Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
I ran home to tell Elizabeth my news and engage in what I surmised to be completely typical female behavior: nitpick every detail of my conversation and time with Quinn Sullivan, a.k.a.
McHotpants. Alas, when I arrived home, I found a note indicating that she’d gone to the hospital for an unexpected shift and that I should start looking for reasonably priced two-bedroom apartments.
Instead of indulging myself in girl talk, I had to settle for watching a chick-flick period drama on BBC America and sifting through craigslist for new living arrangements.
Truth be told, I wasn’t in any real hurry for us to vacate her current place.
I liked sleeping on the couch; it made every night seem like a sleepover. I liked the non-permanence of it.
The next day I was racked with excited nervousness.
I woke up way too early, and left the apartment late after trying on every piece of clothing I owned.
Finally, I settled on a scoop neck white shirt, dark blue pants, and matching high heels.
I felt I’d achieved my goal of business professional without trying too hard, but I worried, as I waited for the train, that I’d not tried hard enough.
I worried that I looked boring.
Almost immediately, I pushed the thought out of my head. I reminded myself: Quinn Herr Handsomestein Sullivan is my coworker; he isn’t interested in me, and he doesn’t care or notice what I am wearing.
The reminder made me feel both better and slightly worse.
When I arrived at work, I stopped by Steven’s office to ask if I should prepare or bring anything to the training session.
Steven only shrugged and said, “No. Mr. Sullivan didn’t tell me much about it, but then, he’s not much of a talker, is he?
He’ll probably just show you one of the properties and have you back within the hour.
” Steven pushed a button on his phone to get on a conference call and then shooed me out of his office.
I waited all morning for Quinn to call. I stayed within earshot of my office phone and jumped every time I heard someone else’s phone ring. Around three o’clock, I glanced at my watch and frowned for the forty-second time that day.
Still no call and it was past lunch. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast at six o’clock in the morning, and that had consisted of two hardboiled eggs.
Additionally, I had to be on the South Side in three hours for my Thursday night tutoring session.
I decided to bury my disappointment in an Italian beef sandwich from Smith’s Take-away and Grocery.
Things went awry when I ran out to pick up lunch for Betty and me, since we were the only ones in the office who hadn’t yet eaten. In the seventeen minutes it took me to pick up lunch, Quinn left me two messages on my office phone.
The first was a gruff, “Call me back ASAP.”
The second call was less verbose.
He must’ve called as soon as I left. My heart leapt at the sound of his voice when I checked my voicemail with one hand and held my to-go meal in the other.
Then Keira came into my office. A Bluetooth headset was clipped to her ear.
She told me that Mr. Sullivan was on the phone, and wanted me to meet him downstairs at the Starbucks on the corner.
I abdicated thoughts of eating and promptly took the elevator to the bottom floor. I was agitated. I was tense. As it turned out, both sensations were warranted. My stomach plummeted when I caught sight of him and noted his stern expression and the object he held in his hand.
As we stood across from each other next to the coffee counter, I could see my doom in his hand: a small, sleek, black rectangle with a shiny screen and only one perceivable button. Virtually everyone at Cypher Systems had a business cell phone.
I knew it made sense, but I still didn’t have to like it.
My hands were on my hips, and I eyed the cell phone with contempt. “What is that?”
His smile was reluctant, as though he really wanted to maintain an impassive mask but found it impossible to do so. “What does it look like?”
“I don’t believe in cell phones,” I said.
I might as well have said that I didn’t believe in the laws of thermodynamics.
“I don’t understand.” His gaze felt remarkably penetrating, and the smile fell away from his features. His usual stoic mask of detachment was tinged with confusion.
I shifted awkwardly on my feet, twisting my fingers together. “It means I don’t want to carry a cell phone.”
“I’m not asking.” He reached out with his large hands and placed the phone in my palm.
“What about Carlos? What does he say?”
“It was his idea.”
His rebuttal left me unfazed. Maybe it was because I’d woken up in his sister’s apartment half-naked, or because we may or may not have engaged in flirting the day before, or maybe it was my very real resentment at the thought of having to carry a cell phone.
