I left the lights off, figuring the bathroom light would do, and I started across the dark living room on tippy-toe.
I met a series of surprises, all of them nasty.
The first surprise—discovered by my shin just below the kneecap—was that Rebecca had pulled the bed out for me. This was thoughtful, but weird, since I wasn’t actually supposed to be here. It was also more than a little inconvenient because it hurt like screaming hell, and because I lost my balance and tumbled forward onto the pulled-out bed.
The second surprise was when I stretched my hands out to catch myself—and they landed not on the good old sleeper sofa, but on a body—on bare skin. Someone had apparently deposited a naked corpse in the middle of my bed in the middle of my sister’s living room.
The third surprise—almost as disturbing as the first two—was to discover that I could scream like a little girl.
Don’t judge. Until you have stumbled upon a dead body in the dark, you don’t know, you just don’t know.
All I can say is—this sort of thing does not happen in Iowa.
“Wooomph,” said my cadaver.
Flailing with my arms trying to get up, and with strange noises still escaping me, I managed to push myself up off the corpse and the couch, and I then fell backwards, knocking over a lamp while I tried to catch my balance. The stiff chose this moment to speak with a decidedly not-dead baritone.
“What the fuck?” came from the talking dead.
You’d think if you’d gone to all the trouble of dying and coming back, you might be a little more articulate about the whole thing.
Of course I wasn’t all that coherent myself, just making a lot of sounds without any consonants, while I scrambled back in a straight-up panic. I frantically thrashed around on the wall until I found the light switch and then—
There, on my bed, squinting and shielding his eyes, was the egomaniacal nut-job from lunch a few days ago.
And not dead.
And, as far as I could see, naked.
All I really wanted to do after this unbelievably crap-ass day was to curl up somewhere alone. In my own little corner in my own little chair. Not a lot to ask, was it? And honestly, I thought I had earned a little self-pity time. But no, even that was to be denied to me by this—this incredible dorkwad, who would no doubt assume that by falling over him in his sleep, I was coming on to him. The thought of that made me even angrier than I was, and, as you know, I was already seriously not happy long before my bare hands had come down on whatever part of this naked scumball they had come down on.
“You! Why you!? Of all people on earth who don’t belong in my bed, why is it you who ends up there? And naked!!!”
“A., I’m not naked.” And he threw the sheet back to show off his expensive undies, those boxer-brief things. “B., Rebecca—”
“Do you have to number your paragraphs?!”
“B!” he said just to piss me off—oh, like that was necessary—“Rebecca said I could stay here for a few days because, C., you’re not supposed to be here.”
At this point, Rebecca’s bedroom door flew open.
“For the love of Mike!” she yelled. Understandable, since neither of us was bothering to lower his voice.
“You really do wear flannel pajamas,” said the underwear guy about my sister’s pink floor-length nightshirt, and he hastily pulled the sheet back over his stuff.
“Shut up, Jeffrey,” said Rebecca apparently in no mood to discuss fashions. Yeah, shut up, Jeffrey, I thought. And go the fuck away! “Theo!” Rebecca turned to me. “What are you doing here?”
“Me?! You said I could stay here, remember? The question is—what’s he doing here?”
“She said I could stay here,” said Mr. Pomposity. “You’re supposed to be with your boyfriend or something!”
“Shut up!” I said.
“Everybody, stop yelling!” said Rebecca. “Theo, seriously, are you okay? Something happen with Madison?”
“I don’t want to talk about Madison,” I said with a glance at the ex-corpse.
“Don’t mind me,” he said, hands in the air. “Pretend I’m not here.”
“Oh if only!”
“Whatever,” said Rebecca, interrupting us. “Theo, Jeffrey needs a place to stay for a couple days, and you’re supposed to be in Connecticut, but you’re not. So everybody, deal with it. Jeffrey, scooch over.”
“No way!” I said, shrieking maybe a little. “I’m not sleeping with that! I can’t believe I already touched his flabby body.”
