Even though she was following in the wake of a bombshell, Leah got several offers of drinks and varyingly obvious pickup lines herself, which she tried to deflect without offending anyone and engaging just enough to get some leads. It’d been a while since she’d been to a gay club for anything other than an evening out without dudes trying to pick her up constantly. Leah placed herself at around a “2” on the Kinsey Scale, so she appreciated the view from all sides of the bar before Mallery settled up and whisked her off to bar number two.
———
Mallery adopted a Long Island accent as she slid into the cab, Leah following.
“If you want to be an agent, you need to learn how to read a story. The stories are all around us, right? So, you want to look for stories in progress, read the difference between a lack of sexual tension between people and the comfortable ease that settles in with a couple that’s been together for years.”
Mallery dug a compact out of her purse and set about touching up her makeup. Seeing from the side instead of from the front, Leah could tell she wasn’t actually applying anything. Just another part of the show for the cabbie.
“One of the big signs to look for is people being self-conscious, people who look and act like they’re lost at sea, off course, you know? Those are the ones that are worth studying. The next question to ask yourself is “What’s missing? Are they broken-hearted or just yearning? Where did their story go off track?
Mallery was playing around the edges, avoiding saying anything too blatantly weird, staying within the bounds of self-indulgent New York Arts People weird.
“This will do, driver.” Mallery tapped a manicured hand on the glass. She paid with crisp bills, then nodded to Leah to slide out on the passenger side as cabs and cars beeped and honked, threading and honking their way down the street. The official paperwork said the Genrenauts were privately funded, but Leah guessed they may be getting some government cash, too. King was not very forthcoming with answers on the subject, and when she asked anyone else, they told her to ask King.
PopBar stood just down the street, red neon and black broadcasting the promise of delight to a darkening street. Fall coats abounded in the block-long line to get in to the bar.
“Looks like we’re due for a wait,” Leah thumbed at the line.
“Oh, please.” Mallery passed Leah and walked straight to the bouncer, a tall Latino with an earpiece, a clipboard, and a tailored suit.
Leah caught a flash of a bill folding on the way between Mallery’s purse and the bouncer’s suitcoat, and the velvet rope opened magically. This earned them stares from the people in line. Some of appreciation, some of disgust.
Leah looked over her shoulder to the crowd behind them as they walked into the dim front hall, coat check on the right, music thumping from the left. “Do we get to throw money around like this on every mission?”
“They call them discretionary funds for a reason, my dear. This time, you look out for stories yourself. When you see a likely breach, I want you to tap me on the shoulder and lean in as if to say something, then tell me who and where. Let’s see how your instincts are.”
The interior of PopBar was more bistro than club, with tables and servers. The crowd was less edgy and less queer. Women sat on the interior spaces, straight down the line, with men on the outside, an assembly line of smartly-dressed couples at tables for two, some with appetizer plates, others just nursing drinks.
This wasn’t just any restaurant setup, though. The tables were numbered. In the server’s aisle by the row of numbered tables, a South Asian woman with a tight bun, a headset mic, and a slick blazer announced, “Time’s up.” The couples waved, shook, or sighed in relief as the men grabbed their drinks and slid down one setting, introducing themselves to the next woman in line.
“Speed dating, a prime locale for spotting people in broken stories.” Mallery once again made a beeline to the bar.
“How do we tell the people in broken stories from the regular lovelorn at the start of their stories?”
Mallery surveyed the speed daters. Leah zeroed in on the body language, the conversational flow, anything out of order.
“It’s different from someone at the start of their story—those folks are more likely to seem bland or listless. Someone with a broken story will be distracted, hesitant, off-balance. And if you’re lucky, they’ll look just a shade out of sync with the world around them. King says he explained that part. Any likely suspects?”
“The woman at seven isn’t having any of it,” Leah said, a gentle nod indicating a black woman with arms crossed, her eyes focused somewhere in the distance as a white man leaned forward, eyes on the woman’s neckline, swishing his drink and talking with a wolfish grin.
“Yeah, but I’d peg that more on the guy’s creeper look than anything else.”
“What about the guy at one?” The Middle-Eastern man at the end table wasn’t even looking at his momentary match. His focus was three tables down with the woman at four: white, hair pulled back, and librarian glasses offsetting a baby blue sweater.
“Good eye. They’ll finish in twenty minutes or so. Watch for other potential breaches. When the speed daters take a break, the participants will fill out their cards, and that’s when you’ll swing by to say hello to lovelorn number one and see if you can tease out the story about his bespectacled crush. Got it?”
“I’m not good at chatting guys up on my own, let alone with a covert purpose.”
“You could just lay into him, comedian-style.”
“That’s not likely to get me good answers either; he’d just bolt.”
“It would be funny,” Mallery said with a wink. “No, just ask him if he’s okay, joke about the speed dating format. The story should fall out pretty easy on its own, if you’re right about the breach. When someone’s story is broken here, they’re subconsciously looking for someone, anyone, to latch on to, to start another romance.”
Well, that’s not alarming at all, Leah thought, watching the awkward mark as his momentary match, a probably-Malaysian woman in a hijab, tried to carry the conversation.
