picture happened to crop up. A lot of people go to hob-knob with publishers and writers and that kind of thing. Sure, I can’t help but nerdgasm when they have some of the big-name guests. Case in point: I was up at four in the morning to make sure I didn’t miss Michio Kaku.
I packed most of my bags a few nights ago, and set my clock radio forward by a half-hour. Shit, that means I’m up at three thirty in the morning; I’d have enough time to run by the store for last-minute supplies.
I got into the shower straight away, just long enough to clean off any offending odors I gathered up in the night, and threw on a not-so-odiferous T-shirt and some jeans before I ran out the door. No point in waiting around. It just meant I’d be more likely to fall back asleep. Maybe my first stop should be Starbucks.
* * * *
Okay, I’m not the best at shopping for trips. I think I realized that somewhere between the eleventh and twelfth bags of beef jerky. Or maybe it was the gallon of chocolate milk. Don’t laugh; I like what I like, and I make enough money that I can afford to have the things I like without a whole bunch of stupid questions.
My last stop was pharmaceuticals. Allergy pills and condoms.
What? You don’t think these conventions are good places to get laid? You put fifteen hundred sexually deprived social outcasts in spandex and barbarian costumes and try to keep them from climbing each other. Not so unlikely now, is it? Besides, it’s not like I bought a whole box, just a three-pack. I’ve found it works out just fine. You meet a guy at the dance the first two nights and end with the desperate guy in the bathroom on the last day. Okay, so it’s not my first time making the circuits. It’s one weekend out of the year where I get to have hot, semi-kinky sex every day. Do you honestly think I’m not going to plan my attack routes?
When I got to the checkout counter, the little blond chick working the register—she was probably eight months into her pregnancy—gave me weird look after weird look. When she got to the condoms, well, let’s just say she did a piss-poor job of hiding her thoughts. I guess I can’t blame her, exactly. Thick, square Coke-bottle glasses, three boxes of allergy pills running through the checkout stand, and that kind of hair that only looks good if you don’t brush it for a month. I gave her a half smile.
“I’m going on a trip.”
“Whatever, chief.”
I’m pretty sure she told me what the total was, but I didn’t hear. I just ran it through on my card and got the hell out of there. I had what was left of a caramel macchiato and two hours of freeway time waiting for me.
* * * *
Front of the line, just the way I planned it. So what if registration didn’t open up for another three hours? Like hell I was going to move, now that I had such a prime position.
What I didn’t plan on was Rabbit. I met him a couple of cons ago. By met, I mean fucked in a bathroom stall, of course. Now he had another guy with him. He might have been a little younger, a little more muscular, a little blonder, a little preppier—okay, so the new guy was way cute. I still liked Rabbit more. Last time I saw him he was kind of gangly and his hair was way too short for his face, but he was adorkable, and it worked. Not this year. He still had the big, dorky glasses, pretty much the same as mine, but he’d filled out.
A lot.
Of course, there was no guarantee he would even talk to me. I started drinking with him in the bar last year, and I was totally ready to give him my, shall we say, fullest attention. That was before the cyborg. Rabbit went to the bathroom, a robo-beefcake walked in, and he was assimilating me not five minutes later.
“Noble?” He dragged the mystery blond guy towards me. At least he wasn’t pissed. “I was hoping you’d make it.”
“Like hell I’d miss this. Michio Kaku’s here this year.”
He pushed his glasses up. So fucking hot. Have I mentioned enough how
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