Erotic Refugees (14 page)

She sighed. “Can't let it
slide, can you? I knew there was something biting you. I could
smell it. Look.” She put the sample bottles down and took a deep
breath. “This whole thing with Andy, it's just brought up old
ghosts—”

“
Well tell me about it
then! I always tell you everything and I just want the same in
return. Is that too hard? I mean, we are friends, but if you're
just going to—”

“
Oh fuck it Eoin!” She
spun around, took a few steps and managed to bang her shin on the
open door of the dishwasher. “Helvetes jälva skit!” she roared and
slammed the washer shut. Eoin heard something break inside it. She
stood there, frozen, with a hand pressed to her leg.

“
Okay, fine,” he said
more calmly. “If you don't want Andy on Gotland, okay, I'll just
tell him. I'll just un-invite him—”

“
Is that still all you're
thinking about?” Alice's laughed sarcastically. “Jävla Gotland?
Well I'm sorry that my, my irrational mood is going to spoil your
fucking holiday! Forgive me for not thinking more of
you!”

“
Fine then,” he said,
louder than he really meant to. “I guess I will just ask Andy since
I won't be getting any sense from you.”

Her look was icy. “You know,
maybe I don't want any of you in Gotland! Did you think about that?
If Andy is so fucking important then you can go somewhere else,
just the two of you—”

“
Fine, I will! Jesus, I
didn't expect you to turn into a fucking drama Queen and freak out
as soon as things stopped going your way—”

Eoin paused in mid rant,
because Alice's eyes had grown narrow and the muscles of her jaw
were twitching. He took a step back, with his hands held up. “Um,
I'll probably just go. It's getting late and I, well—”

“
Yes, go. And tell your
friends to fix their own fucking holiday.”

She spun around and stormed out
of sight. Her bedroom door slammed a moment later, making vases
shudder on shelves. Eoin took that as a definite sign that he was
expected to leave.

He hurried into the hall,
scooped up his jacket, shoved his feet into his shoes and opened
the front door. He paused there for a second, thinking and
listening, wondering if he should go back and say something else.
But no, Alice had made it clear. She wanted him out.

He pulled the door closed and
hurried down the steps, hoping there was something on the way to
his date that he could deliver a good, hard, solid kick to. And
preferably several.

Eoin lay in the bed, wondering
where it had all gone wrong. He knew there'd been some kind of plan
for the evening, something about being so rude and arrogant to Anja
that she'd exit the date and never contact him again, thus leaving
him morally free to pursue her friend. Usually he wasn't a rude
person but he'd been so mad at Alice that extending those feeling
over Anja hadn't been difficult. At the time it had seemed like a
great idea but, for some unaccountable reason, it hadn't
worked.

It completely and totally
hadn't worked.

Anja was asleep. She was facing
him with a sheet draped casually (and badly) across her thin body.
Eoin stared at the single small nipple on display and swallowed
before rolling over. He thought back on the evening, and allowed
himself a smile. Actually, some parts had been great. Many parts.
He hadn't been aware that a person could physically do those
things, especially the one with the…

But no! This was all wrong, and
not at all The Plan. He was in bed with a woman he had no intention
of getting together with. And now her friend, the one he actually
wanted, would find about the things they'd been up to. She'd find
out because Anja would tell her, and predicting what happened next
would require either Alice or some kind of supercomputer.

He listened to the gentle buzz
of her breathing, thinking of the hundred kinds of trouble he had
so expertly gotten himself into. One thing, though, was certain—the
prize for Bad Idea of the Week had just been claimed. And in a
fucking landslide.

Chapter
16

Rob made it through the first
morning of his start-your-own-business course by focusing with
Zen-like concentration on one thing—soon, it would be time for
coffee.

When the lunch break finally
rolled around he staggered out the door and into the little common
room, in desperate need of some caffeine. After slotting some coins
into a machine he watched expectantly as coffee-flavoured dishwater
dribbled into a plastic cup. He grabbed it, sipped it and at last
felt his brain begin to stir.

With a warm something in his
hand he stepped to one side to allow the line to move forward, and
allow himself a proper look at his classmates. He was primarily
interested in two things: if he could fuck any of them, and if one
had a room to rent to his sister. They were all probably unemployed
so the chances of both things were, he estimated, fairly good.

Criteria one folded quickly as
there wasn't a decent looking woman among the lot. Well actually
the one standing at the coffee machine wasn't so bad, a red-haired
thirty-something wearing loose casual clothes. She was too old for
Rob but she was the only normal-looking female out of his dozen
classmates. Rob watched her fumble in her bag for change, swearing
under her breath, and he saw his chance for an introduction. He dug
into his jeans, produced a handful of coins, stepped forward and
held it out to her.

“
There ye go, I've got
loads, just take a few.”

She looked up at him in
surprise. With a nod she plucked a few crowns from his hand to feed
into the slot. She positioned the plastic cup, pressed a button,
and watched suspiciously as the thing began to grind and hum and
shudder.

“
Thanks,” she said. “So
who did you kill to end up here?”

“
No-one that'll be
missed,” Rob said. “And it was either this or five years smashin'
rocks. Although now I think I should have gone with the
rocks.”

She plucked her cup from the
machine, sipped at the coffee and made a “bleagh” face. She nodded
in the general direction of outside. “Well, school's out for now,
so do you want to join me for lunch?”

Rob did, and he was happy to
escape his other classmates, as they looked like a very dry bunch.
His new friend led the way down the stairs and he followed
after.

“
You've got good English,
where'd ye learn it?”

“
The usual. Text
adventure games in the eighties. Plus English-speaking friends.”
She held the outside door open and allowed him to step through.
“But mostly the games, I mean you can't beat text adventures for
building your vocabulary, especially for things like go north,
smack beast, open chest.” They came to a halt on the pavement and
she stuck out a hand.

