MOTION Read online

  I dumbly reached my hand over the counter and tried to look and sound more composed than I felt. “It’s nice to meet you, Viki.”

  She held her hands up. “Oh, baby, my hands are covered in grease. You don’t wanna shake deeze unless you wanna wash yer hands with turpentine.” A deep, gravelly laugh escaped her lips as she pulled out an order pad and pen. “But it sure is nice to meetcha. Are you a friend of Shelly’s?”

  Before I could answer that I didn’t know Shelly, Quinn interrupted me. “She’s here with me.”

  Viki lifted her brow, for it truly was a single brow, in what I guessed was surprise, and her mouth formed a small O. I felt her eyes move over me with renewed interest, which made me blush… again. I gripped the menu a little harder and tried to swallow but found the simple action difficult.

  “That’s…” Viki blinked. Her big brown eyes continued their open assessment, and her mouth moved, but she seemed to struggle for words. Finally, she murmured, “Well, that’s a surprise.”

  My cheeks burned; I could hear my heart drum and the blood rush between my ears. I knew that this Viki person didn’t mean to be rude. She looked honestly perplexed, and, if I was reading her awkward soundlessness correctly, she was obviously stunned at the possibility that Quinn and I could be there as a couple. I felt the need to distance myself from the notion and make certain she believed that the very idea was beyond ludicrous to me as well.

  I need to make certain that she knows that I know that he knows that he isn’t interested. I was starting to confuse myself.

  Before I realized that I was speaking, the verbal diarrhea spilled forth. “Oh, we’re not together. I mean, we’re sitting together and we came here together, but obviously, we’re not together. How could we be together? I’m probably never going to see him again after today. We’re not even friends. I don’t even know him. I mean, you know, not really.” I inclined my head toward her and a small laugh burst from my lips. “Can you even imagine? It’d be like Planet of the Apes. He’s Charlton Heston with all the muscles and such, and I’m that girl ape. They could never be together because it’d be like a Neanderthal with a human, cross-species breeding…and that’s just not right. Although Neanderthals are closely related to humans and are in fact part of the same species. If you want to be precise, they are a subspecies or alternate species of human.”

  I glanced at him and gave him a closed-mouth smile. I categorically hoped it dually conveyed confidence and cheerful ambivalence to the obvious disparity in our compatibility. His eyes, however, narrowed as they watched me. I wondered if he found my analogy to be imperfect. Maybe he didn’t like Charlton Heston because of his NRA involvement.

  Conversely, Quinn did seem like the sort to like guns.

  I cleared my throat and continued. “And why would Charlton Heston want to be with the ape? No one would, even though she has this huge…huge…brain.”

  Viki blinked at me and looked at Quinn. “Where didja meet this one?”

  Before Quinn could speak, I felt compelled to answer, hoping to make up for my gaffe. “I met him last week, and before that I saw him a few times at my building where he works as a security guard. I used to work as an accountant there before I was downsized.”

  Viki’s unibrow crinkled over her nose until it came to a point. “A security guard?”

  I gulped and gave her a tight smile as I reached for my coffee, wanting to change the subject. “I love coffee. Brazil is now the world leader in the production of green coffee, but in East Africa and Yemen, coffee was used in native religious ceremonies that competed with the Christian Church. Because of this, the Ethiopian Church banned secular consumption of coffee for many years.” I brought the mug to my lips and sipped the bitter black brew, mostly to keep myself from talking. The coffee burned my tongue. I ignored it. “Mmm, coffee.”

  Viki’s eyes moved between Quinn and me, her unibrow still suspended on her face. “R-i-g-h-t,” she finally said, drawing out the word.

  I heard Quinn clear his throat, and then he placed our order. “She’ll have eggs over easy, bacon, sausage, hash browns, and toast with extra butter. I’ll have the usual.” As he ordered, he pulled my menu away and handed it to Viki along with his, and I noticed his voice sounded different, distant. Viki gave us both a small, quizzical smile, and then she left.

