Geek Actually Season 1 Omnibus

by Cathy Yardley

  Taneesha’s heart sank. Sending her back to the same woman who hadn’t helped her the night before couldn’t be good. If the woman had lied about Cantrow, then she didn’t want to deal with Taneesha, and if she’d merely been mistaken about Cantrow’s availability, it was still going to be weird.

  “Go on back. Second door on the right,” Sweet Miss Syrup said, gesturing to the suite of offices behind her.

  “Thank you,” Taneesha said, holding in a sigh as she went past her.

  Marie Gold was an older woman, with dyed black hair and hands that looked older than her face. She wore a sand-colored pantsuit and shook Taneesha’s hand firmly, then gestured for her to take a seat in front of the desk. “Weren’t you here last night?”

  “I was. You told me to see Mr. Cantrow today, but he’s out,” Taneesha said, trying her best to sound friendly rather than confrontational.

  “Oh, right, sorry about that.” Marie Gold crossed her legs. “You’re still getting the offensive spam?”

  “It’s not spam,” Taneesha said. “It’s tweets, it’s texts.”

  “Unsolicited, unwanted messages? Isn’t that spam?” The woman cocked her head.

  “Spam is…” Man, where to start with this explanation? “We’re talking about death threats, here.”

  “Is this an ex-boyfriend who’s doing it?”

  “No. It’s a horde of random strangers on the Internet.”

  “Well, then, they’re probably harmless. Bored teenagers who think they’re hackers, right?”

  Taneesha felt her temperature rising. Was this woman being thick on purpose or was she really just ignorant? “They have my phone number.”

  “You’re sure it’s not an ex-boyfriend, then? If it’s a stalker, we can help you contact the police about it.”

  “This isn’t a single stalker. But they got my phone number somehow. They probably have my home address, too. And they know I work here. They’ve been saying they’ll complain to management about me, try to get me fired.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Because they’re a racist hate mob.” Taneesha couldn’t keep her voice from rising at that. “There are hate groups on the Internet, racist and sexist groups, who target women for online abuse. They get hold of your personal information and they try to ruin your life. It’s called doxing—they publish your address, phone number, where you work, so that the whole mob harasses you.”

  “Well, you seem to have a handle on the situation. Clearly you know much better than us what is going on. You don’t have a company-issued phone, do you?”

  “No, it’s my personal phone.”

  “Well, if you need to take the morning or afternoon off to go deal with getting it replaced, I’m sure your manager will understand that.” Marie Gold stood up. “I’ll alert building security to look for anyone suspicious if that’ll make you feel better.”

  If that’ll make me feel better? Not because it’s the protocol when an employee’s getting death threats?

  “Is that it? Are you… dismissing me?”

  “Do you have anything more to say? What did you do to provoke this attack?”

  Shit.

  If Taneesha told this woman the whole story about beating Steven to a sorry pulp in WoW, it was going to look like she’d brought this on herself. And then there would probably have to be some kind of grievance filed between her and Steven as coworkers, and who knew what kind of hell that might lead to in the working environment. Taking the morning off to get a new phone was sounding like a good suggestion after all.

  Taneesha stood, too. “Thank you for your time.” She said it too curtly for it to come out polite, but she was done. Totally and completely done.

  MICHELLE

  Michelle started a fresh round of coffee brewing and sat down with her laptop at the countertop breakfast nook. It was her favorite spot in the apartment. The counter bordered a kitchen so small only one person could be in it at a time, but aligned with the one sunny window in the place. She’d filled the inset window with plants—spider plants and miniature palms and other things that were hard to kill—a petite jungle. She’d already worked for two hours on this book, and the progress felt great. More than a hundred pages in.

  At the office I’d be lucky to have read ten by now. To get the focus she needed, she had to turn off the phone and Internet, close the Slack chat, and completely unplug. She felt a twinge of worry, wanting to check on Taneesha’s situation, but the only way to get this done was to ignore everyone—even friends and family—and the other demands of her job.

