My Life in Heavy Metal (6 page)

Those last months had been so quiet. The children were gone, sunk into hectic lives and cowed, truthfully, by their mother's illness, or perhaps afraid to interfere with his grief. They had proved adept, this last year, at matching him silence for silence. Their conversations remained stiff, and a little hollow. They made him wonder: Is this all there is to fatherhood, or have I missed something?

Connie had been dreadfully quiet. She spent mornings by the sun window, perched in her favorite rocking chair, and afternoons sleeping in the den. She moved with the deliberation of one who hopes to obscure suffering. Rodgers watched her grow gaunt. He felt, in her presence, small and boneless.

In moments of duress, such as after treatments, he adjusted pillows and said the right words, but these somehow had the effect
of underscoring the unnaturalness of his attempts. Knowing her affinity for sun, he cursed the gray days of autumn until he felt his throat rip.

And then the study; that afternoon in the study. She had done well the previous day, eaten all her potatoes and even a bite or two of chicken. In the morning he had seen a trace of color in her face. To find her like that, still and unbreathing, her hand clenched against her white cheek—he simply shut down. It was only the phone calls and later a visit from his neighbor that allowed things to move forward.

One by one his children came into the kitchen until he was surrounded. They were here now, his sweet son and daughters, asking what was wrong and their voices, all going at once, composed a child's chant. “Are-you-okay-are-you-okay-Dad-what-is-it-Dad-what-is-it?” He tried to tell them, “Don't be scared,” but could not. He understood that it was his role, as father, to provide some reassurance, to subdue the tide of sorrow that now threatened them all. It was only this business of breath that held him back, the loss of breath.

To calm himself, Rodgers closed his eyes. The baby was whimpering and Ken was apologizing and someone was stroking his poor old bald head and the youngest, Amy, she was even weeping. He felt hands being laid upon him, one pair then another, the hot cling of his children's fingers. They were good children, more than he deserved, because within them lived some link to her; it was this link to which he attached his hopes.

There was quite a lot of commotion, you would have to say that, a lot of crying, a lot of noise, and he could feel his children crowding in on him and he heard the baby nearby, crying now, and he must have reached out for her or made some indication of his
need, because someone placed her in his lap. Rodgers opened his eyes. She stared up at him with sleepy eyes, a tiny fist worked loose from her swaddling and pressed against her cheek. Rodgers examined the intricacy of her face and hands and straightened up a bit and then quietly said, “Why do these crazy people cry so much? Can you tell me that? Why is everybody crying so much, baby girl?”

Computer Boy swaggers over to my cube to help me open this one knucklehead email Phoenix sent me and within about, oh, two seconds, I'm ready to whip off his khakis and blow him right there. He's leaning over my keyboard, tappy-tap-tap, with his lousy beautiful sideburns and his Right Guard wafting all over the place, and underneath that this kind of wounded musk that tends to make my nipples go
boing,
and his teeth which I could fucking eat they look so healthy. I have, mind you, already offered him my seat. But he can't allow that. No-no-no. Don't you move your pretty little self, he tells me, which is when neighbor Brisby starts snarking away and I'm like, Oh for Chrissakes, why does this obnoxious creature, this dopey slab of masculine grace, whose name is (try not to laugh) Lance, and whom I have taken to calling Lancelot, Sir Lance-me-a-lot, why does this totally throat-lickable hottie have to be such a shitbrain?

So I just sit there smelling him and watching his unreasonably defined triceps pulse and unpulse and noticing the blond hairs on his earlobe, like tiny spears of wheat, and the way his firm little rump tenses up when he gets a systems error. And the worst part of it is that he keeps running these lines about how I must be doing something to my machine, my keystrokes must be pretty vigorous—key
strokes
,
get it?—and even though I'm actually kind of impressed by his use of the word
vigorous,
there's no way I can flirt back without losing total office cred with Brisby, who's outright laughing at this point. It's not like I have time for this crap anyway; I'm on deadline. Though actually, the worst part is my leched-out imagination, wherein Lancelot is bending me like a band saw and this can't be happening,
this cannot be happening.
I cannot be lusting after the Computer Boy on deadline, that is too lame for even me.

