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down, waving to the seat beside her.
"I should have seen it coming," Sean admitted, sitting down and looking at
the far wall. "We'd been spending less and less time together and she always
wanted to know when I was going to be home. Thursday was my range night;
there's an indoor range I go to and I usually went right from work to the
range. But I'd forgotten to pack my guns so I went home to pick them up
instead. And . . . there they were, right in our bed."
"I'm sorry," Barb said, honestly.
"I was, I thought, reasonably polite about it," Sean said, looking over at
her, then down to her chest, then back at the wall. "I just nodded at them,
went in the closet, got out my gun bag and went back out. So when I got home,
the police were waiting for me. I explained the situation, they politely took
my guns away and explained that I couldn't go back in my own apartment! I
mean, it wasmy name on thelease ! She moved out the next day and I moved back
in."
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"Did they give you the guns back?" Barbara asked, smiling slightly. The story
had been told with a sort of blunt-instrument intensity that seemed to be
natural rather than a result of the encounter. Sean was one of the mostintense
people she'd met in a very long time.
"Yep," Sean admitted. "But I had a hell of a job getting the clean; they'd
been sitting uncleaned for a week."
"So what did you do then?" Barb asked.
"Went back to work," Sean said, shrugging. "I do remote installation on
internet lines. Mostly hardware work with some software troubleshooting. And
the company does satellite uplink support, so I go out on those projects, too.
It keeps me out of an office and mostly I'm working by myself. I don't handle
office politics very well. I guess I don't really get along with most people."
"You seem to fit in here," Barbara said, her eyes narrowing.
"The Wharf Rats are sort of like an extended family," Sean said, waggling his
head from side to side. "And they're mostly military oriented. They're used to
. . . military types. Civilians get all excited when you just tell them what
to do and expect it to get done. They used to call me General Marshall when I
was working tech support. So I don't do tech support anymore. And being a
field engineer pays better, anyway. Of course, it also meant I was out of town
a lot. I'd guess that was one of the reasons . . . well . . ."
"Yes. Well." Barb said. "Do you mostly work in Virginia?"
"Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio," Sean said. "But things are looking up. I
just got a promotion to shift supervisor so I'll be spending more time close
to home. More office time, too, but I can handle that."
"How's the girl-friend front look?" Barbara asked, smiling.
"Well, it's looking up at the moment," Sean said, smiling at her with a
slight humorous leer. "Just joking. I'm not really looking for anything
serious. I thought Annette was it. Now I'm not sure I trust women. Honestly,
the whole thing with Annette really has me . . . disliking most females rather
intensely. So I'm keeping what few encounters I have with them . . . limited
in scope." He looked over at her and shrugged. "You're an obvious exception.
You seem like a very nice lady. I'd say you remind me of my mother, but my
mom'sa lot meaner. She and dad were both Marines."
"Saying that a lady reminds you of your mom isn't a compliment, anyway," Barb
pointed out acerbically.
"I didn't mean it that way!" Sean protested.
"I understand," Barbara said, laying a hand on his arm. She used the
opportunity to get a quick read of him and wasn't sure what she got. He
definitely had some very dark areas, but no sniff of necromancy. "Well, thanks
for talking to me. I think I'll be seeing you at that panel. That's the one
with K. Goldberg on it, right?"
"Yes," Sean said, standing up. "I should say thanks. This has helped in a
way."
"I'm glad," Barb said, pausing. "Sean, women are as human and fallible as
men. Some of them less so, some more so. Don't . . . put all women in the same
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category as your ex girlfriend. In fact, don't be so quick to condemn her.
Christ tells us to forgive. One of the reasons that he tells us to do so is
that until we can forgive others, we cannot forgive ourselves. Until you can
forgive Annette, and other women that have hurt you, it will be hard to let go
of the darkness in your soul. And it's eating you up."
Sean looked at her for a moment and then nodded.
"You're a very odd lady, Barbara," Sean said, clearly puzzled.
"So I'm told."
Chapter Thirteen
The panel room had about twenty people in the audience and five members of
the panel including Miz Goldberg, Folsom Duncan, Larry, the Publisher from the
Slush party, David Krake and a red-head Barb didn't recognize. It started by
the five introducing themselves and the topic of the panel which was "Art or
Marketing, How to Write." The panel was moderated by the publisher she'd met
last night and he opened the discussion.
"You can write for market all you want," Larry said. "But if you want to
actually get published, you'd better be thinking of your writing as art or
you're never going to get a single thing into print. If you just throw the
words down on paper, it invariably turns out to be crap."
"Larry, you've got your head so far up your ass you can see daylight through [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]