by Jade Bitters
“Romeo! My friend! Romeo! Romeo!” called Ben, who had had enough desserts and drinks to turn into something actually resembling a fun human being. He knocked hard on the repurposed barn wood door. God, this apartment lacked a cohesive aesthetic: it was all just a hipster’s wet dream. Exposed. Fucking. Brick.
At least Romeo had her name: Juliet, sweet Juliet. He opened his company issued laptop and Googled her and Thisbia and found her GitHub profile on the first page of results. She was in the engineering department? And she had a ton of interesting applets available on her personal website, linked in the GitHub profile, ranging from small games to actually useful engineering utilities that had millions of views and as many uses. She wasn’t just some script kiddie: programming in Perl, Objective C, Java, and Ruby on Rails among others, she was the real deal, the kind of intern that was probably taking master’s classes on the side, that was guaranteed a full time position at Thisbia after graduation. Beautiful and smart? She was the real deal.
He searched harder, but there wasn’t any stuff publicly available past two years ago...or privately, for that matter. No Twitter, no Facebook, no Instagram: it was like she hadn’t had a social life at all, ever, or at least, not one online, because when he Googled her GitHub username, all he found were more links to her GitHub on other sites. For someone who had only been in the tech world for two years, her portfolio was extremely impressive, and apparently, he hadn’t been the only one that noticed. He had so many questions for her now, about everything from programming languages to paradigms, and he had to ask those questions to her in person.
“He’s a smart kid, so I bet he’s slipped into his room, to go to bed,” said Mark, who had had equally as much to drink, leaning against the wall opposite of Romeo’s door. He looked over Ben: it was like they’d grown years older all of a sudden. It was like looking in a mirror after getting drunk and realizing just how drunk you were, but regarding age, with friends. They’d been through so much together, and as long as they could help Romeo through the summer, they’d be sitting pretty. Romeo was their last challenge before they could retire early and live the high life...for maybe all over a year, and pivot the faux-retirement into a sabbatical after the fact, begging Caliban for their jobs back, and of course, getting them back, as well as stern warnings. That had always been their lifestyle: working hard for a few years and fucking off for a few months to a year at a time.
Romeo looked through his closet: would she recognize him in casual clothes? He laid out a pair of dark black jeans, a charcoal V-neck shirt, and a black hoodie on his bed. He didn’t want to go overboard and look like a doofus, but he didn’t want her to think he was just some slob. He sat on the bed in only his boxers as he rolled the worn business card in his hands: “Amy Buttons, Human Resources, Thisbia”, but on the back was an address and a phone number, but he couldn’t just call her. He had to see her that night. He couldn’t waste hours texting her when she was so close.
“He went this way, into his room, so bring him out, Mark!” ordered Ben, as if they were really on the job and Ben could still give Mark orders. He switched places with Mark and leaned against the wall, bending his knees and shifting to sit on the floors, freshly cleaned by the biweekly maid service the day before.
Romeo changed into the fresh clothes and looked himself over in the mirror. Ideally, he would’ve had time to shower, but love didn’t have time to wait. He picked up his phone and entered the address into Google Maps: she only lived seven blocks away, seven blocks too far but better than seven cities or states or time zones away.
Mark laughed and knocked at the door. “I’ll bring him out as if I were summoning a ghost,” promised Mark. “Romeo! Crazy kid! Dreamer! Lover! Show yourself or at least give out a sigh. Say at least one sappy thing, and I’ll be happy. Just say, ‘Fucking A’. Just say, ‘love’ and ‘beauty”. Say a word about love, or her blind son lust, the one who shoots barbed arrows into hearts, in legends – Ben, Romeo doesn’t hear us, he hasn’t moved. The dumbass robot is dead, but we’ve got to restart him – I order you out here in the name of Roxanne’s deep brown eyes, her high cheekbones and lips as red as any Ruby, on Rails or otherwise, her tiny feet and long legs, her thick thighs and that stuff between those thighs. In the name of all that I have mentioned, I order you: sudo leave your room, Romeo.”
