Unplugged Page 5

  I tightened my fist on the receiver. Mom had once told me that liars go straight to hell. I had lied immediately thereafter and nothing had happened. I hadn’t felt a lick of flames. I hadn’t even gotten a glimpse of purgatory—unless you count my senior prom. I’ve been a doubter ever since.

  “Which magazine is that?” she asked.

  “Nerd Word,” I said. “You heard of it?”

  “Oh.” She sounded breathless at the mere mention of the magazine. Maybe geekiness is genetic, passed down through the maternal line like hemophilia or male-pattern baldness. Or, more to the point, like impetuous stupidity in the McMullen clan. “Well, I most certainly have,” she said. “You did that lovely article about Jeen last summer.”

  “Absolutetomoto,” I said. “That article was screamin’.” I had no idea what I was saying, but it suddenly seemed to me that being branded with a name like “Frances” would have caused some lasting emotional damage to my character. “Anyways, we were just ’bout ready to put the January issue beddy-bye. I’d done a bang-up piece about a guy making robotic mousetraps, but turns out he was a droid, so I need a new line quick. Thought maybe I could do a follow-up on J.D.”

  I let my lunacy soak in for a moment.

  “Another article?” Teri said. “That’d be swell. But, like I said, Jeen doesn’t live here anymore. He’s got a nice big house in L.A. now.”

  “At 13240 Amsonia Lane,” I said. Clever, see, because that would make her think the Geekster and I were buds and she could trust me with anything from his Social Security number to his ring size. “I called him at his pad this A.M., but it was a no go, and I need some info ASAP. You don’t know his present loci, do you?”

  She was silent for a moment. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to decipher my gibberish or decide if she could trust me with her little angel’s whereabouts. “Well, no,” she said finally.

  I felt my shoulders droop.

  “But . . . wait a minute.” I heard her cup the phone. “Steven, when was Jeen going to that big convention?”

  “I don’t know,” came the answer.

  I assumed the voice was Solberg’s father’s, because, by the sound of it, he couldn’t have cared less if J.D. had been conferring on Ursa Minor. The tone reminded me of the first twenty-odd years of my life. Schaumburg men are solid citizens: They have fifty-hour workweeks, high cholesterol, and belly fat. Give them three solid meals and a remote and they don’t complain. But mess with their evenings in front of the tube and there would be hell to pay.

  “Yes, you do.” Teri’s voice suggested that she might already be contemplating a battle for the revered remote. “He told us about it.”

  There was a mumbled response.

  “Remember, he was doing that presentation. He and that Hilary girl were working on it together.”

  My ears perked up. Hilary? A woman? Solberg had found a woman who was willing to work with him? Was every female in L.A. on the skids? And could it possibly be that Elaine had been right? Might Solberg have actually fallen for someone else? Someone female? Someone with an opposable thumb?

  I shook my head.

  Teri came back on the phone. “I think he may be at that big convention. The one in Las Vegas.”

  “Oh, yeah!” I said it like it was an epiphany, and didn’t bother to tell her that the convention had been caput for several days now and Jeeno still hadn’t turned up. It was, after all, entirely possible that maternal instinct was stronger than the instinctual desire to stamp out mutants, and that she would, therefore, worry about Solberg’s absence. “The con. He and Hilary are doing that gig together, huh?”

  “Yes. I believe they are.”

  “She seemed like a cool chick. Maybe I can do a piece on her sometime, too. What was her last name again? Meine, wasn’t it? Or—”

  “No, no,” she said. “It started with a P. Patnode. No, that’s . . . Sheila’s married name. Pierce. Pershing! It’s Pershing.”

  “Righto,” I said. “Pershing. Good job.” I scribbled the name in the margin of Nerd Word. “Hey, you don’t happen to know where they bedded down while in the big V, do you?”

  There was another pause as she considered my odd verbiage. What the hell was wrong with me? “I think they were staying right at the hotel where the event was held.”

  They. Not he. Damn him to purgatory! “Spectacular,” I said. “I’ll try him at those digs. Oh, but . . . hey, when was he expected back in L.A.? Phone interviews are okey-doke, but face-to-face with the Geekster himself . . .” I let the sentence hang as if the idea gave me goose bumps. In a way it did.