“
I'm Milly. Well Malin
actually, but after a few months of trying to teach my old
workmates to say Malin, it just turned into Milly and then it kind
of stayed there.”

Rob shook her hand, giving a
sharp nod. “Rob. Nice to meet ye.”

“
I used to work here,”
she said, shading her eyes with a hand as she looked around. “So I
should know a million lunch places. Can't think of a single one
right now though.”

Rob seized the opportunity to
look her over while she was looking around. She had thick red hair,
coming down just below the shoulder, and well on its way to
becoming dreadlocks. This framed her dark green eyes and a face
that, while a little round and wrinkled at the edges, was still
strong and full of humour. She looked to be at least thirty-five
and that was far too old to be of any interest to Rob. There was a
chance she might have been of some interest to Drunk Rob, who had a
different agenda, his own flag and a very handy immunity from
prosecution. The next time Drunk Rob appeared on the scene, he
would have to ask him.

“
Ah!” she said. “This
way, I'm almost entirely sure of it.” She moved off and Rob fell
into step beside her.

“
That's an Australian
twang in yer voice if I'm not mistaken.”

“
Sure is,” Milly said. “I
came back from Melbourne five months ago. Figured I'd better start
making some pension in the land of my birth. Not the best plan
given the state of things right now. What are you doing, when
you're doing things?”

“
Well,” Rob said, unsure
of how low to pitch it. “Usually I'm making stuff for web sites.
Ads, games, whatever, just getting all the pieces to work. Internet
engineering, I suppose.”

“
Internet engineering?”
Milly grinned. “So you work in the nineteenth century, do you? It
must be a tough commute. What is it, Dot Net, HTML?”

“
Flash mostly. Bit of the
other stuff too when called upon. So how do ye know all this?
Project leader maybe?”

“
Um, no,” she said with a
twinge of annoyance. “I do what you do, although mostly HTML and
JavaScript. Plus some server-side, when I'm forced to.”

Rob’s attention was tweaked. He
stopped checking out the girls on the grassy slope across the
street and fixed his gaze on Milly. “What, so you've handled
databases? Log-ins, user tracking, stuff like that?”

“
Some. I know the basics
anyway.”

Rob grinned. Now this was
interesting! She wasn't a proper systems developer like he and Eoin
had planned to find, but it was at least something. In fact, as Rob
saw it, she had a definite edge over any proper systems developer
in that she was right here and he wouldn't have to do any work to
find her. This, to Rob, was a big plus and made up for any number
of inadequacies.

“
I'm working on a project
of my own—”

“
Is it one where I'll get
paid?” she said brightly.

“
Well … no, not right
away. Not until we find an investor, or someone who wants to buy us
out. It's a great idea though, just need some systems work on it to
get things rolling.”

“
Mmm,” Milly said,
looking suspicious. “So what do you need?”

“
Just basic user
handling,” Rob said casually. He was careful not to mention they
also needed an interactions designer, tester, graphic designer,
project leader, marketing genius and somebody with their own car
who could also make good tea. First things first though, and
somebody who could rig a database and set up a login sequence was a
start.

“
Well the café's just
over there,” Milly said. “Or it used to be anyway. If you buy me
lunch you can tell me all about this idea of yours.”

Rob nodded. “Fair enough. But
ye do promise not to nick our idea? I've only know ye for like
twenty minutes.”

“
Don't worry, I don't get
any more trustworthy over time, I promise. There's the place, looks
like lots of sitting room. I'll guard the seats and you'll fix me a
turkey and cottage cheese sandwich and a big latte.”

Rob headed inside and ordered
two lunches, amused that he was paying for this woman after having
just met her. And if she could do that, he reasoned, she was
probably a good person to have on board.

He took the tray outside,
offloaded the lunches and lit a cigarette before launching directly
into the sales pitch for their site. Milly listened politely and,
when he was done, she nodded.

“
Well my first impression
is it seems so obvious and easy to do that somebody is bound to
steal it.”

“
Yeah, well, it's because
it’s obvious that we know it's good, see? We are the first, so we
get loads of free attention and then sell the thing as soon as
anybody makes a decent offer. Plus we get a shit-load of free
publicity as those smart guys who came up with the idea and so get
people interested in funding our next project.”

“
Which is?”

Rob chewed happily on his
sandwich. “Dunno, something equally good. Ideas there are no
shortage of.”

“
No, there's never any
shortage of ideas, just time. I'm busy all day every day, and I
don't even have a job yet. God knows where I'm going to squeeze
that in, when it happens! Oh, the sun, fantastic!”

Milly flipped her sunglasses
down and turned her face to the sky, with her hands clasped behind
her head. An odd sound was coming from her and Rob realised she was
drumming her fingers on the back of her head. He hoped that meant
she was considering things.

“
Well I happen to have a
login and registration structure I can just copy from an old
project. What else do you need from me on this?”

Rob grinned. “Well, since ye
ask, maybe some graphics…?”

She reached for her sandwich.
“No, not me, I don't do graphics. I've got a programmer's mind, it
all ends up as grey boxes and big ugly buttons. But it shouldn't be
so hard to find someone to make a few graphics when you've already
got them sketched out, right?”

Rob looked down in shame.
“Well…”

“
But you don't have any
sketches, do you? So how much have you actually done on
this?”

Rob realised the answer to that
question was “very little” but he needed to find a better way to
put it. He reached for his latte glass, found it empty, and
proceeded to scrape out the clinging foam with a spoon.

“
We've got lots of
sketches, boxes, flowcharts, menus and all. Everything's worked out
functionally on paper. Loads of paper.”

“
So not much, is what
you're saying? But you've got the domain, and a web hotel, so we
can get the database up, try some logins?”