Mark Gimenez - The Abduction

And he was sure she did not love him.

They had had sex exactly two hundred forty-nine times-twice a month for the ten years and four months they had been married plus once before marriage. Which sounded like a lot of sex when you said it out loud, way more than he had ever hoped for at MIT, once every fifteen days. But then, major league pitchers take the mound every fifth day. FYA (For Your Amusement), during the same period, Roger Clemens had pitched three hundred two games!

He didn’t think Elizabeth enjoyed sex with him, much less had orgasms. But he was too afraid to ask. Little Johnny Brice had asked his only other sex partner, a sixteen-year-old Army brat who had done every soldier’s son before him at Fort Bragg, if she had had an orgasm; she had laughed in his face and said, “It takes me longer than five seconds, stud.”

Sex was not plug and play.

For him, sex was plug and pray, female orgasms being so highly nontrivial and all, what with hardware that had to be booted and software that had to be tweaked for optimal performance. No point-and-click on the female architecture. No Help button. No Progasm Wizard to guide him through the procedure. So he had searched for technical solutions, even buying a user’s manual- The Female Orgasmand learned to his dismay that writing twenty-five thousand lines of code was cake compared to bringing a full-grown female to orgasm. But John R. Brice, Ph. D., was nothing if not determined; he had devoted his considerable intelligence to learning the deep magic of orgasms, because he knew, as well as he knew the back of his computer, that if he could take Elizabeth Brice to orgasm just once- just freaking once! — her indifferent attitude toward him would instantly morph into extreme love.

Geeks need love, too.

He had studied the manual’s recommended troubleshooting techniques as if studying for a final exam at MIT, applying a new one every two weeks until he had tried them all; he even did algorithms in his head during sex to prevent premature cache burst. In the hacker world, that was known as the brute-force method, trying every conceivable solution to a problem until you found one that worked. He had employed that method on numerous occasions at work and with great success. But not with Elizabeth. He had no doubt that pilot error was to blame, that he simply wasn’t up to the manly task of driving a beautiful and complex woman like Elizabeth to brain-banging orgasms-as they say in the tech support department when the customer doesn’t have a clue, PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair). John R. Brice didn’t have a clue.

And the few times he had thought the techniques might be enabling her, when he had felt her body responding to his hardware, just at the moment when he thought she might experience a power surge, she seemed to freeze up, as if he had performed an illegal operation and her control panel shut down her program. He had downloaded his content and uninserted his floppy; she had gotten out of bed, gone into the bathroom, and left him alone to wallow in unexplained failure. Why didn’t women come with a freaking Error Message box?

He had never forgotten her birthday, their anniversary, Valentine’s Day, or Mother’s Day, always sending flowers and gifts to her office. He had even signed up with the company’s personal trainer and worked out daily. But his efforts had had no discernible romantic effect. He should have taken Gracie’s advice, upgraded his graphics, dressed in cool clothes, gotten a stylish haircut, and ditched the glasses for laser eye surgery. She had said he’d be totally studly then. Which had sounded like a good thing.

If only being totally studly would have brought him Elizabeth’s love.

But he had lived for ten years without her love and without regret, from the moment he had first laid eyes on Gracie in the hospital nursery. It didn’t matter if he loved Elizabeth more than she loved him because Gracie’s love more than made up the difference. Now Gracie’s love was gone. And for the first time in ten years, he felt the difference, an emptiness inside him that no IPO could fill.

Someone sat down on the couch next to him and put a hand on him, over the blanket. He prayed it was Elizabeth, that she had come down to tell him that together they would survive without Gracie, to ask if she could lie next to him and hold him, to whisper that she loved him with all her heart.

Ben sat next to John on the couch, quietly so as not to wake him, and rested his hand on his only son. He recalled the day in 1969 they had brought John home, wrapped in an Army blanket and in desperate need of a father. But all he had gotten was a mother. A month later, Lieutenant Ben Brice had returned to Vietnam to free the oppressed.

He had failed.

By the time Ben had left Vietnam for good, John had already departed on his lifelong journey leading away from Ben Brice, two wounded souls fighting their own demons. Army life had been tough on John; he hadn’t fit in with the other Army brats on the bases where they had been stationed over the next decade as the Army tried to hide the most decorated soldier of the Vietnam War-tried to find a way to forget a war and its warriors. Ben would have left the Army, but he couldn’t; he needed twenty years of service to qualify for a pension to take care of his family. It wasn’t as if Colonel Ben Brice’s peculiar skills were in great demand in the private sector.

At least John’s life had become his own when he left Fort Bragg and North Carolina for Boston and MIT, a perfect score on the entrance exams and a full scholarship in his pocket, the same year that Ben had quietly retired. But Ben Brice’s life would never be his own; a warrior’s life is forever a chattel of war.

John turned over. His eyes expressed undeniable disappointment, as if Ben Brice were the last person on earth he wanted to see at that moment. Father and son regarded each other silently. Then John spoke.

“Why’d you come, Ben? I grew up without you. Only time you came home was to move us to another base, another school, another set of bullies to beat up the geek. And you didn’t save those people-you lost your great war. You were an American hero and what’d it get you? You live with a dog.” He sat up. “You weren’t there when I needed you. I don’t need you now.”

His son’s words hit Ben like a two-by-four across the face. He gritted his teeth to hold back his emotions.

“I know you don’t need me, son. I failed you, and for that I am sorry. Maybe one day you’ll find a way to forgive me.” He stood. “But this isn’t about us, John. This is about Gracie. She does need me, and I’m not going to fail her, too. I’m leaving for Idaho in the morning.”

“ Idaho? What’s in Idaho?”

“Gracie.”

“Ben-”

“She’s alive.”

“Jennings isn’t.”

Kate was standing at the door.

Mark Gimenez

The Abduction

The tires on the Lexus sedan screeched to an abrupt stop in the handicapped parking zone directly in front of the town hall. If any of the police officers standing on the sidewalk and watching in amazement had detained the woman wearing a nylon warm-up suit and sneakers and no makeup, her black hair pushed back behind her ears but otherwise untouched this morning, and asked her if she knew she was parked illegally, she could have said no and passed a polygraph.

The woman ran up the sidewalk and into the building and directly through the metal detectors without slowing, setting off loud alarms. The cop manning the security desk intercepted the woman, but once he recognized her, he retreated and followed at a respectful distance. She proceeded through the lobby and into the police chief’s office; the chief sat alone behind his desk.