“Flabby?!”
“Theo!” said Rebecca. “How many couches do you see around here?”
“I’m not sleeping with him. I’ll sleep with you.”
“Forget it. If you’d rather, you can sleep on the floor for all I care.”
“I’m not sleeping on the floor. Make him sleep on the floor!”
“No. He’s a guest. Now grow up!”
“Ha!” said the shithead. I was just about to throw myself at him but Becca’s hand was already on my shoulder, digging in.
My big sister grew up with all of us boys, whom she ruled by dint of her sheer appalling meanness.
You know that place right where your neck and shoulder meet, and if somebody pinches you really hard there, there’s nothing you can do but say ‘ow ow ow’ until she lets go? We called it her Spock grip. It was a favorite of hers, and she used it now.
Ow ow ow.
“Stop being babies,” she said letting me loose, “and go to bed.”
“Hey, I’m not the one being a baby,” said Jeff-rey, sounding exactly like a big baby if you asked me.
She flashed us both a mean big sister look, went back to her bedroom and slammed the door. I was still rubbing my neck.
“Fuck,” I said.
“And people say millennials have no language skills.”
“Right here, buddy,” I said, pointing to my left butt cheek. “You can kiss me. Right. Here.”
“And Theo—” said Rebecca sticking her head back. I stopped and turned back to her. “I’ll talk to Human Resources, tell them you can come in for training on Friday.”
“Oh, c’mon, Beccs. Can’t we push it till Monday?”
“No. You have tomorrow to do whatever. No whining. Jeffrey, he’s Victoria’s new assistant, so be nice to him.”
Fuck. I would start this new suckshit day job just that much sooner. One more reason to resent Madison.
“Victoria Collins?!” Jeff didn’t seem too pleased with my new job. “You’re kidding me.”
“Nope.”
“First Tommy, now this?”
“It’s a hard knock life,” I smiled and sneered. If it was bad news to this ignoramus that I was working for Victoria-whoever, then, hooray! I was working for Victoria! “Who’s Tommy?”
“See?” said Jeff. “You cannot let those two meet! It could shift the entire twink center of gravity, it could bring down the whole solar system.”
“Who’s Tommy?” I knew already I was going to like this guy.
“But think, Rebecca! What if they have children!”
“G’night, boys,” said Rebecca and closed her door again.
Mr. Armani was still just sitting there with his abs hanging out. Damn, the dickhead was really fit. You know, for his age. He leaned against the back of the couch and folded his hands behind his head. Well damn.
I looked up and he was smiling. Fuck!!! He’d totally caught me checking out his abs and stuff. That’s all I needed.
“What kind of barbarian are you supposed to be?” I sneered. “Put a shirt on, Attila.”
The Hun reached over, rummaged in his bag on the floor by the couch and pulled out an undershirt, the sleeveless kind, and he tugged it down over his head. Like that helped.
“I’ve got this side, okay?” he said—the
side closest to the windows. And the bathroom. I didn’t care.
“Fine. Just—stay on your side.” I knocked my shoes off, one shoe against the other.
After I’d done the necessary bathroom stuff, and I was over on my side, I started stripping down to my underwear.
“And don’t look, you letch.”
“Believe me, I’m not looking,” he said. He was facing the other way, but it creeped me anyway.
I turned out the lights and got very carefully into the sleeper, as far away from him as I could, and tried to get settled.
“If you so much as touch me, old man,” I said, “I’ll clock you with this lamp, I swear.”
“What did you call me?”
“You heard me, perv.”
Finally. The end of this godawful day. Just part of this godawful week. I was so tired I could almost cry. Fuck it, I wanted to cry.