  She set a timer for twenty minutes and dove back in. When the timer rang she got up to pour some more coffee and turn her phone on to check for emergencies. There were no texts from Jamie. Good. Nothing from Aditi yet, either. If she hadn’t yet sent the think piece she’d promised yesterday, then it was no good trying to nag her for it now. The last thing Michelle wanted to do was make Aditi’s writer’s block worse. And they’d ended their last conversation so badly, Michelle wasn’t ready to wade back into those waters.

  She brushed her hair and wondered if she should do something with it for the party that night. Normally it hung straight and flat, and her two choices were to leave it down or pin it into a small bun. But if she put it in curlers now, there would be plenty of time for it to dry by party time. It was not completely a coincidence that she had picked today to work from home.

  A quick shower to wet her hair, and then just a few minutes to set a body wave with the pink foam curlers. While she was in the bedroom, she decided to lay out the things she was planning to wear. A black leather corset had come from eBay, velvet leggings and a cute matching mini-cardigan from Zulily, and a skater skirt from Amazon, of all places. And a nice, tall pair of black leather boots from Zappos. Yep. Dressed by the Internet. She laid all the clothes across the bed and then had to empty most of the underwear drawer onto the bed to find the black lace panties she knew she had. Guess it’s been a while since I wore them.

  The only part of tonight’s plan she hadn’t tested was the corset itself. It laced up the back but had hooks in the front, and she had watched three different YouTube videos about how to put one on by yourself. Well, that is, she had bookmarked three different videos that she hadn’t had time to watch yet.

  Couldn’t be harder than putting together those shelves from IKEA. That had turned out to be much easier to do by herself than with Ted’s “help.” Not that she’d expected a guy who could talk with equal ease about Shakespeare and Foucault and Maya Angelou would necessarily be handy with an Allen wrench, but she hadn’t expected him to be utterly useless, either.

  She stole a glance at the clock. She was way ahead of where she thought she’d be editing-wise by this time of the day. She could afford to spend a few more minutes making sure she would be ready to go with no mishaps at the last minute to derail her plans.

  Within minutes, she had the laptop on the bed and was skipping the corset video forward because hers had come pre-laced. “Putting on a corset properly is a two-person job,” the busty vlogger assured her, “but this technique will at least get you out the door if you’re a single gal. When you get to the party or the Renaissance faire or wherever you’re going, you’ll surely find other corset-wearing aficionados who can adjust you. In our next video we’ll go over what to do when it’s your turn to assist! But for now…”

  Fascinating. She’d always assumed lacing a corset was like tying a sneaker. You laced it from one end to the other and then tied a bow, right? But a corset was tied in the middle of the lacing, where the waist was narrowest, not at one end or the other.

  With it lying flat on the bed and the laces up, she adjusted the lacing and tied a double bow as instructed. Now for the moment of truth. She stripped off the tank top she’d put on with sweatpants after she got out of the shower and wrapped the corset around her middle. The two panels just about met at her belly button. Not bad for a first try! She sucked her tummy in as much as possible and got the fi
rst hook to catch.

  The second one, though, that one was a bitch. She kept a tight grip on the side panels and wrestled with it.

  One of the suggestions was to lie down on the floor and try it that way. She lowered herself to the rug at the foot of the bed and pulled as hard as she could on the side panels, grunting as she did.

  Then she froze. Was that the door? It sounded like a key turning the lock over…

  “Michelle? Are you h—?”

  Ted froze in the doorway of the bedroom, his eyes flicking across Michelle on the floor, the pink curlers in her hair, and the boots and lingerie strewn across the bed. He was still dressed for the office, his tie knotted tight and his coat draped over one arm. His mouth opened, then closed, then opened again, but he still hadn’t figured out what to say.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Michelle finally said, sitting up and holding the half-undone corset over her breasts. She felt heat rush to her face as a spike of absolute mortification staked her in the heart.

