The warmth came from the rest of it. From the poured concrete floors with more of that radiant heating beneath them, the bronzed metal and rustic wood accents of a floor-to-ceiling bookcase that took up one entire wall, a matching wine rack that rose halfway up another, sliding barn-style doors that concealed a giant-screen TV in front of a seating area made up of a sectional leather sofa. More bronzed metal formed the hearth of a gas fireplace, in front of which were clustered two oversized leather couches, two easy chairs, and a cozy rug. The nine-foot-long, heavy wood work table took up some space between the two areas, and a separate dining table in the corner stood next to another cook’s kitchen, in which the gleam of stainless steel was softened by more wood and stone. It was all like being in some fantastic combination of a mountaintop and a cave, every part of every room organized and neat to the last degree, with built-in cabinetry that would have made any boat-builder proud.
And then there was what Joe called his Gear Room. When she’d first seen it, Alyssa had laughed out loud. “And here I thought your whole place was a Man Cave,” she said. “But this is the ultimate.”
It was a big room, the size of a normal person’s master bedroom. The center space was open, for setting up equipment, and sorting, and packing, Joe explained, and she had to smile at that. All four walls were lined from floor to ceiling with storage for every kind of outdoor equipment she could imagine. Racks for skis and poles, high pegs for packs and sleeping bags. Tents and rolled mats on shelves, parkas and bib overalls zipped neatly over hangers. It looked like Aladdin’s Cave for outdoorspeople. It looked like a store.
“Organization is good,” he’d said when she teased him about it. “I like to be able to put my hand on what I want.”
“Yes,” she said, “I’ve noticed that.” And he’d laughed and kissed her.
Needless to say, she’d been happy to spend as much of her time as possible at his place. Being with Joe was always good. Being with Joe in the Man Cave was better, even if he spent a fair amount of his time there working.
Now, she looked across at him. “Can I interrupt you to have you listen to something?” she asked. She was sitting at the work table with her laptop while he sat a ways down with his own, nothing moving but his fingers. Both of them facing the soothing view of trees, sky, and hills that somehow made working easier.
“One sec,” he said, his face intent, concentrating. He kept typing for a few minutes, then sat back with a sigh and turned his attention to her. “All right, shoot.”
“Remember the thing I was working on?” she asked. “Something to pull in tech companies?”
“Of course. You thought of something?”
“Yes. I think I did. I think I thought of a great thing. OK. Here goes. What’s wrong with most fundraising events?”
“I don’t know. What?”
“Two things. First,” she held up one finger, “they’re expensive. Our big event is, what? The donor cocktail party coming up in a few weeks at the Asian Art Museum. That’s kind of an, excuse me, stupid event. It costs a lot, even though the space is donated. All that alcohol. And younger people, cooler people, do they want to go to a cocktail party? Never mind, I’ll answer. No.”
She held up the second finger. “And that’s Problem Number Two. Most fundraising events are boring. People who can afford to contribute money, or people who work for companies that contribute money, they don’t want to go to dinners and hear speeches. They want to have fun. So that’s what my idea is. It’s cheap, and it’s fun.”
“All right,” he said, “so what is it?”
“It is . . .” She did a drumroll on the arm of her chair. “Geek Day!”
He laughed. “Geek Day?”
She sat forward and pitched him. “Yes. Geek Day. It’s a day for tech companies. It’s a competition, and it’s fun. Like a Field Day in elementary school. Didn’t you love Field Day? Wasn’t it so much better than school?”
“Yeah, as I recall, it was.”
“Well, that’s what Geek Day will be. Just a day to have fun. Every company fields a team, or more than one team, if they’re big. Maybe lots of teams. And, of course,” she said with a smile, “there’s a great big donation required from every single team. And all those teams compete to win the trophy. The Second Chance Geek Day Trophy. A great big thing for their trophy case. A great big prize.”
“Compete at what?”