“If he hears you, he’ll be pissed,” said Ben with a giggle, a damn giggle. This was the reason he didn’t day drink at work, or during company lunches: he turned into a boy, and damn it, he was a man, a man with composure...at least until his vacations with Mark.
“What I’m saying can’t piss him off,” said Mark. “He’d be angry if I brought over one of the many, many fine women that San Francisco has to offer, the girls who want to offer themselves to him and his bed – that’s what would piss him off. The things I’ve said are all right and true. All I’ve done is say the name of the one he loves, to bring him out of his damn room.” Mark banged the door again but Romeo didn’t answer. Maybe the kid had fallen asleep.
Romeo resisted the urge to open the door and go out and correct Mark. What did he know about love, or about Romeo? There was no other girl who could compare to Juliet, not now, not ever. Things with her just seemed so right, in a world that he felt like he wasn’t made or meant for.
Instead, he opened the window, leading to the fire escape. Mark and Ben had their mouths to keep them company and they’d barely notice if he left, as he’d been quiet as he got changed. Romeo carefully slipped down the rickety metal stairs from the fifth floor until the bottoms of his black canvas shoes hit the even darker San Francisco pavements, gray by sunlight and black by moonlight.
“Let’s go,” said Ben, not noticing that the target of his comments had left the building. “He’s behind that door and wants to keep company with the dark...or his left hand. His heart is as blind as his eyes, and thus, belongs in such darkness.”
“If love is blind, how will it find its target, with heat-seeking tech?” asked Mark. “He’ll just go online, find some amateurs website, and wish that his crush was one of those girls, spread open. Oh, Romeo, I wish she were one of those girls, and you one of the men at the Armory that could enter her. Good night, Romeo. I’ll go to my room, this hallway is too cold for me to sleep in.” Mark turned to Ben. “Should we get out of here?”
“Let’s go to bed,” said Ben. “There’s no point in waiting for someone that doesn’t want to be waited on.”
Little did Ben know that Romeo was tired of waiting. He was chasing.
Chapter Seven: Act Two, Scene Two
It’s easy for someone to joke about love if they’ve never even had a crush, thought Romeo as he made his way through the surprisingly warm Mission, following the arrow on the Google Maps mobile app towards his destination. He had the address, now he just had to get the girl.
Of course, the journey was not that easy: he wasn’t able to just show up on her doorstep and well, ring a doorbell. He got to the address that he’d been given and it turned out that Juliet lived in the Thisbia dorms: Thisbia, with their college campus atmosphere, had employee housing that matched, which required a key card to get into, but the thing about collegiate gothic architecture was that the architects could never resist adding touches of exposed brick and ivy, which made scaling the wall a cinch.
The knees of his jeans scuffed but his skin remained unscathed, and in the glorified quad, unlike anything truly found on a college campus, he looked around, trying to figure out which dorm belonged to Juliet, but it didn’t take him long, looking and finding her illuminated in her room, her curtains up and her windows closed, casting a square of light onto the soft grass, a square Romeo took care to stay out of, lest he reveal his presence to Juliet without gathering his words.
But wait! What’s the light? Romeo was so close to Juliet but so far, alone with his thoughts. It is the server, and Juliet the code. Come, beautiful code, and push your distro to the faulty clients, the clients already waiting to be updated
by your presence. Don’t be a servant to the programs, because they aren’t real, not like you. She was so perfect: a girl who coded, a girl who was part of his world and miraculously wasn’t taken. Old software is meant for green CRT monitors. Abandonware is only appealing to those too foolish to upgrade. Upgrade. Oh, there’s my girl, and my love: I wish she knew how much I love her.
Romeo kept watching her through the window, mesmerized, entranced: she was talking, but he couldn’t see a phone or a headset...and she was walking around too much to be using a speaker phone. She’s talking...but not to anyone in particular, but that doesn’t matter: her hands can do the talking for her. Or, she could talk to me, but I’m...I shouldn’t be here, this is creepy. She’s not talking to me, it’s not my business.
