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Old 09-12-2009, 09:15 PM   #5
Steven Lyle Jordan
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4: Personal is personal

“So, do you know what kind of Trojan Horse you’re going to sell them?”

I thought Gail’s choice of time and place to ask me that question was… questionable. Specifically, we were sitting at either end of her shower floor, which is where we’d ended up when our sex was done and we couldn’t move any more. Hell, my left leg hadn’t stopped twitching yet. I swear, I will never understand how Pete could have let this sex monster go. And after the escapades that had finally deposited us here, wet, tired, twitching, and still naked, pretty much the last thing on my mind was anything even remotely connected to IT.

So, I said, “No.”

“When will you know?”

“Probably at some time in the future when we are dressed,” I said truthfully. “Why? Is there a hurry?”

“I just wouldn’t want to see anything happen to Lou’s company,” Gail said.

There was something in her tone that suggested something significant, though I had already managed to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was no great reader of faces. Still, I went out on a limb and asked, “What was the deal with not letting me say you were a CPA? Is it supposed to be a secret or something?”

Gail tilted her head and rolled her eyes over my head, the way people do when they’re trying to figure out how to tell you something without just coming out and saying it. “I just keep my business and personal lives separate. Most of my friends don’t know what I do or who I work for, and my business associates… don’t have access to my social circles.” I started to ask why, but in another one of those leaky-thoughts moments I seem to have, Gail cut me off by saying, “I like it that way.”

Well, about all I got out of that was that Gail’s relationship with Lou was personal and not business. No, I got something else out of it: That Gail didn’t want to go into it any further. So I shrugged it off, and after a moment, collected enough stray energy to pull myself to my feet, favoring my left leg, grab a towel, and start to dry off. “I’ll have something good figured out by tomorrow morning,” I said over my shoulder.

By the time Gail finally managed to get up, get dressed, and found me, I was messing with her smoothie maker. I had already stuffed four apples, two bananas, a bunch of grapes and a mango down the chute, and was trying to decide whether or not I could stand anything else in there, when Gail saw the oddly-colored mix in the pitcher. “You’d better quit while you’re ahead, Emeril,” she said calmly.

I switched the maker off, and removed the pitcher, trying to remember where she kept the juice glasses. I picked a cabinet and saw tall glasses instead, but they worked, so I grabbed two and poured even amounts of the mix into them. I handed one to Gail, who sipped at it, and regarded me over the edge of the glass. I didn’t really have anything to say at that moment, and as we were both dressed (more to the point, Gail was no longer naked), my mind was already straying to the matter of concocting a Trojan Horse for Coyote Chow. So, Gail lowered her glass, and said, “I guess I should get you back to your gear.”

I drained my glass, and nodded. “Yeah. Lotta work to do.”

We got all the way down to the car, out the driveway, all the way out of the hills and onto the highway before Gail spoke again. “You know, if you don’t want to help out my friends, you can just say so.”

“Who said I didn’t want to help them?” I said, trying not to sound testy.

“Don’t be testy,” Gail said. “I’m just sayin’.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I don’t have a problem with your friends. I’m just trying to figure out this whole thing about keeping business and personal stuff separate. You’re the one who seems to be testy about that.”

“I’m not testy,” Gail replied. “I have my reasons.” After a moment, she risked a glance at me, and saw me staring significantly at her. She knew she wasn’t getting off that easy. “Look, I did some things. In my youth. If they got out into my professional circles, I’d lose my job. It’s that simple.”

I doubted it. But I decided to let it go. “Hit Starbucks on the way home, willya?”

It was getting dark by the time we got back to Pete’s apartment. Gail stopped at the door and said, “I’ve got a lot of work to do tonight for tomorrow. I’ll call if I can get away for the evening.” As she spoke, she was her usual sexy, confident, exuberant self. But then, for an instant, I caught a different look in her eye, something not sexy, confident or exuberant, but something I couldn’t put a finger on either… and before I could spare another second to think about it, she reached forward and kissed me, one of those kisses of hers that has the uncanny ability to push whatever else you were thinking right into another space-time continuum. Then she pulled back, taking one last suck of my lower lip, and said, “See you later, lover,” as she backed out of the doorway. Another step, and she turned and strode away, making sure I got a good show of her junk as she walked down the hallway.

“Trust me, bro,” I heard from behind me, “you do not want to let that junk get away.”

I turned around. Pete stood just a few feet away, positioned in the foyer so that he could also watch his ex’s sexy caboose bustle down the hallway. He smiled at me, but I just found myself staring at him. I still couldn’t fathom how my brother, with young-Bruce-Campbell looks and a healthy libido, could have let that junk get away. It just made no sense to me. I thought about the present situation, and a thought occurred to me. “Was it another guy? Is that it? Did she betray you?”

Pete just shook his head, and gave a wistful smile that I interpreted as “I wish it were that simple,” or maybe, “Don’t you wish it were that simple?” Or maybe, “Would I tell you if it were that simple?” Or maybe, “It’s complicated, but telling you would be too simple…” As I said, my face-reading abilities were really letting me down lately.

At any rate, he said, “No, she didn’t betray me.”

“Well, I know you didn’t sleep around on her.”

Oh, no,” Pete replied, with a look that I interpreted as, “I’d never do that when I had her,” or maybe—but we’ll skip that line this time.

“Then what was it?”

“Look, bro, I just screwed up, is all,” Pete said, turning and walking into the kitchen. “I got stupid and lazy, and she got sick of me. It was my fault. Just stupid.” He opened the door to the fridge, and pulled out a beer, holding one out to me. I took it. “So, what’s she got you working on?”

“An electronics company south of town,” I said, twisting off the bottle cap. “They’re having problems with someone stealing their secrets. I’m gonna have a go at faking out the hackers, or insiders, whichever it is, with a Trojan Horse.”

“You’re gonna give ‘em a virus?”

“No,” I replied, remembering the conversation at the office. “More like the original Trojan Horse. The bad guys won’t be able to resist it, and when they try to access it, it’ll give them away.”

“Sounds pretty much like the virus to me.”

“Well… it is,” I replied. “Hence, the name. But in this case, it won’t be set to automatically melt down their computer… it’ll be designed to gather and send evidence that will convict them in a court of law. Benign, but effective.”

“Oh. Okay,” Pete said, and pulled from the beer. “How you gonna do it?”

“I hope I’ll know that by morning,” I told him. “Right now, I just want to hang out a bit. Anything on TV?”

“I was just about to put on Royal Pains. You should see the Indian chick they’ve got on that show… gawd, she smokes!

Royal Pains?” I repeated. “Never heard of it.”

Last edited by Steven Lyle Jordan; 09-12-2009 at 09:42 PM.
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