Erotic Refugees

by Paddy Kelly

  “Plus we've nailed the flow through the rating and search pages,” Rob added. “Nice and intuitive. And on the first page ye now get a feed with the most interesting profiles, the ones with the most visits or the best tits or whatever. Oh, and the register page is now really simple with only three fields to fill in. So just thirty seconds and the account is open. In general, I'd say no worries!”

  “Pardon me,” Eoin said, politely putting his hand up. “I've got a worry. I went to lunch with Alice and her lawyer friend and she told me some things. Wait, let me find it.” He flipped though his notebook to locate the right page. “She said, as long as we don't directly use material copied from other sites, we should be okay. But if it can be shown that we're encouraging users of our site to copy stuff from, let's say, Diamond Date, then things could get very messy for us.”

  “But could they do it?” Rob said. “Would all the dating sites be able to shut us down?”

  “Maybe not,” Eoin said. “Diamond Date might actually like the idea, since it shines some publicity on them. On the other hand, they might hate it and decide to make trouble. Plus the users on Diamond Date will probably not be happy if they find about it, and might kick up a racket.”

  Milly lifted her pint of cider and stared into it, watching the bubbles as they detached from the wall of glass and streamed upwards. “That's why we shouldn't link directly to the dating sites we use. They'll be able to track where incoming links are coming from. We'll have to give the link to the dating profiles as a text and ask out users to copy and paste it into a new tab.”

  “Fair enough,” Rob said. “Although that throws the whole 'easy to use' thing out the window.”

  “Better that than legal trouble,” Milly said. “And we have to be a bit selective about who we let in for the testing. I mean, we don't want word getting out to Diamond Date again and have them muscle their way in—”

  “Won't be a problem,” Rob said. “That leak's been plugged. No more news will be makin' its way to Diamond Date.”

  Milly turned to him. “You're sure?”

  “I'm sayin' it, aren't I? The Kajsa bridge has been well and truly bloody burned. Do ye want it in writing or what?”

  Milly looked at him curiously. “Sure Rob, if you say so.” She pulled open a packet of crisps and offered them around. “And we're sticking with the name Dating Dirt?”

  “I still like it,” Eoin said. “And the dirt gives it a gritty edge, makes it feels illegal and nasty. That's good for the image. Plus we can work the concept of dirt into the interface. What about Facebook? Shouldn't we do something there?”

  Rob shook his head. “Why not just rent the moon and slap a big fucking banner on it? No, we have to keep this quiet while we're testing. Just find some reliable people and get them to sign up. We'll have to add profiles so it won't be empty when the first people start looking around. Alice can maybe help us there—”

  “Rob,” Eoin interrupted. “Isn't that what's-her-name, your old girlfriend?” Rob turned his head slightly and caught a glance of the waitress who was wiping a table behind them.

  “Yip,” he muttered. “That's Helena. Don't make a mess on the table, is all I'm sayin', because you'll be cleaning it up yerself.”

  Milly shook her head in awe. “You have bodies stashed in every corner, don't you Rob? Maybe she could be a beta tester, I'm sure she has lots of fun things to say about your dating profile!”

  Rob grinned. “Stick to the knitting, funny lady, cos yer jokes are shite.”

  Eoin ignored them and flipped to another page of his notebook.

  “Right, so the timetable is the following. First we finish the major functions, and that's done by the end of August. Then we start filling it up with content ourselves so the testers have something to play with. Done by mid-September. We rope in people to be our testers, and let them in, when? October first? Anything else?”

  “Anything else?” Rob said. “The launch party, man!”

  “Oh right. Milly, what do you have for us on that?”

  Milly dug a printed page from her bag and flattened it out.

  “I talked to my friend Alma. She runs the booking and she said it'll be cheapest on a weekday night. There's space for up to a hundred people and it'll cost us a few thousand crowns. And then there's the freebies, drinks, snacks, computer hire and so on. I'd say the total looks like twelve or fifteen thousand.”

  “Bugger,” Rob said. “So who's selling an organ?”

