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  GEEKOMANCY

  Michael R. Underwood

  Pocket Star Books

  New York London Toronto Sydney New Delhi

  Pocket Star Books

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Michael R. Underwood

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Pocket Star Books ebook edition July 2012

  POCKET STAR BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected].

  The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

  Designed by Kyle Kabel

  ISBN: 978-1-4516-9813-8

  The first one goes to Mom and Dad, who always believed

  Contents

  1. Did You Say BOOM!?

  2. Tunnels and Trollops

  3. As You Know, Bob

  4. A Study in Sherlock

  5. Blood and Cocoa

  6. Plato in the Dorkcave

  7. Mad Shopper What Shops at Midnight

  8. With This Ring, I Thee Pwn

  9. The Precious

  10. Suck It, Crystal Ball

  11. Revelation Station

  12. Marconi’s Nerdy Granddaughter

  13. Downtown Dogfight

  14. Wait for It . . .

  15. Aetheric Boogie

  16. Blue Stone Express

  17. Revelation Redux

  18. Did You Get the Name of That Truck?

  19. Be Vewy Vewy Quiet, We’re Hunting Cowboys

  20. Freytag’s Shotgun

  21. You Have Chosen Medical Masochism

  Epilogue: Shake It Out

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  GEEKOMANCY

  Chapter One

  Did You Say BOOM!?

  Café Xombi was nestled gently (read: “squashed improbably”) between a high-art gallery, which seemed to never have anyone in it but still managed to stay open, and the around-the-corner side of a bank.

  The owner-manager, Bryan Blin (Strength 14, Dexterity 11, Stamina 15, Will 15, IQ 16, and Charisma 14—Geek 6 / Barista 3 / Dad 4 / Entrepreneur 3), paid a premium for the location, just a half-block up a side street from one of the main drags in Pearson’s University District. Café Xombi was the city’s premier coffee shop/comic store/gamer hangout, and in a geek town like Pearson, that actually meant something.

  The formula was simple. The café served a normal assortment of coffee for the walk-ins as well as geek-themed coffee and treats to help it stand out. Additionally, its decor and staff fostered a social atmosphere to help convince customers to pick up that role-playing game book or graphic novel they’d been on the fence about buying for the last three weeks. It was a perfect geeky home-away-from-home.

  Rhiannon Anna Maria Reyes, (Strength 10, Dexterity 14, Stamina 12, Will 17, IQ 16, and Charisma 15—Geek 7 / Barista 3 / Screenwriter 2 / Gamer Girl 2) was Bryan’s secret weapon. Rhiannon (known to practically everyone as “Ree”) kept the café in fabulous baked goods, talked authoritatively about subjects from Aliens to Zork, and drew the attentions of countless lovelorn geeks.

  She got hit on, sure, but the guys were easy to let down, and no one had made a scene about it in a while. They came in, saw her across the room like they had just walked into a meet-cute, and then proceeded to try to cast her as their own Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

  Ree fit the bill—visually, at least. She wore thick glasses (being legally blind and all), had long black hair that she kept braided in a variety of styles (to keep it out of people’s lattes), and had the “ethnically indeterminate” look that came from the mix of her Irish and Puerto Rican heritage. Ree’s figure was more boyish than bombshell, though, despite her teenaged prayers to fill out a C-cup.

  In truth, Ree wasn’t anyone’s dream. She was a near-broke frustrated screenwriter who would rather just talk with a guy for an hour about the ideological condemnation of super heroes evident in Alan Moore’s comic work during the mid-to-late ’80s—without them going straight to imagining her naked.

  Café Xombi was a twenty-by-twenty front room, with a small prep and office area in the back and a basement accessible from the street. Nearly every inch of the front room not devoted to walking space was filled with something. The front half of the store was dominated by tightly-packed round tables and their corresponding chairs. A tall shelf of graphic novels lined one wall, matching shelves filled with RPG books and miniatures on the other side. A six-foot-tall shelf-on-wheels held the comics, currently pushed forward to allow Ree to move out into the seating area. Bryan had painted the walls with a mural, decked with planets, spaceships, super heroes, and java-bean alien monsters, to round out the look.

  As of eleven in the morning on this particular blustery Thursday, there had already been the normal AM rush of young techies and professionals stopping in for their triple mocha lattes and chocolate espresso breakfast bars and then . . . nothing.

  And for Ree, that nothing was scary.

  Taking a lap around the Internet on her phone, she was eager for distraction. Nothing useful in email, but she had three voicemails, including one from her dad.

  Not dealing with that now, she thought. She’d call him when she got home.

  The other messages were from Priya and Anya. Ree didn’t think she could handle the outpouring of support from her friends right now. She just had to lie low until her heart put itself back together. A burst of emotion bubbled up in her mind.

  Fuck you, Jay. “We’re not on the same path anymore,” my ass.

  Red crept into the corners of Ree’s vision, and she flailed mentally, trying to find something to do, something to keep from losing her shaky equilibrium.