Their drinks arrived, and Leah sipped ever so slowly at hers while Mallery worked the crowd. She moved more here than at the Red Rooster, the room more open. She walked the length of the bar, then turned and made her way back, setting her drink on the bar and picking up conversations one at a time with the singletons and their nursed drinks.
Leah watched her mark phone it in through three more speed dates, until he sat down at the table with the subject of his attention. The maybe-librarian gave a big sigh and buried her attention in the plate of appetizers before her. The man started talking, hands shaking, all false starts and clumsiness. He knocked over his own drink, spilling the wine on the woman’s lap. The woman shot up and slid out past him, jetting for the bathroom. The man followed after her for two steps, but the hostess stepped up to stop him with an authoritatively raised hand. He watched for a moment, then turned and almost jogged out the front door.
And this is where you go after him, Leah realized. Abandoning her drink, she left the bar, trying to work in stealth mode as best she could.
The man leaned over a newspaper stand, hands still shaking. He looked like he was about to hurl.
Chapter Three
Learning on the Job
“Are you okay?” Leah asked, voice cutting through the street sounds—the rubber-on-asphalt of cars, honking cabbies, and the clattering of shoes on concrete.
The man didn’t respond.
She stepped up to his side and leaned into his field of vision, repeating her question.
This time he noticed her, righting himself and crossing his arms as if he was holding in his fear and shame.
“I’m just a dolt.”
Leah shrugged. “I’ve done worse. Once, I had a date over to cook dinner together. Accidentally cracked an egg in my hands and dropped it all over his brand-new sneakers. And then, once I’d cleaned it off, I gave him a bloody nose when
I stood up and clocked him with my head. He didn’t call after that.”
A twinge of a smile flashed across the man’s mouth, and his body language loosened up.
Sadly, the story was 100% true.
“Whatever it is, I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Leah said. Remembering her mission, she added, “Do you need to talk about it? I’m happy to be a neutral party. I was always the confessional buddy for my friends in high school.” Which was true, but she hadn’t planned on saying it. She’d just switched into empathy mode and it’d come spilling out.
“I don’t want to bother you with it. It’s ridiculous,” he said, looking down at his own shoes.
Leah extended a hand. “I’m sure it’s not. I’m Leah.”
“Hossan,” he said, shaking her hand.
Hossan leaned on the newspaper stand, facing the street, looking away from the bar. “Sarah,” Hossan caught himself. “That’s her name, Sarah. She and I were designers working at Himalaya, perfecting their Also Bought algorithms. We started going out for drinks after work, and got to working on an algorithm for dating, wanting to use our skills for something better than selling people more useless crap.”
“So, we left and started Cliq, turning the algorithm to dating. We spent all of our time together, pulling twenty-hour days laying out the basic code to underlie the algorithm. It wasn’t long before we weren’t just coding together. That part, that was good.” Hossan blushed. “When we launched, companies came sniffing around almost immediately, with angel investments, promises, and expectations.”
The heartbroken man watched the street, buses and cars dancing their honk-tastic cha-cha. “Sarah wanted to keep the company pure, let it grow at its own rate, but I got blinded by the money; I wanted to take over the online dating world all at once. We started fighting over the business, and then over little, ridiculous stuff. It got worse over the next six months, even as the site was exploding and the offers came rolling in.”
Hossan pulled out a scribbled note on the back of a receipt. “Two weeks ago, she moved out of our apartment and left a note.”
Hossan handed it to Leah.
It read:
“Hossan,
I’m through. You can keep the damned company. Buy me out, and then go sell your soul around town all you want.
Sarah”
Leah looked to see that Hossan was staring up at the skyline and the clouded sky. “So, now I’m here, and I just fell on my face trying to make it right. I don’t even really care about the money. I just got locked into this competitive loop, trying to top everyone. I lost track of what made it special. And now I can’t say any of it. I look at her and all I can see is every wrong-headed thing I said when I was caught up in it all, and then I spilled my wine on her favorite sweater her dead aunt knitted for her, and made it all worse.”
Well, hell. Maybe I can fix this right now and we can be back before midnight! Leah put a hand on Hossan’s shoulder.
“I bet you that if you go back in there and say just what you told me, you’ll be fine. Take a long breath before you start, and speak slowly. She knows you; she’s got to know how you feel. The note tells me she’s obviously more hurt by what you said than anything else, which means you can go in there and make things right.”
“All I want to do is crawl inside a dark hole and forget.”
“How do you think Sarah feels? She made this amazing thing with you, and then you got caught up in the business, not the beauty. Forget Cliq and convince her you care about her more than the money and the fame and everything.”
This part came strangely easy. She had been the one her friends came to for help, since she’d always been the “funny one” in her group of friends, more often the third or fifth wheel than the leading lady in the romantic drama of the group.
Maybe that would come in handy this time.
Hossan looked back at the PopBar, drew himself to his full height, and walked back at the door, hands still shaking. Leah followed at a discreet distance, talking under her breath to Mallery.
“I’ve got Repentant Loverboy headed back in to make the Big Reconciliation.”
Mallery responded over the earpiece. “I heard. Brilliantly done. You’re a natural.”