  I sipped more of my black coffee and glanced again at Quinn. He wasn’t looking at me. His mouth was a precise straight line, and his temple ticked as he flexed his jaw. I couldn’t read his sculpted features. I had a hunch that I embarrassed him or said something inappropriate. This was not a new feeling for me—regretting my words—but this time, I felt remorse on his behalf.

  I set the cup down and sighed. “I’m sorry.” I tried pulling my fingers through my hair but again abandoned the effort when I encountered unruly knots. “I have a bad habit of saying what I’m thinking and—”

  He held his hand up and shook his head. “No—no need to apologize.” He gave me a tight smile that didn’t reach anywhere near his eyes. “You were just being…honest. It’s not the first time I’ve been called a Neanderthal.”

  “You’re not a Neanderthal.” I frowned at him. “For one thing, you’re far too tall. And, I was comparing myself to a Neanderthal due to my physical features—you know, the size of my head, for one.”

  “So, you’re saying your head is larger than mine?”

  “Yes—no—what I mean is, they have big awkward heads, or are believed to have had big awkward heads that were too large for their body. Then, there is also the hair.”

  “Hair?”

  “Yes, hair. It is hypothesized that red hair…” I gestured to my crazy-town curls, “…comes from the Neanderthals interbreeding with the earliest humans.”

  “So, Neanderthals and humans did breed?”

  “Yes. Female humans and male Neanderthals may have bred successfully, which, if you think about it, isn’t as far-fetched because bigheaded men and small—er, normal-headed—women still breed quite often today. But, currently, scientists believe that the male humans who mated with female Neanderthals created sterile offspring. They believe this because there is a lack of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA present in modern humans. So, as you can see, and if you reflect on it, awkward headed-females mating with beautifully normal headed-males is a bad idea.”

  He blinked at me once, frowned, then turned his attention to his coffee. Unbearable silence lay like a thick blanket of fog around us. I figured he was regretting his decision to invite me to breakfast. I thought about comparing myself to a donkey and him to a horse, but instead bit my lip to keep from speaking.

  I noted his cheeks, neck, and the bridge of his nose were tinged with a faint shade of pink, likely due to annoyance with my fumbled conversation. I searched my brain for anything that would distract him. An abrupt thought came to me and, for lack of a better strategy, I decided to resort to a parlor trick that usually either amazed people or endeared me to them. It would also be an excellent demonstration of my freakishness, but I didn’t really have anything to lose.

  I licked my lips before speaking. “So, uh, want to see a trick?”

  He shrugged his shoulders, his tone unenthusiastic. “Sure.”

  I turned in my seat to face him, resting my elbow and arm along the counter. “Give me any two numbers and I can give you their value in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.”

  He turned toward me and met my gaze with a disbelieving one of his own. “What—in your giant brain?”

  I noted that he sounded interested more than sardonic, which I felt was an improvement, but I chose to ignore his giant brain comment. “Yes, in my brain. No paper.”

  His mouth hooked to the side just barely. “Any two numbers?”

  I nodded once. “Try me.”

  He turned his body to me completely, and I tried to ignore how his legs bumped into me, one of his knees settling between mine as we faced each other. “Hmmm...” his gaze narrowed speculatively. “
Ok, four hundred and seven hundred.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Here you go: addition—1100; subtraction—negative 300; multiplication—280,000; division—.57 yada yada yada. Ok, give me a hard one now.”

  He blinked at me, his mouth slightly open, then he smiled a small albeit real smile and rubbed his hands on his thighs. “Fine, a hard one then: twenty-one and five-thousand-one-hundred-twenty-four.”

  I let out a breath of relief; our earlier unpleasantness seemingly forgotten. “Ok, in the same order as before, the answers are 5145, 5103, 107,604, and .004 yada yada yada. That wasn’t a hard one, either.”

  He half-laughed half-sighed. “How do you do that?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve just always been able to. It comes in handy on Thursdays.”

  “What happens on Thursdays?”