  “That… that’s what I should be asking you!”

  “I’m working from home today!”

  His voice rose in pitch. “As an escort?”

  That was it. The last straw. No explanations. She didn’t owe him any. He would never listen to logic anyway. She got to her feet and her voice dropped into full sub-zero ice queen territory. “Get. Out.”

  He backed into the kitchen but tried to unfluster himself. “I’m here to pick up some things I left behind. I told you I needed to at some point.”

  Oh, and you were going to just come by and do it when I wasn’t here so you could take whatever you wanted. “Get out.”

  “I’ll just—”

  She didn’t know where the power came from, but the next words came out a roar, like a dragon breathing fire. “Get the hell out, now!”

  “Right, I’ll just go,” he stuttered, hurrying to the apartment door and pulling it open.

  She stalked after him.

  “I’ll, um, text you next time, give you some warning—” He made a slightly panicked sound as he pulled the door closed behind him before she could get there.

  “Asshole,” she said through gritted teeth at the closed door as he turned the deadbolt from outside with his key. Time to have the super change that lock. Maybe he could even do it this afternoon. After she put some clothes back on.

  Michelle couldn’t stop a small smile from crossing her face. She was mortified, but there had been something satisfying about knocking Ted off balance like that, about making him crack his well-put-together facade.

  Fuck Ted.

  Concentrating on editing this afternoon was going to be a real challenge now. Michelle threw her sweats on, called the super, and then picked up her trusty Kindle. She was just getting to the chapter on canes and caning. Imagining Ted bent over and begging to be forgiven was a very compelling image right then.

  TANEESHA

  Taneesha sat in the mall food court with a smoothie, texting everyone important from her old phone. She’d settled on as innocuous a message as she could compose, something she could paste in time and time again without going into a massive explanation of the headache.

  Hey guys, bc of prank calls I had to get a new phone number. I’m turning this one off so only use the new one from now on: 555-827-9094.

  Look on the bright side, the woman at the Apple store had said. It’s a great excuse to get a new phone.

  Fingerprint unlock was seeming more like a necessity than a high-tech luxury all of a sudden.

  She sent the last text to the most recent addition in her address book: Diego.

  She was just trying to get her password right in Slack so she could update the Rebel Scum on everything when the old phone rang with the ringtone she had set for Bobby. “Hello, what do you think you’re—”

  “Neesha, what is going on? Prank calls?”

  “Excuse me, did you not just one second ago get a text from me saying not to use this number anymore?”

  “Oh, well, um.” He mumbled something unintelligible.

  Save me from little brothers… “Call the new one. You’ll be the first incoming call.”

  “All right.” He hung up and a moment later the other phone rang.

  Oh, we are changing that ring tone right now. “Yeah.”

  “So what is going on?” Her brother’s voice sounded concerned. “Seems a bit extreme to get a new phone number just because some joker’s getting his jollies?”

  “It’s not just one joker. It’s a whole crowd of idiots sharing my number on the Internet so they can harass me. You should see the texts I’m getting. I didn’t want Mom and Dad to freak out too much, but it’s pretty bad.”

  “What do you mean by ‘pretty bad’?”

  Taneesha sipped the smoothie through the straw but didn’t really taste it. “Oh, you know how it is. Death threats. Rape threats. The usual.”

  “The usual! That is not usual. People on Tumblr telling each other to go fuck a chainsaw over which Marvel movie is better is normal. Sending death threats to someone’s phone is not. Downplay it for the folks all you want, but holy shit. Not okay.”

  Taneesha sighed. “I know. But right now I don’t even know how seriously to take it. I’m keeping the phone in case I need to use the text record as evidence, but I’m not even sure if the police are going to care. I told them at work and they were like, we can’t help you with personal shit.”

  “Can’t imagine the police would be much help, either,” Bobby said. “Like, excuse me, ma’am, but what’s the problem here? Some teenage hacker in his mom’s basement texted you a nasty word? They can’t do shit about that, even if they give a shit.”

