her
husband—and herself. So that, if it ever comes up in your life, Geekus
Interruptus is merely a temporary blip on your screen.

The
End

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Originally from
Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan lives and writes and gets into trouble in South
Florida, where the men run guns and the women run after them.

Mickey is the
author of a number of e-book novellas. The cyber sci-fi romance
Dream Job
(2012) has been compared to The Matrix and the Twilight Zone.
Professional
Grievers
is a spicy romcom for the second chance crowd.
BabyShares
,
a financial crime romance, and
Me Go Mango
, a fun novella for the
over-forty romantic, are other titles by Mickey.

Bottom Drawer
Publications will soon release two new stories by Mickey.
Normal
, a sexy
novella about everyday marital discord and some very unusual solutions, and
Mickey’s new novel,
The Ghostwriters
.

Find Mickey at her website:

www.mickeyjcorrigan.com