Geekus Interruptus Read Free Page A

times and
she experienced raw stabs of gut pain. She had to breathe through her mouth
until the pangs subsided. When she felt a little better, she went into the
kitchen and tried to compose herself. As she bunched up the messy newspaper and
stuffed it into the garbage can under the stainless steel sink, she kept picturing
the woman in the dream. Her whitewashed face, colorless eyes, pale hair.
    Scandinavian, Marcy imagined, and cold as a
snowball. The perfect match for her emotionless husband. Her cheating spouse.
    Marcy suddenly remembered a cheesy
television advertisement she’d seen one night after watching the movie of the
week. The ad was for a local shop that specialized in spy equipment. Out of the
depths of her sexual frustration and emotional confusion, a brilliant tactical
plan bobbed to the surface.
    She hurried upstairs to change her damp
underwear.

 

CHAPTER TWO

 
 
    Geeks Are Us

 
    She drove quickly
toward the outskirts of town in her BMW convertible. Her hair whipped about her
head; the sun splashed on her bare face and arms. It was a beautiful day.
Listening to Adele wail at top volume should have calmed her nerves, but it didn’t.
Maybe she needed to take up meditation. And hot room yoga.
    Marcy wondered how this could be happening
to her. Jess was the ultimate geek, so the situation she found herself in shouldn’t
have been possible. Geeks were like Jews; they mated for life. Didn’t they?
    Marcy hadn’t been the least bit interested
in geeky men before she met Jess. But, once she’d fallen for him, she’d
discovered how reassuring geek love could be. Or so she’d thought.
    Jess Margate wasn’t your average geek. He
was a certified genius. The real deal, a wow whiz kid, an IQ beyond the beyond.
He was Super-Nerd, so different from her in so many ways. So smart he was on
another planet, one that spun faster than hers. But he was incredibly decent. Kind,
when he remembered to be. Attentive, when he had nothing else going on.
    Before Jess came into her life, Marcy knew
a few geeks. Guys who were content on a Saturday night to be rewriting a
computer program. Or solving Heisenberg’s uncertainty equation or something.
That’s why she’d never fallen for one of them before Jess came along. Geeky
guys just weren’t her type.
    When she met Jess, he was still a virgin. A
real late bloomer sexually. He’d made it through the usual rounds of day-to-day
bullying during grade and middle school without dumbing down, without going
bad. Which explained why, senior year in high school, he became the Boy Most
Likely to Succeed—but not with the chicks. Totally awkward, gawky, not
cool. Big glasses with dark frames, pale and bony. No sun, no exercise, too
much time in the basement creating algorithms for software design companies and
financial investment firms. Jess breezed through college with honors,
graduating magna cum laude . But without a single hot date on his resume.
    In his early twenties, however, Jess
finally decided enough was enough. He wanted some action. He went for long runs
every morning, sculpting himself into a lean and mean man-machine. He got some
color to his complexion and started wearing tinted contacts. He had his smile
whitened and grew out his hair, which he got in the habit of tossing back with
a casual shrug. Women began to check him out.
    Around this time, geeks in general enjoyed
a widespread image boost. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg. Go ahead, laugh, geeks were saying. I’ll be your boss one day . The attitude
had shifted overnight. Suddenly, the smartest guys in the room had magnetic
appeal for women. Women everywhere said to themselves, You know what? We
like them nerdy. High IQs make us hot.
    It was at this exact tipping point in the
cultural consensus of opinion on high-tech sexiness that Marcy Buenaventure
first turned blurry eyes to Jess Margate. In the midst of a crunky party, where
she’d already had a bit too much to drink. Her most recent fling