  “I tutor math and science at the Kids’ Club on Thursday afternoons. Sometimes, if I can’t get them to focus, I distract them with my ‘freakishness.’” I used air quotes for the word freakishness then frowned at myself for doing so. I hated it when people used air quotes. It was like when someone says ‘we’ instead of ‘I.’ As in, ‘We would be so delighted… we just did the laundry… we have a yeast infection.’

  “Why did they downsize you? It seems like you would make an incredible accountant.”

  “I don’t know that either. My friend Kat—she still works there—she was going to try to find out but hasn’t been able to for some reason.”

  He took a sip of his coffee and said, “Has anyone else been let go?”

  “No. I’m the only one. But you have to admit, I’m pretty strange. Maybe they were just looking for an excuse to get rid of me. I have a tendency to make people uncomfortable with—you know— the plethora of trivial facts.” I was about to air quote ‘freakishness’ again but successfully suppressed the urge to do so.

  “Hmm.” His clear blue eyes narrowed as they studied me. “Are you…?” He set his cup down and leaned a little closer. “Do you have a photographic memory?”

  I laughed despite myself, mostly from nervousness due to his proximity. “No—God, no. I’d forget my name if it weren’t on my driver’s license.” Then I frowned at the inaccuracy of my statement. “Actually, I don’t have a driver’s license since I moved to the city, but my name is on my credit card and my state ID, so that helps.”

  He continued to survey me for a long minute, and then he asked, “Have you found a job yet?”

  I shook my head and rolled my lips between my teeth. Even though it had only been a week and a half, and I was eligible for unemployment, I felt anxiety about being out of work.

  He reached for his coffee and watched me over the rim of the cup as though he were considering something, or more specifically, considering me for something. When he put his cup down, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a business card and a pen. “I think I might be able to help you.” He wrote a name and number on the back of the business card.

  “What? Do you think I should get into the security business? I am pretty tall for a girl. And I can be fierce when I need to be.”

  He tilted his head to the side in a gesture that I was becoming used to, and then he handed me the card. “I don’t doubt it, but my company always needs someone good in the business office.” He closed his pen and set it on the counter. “I’ve written down the name and number of our director of business operations. You should call him; send him your resume. I can get you the interview if you want, but you’ll have to get the job on your own.”

  Viki returned with our food as I studied the card. I turned it between my fingers and read the front:

  Quinn Sullivan

  Cypher Systems, Inc.

  * * *

  Under his name was his phone number and business email address. I flipped the card to the back and stared at his handwriting rather than the name and number he’d written. His letters were all capitals, severe and precise; he put little dashes through his sevens but not through his zeros; his words were in a straight line rather than drifting up or down in the absence of lined paper.

  I liked his handwriting. I imagined reading a handwritten letter from him. I thought about him writing it—about taking the time to think of me enough to want to sit and write something to me. It made a volcano of warmth erupt in my stomach.

  When I looked up, he was frowning at me, his gaze guarded. “Of course you don’t have to apply if you don’t want to.”

  I placed my hand on his arm without thinking. “Oh, no, I’m going to apply. Really, thank you. Thank you for thinking of me.” His eyes moved to my fingers, and I withdrew my hand quickly and tried to tuck my hair behind my ears as I turned to the plate of greasy food left by Viki. I stared at the plate for a moment before I spoke. “I’m very grateful for everything you’ve done for me, last night and this morning, and now this.” I gestured to the card on the counter. I met and held his gaze as I added with a thankful smile, “You’re a really nice guy.”

  His frown deepened as though I’d just insulted him. His attention moved over my face, hair, and neck, and then he sighed and looked upward in an almost stealthy eye-roll.

  He mostly mumbled, “I’m not that nice.”

  Despite one more extremely awkward moment when Quinn wanted to give me a ride home on his motorcycle and I somewhat freaked out, stubbornly refused, and insisted on taking a cab, the rest of our morning together was actually really nice. Rather, more precisely, it was as nice as it could be considering I spent most of the time distracted, attempting to think of a way to get him shirtless again. During one weak moment, I contemplated throwing my coffee at him.