“Helps that I’ve had some experience with romantic misadventure.”
“I could tell. Meet me at the bar and we’ll watch this play out.”
———
Mallery greeted Leah by holding out Leah’s mostly full amaretto sour, her other hand wrapped around a glass of red wine.
The speed dating crowd had broken out into a mingling period, couples reconnecting and expanding on their conversations. Sarah stood in a corner, shields up with crossed arms and face buried in her phone.
“It’s super-intrusive, but is there any way we can hear what they say?”
“We’d have to drop an omnidirectional mic with a power source somewhere nearby. Also, ten bucks says they make up.”
“This is my story fix. Why would I bet against myself?”
“If you’re right, I pay for the next round of drinks.”
Leah chuckled. “You’re already paying for drinks.”
“Work is paying for drinks. You pull this off, and I slap down my own hard-earned cash to celebrate. It’s a gesture; please take it in the manner it’s intended.”
“Sorry, of course.” Leah just hoped it wasn’t also some other kind of gesture. Workplace romance drama was exactly what she didn’t need in this new amazing job. There was too much going on in her day-to-day to get distracted by hot coworkers, bombshell dress or no.
Leah focused on the couple in the corner.
Hossan’s hands were shaking, but he kept solid eye contact with Sarah. He wasn’t boxing her in, either. She had room to get out but wasn’t even eyeing an escape, looking for help. They were really talking, and so far, there was no more spilling or klutzy ridiculousness.
Sarah set her drink down and took Hossan’s trembling hand. Tension bled out of him and the couple closed in to kiss.
“Yes!” Leah said more than a little too loud for the bar’s average volume. Apparently, everyone’s attention was on the couple in the corner, and she got away with it.
Mallery turned to the bar. “Can you please send a bottle of champagne to the couple in the corner, and another round for us, please?”
“So, is that it?” Leah asked, heart racing.
“I hope so. We’ll have to wait an hour or so and take readings again. There might be multiple breaches, or this might have been a story that was supposed to end badly, and maybe we’ve made things worse. Rom-Com can be a tricky region if you don’t peg the breach right away—it’s not like Crime World, where a breach means that the wrong people are dead. But the impact back home is just as bad. A while back, we—” Mallery stopped, interrupting herself. “Not literally we, but the organization we bungled a mission here by getting the wrong people together, it led to that insidious ‘fifty percent of marriages end in divorce’ meme back on our world.”
Leah shuddered. She’d heard that statistic from more than one would-be significant other when they blew off her attempts to start a define-the-relationship talk. “How can we make things worse by making a happy ending?”
“Not all romantic comedies end in a happily-ever-after.”
“Yeah, but like one percent, right?” Leah said. “I can think of about two in the last fifteen years.”
“It’s very rare, which is why I had you go for it. Let’s hope this was the breach. Missions don’t tend to go this easy. Especially not this year. More breaches and worse. It’s like El Niño for making our job a pain in the ass.”
Leah peeked at the couple. Awkwardly adorable, they were perched half-on a wide bar stool, totally wrapped up in one another. She flashed back to her own relationships, to foolishly patterning her life off of Rom-Coms for a semester, and the montage of heartbreak that had led to. She was probably too young to be jaded about relationships, but she was well on her way. But that did
n’t stop her from enjoying every second they spent in this world so focused on people finding love.
“Yeah, King and folks read me in about the storms and the breach rate. Any idea of why things have gotten harder?”
Mallery finished off her drink and picked up her backup, sliding Leah’s new round over to her. “That’s the question that’s making the High Council twitchy and is driving Ops up the wall. Leading theories at the top are that this is the interdimensional equivalent of El Niño or a meteor shower, some kind of convergence or confluence of forces that we can’t adequately read, accumulating in a way that increases dimensional instability.”
“So, basically, ‘We don’t know; maybe weather?’”
Mallery shrugged. “That’s for Ops and the Council to figure out. We’re just the story plumbers.”
“That makes it way less glamorous than our current fancy-outfit-wearing, cocktail-sipping existence would indicate.”
“Oh, it gets far worse than this. Romance World tends to be the best, since the chances of gross bodily harm are pretty low. Though there was that brief crossover with Fantasyland where there were as many spells cast and dragons fought as there were long walks through gardens.”
“Crossover?” Leah asked. “There’s nothing in the documentation that talks about crossovers.”
“Council regulations. They say crossovers are so infrequent as to be not worth putting into the official material. I’d have thought that King would have told you about those by now.” The Genrenauts High Council was the founders and directors of the organization, which had bases all around the world. Of their team, only King ever talked to the Council, which suited Leah just fine. They sounded like a bunch of jerks, to be honest.
Leah took a sip of her drink. “They might have. My brain has gotten so full it spilled at least three times so far.”
“Do I ever know that feeling.” Mallery peeked at the couple in the corner. “Our work here is done. I’ll leave behind a sensor to collect the readings. Do you want to hit the third bar to relax out the night, or turn in for an early day tomorrow, should your marvelous story fix turn out to not be the patch we needed?”
The Cupid Reconciliation Genrenauts Episode Three Page 3