“All sorts of things. Silly things. Fun things. Nothing like robotics or programming or anything geek-related like that. Nothing they’ll be good at. That’s the point. Nobody has to get all competitive and crazy, because it’s just fun. Although it’s going to be mostly guys,” she conceded, “so, all right, they’ll get competitive and crazy anyway. Oh, man, that would be awesome media, Google employees practicing for the three-legged race! Because that’s what it’s going to be, things like you’d have at a company picnic or a kid’s birthday party. Things that will make people laugh. Egg-and-spoon races, three-legged races, jump-rope contests, gunny-sack races where you hop in a sack. It doesn’t matter if you’re athletic, it’s just for fun, things geeks can do, things the media will love to take pictures of. Alec in a gunny sack . . .” She laughed. “That’d be great.”
“Things geeks can do? I beg your pardon?”
“Well, I’m not talking about you and Alec, obviously,” she conceded. “But I’ve been in you guys’ office enough now, and let’s just say that I’m pretty sure my high school girls’ basketball team could have kicked your company team’s butts. If you had a company team, which you don’t. Maybe a company Ping-Pong team. A Wii Ping-Pong team, and I’d still bet on my basketball team kicking your butts. I don’t think any of those guys was on the football team, not unless he was the water boy.”
“Statistician,” he suggested, his smile trying to work its way out again.
“Exactly,” she pounced. “So here’s their big chance to do athletic things. With a tug-of-war for the final event. Sudden-death, and the teams keep going until you’ve got a winner. You add up points for it all, and . . .” She gestured broadly. “Ta-dah. The winner! The Geek Day trophy!”
“Tug-of-war in the mud,” he suggested.
She laughed. “Even better, but I’m not sure how you’d get a field full of mud. But yeah, that would be awesome.” She made a note. “Just in case.”
“Where would you have this event?” he asked. “You’d need a pretty big venue.”
“Well, I thought,” she said, and took a breath. “Stanford. Isn’t that the perfect place? We could combine it with foster kids getting tours of the campus the day before. More PR, and that would look really good for the University. And mentoring, and everything,” she began to plan. “More community service for tech firms. Get that rolling, who knows where we’d end up? Plus, I’ll bet, help from the Stanford Athletic Department. First-aid staff, right? Stanford has a lot of school spirit, and a lot of money, too. Don’t you think they’d go for it? Don’t you think they might donate the use of their facilities?”
“I think they might, with a couple well-placed alumni to help ease the way.”
“Exactly. Alec and you to help with that, and Rae to help with the committee, for the logistical side of it? Don’t you think it could work? And don’t you think it’d be great publicity for all the companies that contributed? Plus, think of the networking opportunities. Maybe I’ll keep this one quiet, maybe it’s not a great selling point for management, but think about it. You’re there cheering your team on, talking to people from all the other companies? Just think about all the job-hopping that could happen after Geek Day!”
“Mmm. Not going to help you sell the idea to Rae,” Joe agreed. “Maybe don’t emphasize that one.”
“Yeah. But on the other hand, if a company’s doing well and is good to work for, hey, net gain, right?”
“One hopes,” he said. “Anyway. Going to take awhile to get the publicity going, and to organize it. When were you thinking?”
“It’d hav
e to be a next-year deal. Say, soon after school lets out next June. That would let it get into the budget for the next fiscal year, and let us build up anticipation, too. And after that,” she went on, caught up in her enthusiasm, “we could do it the next year, and the next, and the next, and every year, it would get bigger, and the publicity would get bigger, too, because tech is only going to get bigger. What do you think?”
“I think,” he said, and he was smiling, “that you’re brilliant. I think it’s a terrific idea. I think you should go for it.”
“You really do?” she pressed him. “It’s not just because you’re sleeping with me?”
He sat back and put his hand over his heart. “I swear. This isn’t Joe-Your-Boyfriend talking. This is the cold, hard partner talking. I think it’s an awesome idea. I think it’s going to work. I think it’s great.”