Romeo knew he should turn away, but like a moth driven towards a flame, like a fly towards honey, he knew he had to get close to the one thing bright and sweet in his life, rather than fly away before it was too late, before he was electrocuted and drowned simultaneously by her glorious presence. God, her eyes, they’re gorgeous...like two bright LEDs that needed something more brilliant to take their place, like she’s one of those light statues. Or maybe her eyes are really LEDs, Romeo joked to himself. Even in the soft light of the room, her eyes seemed to sparkle all their own, just like at the night club, but she looked so beautiful, even in her plain grey tank top and red and black buffalo check pajama pants.
Her cheeks...oh God, she’s blushing, and they’re practically glowing, at least in that light, and they outshine her eyes, the way the sun outshines a phone, thought Romeo, touching his own soft cheeks which he could feel were growing warm. If her eyes were in a museum, they’d shine so bright that they’d shut down the city’s power grid, the network unable to provide such a concentrated amount of power to her without failing entirely, but it would be worth it, thought Romeo. To think: he’d been so close and
He watched as she picked up her phone and pressed at the touch screen, and sighed as her face was lit up by the phone...and her expression lit up with a smile. And look how she holds her phone up to her face finally...I wish I was her cell phone, so I could lay against her cheek.
“Oh, damn,” said Juliet, opening her window and leaning out and holding her phone out of the open window, trying to get a better Wi-Fi signal. The router in her building had gone out. Again. She’d let Amy know about the problem but apparently the IT boy had been given vacation, during the summer of all times, and so it wasn’t going to get fixed any time soon, not at the height of hackathon season. Part of Juliet wondered if it was a plot by Amy to ensure that Thisbia’s little workaholic got enough sleep every night, by making sure that Juliet wasn’t able to just mess around on Tumblr all night (or, realistically, updating her repos on GitHub) but the other part of Juliet knew that Amy trusted her to self-police her internet usage.
Romeo turned and leaned against the building. Seeing her again had just made his love for her stronger, because it meant that his memories of her weren’t some ersatz, inexplicable dream. It meant she was real, a real girl that he’d fallen indisputably and unconquerably in love with. And there’s her voice. Oh, speak again, beautiful coder. You are as amazingly beautiful as any model this night. Above me, you stand like a coder from the cloud who makes boys like me access your source code to read your comments, to just get close to you and understand your intelligence, thought Romeo.
“Oh, Romeo, Romeo, why do you have to work at Pyrymyn? Forget about your company and resign. If you won’t leave, just promise to love me, and I’ll quit my internship,” said Juliet to herself. The boy and his voice had disappeared, and there were some things she just couldn’t keep inside.
Romeo could still hear Juliet though: Should I listen for more...or tell her I can hear her? He leaned against the wall wondering if she’d go back inside, or if she secretly knew that he was leaning against the wall, just barely out of her line of sight...although she’d surely see the imprints he’d left in the grass if she looked hard enough. For now, although he couldn’t see her face, he could hear her voice, that dulcet voice, and that was enough for him...for now.
Juliet sighed and looked up at the moon, wondering if Romeo was looking at the same moon wherever he was in San Francisco right now, wondering if he was thinking about her the way she was thinking about him. It seemed so silly: she was here to work, not to fall in love, and yet she’d found herself longing for the arms of one of the few men forbidden to her: a goddamn Pyrymyn employee. But why did that matter at all?
Juliet touched the side of the window: the only thing that could make the apartments better would be balconies, to be able to sit outside and look up at the moon, and feel closer to it by merit of being outdoors, if not out of the bounds of Earth, the way it felt like she was, as her heart was out of the bounds of her body. “It’s only your company that’s my enemy: you’d still be yourself, even if you stopped working at Pyrymyn. What’s a Pyrymyn employee anyway? It isn’t a hand, foot, arm, face, or any part of a person. Oh, just work at some other company! What does a company mean? A rose by any other name smells just as sweet. Romeo would be perfect, even if he wasn’t working at Pyrymyn, and oh! Romeo, leave your company. Give up your company – which doesn’t define you – and take me instead.”
