“Okay. I’m sorry. Please tell everyone I’m sorry. Maybe I should get out of here and try to get some sleep.”
“Oh, you thought leaving was only a suggestion? No, my friend. It’s an order. Your weaselly boss just didn’t have the balls to come in and tell you himself.”
“Good thing you don’t have a shortage of balls.”
“Hey. I got some great big ole low hangers in my pants between my legs. Now get out of here before I’m forced to haul ’em out and show you!”
“Okay! Okay! Not the sagging testicles!”
“Hey! They don’t sag. They hang majestically! It’s their size that makes them a bit… heavy. Ponderous.”
“Ponderous?”
“Hey! Work with me! I’m making this shit up as I go,” he yelled.
“Good. I’d hate to think that this is what you came up with after mulling it over ahead of time.”
“Okay, bite me, bitch!”
“Careful,” I half-jokingly warned. “Aren’t you afraid I’d actually do it today?”
“And aren’t you afraid that I might just bite back.” The man said it as a statement, not a question. If nothing else, that alone made me grab my jacket and head for the door.
“Okay. Okay. No biting.”
My office buddy walked me to the elevator to make sure I actually left. As the elevator doors closed, I heard the man as he shouted, “Okay, you chickenshits! He’s gone. You’re welcome!” Nope. No shortage of testosterone in him!
Chapter 7
OUT on the street busy with lunchtime office workers scurrying hither and yon, I thrust my hands in my pockets and walked slowly toward home. I didn’t know if I had anything in the refrigerator appropriate for lunch, so I stopped at a deli near my building and ordered a sandwich to take back with me.
After eating I sat on the couch, kicked off my shoes, and put my feet up. The next thing I knew, it was two hours later. I had apparently fallen asleep in an incredibly awkward position, which left me with a pain in my neck. Great! One more woe to add to the list. Broken heart. Burned mouth. Sore neck.
My cell phone rang—that must have been what had woken me up. After stumbling around for a minute in search of the offending instrument, I found it and noticed that it was Kyle calling again. I had to give the guy extra points for persistence. No matter how persistent he was, I just wasn’t awake enough to talk with him at the moment, so I let the call roll over to voice mail.
I stripped off my work clothes, took a quick shower, and fell onto the bed. I was once again asleep in under sixty seconds. Sometime later my sleep was disturbed by the ringing of the damned cell phone once again. By reflex mostly, I grabbed the little instrument and sluggishly said, “What?”
“Joseph?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s me—Kyle. You okay?”
“What day is it?”
“Tuesday. You okay?”
“Um… I guess. Who’s this?”
“Kyle.”
“Oh, right. Sorry. I was asleep.”
“They let you sleep at your office? Sounds like a nice place to work.”
“Not at my office. I got sent home for being hazardous to the health of my coworkers. They said I should leave before someone won the pool and got to come kick the shit out of me. I told them it was too late—someone had already taken care of that.” Okay, that was a low blow. Even I had to admit that, but I was waking up enough now to catch up with where I was and what was going on.
There was silence at the other end of the line for a moment before Kyle said, “I’m so very sorry. Please believe me, Joe.”
“Sure. Okay. I gotta pee.”
“Okay. Want me to hold?”
“Nah. I really gotta pee.”
“Please call me,” Kyle practically begged.
“Bye, Kyle.”
“Bye.”
It wasn’t a total lie—I really did need to pee. But I also had no intention of returning the call. Not bothering with clothes when I was finished, I made my way into the kitchen, scratching the hair on my belly as I stood in the middle of the room, trying to figure out what I was doing there.
Before I could reach any conclusion about why I was in the kitchen, there was a knock at the door. “Oh, fuck! I don’t believe this! Just give it a rest, Kyle!” I was so convinced that it was Kyle at my door that I threw it open without putting on any clothes. The small Latino man who stood there was a bit startled but said nothing, simply handing over a large bouquet of absolutely gorgeous red roses. Without waiting for a tip, the man took off at nearly the speed of sound. I guess he didn’t want to stick around to see what the naked man would offer as a tip.
Admiring the roses, I closed the door to the apartment. I set them down on the dining room table and searched for the card. Predictably, the flowers were from Kyle, and the card simply said, Please forgive me. Let me make it up to you. Kyle.
“Well, big guy, I gotta give you points for persistence.”
For about the 400th time, I wondered if perhaps I was being a bit hard on the other man, but then I thought, no, it really was bad form to leave your date with a big ole hard-on after he’d blown you to the stars and back. I waffled back and forth on the issue throughout the evening, half expecting Kyle to appear at the door every time I heard a sound in the hallway. Fortunately, though, there were no other calls or visits.
The next morning I felt more rested and didn’t dread going to work—well, except for the image of the old accountant who wanted to kick me in my compound interest. Secretly I wondered if the woman might have been a Nazi storm
