Geek Charming (12 page)

He didn’t say anything.

“Josh? Are you there?”

“Yeah. It’s just . . . nothing,” he mumbled. “It’ll be fine. I’ll just make sure to have an extra inhaler with me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Let me guess: you’re allergic to animals, too.”

“I can’t remember if I was tested by the allergist for animal dander, but I’m sure I am. I was three weeks premature, so—”

“—you don’t have a strong immune system. Yeah, I know,” I replied.

He was quiet again. “Plus . . . forget it.”

“What?”

“It’s just that . . . well, there was an incident,” he finally said.

“What kind of incident?” I asked warily.

“An incident with a guinea pig I brought home over Christmas vacation in fourth grade. Pepper was his name.”

“What happened to Pepper?”

“He kept giving me these pleading looks like he was really hungry, so I threw in a head of lettuce before I went to bed one night and then . . . ”

“Then what?”

“Well, apparently guinea pigs don’t know when to stop eating, so he didn’t. And he . . . exploded.”

“Ewwww!”
I shrieked. “That’s
disgusting
!”

“Yeah, it kind of was,” he agreed. “So ever since then, I tend to avoid being around animals whenever I can. It’s a post-traumatic-stress thing.”

“Oh.”

“But maybe this is a good opportunity for me to try and get over it. I should probably start getting some experience working under less-than-perfect circumstances, for when I’m a real director.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. I had to give him credit—having once had a teddy bear that exploded in the washing machine when I was four, I knew how traumatic seeing an animal’s intestines could be.

“Yeah. It’ll be okay. I’m sure I’ll have to work with animals at some point. I might as well start now.”

I had always been under the impression that geeks were frightened of their own shadows, but I had to admit that Josh was being pretty brave.

That was the thing about people—sometimes they actually surprised you.

 

As soon as I walked into Good Buys the next afternoon with the three shopping bags I had accumulated in the last hour, I totally understood why Josh’s shirt had said GEEK GANG that first day I met him—
everyone
in there was kind of geeky, from the people who worked there to the customers. Unlike the Apple Store or Circuit City, which were super loud and made you feel like you had had seven energy drinks, the vibe in Good Buys was more like a funeral.

I walked over to the neon Geek Gang sign where a guy with glasses and a wart on the right side of his nose was reading a magazine called
Fangoria
that had a picture of a guy dripping blood on the cover
.

“Hi,” I said, trying not to look at the wart. Facial disfigurations tend to make me nauseous.

He looked up. “Hello,” he replied. “I’m Agent Raymond Strauss, director of intelligence for The Dell branch of the Geek Gang. How can I help you today?”

“I’m looking for Josh Rosen,” I said.

He scratched his nose, right near the wart. “And you
a-r-e
?”

“Dylan Schoenfield.”

“Ah. So
you’re
Dylan.” He nodded as he brought his walkie-talkie up to his mouth. “Agent Rosen, Agent Rosen. Please report to the command station. You have a visitor. Over.”

“How cool!” I said excitedly. “I totally feel like I’m in an episode of
24
!”

Now, I thought that was pretty funny, but by the stone-faced stare I got in return, apparently Agent Raymond or whatever his name was didn’t think so. Josh must’ve known how weird this guy was, too, because within thirty seconds he was trotting up to us with his video camera, all out of breath in his white shirt and creased black pants.

“Omigod—is that a
clip-on
tie?” I asked, grabbing for it.

“Hey! Don’t—”

“I guess it is,” I said as it popped off.

“Give me that,” he said, taking it back and clipping it back on. When he was done he turned to the wart guy. “Okay, Raymond, I’m leaving.”

“So I’ll see you at fifteen-hundred hours tomorrow, Agent Rosen?” he asked.

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, Raymond—I’ll see you at
three
o’clock.” He turned to me. “You ready?”

I nodded.

He reached for two of my shopping bags. “Here, let me take these.”

