Page 26 of Betting on the Brainiac

“Do not try tobe cool.” I give myself a hard stare in my car’s visor mirror. “Madison is a human. You are a human. You know how to talk to humans. You talk to humans all the time. Talk to her like she’s a human.”

So far, I’m the only one parked behind Gatsby’s. It’s Monday, and Madison may not even come in today after working last night, but if she does, I want this self-coaching to stick. It might if it weren’t for a small problem: my subconscious knows that I’m into her, and my conscious knows that my subconscious knows, and my conscious also knows that I don’t have time to date, so it’s sabotaging me.

Probably.

I grab my gear and head into the club, noticing a pile of marketing materials stacked near the office as I pass it. Black and gold lettering in an art deco font announce a First FridayMasquerade for the upcoming weekend, the first weekend in September. I’ll have to ask Madison if that will change the quiet times in the club, but so far, she’s been pretty good about notifying me of what to expect.

About an hour later, I hear the faint beeping of the alarm pad.

Be cool, dummy. I will not invent an excuse to walk around the top floor to “stretch my legs” while I stretch my eyeballs to the end of their cartoon stalks and appreciate Madison’s salsa form. Or yoga form. Or air boxing form. Whatever form her exercise takes today.

Instead, I set a timer on my phone for ten minutes. Those are ten minutes in which I will code as fast as I can so that it takes all my concentration and the urge to be dumb passes.

I end up finding a good rhythm, which—if I can stay in long enough—will turn into a flow state. I’m unstoppable in a flow state, and my shoulders relax even as my fingers fly over the keys, my eyes scanning the code, tapping out the familiar brackets and semicolons.

Yes. This feels good.Thisis the state that I’m lucky to slip into once or twice a week. This is the whole reason I looked for a quiet, off-site place to work. This is—

“Oliver?”

Madison’s voice is coming from the closest staircase. She rarely comes to the third floor, and I gear down the code running through my brain. I turn as she reaches the top step, today in a fitted white tank top with the UT longhorn logo in burnt orange across the front and black leggings with a UT racing stripe down the side.

Well, that’s a plus. I didn’t go to the University of Oklahoma, but I’m still from there, and anyone dressed in UT’s burnt orange goes down two hotness points while wearing it. Which is only fair since UT fans subtract attractivenessandIQ points from anyone in OU crimson.

“Hey, Oliver, I’m so sorry to interrupt, but there’s a situation?” She’s fiddling with the tie at her waistband.

Why do leggings have ties? There is zero chance those are falling down. I slip out of the booth to meet her at the stairs, trying to read her energy. Slight distress but no fear, I think. “What’s up?”

“A cat.”

A cat? This doesn’t seem distressing. “In the building? Is it feral or something?”

Her eyes widen. “I don’t know. Please don’t say feral. That makes it sound attacky. I wasn’t planning on attack cats today.”

“Feral just means it’ll be easier to get out,” I tell her. “It won’t attack you, I promise. It’s probably mad it’s stuck in here and wants you to open the door and let it out.”

“Okay. I can hear it, but I can’t see it. Could you, uh, help?”

“Sure.” I follow her when she turns and heads back down the stairs. “Are you allergic or something?”

“No. More like unfamiliar. We didn’t have any pets growing up, and I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with cats.”

What does anyone do with cats? “You don’t have to do much. Usually if you even act like you’re thinking about petting it, it will go away by itself.”

“That’s good.”

When we get to the bottom step on the main floor, I hear it. It is definitely a cat. It is loud and it’s distressed.

“It sounds like it’s in the storage room,” Madison says. She gives me plenty of room to take the lead, like either of us is going to need protecting from a ten-pound cat.

We cross the dance floor, and the cries grow louder, definitely coming from the back of the storage room. The cat doesn’t make any noise for several seconds. “Here, kitty, kitty.” A soft scuffling comes from the ceiling, and I point. “Up there. It’ll be easier to get to it from the pantry.”

The kitchen pantry is on the other side of the wall, and as soon as we walk in, I see the problem. “I found her.”

“Her?” Madison’s voice is close behind me. She takes in the situation. “Ohhh. Babies?”

“Yeah.” A gray tabby with dark eyes sits on top of a stack of boxed tortilla chips. The stack is shoulder high, and she stares down at us, two tiny kittens beside her. They’re wiggling kind of sleepy-like, and as we watch, she bats her paw in the direction of the ceiling and yowls again.

One of the ceiling tiles is knocked askew enough for a cat to get through. She meows again and nudges one of the tiny babies with her nose, pushing it an inch in our direction.

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