  Ree looked over and saw Charlie, the other full-time cash-wrap monkey, straightening some comics and staring absently out the window. Ree squatted down and checked the food case, starting a mental list of what they’d need to bake to replenish the store.

  As she was counting the Mario 1-UP cookies, a theremin-tune door chime rang, signaling another customer. Ree looked up to see a vaguely familiar young man in a polo shirt and khakis. He was on the skinny side, with medium-brown hair, a soft jaw, and the start of laugh lines. Ree was sure she’d seen him in the café before, but she didn’t remember anything in particular about him other than that he was one of the shy ones.

  “Hello,” Ree said, but got no answer. The customer wove through the sea of tables silently and pulled an issue of Action Comics off the shelf, shifting his weight side-to-side as he read.

  Ree turned to Charlie, who had come back to the counter. Charlie French (Strength 13, Dexterity 13, Stamina 15, Will 15, IQ 16, and Charisma 14—G
eek 5 / Barista 2 / Social Media Ninja 4 / Trekker 2) was five-five, had sandy red-blond hair that was consistently a mess, and was in the top twenty for the “install a phone in my brain, please” wait-list.

  Ree asked, “You want to start bake prep or should I?”

  Charlie reached down to a coffee mug and drew out two d20s. Ree nodded and took one. Roll-offs solved nearly all trivial arguments at Café Xombi, per Bryan’s lead. Ree cupped the die in both hands, blew on it, and shook, warming up its inherent mojo. Charlie shook his d20 in one hand near his head, then threw. Ree rolled as well, and the dice kissed on the counter, Charlie’s nearly rolling off the far side. His read 13. Ree’s: 18.

  Charlie sighed, then knelt to fiddle with the music station, an iPod permanently plugged in to their PA. Bryan was eight months into a XM discounted-rate trial, but Charlie only baked to Weird Al. He queued up Running with Scissors and set to work.

  Ree slid around him and tried to get the customer’s attention. “Looking for anything in particular today?”

  The customer looked up briefly at Ree, opened his mouth as if to speak, then looked down again, his cheeks red.

  Make that “one of the really shy ones.”

  Ree waited for a response. A beat passed, and she said, “Let us know if you have any questions.”

  She waited another moment for the customer. He was unresponsive, immersed in the comic.

  Okay, whatever, she thought, nonplussed. Some folks just wanted to read in peace. The café wasn’t a library, but if she took to banishing customers for loitering and reading comics, they’d run out of customers pretty damn fast.

  Charlie made a sad-angry face at his phone as he picked up Ree’s bake list.

  Ree asked, “What’s up?”

  “Tweet linking to a news story. There’s been another suicide in town.”

  “That’s the second this month, isn’t it?”

  Charlie nodded. “I don’t know if these things are happening more or if I’m just psyching myself out by reading all of the news all of the time.”

  Ree put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Maybe you don’t need to follow every news outlet on the planet through Twitter.”

  “But . . .” Charlie said, then nodded. “Still a shame.”

  Ree nodded back at him, ducked down, and turned up the Weird Al a notch. “Maybe put down the phone for a while?”

  Charlie laughed, disappearing into the back for the construction phase of the baking. Ree heard the sound of the fridge and freezer opening as Charlie gathered culinary forces to wage delicious war.

  Ree killed time by cleaning the espresso machine and the counter, keeping an eye out for movement or indications of help-needing-ness from the silent reader. He eventually replaced the comic and left without a word.

  • • •

  Charlie clocked out at two, leaving Ree to woman the fort by herself.

  The alarm for the peanut butter chocolate d6 cupcakes went off, and Ree spun in place from the register to grab the robot-claw hot mitten and shimmy through the narrow behind-the-counter walkway to the oven. The lack of customer traffic gave Ree the chance to slide off her wobbly plateau of emotional stability right back into her least favorite, yet most frequent, train of thought: Jay.

  Jay. The man who had been, up until last Sunday, the love of her life, the guy she thought she might actually marry, against all odds. Instead, he announced that they’d “grown apart,” that he didn’t think they could make it better. And that there was this girl from work . . .

  And so Ree had spent each of the last three nights drinking heavily and trying to keep everyone else out of the splash zone of her self-destruction. Last night she’d drunk mojitos until Anya and Priya carried her home so Sandra could stay with her in the bathroom and hold her hair. Ree was, in retrospect, not doing so great.

  On top of that, yesterday she’d heard back from the friend of a friend in Pasadena who had pulled some strings and gotten her script, Orion Overdrive, in front of Damon Lindelof. No comments, no invitation to send more, just a “no thanks.” She’d spent a year writing and rewriting the script, trying to make something fun, feminist, and optimistic, but so far it had gotten even fewer nibbles than her far-less-awesome but very hook-y SpaghettiWesternCthulhu mashup, Shibboleth Showdown.

  Even with the one-two whammy of that rejection and Jay’s bombshell, she couldn’t miss work. So this morning, she had picked herself up off the floor, put on her big-girl pants, and dragged ass down to the café.

  Ree sighed and checked her hair to make sure it hadn’t spontaneously changed into an Emover.