“Oh. You don’t have to—”

“It’s okay,” he said, leading the way to the door. Asher
never
carried my bags for me. In fact, one time when he dragged me to a sporting-goods store, he actually made
me
carry
his
stuff so he could flip through the latest issue of
Surf’s Up!
on the way back to the car.

“Is that guy really like that or is he an actor?” I asked when we got outside the store. Even though it was five o’clock on a weekday, the mall was packed. Sure, New York City might beat L.A. when it comes to museums and the symphony and all that cultural stuff, but no one can touch us when it comes to shopping.

“Unfortunately he’s really like that,” Josh said as he unpacked his video camera. “Uh-oh,” he said as he examined it.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, panicked. The last time he had said “Uh-oh” I had ended up stranded on the side of Sunset Boulevard.

“The battery’s dead.”

I relaxed. “Oh. So now what?”

“Well, I guess I could buy one at work, but even with my discount it’s pretty expensive, so if it’s okay with you, I’d rather recharge it at home and do this some other time,” he said.

“Oh. Okay,” I said, trying not to sound too disappointed.

“Look, I feel bad about having made you wait around for me,” he said. “Can I, uh, buy you something to eat to make up for it?”

Fighting my way through the crowds at Nordstrom’s yearly half-off sale earlier
had
sapped a lot of my strength. But still—he was . . .
him
and I was . . .
me
. “You mean sit down at a table in a restaurant alone together?”

He shrugged. “Well, yeah. Unless you want a Hot Dog on a Stick from a cart. Other than the fact that they smell like formaldehyde, they’re pretty good.”

My stomach started to rumble. “I guess having a meal together would be okay.” My eyes narrowed. “But you’re not thinking of it as a
date
, are you?”

He snorted. “No. Of course not.”

I was glad we were on the same page, but he didn’t need to
snort
about it.

“Our relationship is strictly professional. I’m just trying to be a nice guy, seeing that you came all the way over here for nothing.”

“Okay, then. So where should we go?”

“I usually go over to Du-par’s at the Farmers Market,” he replied.

The Farmers Market was within walking distance of The Dell. It had been built in the 1930s and had a bunch of different mom-and-pop food stands and restaurants from Mexican to Korean. Daddy had tried to buy that land as well when he started developing The Dell, but backed down after he received a petition with over a thousand signatures from people who were against it. As there wasn’t one health-conscious restaurant in the bunch, I thought that getting rid of it and putting up a gym was a good idea, but for some reason people tend to like greasy food and old-fashioned soft-serve ice-cream cones. Go figure.

“Isn’t that like a pancake place?” I asked.

“Well, yeah, they have pancakes, but it’s more like a diner.”

I highly doubted that there’d be anything on the menu that was less than fifteen Weight Watchers points, but anything sounded better than a hot dog on a stick.

“Sure. That sounds fine,” I said.

Plus, it was a very nondatelike place.

 

If you ever want to find the over-sixty-five crowd in L.A., just go to Du-par’s at 5:15 P.M., because they’re all there, eating their Salisbury-steak-and-baked-potato dinners. It was sweet to see so many old couples in love. Who knew—maybe Asher and I would eat here when we got old, too. That is, if I could get him to spend some time with me. Or just even
talk
to me. While Asher may be super hot, he’s next to hopeless when it comes to communicating. When we were first going out, he’d at least
try
to keep the conversation going. Granted, it was usually him going on and on about Ultimate Fighting or surfing or some other subject that I had zero interest in while I said things like “uh-huh,” “mm-hm,” and “oh, really?” every few minutes to make him think that I was listening, but he didn’t even do
that
anymore. Now our conversations went more like this:

 

Me: Hey, Asher.

Him: What up?

Me: Nothing. Just wanted to say hi.

Him: Hey, can I call/text you later? I’m kind of busy at the moment.

Me: Sure. Well, bye . . . love ya!

Him: Later.