  “I've got it covered,” Eoin said. “I've sent in the application for the start-your-own-business grant. And I'm registering the company. We also need to write some agreements about how we share the costs and the profits, if we ever see any. Necessary steps so we don't end up killing each other if this takes off.”

  “Sweet,” Rob said. “So when's the big day?”

  “Later than you'd expect,” Milly said. “The worst thing would be to plan a launch party and then have nothing to launch. I say November is a good bet. Send me your suggestions.”

  “And then directly after that we launch the thing properly?”

  “Before, probably,” Eoin said. “We want it to be working when we open it officially for the public, with no serious issues.”

  “And,” Milly said, “my server has a pretty fat line. I host the knitted art site from there and they pay for the connection. No big traffic on that though, so as long as we're not talking a million hits a day, we should be good to go for now.”

  Rob nodded. “Right, so basically we have three months to get everything up and running. And in the meantime we'll have to shell out fifteen thousand until Eoin gets the paperwork through.”

  “Not right away,” Milly said, “but yeah, pretty soon.” She peered into her empty glass. “Looks like my round. So what can I interest you boys in? Champagne on the company budget?”

  “Are ye bloody kiddin' me? When we're already fifteen grand in the hole? I don't think so.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Three ice-waters then. And I'll tell them to use the recycled ice.” She winked and headed for the bar.

  “Oh alright then,” Rob called after her. “Three pints for fuck's sake. But this is the very last time. From now on it's just gruel and porridge!”

  “Gruel is porridge, Rob,” Eoin said.

  “Oh.” Rob nodded thoughtfully. “Well that'll make it easier then. Won't it?”

  Chapter 32

  Rob woke one Saturday morning and realised three things.

  One, that it was already October and he had less than six short weeks to make his fortune or else sell his soul to an employer.

  Two, that the strange wart-like lump on his small toe wasn't going away by itself, no matter how hard or often he glared at it.

  And three … hmm, there was a third thing, some fuzzy item that skittered around the periphery of his mind. But it just wouldn't surface.

  Rob yawned. No matter, it would come to him eventually.

  He rolled out of bed and scratched his stubbly cheek. His bathrobe was waiting on his laundry chair so he pulled it on. After that he stumbled into the kitchen and turned on the kettle, as he continued to ponder.

  Maybe he'd missed a washing time, could that be it? He was pretty sure it wasn't, but maybe he'd booked one while drunk. But no, it didn't feel like that. It was something else.

  He sloped into the bathroom and brushed his teeth. Was it an interview? No damn it, it was Saturday, and anyway he hadn't applied for a real job in months. An appointment with a hairdresser then? Dentist? Some hot girl? No, nope, and he wished. He rinsed the toothbrush, stuck it back on its rack and returned to the kitchen.

  He flipped open his laptop and spooned some instant coffee into a mug. As he stirred the brown lumps into the water he stared at the dour autumn morning that was on offer outside his window. He turned back to the computer and moved his attention down to the task bar where he noticed the clock. He frowned.

  That was it, something to do with the clock. The clock was important. Or, more
to the point, something to do with the numbers on the clock was important…

  “Oh bugger and shite!” He shoved back the chair and stood up so fast he became light-headed. It was only bloody Karen! She was coming to town for two weeks to help finalise the site and help out with the launch party. And he was supposed to meet her in approximately—he leaned over and checked the clock again—twelve minutes ago!

  Rob took stock. He could still make it within the accepted limits of lateness. Maybe Karen was running late herself and wouldn't notice. He hunted around for his mobile and found it after a whole lot of swearing. The sound was off, and there were six missed calls and four messages blinking for his attention.

  Rob groaned, and lunged for his clothes. Three minutes after that, wearing yesterday's underwear and no socks, he was dashing out the door as his coffee sat abandoned and slowly cooling in the empty kitchen behind him.

  “So this is where you live?” Karen said as she kicked her bag into a corner and slid her feet from her boots.

  “Here? Nah, I don't live here, this is just my weekend place. When I'm not stayin' on the yacht. Or in the castle. Or on the bloody space station.”