  She set the cupcakes on the cooling rack under the counter and checked on the coffee. It had been on for two hours but was still hot enough to serve. Back at Big Corporate Coffee Land, they’d had strict regulations about coffee rotation, but Bryan wasn’t much of a stickler. They stuck close enough to health code regulations that the place had never gotten more than a warning.

  She looked around the empty room and felt the shadow of Jay creeping back in.

  This was going to take some intervention. If she was left by herself, alone with the cupcakes, the angst would run on repeat.

  She checked her texts.

  Sandra: I’ll be home at 6:30. I can make dinner, or we can go out. I hope things are ok at work.

  Priya: U ok? Sandra said you had a pretty bad night. Movies tonight?

  Anya: Call me anytime. Have laptop, will travel.

  Ree looked over her shoulder to check the cupcakes, then texted Anya: Can you come to the cafe?

  Three minutes later, Anya: What’s up?

  Ree: Tide-y Bowl of Emo.

  Anya: Got it. On my way.

  Ree distracted herself with more baking, despite the fact that there were no customers. The food she made today would still be good for Friday, which should be busier. Since Café Xombi didn’t believe in throwing out food if at all possible, anything left over after that would go home with the closer. Conveniently, Ree always made sure there were plenty of treats that she wouldn’t mind eating all weekend if need be.

  Hearing the theremin-tune motion detector, Ree looked up to see Anya Rostova (Strength 7, Dexterity 12, Stamina 15, Will 15, IQ 16, and Charisma 15—Musician 5 / Geek 2 / Scholar 3 / Opera Diva 2), wrapped in trendy jeans, a jacket, and one of the fabulous brocade scarves that Ree frequently plotted to steal from her but never quite managed to. Anya was Russian in the way that movies in the ’80s said Russians always must be: thick black hair, sharp features, and an enviably curvy (if short at five-three) figure.

  Ree coveted Anya’s curves sometimes, having inherited a fairly sticklike figure from her mother’s side of the family. Ree wore her hair long so she didn’t get mistaken for a boy. It mostly worked. Mostly.

  Anya, on the other hand, managed to look amazing every single time Ree saw her, which was impressive and somewhat frustrating, since as a doctoral student, she made even less than a comic shop lackey. But Anya was a diva-in-training, and fabulous was part of that job description.

  Ree’s own wardrobe consisted mostly of jeans, T-shirts, more jeans and T-shirts, a handful of skirts, her three “date outfits,” and a smattering of business-wear for her occasional bank-breaking trips down to L.A. to pitch producers or attend conferences to woo agents.

  “Step one: Can I get a chai?” Anya asked.

  Ree nodded and grabbed a mug off the top of the espresso machine. “Done. Step two?”

  “Step two happens when you’re done here, but step one and a half can be where I tell you about how crazy my show is.”

  Ree listened while on chai autopilot. Café Xombi used a chai concentrate, which made the drink comically easy to prepare. Since Anya had forsworn real dairy in her drinks, Ree started steaming some soy milk. Ree spoke up to be heard over the machine. “I do so love wallowing in the misfortune of others.”

  Anya cracked a smile. “It’s one of your best qualities.”

  “True story. Now spill.” Ree leaned over the counter
, chin resting on one fist.

  “So we’re doing Carmen, right?”

  Ree nodded. Since she’d met Anya, Ree’s opera knowledge had gone from 0 to no more than +4, but even she knew Carmen.

  “We’re doing it Steampunk-style, so the toreador is fighting a steam-bull, right?”

  Ree nodded. “Perfectly reasonable.”

  Anya continued. “And the director wants me to wear a corset so freaking tight, I can barely breathe. Then she yells at me when I can’t hold the notes.”

  Ree raised an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t she know that corsets do that? And that’s it—a corset? Don’t you at least get a clockwork arm or something?”

  Anya chuckled. “I get a fan. As Madame Wesselmann reminded us, ‘I performed the role of Papagena wearing a corset that brought my waist down to 18 inches—and we got rave reviews in Chicago.’ So I get to ‘suck it in.’ ”

  Ree made a sour face while giving a thumbs-down, and Anya nodded.

  “How was I supposed to know I should have been deforming my organs since I was twelve in order to properly function in my first operatic leading role?”

  “That’s really the kind of information they should put in your grad packet, at least, right?” Ree mimed a neutral voice-over tone: “ ‘As a part of the University of Pearson vocal performance program, here are some tips on how to best abuse your internal organs. Remember, organ failure is temporary, but glory is eternal!’ ”

  Anya laughed.

  At that particular moment, as Ree was happily settling into Listen-and-Support mode, a clear key-shift away from her post-breakup funk, the door burst open, hitting the near wall before the door chime could finish. Through the door lurched a scruffy man in a dirty black trench coat that Ree could have sworn was smoking. The man grabbed the door and slammed it behind him, muttering something under his breath. He was around six feet tall and looked somewhere between forty and fifty-five. He had a couple days’ growth of beard and, oddly, several bruises on his face. The biggest bruise swelled one of his Capital-G-Green eyes nearly shut.