  Later that night, as I lay on the couch in Elizabeth’s apartment trying to concentrate on reading my book and failing miserably, I thought about my debate with Quinn about the motorcycle. If he’d offered to drive me home in a car I likely would have said yes.

  As it was, he owned a motorcycle.

  I’ve never been on a motorcycle, and since my mother died on one, I have absolutely no desire to ride on a motorcycle, ever. Obviously, I didn’t tell him that. I don’t like to think about, much less talk about, my mother’s death. I doubted that Quinn, who probably already thought I was a complete nutcase, wanted to hear about it anyway.

  “Janie? Janie, are you here?” I heard Elizabeth burst through the door just as I was getting up to brush my teeth, for the tenth time that day, and go to bed. There was an unexpected urgency in her voice, so I met her at the hall.

  “Yeah, I’m here; are you ok?”

  When she saw me, she stepped back and closed her eyes, her hand over her chest. “Oh, God. I’m going to kill Jon.”

  I lifted my eyebrows in confusion. “Jon? My Jon? What happened?”

  Elizabeth sighed and let the bag on her shoulder fall to the ground. “He called me, like, eleventy-thousand times today; he kept paging me, too. He said the two of you were supposed to meet today, and you didn’t show up.”

  It took me approximately five seconds to remember the planned meeting with Jon that I had obviously forgotten about earlier in the day. The sight of Quinn’s bare chest must have wiped my memory.

  “Oh, geez, I totally forgot!”

  Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “You need to get a cell phone. I’m blocking his number from mine.”

  “I am so sorry, Elizabeth. I’m sorry he bothered you at work.”

  “Don’t worry about it; I was more worried about you.” She laughed lightly as she pulled off her work clogs. “But you might want to send him an email or call him on Skype. He said something about calling in a missing persons report.” She stopped to give me a brief hug before walking to her room. “I’m glad you’re ok.”

  I nodded and turned to my laptop. It was already ten o’clock at night. I knew he would be up, but I didn’t particularly want to speak with him, so I opted to send him an email instead. When I opened my account, I saw that he’d already emailed me five times, with each message progressing in level of anxiety. The last
was sent less than a half hour ago and read:

  Would you please call me and let me know you are ok? I am going crazy with worry. I love you, Janie, and just want to know you are ok. I get that I hurt you and that you are mad, but please don’t punish me like this. This isn’t like you. If you’re trying to make me upset, then you’ve succeeded. If you don’t want to see me, just say so. I’m scared to death that you are somewhere hurt. If you get this and you are ok, then we really need to talk about getting you a cell phone. Please call me. Jon

  I sighed and gritted my teeth. I was annoyed by his presumption that we “needed” to talk about “getting me” a cell phone (as if I couldn’t do that myself if I wanted to) as well as at the pinch of guilt I felt as I typed my response:

  Jon, I’m ok. Honestly, I forgot about meeting you today. I’m sorry I didn’t call, but there is no reason to worry. Elizabeth just came home and said that you were calling her at work. Please don’t do that again. You know that I usually check my email at least once a day, and you also know how I feel about cell phones. I have no problem meeting you, I don’t want to upset you, and I’m not punishing you. I really do want us to be friends. Let me know if you want to try to meet up next week sometime. Talk to you soon, Janie

  I stared at my cursor and re-read my email. I decided to delete Talk to you soon then I sent it. I didn’t want him to think I was promising to speak with him soon. I took a moment to skim down the list of emails in my inbox, and I noted with a great degree of frustration that none of them contained responses to the hundreds of employment queries I’d sent.

  My thoughts drifted back to Quinn, and I remembered the card he gave me at breakfast. I reached to the coffee table in front of me and pulled out the card, letting my thumb caress his name before flipping it over to read the contact information he’d written on the back. My mouth curved into a wistful smile when my eyes met with the image of Quinn’s handwriting. I really was ridiculous.

  I clicked the Compose button and typed a quick letter of introduction, making sure to attach my resume to the message. As an afterthought, I decided to copy Quinn on the email. I wanted him to see that I was actually very interested in the position and thankful for his recommendation.