  Karen gave him a pitying look. She was wearing less black than the last time Rob had seen her, and her makeup was fairly minimal, but the goth thing clearly hadn't just been a phase. It was still there, just more subdued. Rob didn't approve, exactly, but he was at least happy there was a bit less to disapprove of.

  “Well I suppose yer not metropolitan enough to say no to a cup of tea?”

  “Is the Pope a Catholic? Actually”—she paused to consider—“that would mean no tea. Or would it?” She waved a hand. “Whatever answer brings me tea, that’s my answer.”

  Rob got to work. Boiling water for tea was, for an Irishman, a reflex second only to breathing. “So,” he said from the kitchen, “if the mother was to call, what complicated ball of a lie would ye like me to tell her?”

  “You can stop worrying about that, because I told her. Yesterday in fact, and my ears are still ringing.”

  “Oh,” Rob said. “Good then. Better a month late than never I suppose. So I can be expecting a call from her any minute now to have my own ears chewed off?”

  “I wouldn't doubt it. She knows I'll be here this week. I told her I made you lie for me, if it's any help.”

  “Probably not,” Rob said as he appeared carrying two fat mugs. “She'll be like a badger biting' a boot, she won't end that phone call until she hears a bone crack.”

  Karen took the tea that was offered. “You'll survive. We're paying our own bills now so there's not much she can do, besides the guilt.” She tasted her tea. “So, not a bad place you have. I just wonder where you were planning to put me, back when you said I could live here.”

  Rob sat down on a chair that was mostly hidden under a pile of shirts. “Oh I was just planning to shack up with my neighbour so ye'd have the whole place to yourself.”

  Karen scratched her ear. “Seriously?”

  “Of bloody course not! There's a fold-out bed I went and bought specially. Dragged it across town, so I did.”

  “My hero. So what's the plan for today, some sightseeing?”

  “Sights, is it? Ye saw plenty sights on the way over, that'll have to do until tomorrow. Eoin's coming here later, and it's down to work. Twelve days isn't much time, and we have the whole bloody party to fix too.” He handed her a sheet of paper. “Here, Eoin's summary of our progress. As ye can see, we're pretty much on schedule. The beta testers have been working like mad things.”

  Karen scanned the list. “You know them all, these beta testers? I mean, there's no chance of a leak, like that girl who messed it up last time? You sure there's no way she could find out and hurt us again?”

  “Shite Karen, yer worse than Eoin now!” Rob's raised his voice without really meaning to. “Course she doesn't, I haven't seen her in months, and I don't plan to either. So drop it, yeah?”

  “Well forgive me for asking. It's just I am doing quite a bit of work for this, and I don't want some disgruntled ex of yours scuttling the boat, do I?”

  “Well she won't.” Rob shoved a biscuit at her. “And to be honest I'd prefer we didn't talk about Kajsa.”

  Karen ignored the biscuit and leaned closer, studying her brother in a way he found very uncomfortable. Then her face broke into a smile.

  “No way Rob! You're way into her, aren't you? This Kajsa's completely boiling your spuds!”

  “Course I'm bloody not, what are ye on about?”

  Karen crossed one black-and-white striped leg over the other and gave him the full benefit of her eye-liner gaze.

  “Rob, I could probably count the number of times you lied to me on two hands. You were always shite at it. Even when you thought you'd gotten away with it, I still knew. So just drop the whole uh-I-dunno and tell your sister what she's after, like a good lad.”

  Rob fished a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and shoved one in his mouth. He picked up the lighter and turned it over in his hands, staring at it while the cigarette hung there unlit.

  “All right then. Not that it'll help, but fine.”

  He told her the whole sordid story—the late-night messages, the lunchtime sex, his fear of being seen with her, the gnawing guilt and the running away. He ended his tale with the time he saw her and Some Guy in the local shop and what that had done to his already swirly head. Karen sighed when he was finished and patted him on the hand.

  “The poor boy. He doesn't realise how much he likes the girl until she's thrown him out for being an arsehole.”

