Erotic Refugees (30 page)

Eoin loved strong food with
piles of garlic, and Jenny had hated it. He liked traditional
old-fashioned clothes and hats, but Jenny had “updated” his
wardrobe and convinced him that he was actually preppy. And he
liked strong colours and dark-wood furniture, but Jenny had
explained at length why white and minimalistic were so much better.
And he'd just accepted it.

But those things weren't him at
all. They had simply been bolted on over the real him, like a shell
on a hermit crab. Well now it was time to crack off that shell and
let the actual Eoin underneath peek out.

Life should be simple and he'd
make it simple. Damien, and him, and his project with Rob. That was
it. No more text-message dances with women, no fretting mail
exchanges, no tiptoeing around people's emotions. That would all
stop here.

Eoin reached for his water
glass as a giddy sense of freedom and possibility tingled in his
head. He felt like making a memorial plaque and hanging it on the
wall so he could look at it every day and remind himself of this
place and this moment. It would be brass and shiny and it would
simply say: Life resumed here.

Eoin studied the white wall and
narrowed his eyes. What a typically unthreatening Swedish wall. It
would look so much better if it were green. Or maybe purple with a
cluster of gold-framed portraits on it.

Yes, he thought, already seeing
it in all its loud and gaudy glory. Why the hell not?

Chapter
31

Milly was already sitting
outside the bar when Rob arrived. She'd seized the table furthest
out, the one with the most remaining minutes of precious evening
sun. “Mine's a cider,” she said. “And don't worry, I've taken care
of the snacks!” She waved a hand over the pile of crisp packets.
“Behold my snack wonderland!”

Rob deposited his jacket and
pressed his way to the bar through the Friday after-work crowd. He
glanced to his right and saw Helena was working. She was positioned
at the end of the bar waiting to take delivery of some drinks.
She'd clearly noticed him too but was making a point of not looking
in his direction.

Yeah whatever, Rob thought. He
caught the attention of the barman and ordered three drinks. When
he had transported them back to the table, Eoin was settling into
place, unusually for him a few minutes late. As soon as Rob had sat
down the meeting, without a word of preamble, got underway.

“
So how is our baby
doing?” Milly said. She had squeezed her ginger dreadlocks into two
pigtails and looked like some slightly mad schoolgirl.

Eoin flipped open his project
notebook. “We're looking good. Rob's put in the icons and the
layout that Karen sent. And it's a bit bright and flashy, but it
definitely makes everything more alive and integrated.”

“
Plus we've nailed the
flow through the rating and search pages,” Rob added. “Nice and
intuitive. And on the first page ye now get a feed with the most
interesting profiles, the ones with the most visits or the best
tits or whatever. Oh, and the register page is now really simple
with only three fields to fill in. So just thirty seconds and the
account is open. In general, I'd say no worries!”

“
Pardon me,” Eoin said,
politely putting his hand up. “I've got a worry. I went to lunch
with Alice and her lawyer friend and she told me some things. Wait,
let me find it.” He flipped though his notebook to locate the right
page. “She said, as long as we don't directly use material copied
from other sites, we should be okay. But if it can be shown that
we're encouraging users of our site to copy stuff from, let's say,
Diamond Date, then things could get very messy for us.”

“
But could they do it?”
Rob said. “Would all the dating sites be able to shut us
down?”

“
Maybe not,” Eoin said.
“Diamond Date might actually like the idea, since it shines some
publicity on them. On the other hand, they might hate it and decide
to make trouble. Plus the users on Diamond Date will probably not
be happy if they find about it, and might kick up a
racket.”

Milly lifted her pint of cider
and stared into it, watching the bubbles as they detached from the
wall of glass and streamed upwards. “That's why we shouldn't link
directly to the dating sites we use. They'll be able to track where
incoming links are coming from. We'll have to give the link to the
dating profiles as a text and ask out users to copy and paste it
into a new tab.”

“
Fair enough,” Rob said.
“Although that throws the whole 'easy to use' thing out the
window.”