I would admit this only because I was so tired and so miserable—
Most of the time I was perfectly fine with the whole Bohemian thing. Riding my bike past the three-piece suits. I was proud of it even. I wore my duct-taped shoe defiantly, daring people to make a judgment about me. But there were times, I’m not gonna lie. Sometimes the poverty, the constant worry about tiny amounts of money, desperately counting dollars, quarters, dimes. Walking blocks because the subway was too expensive. Washing one of my three pairs of remaining underwear in the bathroom sink, and wanting to break something when my finger somehow tears yet another rip in one. Showing up at people’s apartments at six-thirty, hoping they might be eating dinner. Coming home and finding nothing in my tiny section of the fridge but one of those things of Kraft pre-grated cheese, and a tablespoon of mayo in the bottom of a jar—and calling it dinner.
Hi-ho, the glamorous life.
It hadn’t been exactly fun getting kicked out of the flat-share, squalid and miserable as it was, getting ganged-up on by people I used to call friends, with lots of yelling; and then having to crash with my sister, which, in the war for survival in New York, felt like a pretty serious defeat. I was just a minor second away from having to Greyhound it back to Waterloo.
And then Madison exiling me from the entire State of Connecticut, and I swear to whatever that I am never setting foot in the state again, and now I end up having to share a sofa bed with this awful awful awful lawyer.
Fortunately, I don’t normally cry. I grind my teeth instead. Right up until I kill someone.
And I obviously wasn’t going to cry with this piss-ant over there anyway.
“So,” said my new bedpartner, apparently wanting to have a little roomy-roomy pillow talk. “Your boyfriend’s name is Madison?”
“Shut up,” I said politely. I thought that would be the end of it.
“Seriously. And I thought Theo was precious.”
“Seriously. Shut up.”
Did he take the hint that time? Nope.
“Trouble in paradise?” he asked after a bit.
“Shut-up-shut-up-shut-up-shut-up-shut-up!” I screamed at him.
I plopped back down on the mattress, facing away from him still—and I swear I could feel the bed shaking a little. The dipstick was laughing at me. I picked up my left leg and kicked behind me like a mule—as hard as I could.
“Ow!”
I’d caught him on the calf. I could feel him sitting up. I half-expected him to hit me. Just let him try. After the day I’d had? I was so ready for a fight.
“Go for it, asshole, I dare ya,” I said, glaring up at him.
And then we heard, muffled, from the bedroom:
“For the love of Mike!”
Chapter 8
There’s Got to Be a Morning After
Jeffrey
Without opening my eyes, I knew it was light out already. I’d overslept. Damn, how’d that happen? There’d be no run this morning.
There was a pain right along the bottom of my rib cage—what the? Like a metal bar or something. Like from a hide-a-bed.
And then it all came rushing back. Rebecca’s hide-a-bed. Someone had told her it was comfortable. Theo. The psychotic little brother with whom I was sharing this fold-out torture device. The psychotic little brother had lied.
And Jesus Christ it was cold in here.
I needed to pee. I started to get up, but realized I had a pretty serious tent pole going in the underwear. I hadn’t thought to bring a robe, and I wasn’t really keen on bumping into either Rebecca or the red dwarf with this thing proudly outlined in the thin fabric of my Diesels. I tried to gather up some of the bedding to wrap around me.
Of course even in his sleep the little homicidal maniac was a total pain. As I pulled gently, he clutched. I pulled again, he clutched more tightly. I pulled again with increasing force.
“Stop!” he said finally, without turning over.
“Dude, I need to take the blanket for a bit.”
“No.”
“Yes! I need it.”
“I don’t care.”
“Look, it’s morning, and I am not going to prance around your sister’s apartment in front of the gayboy leprechaun with a morning hard-on. Let me have the blanket.”
“Gross. And no,” he said louder.
“Yes!” and I yanked harder—while the little spider monkey just held on tighter. I was really starting to hate this kid.
“Trust me,” he said. “I’m not going to look. The last thing I want to see is a paunchy old lawyer with a boner.” Yeah, yeah, paunchy. He’d seen me shirtless, he knew better.
