Vaporware by Richard Dansky Page A

your baby. You should have had some time to
deal with that before he asked you to play rodeo clown.” I got another look,
longer and more searching. “You did a great job back there, but I could tell
your heart wasn’t in it. Blue Lightning was going to be a great game. If you’d
called bullshit, a lot of people would have followed you right out the door,
you know.”
    Including
you, I thought, but didn’t say. We went past trees, past new housing
developments with names like “Kirkwood Highlands.” past strip malls at a steady
rate of one supermarket per. Somewhere in my cerebellum, drunk was fighting a
holding action against coherence and losing. “I was being selfish, Michelle. I
love Blue Lighting. I love having a job better. And if I walked, Sarah wasn’t
going to let me get another job in games. She hates me doing it, you know. And
I didn’t wanna go out the door ‘cause I was being an artiste.” I tried to bring
my hand to my forehead in the time honored “sensitive artist” pose, but just
succeeded in slapping myself instead. “Ow,” I said, and stared at my traitorous
hand.
    There
was silence for a couple of blocks before she answered me. “You might want to
think about who’s being selfish there.” And then, “Give me your cell phone.”
    I
reached into my pockets to haul it out. “Why?” I asked stupidly.
    “To
call your girlfriend to let her know you’re safe and on your way home. That’s
why.”
    “Oh,”
I said, handing it over. She fumbled with the autodial for a second, then put
it to her ear.
    “Hello?
Sarah? It’s Michelle. Yes, I’m on Ryan’s phone. He’s fine. Just had too much to
drink. I’m bringing him home. Leon was headed the other direction, so…no, no,
it’s no bother. Yeah, there were lots of people there. He just drowned a couple
of people’s sorrows with one too many. Yeah, I will. Don’t worry. I’ll give you
his keys. Bye now.”
    She
flipped the phone closed and tossed it into my lap. “At least she had the good
grace not to ask if you’d gotten wasted over at my place.”
    I
protested. “She’s not like that.” A pause. “She likes you. She told me.”
    Michelle
laughed, short and sharp and bitter. “Oh, God, Ryan. She may say that. She may
even want to think that. But she doesn’t and she never will. It doesn’t matter
that we’re ancient history. She’ll always worry.”
    We
coasted to a stop at a red light. I recognized the intersection. We were maybe
six blocks from home. “Why?”
    “You’ll
figure it out one of these days. And in the meantime, if I do enough stupid
things like this, maybe she’ll finally unclench her hair.” Grinning, she looked
over at me. “God, can you imagine if I did take advantage of poor little drunk
you? She’d have a heart attack.”
    My
expression must have said volumes, because Shelly just laughed. “Easy there,
tiger. I’m not interested.”
    I
slouched back in my seat, a half-dozen responses coming to mind. She doesn’t
like you because I was a wreck after we broke up, she does like you but thinks
you’re keeping me in video games when I should be moving on to something else,
she wants me to get a better-paying job that doesn’t work me so hard—all of
these came and went. Instead, I just said, “So are you going?”
    Michelle
shrugged, then took the last right before the turn onto my street.
Min-McMansions rolled past, anonymous and identical. “I don’t know. My
headhunter texted me a couple of times today with some stuff. Word’s already
out somehow.”
    “Gordon?”
It didn’t really matter. All it took was one guy barfing something onto Twitter
and word would spread, and then the vultures would start gauging their chances.
    “Maybe.
Don’t know, don’t care. We’ll see if any of the offers look interesting.” She
turned left without signaling, onto Cordero, my street. The house was three
blocks down.
    “I’d
like it if you stayed,” I mumbled, then leaned my face out the window.