  “Yeah. But hear me out on this.” It seemed so surreal to be sitting in the middle of a mall, everything so utterly normal, and describing the haterade on the Internet. “Jerks online are mobbing me and they want me to get freaked out, right? So if I freak out, they win. Does that mean if I don’t get freaked out, I win? If I just laugh about them do I take their power away?”

  “Isn’t there some monster in D&D like that?”

  “Harry Potter, but yes.” Maybe there were boggarts in D&D too and she didn’t remember. Bobby had been the one who read all the manuals while she’d played with the probability tables. The math had been more interesting to her than the half-baked mythology. “They’re a bunch of whiny man-babies. They want attention most of all, I think.”

  “Maybe you’re right, then. They want you to freak out and get all your friends and family freaking out, too. Speaking of which, you better not tell Dad or our Army Ranger brother about the death threats or you know they’ll camp out on your doorstep with their guns.”

  Which’ll only make it worse. “I’m sure it’s all going to blow over,” she said, trying to convince herself as much as Bobby. “If I just lie low. I’ll get rid of my phone and then maybe delete my Twitter. I’ve hardly been reading it lately anyway.”

  “Coulda fooled me, judging by how often you retweet Emergency Kittens.”

  Taneesha liked that Bobby was taking her seriously but trying to keep the mood light.

  “There are probably kitten photos on Facebook, too,” she quipped. “I’ll get my fix that way.”

  “Probably.”

  “I’m heading back to the office now. I’ll text you when I get home.”

  She got up and walked toward the parking lot, feeling thoroughly unmotivated to return to work. Funny, that. Hey, girl, when was the last time you played hooky? She knew the perfect spot to do just that. Diego’s store. Just to say hey, she thought. Not going to drag him into all this bullshit.

  When she got there, she found the store empty of customers. Diego’s smile hit megawatt level when he realized who was walking in the door. “Taneesha!”

  She couldn’t help but smile back. It was nice to be wanted somewhere. “Hey, Diego. I was running an errand out of the office and thought I’d drop in. Is it always this quiet?”

  “The high scho
ol lets out at 2:30. It picks up fast in here after that.” He came out from behind the counter. “Are you hurrying back to the office or can I lure you into checking out a game? Nothing as long and involved as Settlers, of course.”

  She smiled, still feeling vindicated that an avowed tabletop gaming nerd like Diego shared her dislike of Settlers of Catan. She found herself wishing “lure you into checking out a game” was a euphemism, but Diego was, as usual, polite almost to a fault. The thought occurred to her that she could, for once, be the one to make a suggestive comment, or make the first move.

  But coming up with a good suggestive line that didn’t sound really stupid was hard. So she stuck to the subject at hand. “What did you have in mind?”

  “I just opened this new two-player card game called Thunder and Lightning. One player is Thor, one is Loki, and you battle with cards, kind of like you do in Magic the Gathering. Each one has different skills and strengths. I need someone to try it out with. Someone smart.”

  That dimple when he smiles! My uterus just did a flip, I swear. “I suppose one round couldn’t hurt.” And then I’ll go back to the office. Promise. “I’ll play on one condition.”

  “Name it,” he said.

  Maybe he just needed the right opportunity. Taneesha figured it was up to her to create one. “You come to my house to check out my vintage games collection.”

  “I’d love to,” he said. Had a hint of flirtatiousness crept into Diego’s smile or was that just wishful thinking?

  MICHELLE

  The fourth-floor walk-up wouldn’t have normally been a challenge, but in her new boots, Michelle found herself clinging to the banister as she climbed the stairs. Manhattan was full of old buildings like this, crammed with everything from offices to print shops to who knows what. This one had a camera and electronics shop on the ground floor, a plumbing supply company on the second floor, an industrial shop that smelled like paint stripper on the third floor, and on the fourth floor…