  Rob nodded. He felt ridiculously relieved to have actually told somebody. “Well, when it comes down to it, it was probably the right thing to do, wasn't it? Not much point if the girl's going to smash all yer hard work by telling her bloody brother all yer secrets.”

  “Agreed,” Karen said. She raised a finger. “However. You don't know for sure it was Kajsa, do you?”

  “Of course it was bloody her, who else could it be?”

  “I'm just saying you're not a hundred percent. I mean, have you checked this brother of hers on Facebook? Maybe somebody else you know has a connection to him.”

  “My old job blocked Facebook,” Rob said with a sour look. “So I never really got into it. And anyway, why would I want to? I wouldn't look at hundreds of bloody baby photos in real life, so why would I do it online?”

  “No Rob, you're missing the point. Facebook is for checking out who's single, and who's into who. You know, cyber-stalking, on a massive scale!”

  Rob looked doubtful. He nodded towards the kitchen. “So show me then. Work your magic on Kajsa and I'll believe you.”

  They relocated to Rob's workplace in the kitchen and Karen watched as he logged in. She turned to him with a look of deep amusement.

  “Rob, seriously … you have fifteen friends? Fifteen? And you worked on the web for how many years?”

  “Less grief and more work from you, thanks. Now show me what to do here. Should I start with Kajsa? I don't have her as a friend. Maybe I can find her. Let’s see, where do I write…”

  “Oh here, for God's sake, give me that chair. What's her full name?”

  “Kajsa Jemte.” He spelled it out and Karen typed it in. “This is her? Okay, we can't see her wall so we don't know if that guy is posting to it. And we can't see if she's listed as single as not. She's cute though. Sexy lips.”

  “Mmm,” Rob said.

  “But we can see her friends list. Here, this must be her brother, Linus Jemte, so we go to him and have a look. Whoa, six hundred friends? Tosser, nobody has that many friends. Anything above two-fifty and you're just taking the piss. Anyway let's have a poke around in his friends and see what we find, shall we?”

  She scrolled through the list and Rob watched until his eyes started to glaze over with boredom. Then, about halfway down, his hand shot out.

  “Wait, go back, the one before. Yeah there, that one.”

  He leane
d closed to the screen and squinted at the photo.

  “Bloody hell, it is.”

  Karen pulled her chair closer. “Who is it bro?”

  Rob sat back in his chair, his thoughts swirling. “That one there, Helena Svanqvist. I kind of saw her for a month or two, right before Kajsa. Works at the Bishop's Arms and still won't talk to me. But that's just too bloody weird. I mean, everybody can't just know everybody else like that. It's a big city, it's too bloody convenient…”

  “Well think bro. How did you meet Kajsa?”

  Rob thought about it and his eyes grew wide as something occurred to him. “Oh crap”. He lit his cigarette. “I remember now. Linus had a birthday bash last summer, at the bar. Helena had fixed it for him, and I was kind of seeing her at the time so I went along. Kajsa was there and I got talking to her. I got her number, and well, you know…”

  “Alright,” Karen said. “Progress! So you met Kajsa through Helena? You’re telling me that you put this Helena in the position of losing her boyfriend to somebody she knew?”

  “I suppose. I wasn't really her boyfriend though—”

  “Well damn it, it doesn't matter how it really was! If she thought you were her boyfriend then that's what you were. No wonder the girl's so pissed at you.”

  “Oh shite.” A thought occurred to Rob. His mouth gaped and the cigarette dangled from his lip. “We've been talkin' about our projects in the Bishop's Arms, and Helena’s been there too, listenin' to every word. She wouldn't though. Would she?”

  “She might. The question is which of your two jilted women is feeding your secrets to this guy Linus? Is Kajsa or Helena the bad egg?”

  Rob thought about it. “There's one easy way to find out. We sit around the Bishop's Arms and talk about when and where the party is, so Helena can't miss it. And we mention Diamond Date a lot, and loud. Make it really obvious. And then, if they come after us to stop us, we'll know it was her, won't we?”