  “I’m not exactly certain.”

  “Sure hope he doesn’t get caught up in the slots there,” I said, trolling madly for some kind of feedback.

  “Jeen? Oh, no, he wouldn’t. He’s very responsible. They love him at NeoTech.”

  Uh-huh. Well, life was just damned weird, wasn’t it? Had I not known better, I would have expected a guy like Solberg to be flipping burgers at the Dew Drop Inn, not buzzing his way up the technological ladder of success while the rest of us scraped by, cursing and sweating. The idea made me feel cranky and mean. Sometimes I can feel good about other people’s triumphs, but sometimes generosity’s not in my fifty best attributes.

  “And he loves them,” she added. “Or at least . . .” She laughed. “He loves all that crazy new technology. When he was home here he couldn’t stay off the computer for more than an hour at a time. I used to get kind of angry with him. I swear, the boy forgot to take out the garbage every single night of the week. But now I’m glad he took such an interest, because it’s really given him a leg up at NeoTech. His colleagues think the world of him.”

  “I’m certain they worship the ground he walks on,” I said. There might have been just a tinge of sarcasm in my tone. “When was the last time you heard from him exactly?”

  The phone went silent, then, “What did you say your name was?”

  Shit! I’d lost my fictionalized persona. In fact, I seemed to have spoken in what Elaine calls my nose voice. And now I couldn’t remember my imaginary name.

  I glanced frantically at Nerd Word, and realized with electrifying abruptness that I had closed it. A chubby-faced geek holding a silver sphere I couldn’t hope to identify smiled at me from the cover. I flipped through the magazine frantically, but the appropriate byline failed to pop up before my idiotic eyes.

  I croaked a laugh. “My apologies, Mrs. S., you probably think I’m J.D.’s stalker or something.”

  She didn’t seem to find such lunacy amusing, which made me wonder if the whole world had gone mad. Who would stalk J. D. Solberg? Certainly not a woman who had a Ph.D. and . . . walks erect.

  And, oh, crap, she was still waiting for an answer.

  I skimmed the table of contents and finally spotted the name.

  “Frances Plant,” I spouted, then cleared my throat and slowed my tone. “I’m super sorry to bother you, but my edi-tor’s a first-class papilloma sometimes.” I made my voice go whiny. It wasn’t that hard. “I’m crunchin’ deadlines. You know? Sweatin’ twenty-four-seven. And I gotta get ahold of the Geekster, stat. You know of any friends he might be hangin’ with?”

  “Well . . .” Her voice trailed off. “I’m not certain. Jeen was always popular. Even in high school. Especially with the girls.”

  I blinked stupidly. Could it be that I had contacted the wrong Solbergs? I removed the receiver from my ear and stared at it, then placed it tentatively back against my lobe, lest it explode into a thousand plastic shards. “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “Seems like he was calling a different young woman every night of the week.”

  I relaxed a little, wondering if she had noticed that their names were in alphabetical order and that he was working his way down the columns of the phone book.

  “You know if there’s one particular chick he’s diggin’ on?” I asked.

  She paused. I laughed with embarrassment. It wasn’t completely manufactured. It was entirely
possible that a sane person would have just called the woman up, said her son was missing, and asked for information.

  “I wouldn’t ask,” I said, “but the Mag Mag Awards is coming up and this edition is humungo important.”

  “The what?”

  I tightened my fingers in the telephone cord and tested my mother’s hell theory once again. “The Mag Mag Awards,” I lied. “It’s a big whoop in the techno magazine industry, and I thought, if I could get another explosive interview with J.D. . . .” I let the statement hang in the air.

  “Well . . .” She sighed. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, but I don’t think Jeenie’s seeing anyone special.”

  My jaw dropped. Not seeing anyone? No one special! What the hell was she talking about? Maybe in her eyes Oprah was no one special. Maybe Cher was of no particular interest. But Elaine, Elaine was goddamn special!

  That conversation haunted me for the rest of the day.