“Then that’s what I’m going to do,” she said. “I’m going to get pictures of people doing all those things, and I’m going to make a slideshow, and I’m going to talk to Rae about the dollars part of it, how much of a contribution to ask, and I’m going to work up projections, and I’m going to do it.”
“When? You should give yourself a deadline,” he advised. “Always work with a deadline.”
“All right.” She looked at her calendar, made another note. “A week from now, I’ll ask for the meeting. April twenty-first. It should be good timing, because we’re in the middle of planning the donor party, and Helene can look at my projections against the cost of that, and it’ll look especially good, right?”
“Sounds good,” he said. “You can practice it with me first, as many times as you need to. I’ll ask all the hard questions I can think of, get you ready to go. And then you’ll go in there, present it to Helene, and knock it out of the park.”
“And you’ll still go to the party with me too?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He smiled a little wryly. “I’m thinking you’re completely right, by the way. My feelings about getting dressed up and going to your cocktail party, versus doing Geek Day? No contest.”
Another Bad Date
Alyssa paced the living room on a Friday night several weeks later. Around the couch to the kitchen entrance, a U-turn and on to the front door, then around the couch again. And repeat.
She’d got the text forty-five minutes earlier—after she’d spent a half-hour trying on and discarding clothes until she’d settled, as she’d known she would all along, on the red sweater and skirt she’d been wearing when Joe had picked her up on his motorcycle. Her club clothes, and she’d gone ahead and worn her cutout ankle-strap heels too, because she loved them. She couldn’t walk too far in them, but she was pretty sure she wouldn’t have to, because Joe was never going to make her hike halfway across the City to his car.
She’d made up her eyes so they were huge and mysterious, kept her lips understated, because they were full enough without help, and she didn’t want to look like a vampire. She’d bent from the waist and stood up again so her hair was just-enough disheveled. She’d looked in the full-length mirror in her room, turned and twisted and nodded with satisfaction. A little bit wild, and a whole lot naughty. Joe was going to like it. He was going to love it.
And then she’d got the text. Sorry late. Emergency. Half hour.
Forty-five minutes now. She was hungry, but she was worried too. What was the emergency? She’d texted him back at the time with Hope all OK see you then, and that was the last she’d heard. Finally, she fished her phone out of her little date purse and called him.
“Hi,” she heard right away. “Sorry. I’m almost done. I’ll be there.”
“What? Almost done with what? What happened?”
“Problem with this app. I need to get a guy started on it tomorrow, and I’ve got to work it out.”
“Wait a second,” she said, feeling her heart rate kicking up a fatal few notches. “Hold on. The crisis is work, on Friday night? Nobody’s dying? Nobody’s even bleeding?”
The sigh came right over the line. “No. But I have to get this done first. I’m sorry.”
“You’re still there. You haven’t even left the office.”
“No, but . . . almost. I’ll be there soon.”
“Right. You’re busy. Then I guess you shouldn’t have asked me out.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She hung up on him.
Sherry came out of the kitchen. “Joe not here yet?”
“No.” Alyssa shoved the phone back into her bag. “I’m going out,” she decided.
“Uh . . . by yourself?”
“You want to come?”
“Nah. Sorry. I’m in pajamas-and-popcorn mode tonight. Too hard to get dressed again.”
Alyssa nodded jerkily. That would have been fine with her too, if that had been the plan. She went into the kitchen and ate a bowl of cereal standing up, because she really was too hungry not to, and the whole time she was doing it, she was getting madder. She brushed her teeth again, reapplied her lipstick, called a cab. And she went out.
Joe was swearing at himself. Stupid. Idiot. When he’d found the bug, he’d thought it would be quick. Had felt the urgency of fixing it, like always, had been glad he’d remembered to text Alyssa. A niggle of uncertainty had troubled him while he was doing it, but getting the work done, right the hell now, was too deeply ingrained in him, his fingers itching to get back to it, his brain making a connection right then, even as he texted, that had him turning back to the computer.