“
Better that than legal
trouble,” Milly said. “And we have to be a bit selective about who
we let in for the testing. I mean, we don't want word getting out
to Diamond Date again and have them muscle their way
in—”

“
Won't be a problem,” Rob
said. “That leak's been plugged. No more news will be makin' its
way to Diamond Date.”

Milly turned to him. “You're
sure?”

“
I'm sayin' it, aren't I?
The Kajsa bridge has been well and truly bloody burned. Do ye want
it in writing or what?”

Milly looked at him curiously.
“Sure Rob, if you say so.” She pulled open a packet of crisps and
offered them around. “And we're sticking with the name Dating
Dirt?”

“
I still like it,” Eoin
said. “And the dirt gives it a gritty edge, makes it feels illegal
and nasty. That's good for the image. Plus we can work the concept
of dirt into the interface. What about Facebook? Shouldn't we do
something there?”

Rob shook his head. “Why not
just rent the moon and slap a big fucking banner on it? No, we have
to keep this quiet while we're testing. Just find some reliable
people and get them to sign up. We'll have to add profiles so it
won't be empty when the first people start looking around. Alice
can maybe help us there—”

“
Rob,” Eoin interrupted.
“Isn't that what's-her-name, your old girlfriend?” Rob turned his
head slightly and caught a glance of the waitress who was wiping a
table behind them.

“
Yip,” he muttered.
“That's Helena. Don't make a mess on the table, is all I'm sayin',
because you'll be cleaning it up yerself.”

Milly shook her head in awe.
“You have bodies stashed in every corner, don't you Rob? Maybe she
could be a beta tester, I'm sure she has lots of fun things to say
about your dating profile!”

Rob grinned. “Stick to the
knitting, funny lady, cos yer jokes are shite.”

Eoin ignored them and flipped
to another page of his notebook.

“
Right, so the timetable
is the following. First we finish the major functions, and that's
done by the end of August. Then we start filling it up with content
ourselves so the testers have something to play with. Done by
mid-September. We rope in people to be our testers, and let them
in, when? October first? Anything else?”

“
Anything else?” Rob
said. “The launch party, man!”

“
Oh right. Milly, what do
you have for us on that?”

Milly dug a printed page from
her bag and flattened it out.

“
I talked to my friend
Alma. She runs the booking and she said it'll be cheapest on a
weekday night. There's space for up to a hundred people and it'll
cost us a few thousand crowns. And then there's the freebies,
drinks, snacks, computer hire and so on. I'd say the total looks
like twelve or fifteen thousand.”

“
Bugger,” Rob said. “So
who's selling an organ?”

“
I've got it covered,”
Eoin said. “I've sent in the application for the
start-your-own-business grant. And I'm registering the company. We
also need to write some agreements about how we share the costs and
the profits, if we ever see any. Necessary steps so we don't end up
killing each other if this takes off.”

“
Sweet,” Rob said. “So
when's the big day?”

“
Later than you'd
expect,” Milly said. “The worst thing would be to plan a launch
party and then have nothing to launch. I say November is a good
bet. Send me your suggestions.”

“
And then directly after
that we launch the thing properly?”

“
Before, probably,” Eoin
said. “We want it to be working when we open it officially for the
public, with no serious issues.”

“
And,” Milly said, “my
server has a pretty fat line. I host the knitted art site from
there and they pay for the connection. No big traffic on that
though, so as long as we're not talking a million hits a day, we
should be good to go for now.”

Rob nodded. “Right, so
basically we have three months to get everything up and running.
And in the meantime we'll have to shell out fifteen thousand until
Eoin gets the paperwork through.”

“
Not right away,” Milly
said, “but yeah, pretty soon.” She peered into her empty glass.
“Looks like my round. So what can I interest you boys in? Champagne
on the company budget?”

“
Are ye bloody kiddin'
me? When we're already fifteen grand in the hole? I don't think
so.”