  Where was the Geekster? Why hadn’t he called? And who the hell was Hilary Pershing?

  Devoid of better ideas, I checked the Internet again. After a few slow starts, a photo of Hilary popped up on my screen. She was by no means a raving beauty, but when I saw the shot of her and Solberg accepting an award together at a banquet in San Francisco, I had to admit they looked comfortable together. Were they an item? Had they been an item? Had she been dreaming of rings and roses and gallumping down the aisle with Geek Boy?

  Maybe. Anything was possible. Someone had agreed to marry Michael Jackson. Several someones, if I remembered correctly.

  I searched on, and eventually found a small article about Hilary and cats. Show cats. Abyssinians, to be precise. They looked exactly like the litter of kittens I had found snuggled between the hay bales on my uncle’s farm. Cousin Kevin and I had stood for hours at the livestock auction in Edgeley, North Dakota, giving them away for free. Pershing’s kittens weren’t quite such a stellar value. They started at nine hundred dollars a pop.

  You know what I really needed? A cat. And information about Solberg.

  Hilary Pershing lived in a developing development in Mission Hills, where they were carving space out of the scrubby, inhospitable hills for a dozen or so new upper-income homes. I stood dressed for success on her front stoop. Nothing says “I can afford a nine-hundred-dollar farm cat” like a buttercream angora sweater, herringbone tweed slacks, and chocolate leather wedge heels.

  “Hello,” I said when the door opened a crack and one eyeball peered through at me. It didn’t strike me as unusual behavior. Not for L.A. Most Angelites won’t invite you in unless you’re blood kin and come with a signed affidavit from your mother.

  But a moment later the door was thrust wide and I was motioned in. I stepped inside with broad misgivings. A woman I assumed was Hilary Pershing locked the door behind me. I clasped my chic handbag to my chest and examined her. There was a ballpoint pen nestled into mousy-colored hair that had been permed to frizzle. A roundish nose overlooked a doughy face and multiplying chins, and a cable-knit cardigan was buttoned up tight from good-sized bosom to charitable hips. In short, she was perfect for Solberg.

  “You must be Ms. Harmony,” she said.

  “Yes.” I know my conversation with Teri Solberg should have taught me I’m not bright enough to remember an alias, but sometimes the most hard-learned lessons are the ones most easily forgotten. “I’m sorry to bother you on such short notice. I was just so excited when I found your website and realized you were right here in town,” I said.

  “Do you show Abbies?” she asked, peering over her shoulder at me as she led the way inside. She was a good four inches shorter than me, but she had a commanding air about her. If Solberg liked strong women, he should have been in weenie heaven. On the other hand, if he liked hetero-sexual women . . .

  “Show? Oh, no,” I said, as if breathless at the thought that I, too, could be among the honored few. “I mean, I’d love to, but for right now I’m just looking for a pet. And maybe, you know, to have a few kittens eventually.”

  “Kittens?” She stopped dead in her tracks.

  “Umm . . . yes?” I ventured.

  She turned slowly toward me, her lips pursed and her voice absolutely monotone. “Raising kittens is not for amateurs, Ms. Harmony.” In retrospect, I have no idea why I chose that name. I was not feeling particularly harmonious. And she didn’t look exactly peaceable, either. Her face had gone cold. “These cats are the direct descendants of the sacred companions to the pharaohs.”

  “Oh, well . . .”

  “I don’t sell my cats for indiscriminate breeding purposes. You can’t simply toss ’em together and let ’em mate willy-nilly like animals.”

  But . . . they were animals. “No.” I shook my head. Holy shit. “Of course not.”

  “If you were to adopt one of my feline friends I would have to insist that you sign a waiver giving up all breeding rights.”

  “Certainly.” I nodded, not wanting to send her into cardiac arrest at the thought of unauthorized mating. Geez, what kind of pedigreed stud muffin did she take to bed? “I can understand that.”

  She stared at me. Apparently, I passed the litmus test. “Good, then,” she said, and gave me a smile that suggested the storm had passed. “Would you like to meet the little ones?” She said it like she was about to introduce me to a magical coven of fairies.

