Technology is an amazing thing, which means I was looking at porn when my cell phone suddenly began to thunder Beethoven at me. Startled, I quickly closed the browser before answering the phone, as if the person on the other end was going to be able to tell what I had been looking at.

But it was only Martin. Everyone gets to feel superior to someone, and so Martin and I had each other. To everyone else, we were losers, but we gave each other someone to look down on. He could feel good about being the smarter than me, and I could feel good that at least I could talk to girls without breaking a sweat.

"What is that girl's name?" he asked, "you know, the redhead." He was sounding about as scattered as ever. Martin didn't quite stutter, but his speech was always a bit jumpy. It was as if the words were under pressure inside of him and he trouble controlling them as they flew out. He somehow always managed to sort of look embarrassed when was talking. Of course, I had no idea what he was talking about.

"What redhead?" I asked, patiently.

"The pretty one." I just let the line hang silent while he reconsidered that. Then he offered more. "She worked at that place where you were temping. We saw her in Davis Square."

"Oh her. Her name was Annie. Annie Moore." Annie was a pretty girl with bouncy red curls and a huge, full-lipped smile. I recalled that she was a pretty good Photoshop artist. Martin and I had passed her in the square a week or two before, when we were getting burritos. I had waved at her and she had smiled and waved back, we had worked some jobs together. Martin had been quite charmed.

"So why do want to know about Annie? Have you developed an interest in girls suddenly?" But Martin had already hung up.

Martin was good with computers, and smart as a whip, but he wasn't good at people. He didn't have a lot of friends. I don't think he'd had three dates in three years. I suppose people imagined that he was living out some ideal geeky stereotype, but the fact was that he tended to be kind of slimy. It kept people at arm's length. However, Martin and I had been friends for since we were little kids, and always seemed to end up back in each other's orbit. After college, we had both ended up staying in Boston, and inevitably, became roommates.

And he was so far from being in Annie Moore's league that they might just as well have lived in different universes altogether.

Our apartment was a handful of rooms on the second floor of a sagging three decker, in a residential neighborhood that sprawled north of the city, somewhere in that boundary layer between city, suburb, and rust belt. The apartment somehow managed to be cluttered and kind of empty at the same time. It had the slightly stale atmosphere of long-term bachelors. I drained my coke and looked at the TV, but I didn't bother turning it on.