 

We had been together for two years, so I realized it wasn’t going to be like it was in the beginning when all we did was make out and tell each other how hot the other looked that day. However, in the book
How to Put the Sizzle Back in Your Marriage
that Lola stole from her mom’s nightstand drawer a few months ago and gave to me, it said that communication was the keystone to a successful relationship and that if one of the partners was always giving one-word answers or saying things like “Can we talk later? I’m kind of busy,” then chances were the marriage was in trouble.

And I also knew from having read the copy of
Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
that Hannah took from
her
mom’s nightstand drawer that men just aren’t into talking as much as we women are because they’d rather be off
fixing
something. But I also knew from the book that there were some guys out there who not only
like
to talk, but who know how to have a dialogue instead of a monologue.

Asher just didn’t happen to be one of them.

At least not at the moment. But that was okay—I could train him. Like a puppy. I mean, he
was
super hot.

“This is so trippy,” I said as I squinted against the fluorescent light and took a bite of my iceberg-lettuce salad with Russian dressing. Usually I avoid dressing like the plague, but when I asked for balsamic vinaigrette, Doris, our yellow-haired waitress who seemed to never have heard the word
sunblock
before, looked at me like I was speaking Swahili so I decided to just go with the flow. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen polyester-and-elastic-waist pants up close before.”

Josh took a bite of his club sandwich. “I know it’s not written up in a gossip blog or anything like that,” he said, “but I have seen a few celebrities in here from time to time.”

“Like who?”

“Like . . . Janusz Kaminski.”

“Janusz Kaminski!” he said with his mouth full.

“Okay. A) Rule number 732: the talking-with-your-mouth-full? Totally gross, so please refrain.”

He finished chewing and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Sorry. I guess I’ve been spending too much time with Steven.”

“And B) Who on earth is Shamu Kazinsky?”

Josh looked at me like I had just stood up on the table and started barking. “Janusz Kaminski. Only one of the best cinematographers of all time. He shot a lot of Steven’s movies.”

“Steven your friend?”

As he took a sip of his milk, I cringed. First of all, who over the age of five drank milk with a meal? And second, did he not know how much fat was in that glass?

“No. Steven
Spielberg,
” he replied.

“You know Steven Spielberg?” I asked, impressed.

“Not exactly,” he admitted. “But I’m sure I’ll meet him one day. Anyway, I’m not quite sure it was Janusz because I only saw him from the back and it was right before I got my new prescription for my glasses—”

“Okay, sorry, but that’s
not
a celebrity,” I replied.

He shrugged. “In the film world, he is.” I guess my fry envy was showing because he pushed his plate toward me. “Want one?”

I shook my head. “No thanks. I try and only have carbs one night every other weekend.”

He shook his head. “I’ll never understand girls and food. I bet you could eat at In-N-Out Burger every day for the next five years and still be skinny.”

“That’s so not true, but it’s still really sweet of you to say that,” I replied. His fries
did
look good. “Okay, maybe I’ll have
one,
” I said as I reached for one and dipped it in the ketchup/mayonnaise concoction he had made. “Omigod—these are amazing,” I said with my mouth full.

“You’re talking with your mouth full,” he said.

I finished chewing and dabbed at the corners of my mouth. “I am not.” I reached for another fry. “I’m just going to have one more, if that’s okay.” It couldn’t hurt. I had already fallen off the wagon with the Russian dressing.

“Have as many as you want,” he said.

Wow. How nice to be around a guy who encouraged a girl to eat—even if he was a geek. The few times I had tried to snag a fry from Asher’s plate, he always gave me a look like he had just caught me shooting drugs or something. But now one turned into two turned into him ordering me my own side of fries. I felt a little self-conscious pigging out like that in front of him, but soon I relaxed. I didn’t even get upset and say, “Excuse me, but are you
kidding
?” when an old man and woman shuffling past our booth stopped to say what a cute couple we made.

“You really love movies, don’t you?” I asked as I scarfed down some of the onion rings he had ordered for us. (Well, he
said
they were for us, but I don’t particularly like them, which is why I only had seven or so.)

He nodded as he dipped one of them in the salsa/mustard combination he had whipped up. Although it sounded disgusting, it was pretty yummy.