Whatever it was, I seemed abruptly semi-impervious to the usual pandemonium his proximity administered to my insides.
I countered, “No, it’s not Carlos’s idea. It’s your idea. You probably talked him into it.”
“Fine, yes—it is my idea, and Carlos thinks it’s a great one. And, since Carlos is your boss…” he lifted his eyebrows and waited for me to fill in the blanks.
My chin lifted in defiance while he cradled my hand with both of his.
I tried not to be affected by his touch, but the incongruence between the gentleness with which he held my hand and the obstinate quality of his glare was unnerving.
His thumb was also moving in slow circles over the back of my hand.
I clutched my anger to my chest like a last pair of marked-down Jimmy Choos in my size.
Finally, I said the only thing I could think of. “It’s a personal choice. I don’t want it.”
He sighed, visibly annoyed. “Why not?”
“Because…because…” I held my breath, not wanting to explain my unconventional repugnance for conventional technology, but I couldn’t help myself.
His closeness, his hands holding mine, the dastardly small circular motion of his thumb, even his slightly perturbed glare unleashed the floodgates of my nonsensical verbosity.
“Because—are we really here, alive, if we interface with the world via a small black box? I don’t want my brain in a vat.
I don’t want to be fed with input from the equivalent of a cerebral implant until I can’t tell fiction from reality.
Don’t you see those people?” I motioned with my free hand to a line of customers waiting for their coffee orders to be filled.
“Look at them. Where are they looking? They’re not looking at each other, they’re not looking at the art on the wall or the sun in the sky; they’re looking at their phones.
They hang on to every beep and alert and message and tweet and status update.
I don’t want to be that. I’m distracted enough as it is by the actual, tangible, physical world.
I’ve embraced the efficiency of a desktop PC for work and research, and I even use a laptop on my own time, but I draw the line at a cell phone.
If I want social media, I’ll join a book club.
I will not be collared and leashed and tracked like a tagged Orca in the ocean. ”
I was a little breathless when I concluded and withdrew my fingers from his, leaving the phone in his hand. I tried to look everywhere but at him and his damn tenebrous blue eyes.
He placed the phone in my hand once again. “As much as the idea of collaring and leashing you sounds promising, the purpose of the phone is to ensure you’re reachable.”
I interrupted him. “You mean bound and restrained.”
“Janie, if I wanted to restrain you, I’d use rope.” When he spoke, his voice was low and softened with what could only be described as intimacy.
I met his gaze abruptly, startled by his tone, but his gaze struck me momentarily mute.
He’d shifted closer, towering over me so I had to tilt my head back to meet his stare, his mouth curved into a whisper of a smile that felt more menacing than a scowl.
I blinked under the scalding stare and leaned one elbow against the counter for balance.
I felt heat rise up my throat and over my cheeks as I frowned at him. “I know what you’re doing.” My own annoyance bolstered my confidence.
He lifted a single eyebrow and leaned against the counter, mimicking my stance. “And what’s that?”
“You’re teasing me again, like yesterday; you’re trying to distract me.” I placed the phone on the counter.
“I’m not trying to distract you.” His eyes traveled slowly over my face.
I gritted my teeth to get my blush and the beating of my stupid heart under control. “Yes, you are, and it won’t work.”
His smile grew, but it was still just a small curve; his gaze continued its searing yet leisurely perusal of my features. “And why not?”
Recovering my voice but not entirely in control of my brain, I started talking without really paying attention to my words.
“Because they don’t use ropes; they use nets.
They track the Orcas between Alaska and the Hawaiian islands to establish migration paths, mating patterns, and birth rates.
It’s actually fascinating. Did you know that most male killer whales that are raised in captivity—which is about sixty to ninety percent of them—experience dorsal fin collapse? ”
“Really? How interesting. What is dorsal fin collapse?” His voice was deadpan, but he was still giving me that dangerous smile.
I took a step backward. “It’s where the dorsal fin—you know, the usually stiff fin on their backs—droops to the side, and they can’t get it up.
Scientists think it’s because when the males are in captivity, they can’t swim to an adequate depth, and so their dorsal fins droop.
That is why I don’t want a cell phone. I don’t want a droopy fin. ”