“
Fine,” she said. “Three
ice-waters then. And I'll tell them to use the recycled ice.” She
winked and headed for the bar.

“
Oh alright then,” Rob
called after her. “Three pints for fuck's sake. But this is the
very last time. From now on it's just gruel and
porridge!”

“
Gruel is porridge, Rob,”
Eoin said.

“
Oh.” Rob nodded
thoughtfully. “Well that'll make it easier then. Won't
it?”

Chapter
32

Rob woke one Saturday morning
and realised three things.

One, that it was already
October and he had less than six short weeks to make his fortune or
else sell his soul to an employer.

Two, that the strange wart-like
lump on his small toe wasn't going away by itself, no matter how
hard or often he glared at it.

And three … hmm, there was a
third thing, some fuzzy item that skittered around the periphery of
his mind. But it just wouldn't surface.

Rob yawned. No matter, it would
come to him eventually.

He rolled out of bed and
scratched his stubbly cheek. His bathrobe was waiting on his
laundry chair so he pulled it on. After that he stumbled into the
kitchen and turned on the kettle, as he continued to ponder.

Maybe he'd missed a washing
time, could that be it? He was pretty sure it wasn't, but maybe
he'd booked one while drunk. But no, it didn't feel like that. It
was something else.

He sloped into the bathroom and
brushed his teeth. Was it an interview? No damn it, it was
Saturday, and anyway he hadn't applied for a real job in months. An
appointment with a hairdresser then? Dentist? Some hot girl? No,
nope, and he wished. He rinsed the toothbrush, stuck it back on its
rack and returned to the kitchen.

He flipped open his laptop and
spooned some instant coffee into a mug. As he stirred the brown
lumps into the water he stared at the dour autumn morning that was
on offer outside his window. He turned back to the computer and
moved his attention down to the task bar where he noticed the
clock. He frowned.

That was it, something to do
with the clock. The clock was important. Or, more to the point,
something to do with the numbers on the clock was important…

“
Oh bugger and shite!” He
shoved back the chair and stood up so fast he became light-headed.
It was only bloody Karen! She was coming to town for two weeks to
help finalise the site and help out with the launch party. And he
was supposed to meet her in approximately—he leaned over and
checked the clock again—twelve minutes ago!

Rob took stock. He could still
make it within the accepted limits of lateness. Maybe Karen was
running late herself and wouldn't notice. He hunted around for his
mobile and found it after a whole lot of swearing. The sound was
off, and there were six missed calls and four messages blinking for
his attention.

Rob groaned, and lunged for his
clothes. Three minutes after that, wearing yesterday's underwear
and no socks, he was dashing out the door as his coffee sat
abandoned and slowly cooling in the empty kitchen behind him.

“
So this is where you
live?” Karen said as she kicked her bag into a corner and slid her
feet from her boots.

“
Here? Nah, I don't live
here, this is just my weekend place. When I'm not stayin' on the
yacht. Or in the castle. Or on the bloody space
station.”

Karen gave him a pitying look.
She was wearing less black than the last time Rob had seen her, and
her makeup was fairly minimal, but the goth thing clearly hadn't
just been a phase. It was still there, just more subdued. Rob
didn't approve, exactly, but he was at least happy there was a bit
less to disapprove of.

“
Well I suppose yer not
metropolitan enough to say no to a cup of tea?”

“
Is the Pope a Catholic?
Actually”—she paused to consider—“that would mean no tea. Or would
it?” She waved a hand. “Whatever answer brings me tea, that’s my
answer.”

Rob got to work. Boiling water
for tea was, for an Irishman, a reflex second only to breathing.
“So,” he said from the kitchen, “if the mother was to call, what
complicated ball of a lie would ye like me to tell her?”

“
You can stop worrying
about that, because I told her. Yesterday in fact, and my ears are
still ringing.”

“
Oh,” Rob said. “Good
then. Better a month late than never I suppose. So I can be
expecting a call from her any minute now to have my own ears chewed
off?”