“Okay, you win,” I said. “Keep the blanket.” Of course I could have just thrown caution to the wind, and counted on the fact that Rebecca’s door would stay shut, and that Theo really had no interest in seeing what was to be seen—or even if he did, what did I care if he peeked? But by now it was a matter of pride, a question of principle. I couldn’t let this spoiled little brat-boy have his way.
I let him enjoy the bedding a little longer, long enough to relax just a tiny bit, just enough, and—I yanked on the blanket, sheet, everything, as hard as I could, and—as calculated—they slipped right out of his freckled little hands and I had them. I started to wrap myself in glory and bedclothes.
“Yes!” I yelped, clutching victory in my hands.
Now, what I should have guessed—but hadn’t—was that Theo had his own reason for not wanting to give up the bedding. While I shouted in triumph and Theo screamed in horror, I saw Theo’s own, seriously impressive morning embarrassment poking up out of a ratty pair of tighty-whities.
I let out a huge laugh of surprise, just as we heard, from the bedroom:
“Have you two lost your minds?”
“Don’t come out here!” we yelled in unison, as poor Theo flipped over onto his stomach. Rebecca came storming out anyway, in her pink flannel night-dress thing, while Theo yelled an amazing string of threats, generously laced with obscenities. He might be from Iowa, but he could swear like a New Yorker. As for me, I couldn’t stop laughing while I separated the sheet so Theo could at least keep the blanket, and we’d both be relatively decent in front of Rebecca.
“Look, I’m sorry, dude,” I said to Theo, trying to stop laughing. “I didn’t realize, or I would never—”
“You guys know what time it is?” Rebecca yelled over the top of all this, while she stood there, arms akimbo. Really. Akimbo. In a pink flannel pup tent, with bunnies, which did nothing to help me with my giggles. “What are you two doing???”
“Nothing!” I managed to get out. “Bedclothes malfunction! Sorry, Rebecca, it’s all my fault.” Theo was still threatening some really torturous disfigurements. “I’m-so-sorry-I’m-so-sorry-I’m-so-sorry!” I called to both of them, as I hightailed it to the bathroom in my toga.
Text from Madison
Hey.
Hey, u there?
I’ll try a
gain.
Hey, u there?
Fuck.
Off.
I’m sure you’re pissed.
Did you figure that out on your own, or did Tanner explain it to you? Or did you just intuit what Tanner was thinking?
I guess I have that coming.
Ya think.
But I was saying something before, and now I’ve forgotten what it was.
Oh yeah, now I remember.
Fuck.
Off.
Hey—I just wanted to say I’m sry. I’m under a lot of pressure here.
I got three words for you.
Yeah yeah yeah.
People have huge expectations of me.
I don’t.
I said I’m sorry.
Hey, u still there?
U still there?
Theo—talk to me.
Chapter 9
Peace Offering
Jeffrey
I didn’t get back to Rebecca’s until after ten—just another twelve-hour day at the office.
What I do. I’m a litigation attorney, who somehow got pigeonholed as an advertising claims lawyer, which was never my ambition.
Ad claims law is when you see an ad on TV that says this antacid works twice as fast as this other antacid. The manufacturer of the other antacid resents the piss out of this—but instead of sitting at home, repressing his anger and getting an ulcer, he calls us. And we sue the lying bastards, throwing all the scientific evidence we have at them to prove beyond the usual reasonable doubt that our client’s antacid is actually faster than theirs. It may be slightly more nuanced than that, but you get the idea.
Is it important? Is it meaningful? Is it making the world a better place? Okay, maybe not. It’s a job. Yes, I’d like to do other kinds of litigation, but then I’m not the boss, now, am I? Not yet, anyway.
So that’s what my twelve-hour day had been, split between an absorbent paper towel and a fabric softener, but I still had to deal with my new housemates and my charming new bedfellow.
And the Next Thing You Know... Page 5