But when she’d called, he’d realized that he should have listened to the niggle. Because he’d screwed up. He’d screwed up bad.
He’d logged off, ridden home, showered and changed in about ten minutes flat, climbed into the Audi and headed for her apartment. Endured frustrating minutes of circling for a parking space, until he gave it up and parked in front of a hydrant. A ticket seemed like the least of his worries.
He walked fast to her building, pressed the doorbell, and waited.
Sherry’s voice on the intercom. “Yes?”
“It’s Joe,” he said. “Here for Alyssa.”
“You’d better come up.” The buzz came, and he was inside, and up the stairs.
No Alyssa at the door. Sherry instead, in her pajamas.
“She isn’t here,” she said, looking not very happy with him at all, not even asking him in. “Seems her date stood her up, so she went out by herself.”
“I didn’t stand her up,” Joe tried to explain. “I just got held up.”
“Uh-huh. Well, good luck telling her that. Women are funny that way. When the guy doesn’t show, they tend to think he doesn’t care that much, you know?”
“I—” Joe stopped. He had a feeling he needed to save the explaining for Alyssa. “Where did she go?”
Sherry shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Well, can you guess?” He blew out a breath, tried not to sound impatient. “Please,” he added. “Can you guess? Did she say anything?”
Sherry still looked reluctant, but she answered. “I think probably wherever you guys were planning to go. You were going to some jazz club, right?”
“Right.”
Another shrug. “Then that’s it. That’d be my guess. She probably went to some jazz club.”
“But why would she go by herself?” He was still confused.
“You really don’t know women, do you?” She was looking at him with a little pity now, and if she’d ever had a thing for him, he had a feeling the thing was gone. “She’s showing you. My guess is, she’s out there where she was going to be with you. She’s dancing with other guys instead of you. She’s showing you.”
She was in the third place he tried, a good hour later. The Boom Boom Room. He’d headed to the front of the line, nodded to the guy on the door. “Hey, Marcus.”
“Hey, Joe. How you doin’?” A gold tooth shone in the smile as Marcus held out a hand. Joe shook, slid the fifty into the broad palm, and it was in Marcus’s pocket in one quick move, even as Marcus lifted
the velvet rope and moved his bulk out of the way.
Inside, Joe’s ears were assailed by the sound of a live band in full swing, the babble of dozens of voices shouting to be heard, the whir of the huge fan cooling the dancers on the packed floor. He scanned the bar, the groups perched on stools or standing with drinks in hand. No Alyssa. He moved closer to the noise, the action, prowled back and forth, searching the dimly lit dance floor, the couples shifting and moving, the light picking out first one group, than another.
He was about to give it up as yet another dead end when he saw her. Dancing with her eyes half-closed, her head tossing, her body swaying, looking like a wet dream in that damn red sweater. And the guy opposite her looking like he’d hit the jackpot. His eyes weren’t half-closed.
Joe began to push a path through the crowd of dancers as the song ended. From the vantage point of his height, he could see Alyssa saying something to the guy, heading off the floor, only to be intercepted by somebody else, somebody he guessed she’d been talking to earlier, because New Guy touched her shoulder, smiled, put his hand on her back to turn her onto the floor, and she was smiling back, tossing her hair, and Joe was burning.
She caught sight of Joe as he twisted and shoved his way through the crowd, packed ever more tightly as he got closer to the stage. Her eyes widened as they met his, then she turned her back on him, did a wriggle and a shake, her elbows up over her head, her hands waving like some kind of welcome sign, and her partner was moving closer, his eyes avid, reaching out a hand and grabbing a hip, and Joe had reached his limit.
He got to them, finally. The band was loud up here, and they were near the fan, and it was blowing Alyssa’s skirt, her hair, and the music was pumping.
Asking for Trouble (The Kincaids) Page 21