Romeo couldn’t stand to just listen anymore, as his eyes welled with tears: “I trust you, and of course, your logic is flawless. Just call me yours, and I’ll take a new job somewhere else. From now on, I’ll never be a Pyrymyn employee again.” He couldn’t move from his stance against the wall because he didn’t want Juliet to see the tears that were streaming down his face. To think: Juliet felt the same way about him that he felt about her, and felt the same sorrow regarding the limitations of their unfortunately fortunate circumstances. Pyrymyn and Thisbia were rivals because they were companies worth being rivals with: excellent, selective companies which had happened to select them and tear them apart before they’d even had the privilege of meeting.
Juliet looked around, outside and into her room, and she didn’t know where the sound was coming from...but she knew what she’d heard: a voice, a man’s voice, strange but familiar. “Who are you? Why are you listening to me? Show yourself!” ordered Juliet, a shiver running down her spine.
“I don’t know...how to tell you who I am by giving you my name or my company. I hate my company, sweetheart, because my company is your enemy. If I had it written as a line, I’d erase it,” said Romeo with a sigh.
“I haven’t heard you say a hundred words yet,” said Juliet. “But...I know that voice. You’re Romeo...the Pyrymyn intern, right?”
“I’ll be neither if it pleases you,” said Romeo as he stepped out of the shadows and into the window of light beneath Juliet’s window, the light glowing like a squared spotlight on a stage.
“How did you find me? And why...why are you here?” asked Juliet, confused and embarrassed that she’d been scared. “It’s a bitch to get in here. If anyone from Thisbia saw you here, they’d call security to have you removed, because...you work for them. For Pyrymyn.”
“I scaled these walls with the parkour of love,” said Romeo with a laugh. “Walls can’t keep out love, and whatever a man in love can do, he will try to do. Your employer is no obstacle.”
“If anyone saw you here, they’d throw you out,” Juliet half hissed, half whispered.
“Too bad, as one glare from you is worse than twenty Thisbia employees with guards. Just look at me the way you did at the masquerade, and none of that matters,” said Romeo.
“I’d give anything to keep you here, and out of their sight,” said Juliet, half considering letting him into her room and thinking about what would happen if somebody came over spontaneously, like they inevitably did every night: someone knocking at her door, someone asking her to drink with them, someone asking her to hang out with them in their room and actually relax for once, but even though she would obviously refuse them, like she did every time, what if they saw Romeo hiding under her
bed or in her closet?
“It’s dark, we’re going to be fine...unless you don’t want me, and then let them find me and kick me out,” said Romeo. “I’d rather be kicked out than have to stay here without receiving your love in kind.”
“Who told you how to get here, to my balcony?” asked Juliet, suddenly wary. The boy in the quad was tall, handsome, and...knew way too much about her. She was confused but mostly impressed that Romeo had been able to find her apartment. Had Amy given him the address, or did he just happen to know where most of his rival’s interns happened to be housed? Or was it just fate?
“My heart, the same thing that told me to look for you in the first place. Love guided me, and I let love take over my bodies. I’m no securities expert, but if you were hidden behind seven proxies, I’d do whatever it took to break the encryption and find you,” promised Romeo.
“I’m glad it’s dark, because otherwise, you’d see me blushing,” said Juliet.
“I’d be happy pretending that I hadn’t said what I said before, but forget about happy: do you love me? I know your answer is yes. I know my heart will believe you. But, if you promise you love me, you could be lying, and they say an investor laughs every time a startup kid thinks they’re in love. Oh, Romeo, if you do love me, say it, but only truthfully...or if you think this game is too easy, I’ll raise the difficulty level, as long as it made you try harder to win my heart, but otherwise, I won’t play games with you,” promised Juliet. “But for real, Pyrymyn boy, I like you...a lot, so you might think I’m easy, but trust me, honey, I’m ride or die. Maybe I should’ve played hard to get, I’ll admit that, but you heard how I feel about you, standing down there, by the apartments, so understand that even though I fell in love fast, my love is true.”
