Unplugged Read Free

“State-of-the-art-electronics store. The only one in the country, I guess.”
    “You can go next weekend. It’ll probably still be open.”
    She glanced down at her hands. “I don’t care that we missed it, of course. I mean, if you’ve seen one gray piece of plastic, you’ve pretty much seen them all, but . . . he was really looking forward to it and . . .” She shrugged as if to dismiss the whole situation. “He’s been gone almost three weeks.”
    “Well . . .” I began, then, “Three weeks?” It hadn’t seemed like nearly that long since I’d seen the little Woody Allen look-alike. “Really?”
    “Seventeen and a half days,” she said.
    I winced. She’d been counting. A girl has to be pretty loopy to count.
    “You said it was a really big deal,” I reminded her. “He’s probably just tying up loose ends. That sort of thing.”
    “He said he’d call every day.”
    “And you haven’t heard from him?”
    “I did at first. He phoned every few hours. And e-mailed. Sometimes he’d fax me.” She gave me a watery smile. “Left text messages with little hearts.”
    Yuck. “Uh-huh,” I said.
    “And then . . . nothing.” She shrugged, glanced at the desk, and shuffled a few papers around. “I don’t even know if he won the Lightbulb.”
    “The what?”
    “It’s an industry award. He was really jazzed about being nominated when he left, but now . . .” She cleared her throat. “I think he met someone else.”
    I blinked. “Solberg?”
    “He was in Las Vegas,” she said, as if that explained everything. It didn’t. She continued as if she were lecturing a retarded duckling. “There are more beautiful women per capita in Vegas than in any other city in the world.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    She scowled a little. Somehow it didn’t create a single wrinkle in her rice-paper complexion. I would hate her if I didn’t love her to distraction. “It’s tough to compete with a hundred topless girls juggling armadillos and breathing fire.”
    “Armadillos?” I asked. I couldn’t help but be impressed. Those armadillos are tough.
    “He’s got a lot going for him, Mac,” she said.
    I kept my face perfectly expressionless, waiting for the punch line. It didn’t come. “Have you heard him laugh?” I asked.
    She gave me a sloppy little grin. “He sounds like a donkey on speed.”
    “Whew,” I said. “Then we are talking about the same guy.”
    She tilted her head in a kind of unspoken censor. “I’ve dated a lot since moving out here, you know.”
    I couldn’t argue with that. Laney got marriage proposals from guys who hadn’t yet exited the womb.
    “But Jeen . . .” She paused. I didn’t like the dreamy look in her eye. “He never once bragged about how many push-ups he can do or how fast he can run a mile.”
    “Well, that’s probably because he can’t do—”
    She stopped me with a glance, which was probably just as well. Sometimes tact isn’t my number one attribute. I’ll let you know when I figure out what is.
    “I don’t even know his astronomical sign,” she said.
    “He’s a Scorpio.”
    “You know?”
    Sadly, I did.
    “Laney,” I said, taking her hand and trying to think of a nice way to inform her that her boyfriend was a doofus, “I know you like him and everything. But really—”
    “He’s never tried to get me into bed.”
    My mouth opened. Solberg had propositioned me approximately two and a half seconds after I’d first met him. I would like to think that’s because I’m sexier than Elaine, but apparently I’m not brain-dead, despite the five days and twenty hours since my last cigarette.
    “You’re kidding,” I said.
    “No.”
    “Does he call you Babe-a-buns?”
    “No.”
    “Stare at your chest till his eyes water?”
    “No.”
    “Pretend he stumbled and grab your boobs?”
    “No!”
    “Wow.”
    She nodded. “I thought he really cared about me. But . . .” She laughed a little, seemingly at her own foolishness. “I guess he just