  “I can’t wait.”

  She led me past a kitchen that boasted a handsome bay window but no curtains. By NeoTech standards, her house was fairly modest. Maybe she spent her money feeding filet mignon to Pharaoh’s cats, or maybe, for inexplicable reasons, Solberg made twice her salary and she was pissed about it. Pissed enough to forgo buying curtains for her untreated living room windows and take out a contract on the Geekster’s pathetic life. Or—

  “Here they are.”

  Four kittens lay snuggled together in a basket on the couch in front of a gas fireplace. They blinked and stretched, equally as cute as the litter I’d given away at the livestock auction when I was a kid.

  “Ohh . . .” I made the sounds I thought were appropriate, although honestly, if a pet can’t fetch your slippers and refuses to bring you a beer after work, he’s never been very welcome in the McMullen clan. “They’re beautiful.”

  “Yes, they are,” she said, and picked them up, one after the other, spouting mumbo jumbo about lineage and colors.

  I uh-huhed like I cared and wondered when to launch into my reason for being there. I hoped it would be before my allergies kicked in. My eyes were already beginning to itch. I could only assume the pharaohs weren’t sensitive to feline dander.

  “Would you like to see the sire?” she asked.

  “Well—”

  “You can’t legitimately judge a kitten without assessing his heritage,” she said, and hurried toward what seemed to be a bedroom. She opened the door a hair, shimmied in, and reappeared carrying a tom, who flipped his tail and looked generally pissed at the world.

  “This is Silver Ra Jamael. Best of Color three years running at the Mid-Pacific.”

  I stared at him. His color was gray. I swear it was. “Amazing.”

  “Yes, and the mother—” she began, but suddenly the bedroom door creaked ominously open behind me. I swung toward it, breath held, but there was nothing more sinister than a cat slinking through.

  I gave a sigh of relief, but Hilary was already lurching toward the door and pulling it shut tight.

  She turned back, giving me a sticky smile. “That’s Cinnamon Obanya,” she said, indicating the escapee. “Seventh-best shorthair in 2004.”

  “Beautiful.” My throat was starting to close up. And Pershing was weirder than shit. What was in the bedroom? More cats. That much was obvious. But what else?

  “Maybe I should get an adult,” I said, mind spinning. “Could I see your grown-ups?”

  She scowled at me. “I’ve only got a couple,” she said, “and they’re not for sale.”

  “Oh. I guess I misunderstood. I
thought J.D. said you had more.”

  The house went absolutely silent.

  “J. D. Solberg?” she asked.

  “Yes.” I kept my expression casual, but frantically searched hers for clues. “He said you’re the one to come to for Abyssinians.”

  Her mouth was tight. “I thought you said you found me on the Internet.”

  “Well, J.D. mentioned you first, then I hopped on the Net and learned more about you. Your site was very impressive.”

  “Where did you say you were from?” she asked.

  “Just south of here. In Baldwin,” I lied.

  “And Solberg told you to stop by?”

  “Well, no. Not exactly. I mean, I haven’t spoken to him in weeks. I think he had . . . didn’t he have a big convention in Reno or something?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Listen . . .” She suddenly paced toward the front door, her short strides determined. “I just remembered a previous engagement. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  “Now?” I asked.

  “Immediately.”

  I blinked at her. “But what about the kittens?” And Solberg. Where the hell was Solberg? And why was she so eager to get me out of her house? A minute ago, she’d been quoting cat lineage back to King Tut.

  “These cats are my family, Ms. Harmony. I don’t let any of ’em go without references.”

  “References?” I echoed.

  “And a cashier’s check.”

  “You don’t take cash?”

  Her face froze. “I think you’d better leave,” she said, and whipping open the front door, all but tossed me onto the sidewalk.

  I gathered the shreds of my dignity around me and strolled off to my Saturn. Once there, I drove around Hilary’s block, parked down the street, and watched her house for half an hour. No one came or left.

  My mind spun in ever-widening circles. Why was she suddenly in such a rush to get rid of me? Had she and Solberg been an item at one time? Was she the jealous ex?