Only now Brisby's on the phone with his fiancée, for the twelfth fucking time this hour, and Lancey tells me he's going to have to reboot and suddenly
down he goes,
under my desk, and I forget to skootch my chair back because I'm too busy staring at his back and counting up the individual muscle groups, sort of flowcharting them, and then something rubs against my knee, his wrist I guess, but of course I've got these jeans on, because it's forty fucking degrees in the office; the hotter it gets outside, the colder they keep the office. Then, just to balance himself I suppose, Lancey sets his hand on the bridge of my foot and starts in with these little appraising squeezes, like he's fitting me for a pair of pumps, and I want to tell him, Hey, bright boy: there's a whole calf and thigh where that came from! But before I can say anything, he turns and informs me
I've got real soul
and I want to barf and run my tongue along the pink canals behind his ears all at once and I can hear Brisby mumbling his I-love-yous and hanging up and my screen goes blank. Lancey rolls back on his haunches just enough to send a ripple under his shirt and I imagine looping my arms around him, taking the meat of his shoulders in my palms, and his front teeth, his, let me emphasize,
goddamn perfect front teeth,
biting my clavicle, and I know Brisby's going to slag me for the rest of eternity, until death do us part, but it's too late, I'm halfway off my chair in a canine posture and my knees are trembling.

Ahem.

You're all set, Lance tells me. Just turn it on. He's back to hovering over me. You know how to turn it on, don't you, he says. I'm like, Yeah, it's not the turning on I'm worried about. It's keeping the hard drive going. And immediately, even before Brisby snarks, I regret having reduced myself to lurid banter with Computer Boy, who gives me his cheap and evil grin, causing this adorable declivity in his left cheek, not exactly a dimple, a crimp, a
crimple,
which he then has to ruin by saying: Maybe you could come back to my office sometime and we could
work on that.
And now, paddling to regain my footing and really hoping he'll just leave me be, I mutter: Yeah, maybe when the new laptops come in, Lance, I could come back there and give you my special laptop dance.

I'd like that, he says, I'd like that
very much,
then—get this—
winks,
so that finally I can muster a decently derisive laugh, a true ho-ho-ho-you-bonehead-why-don't-you-crawl-back-to-whatever-mousepad-you-came-from kind of laugh, which still isn't enough to get Brisby off my back, because the instant Computer Boy and his filet mignon of an ass have bounced off he messages me:
When do I get mine?
Meaning, laptop dance, the prick.

What I really want to know is when this sad new genre of human being, the Geek Player, came into existence. Because even two years ago the Systems Manager was this little smudge of a person who frittered on about mainframe systems and was perfectly content to hang with his tech buddies and flirt with the forty-something divorcées at Mac Warehouse. Those guys had a certain pathetic, introverted arrogance, because they knew they had the rest of the office by the stones. But they were basically
frightened of people.
Then
this new breed started up, guys like Lance, who are no longer Systems Managers. Now they're Computer Guys, which means they can be cute and outgoing and some of them, such as Lance, even ripped. And they strut around the office, coming to the rescue of all us computer fuckups, including the publisher, whose dome turns the color of salsa whenever his Mac crashes and who worships the very ground Lance walks on, because without Lance his
cursor won't move.
When he isn't hustling the chicks in production and advertising and even that one chick in editorial (me), when he isn't out amongst his subjects, in other words, Lance sits in his office talking to the other Geek Players in the other offices, on speaker phone, all of them hollering, and playing Nerf basketball via remote, and cheating.

How did Computer Guy become the Lifeguard of the decade? How did the mild-mannered Systems Manager morph into an omnipotent Geek Player, Love Slayer? Brisby and I have developed the following theories:

Geekerella:
The existing SM population, recognizing player potential, has undergone an eerie Men's Magazine transformation involving facial scrapes, free weights, some kind of Toastmasters public-speech seminar, and clothing from Structure.

Trickle-down chic:
Noting the wealth and power afforded anyone with a whiff of tech know-how, an entirely new population of vaguely cool and mendacious men (previously drawn toward, say, condo sales) has chosen a career in the computer sciences.

Not-so-great expectations:
The general population, steeped in the greasy autism of the Systems Manager, has a tendency to inflate the coolness of the Computer Guy. As Brisby puts it: When you're expecting Bill Gates, Steve Jobs starts looking like Brad Pitt. A related phenomenon (
The Naughty Wonk Effect
) holds that a geek overlay accentuates sexiness through irony, the same principle that
leads pornographers to script so many gang-bang scenes featuring librarians.

But how far will this paradigm shift go? Geek mafioso? Geek supermodels? Geek gangsta rap? How much cultural power will the Geek Player amass before people realize he's just a guy who can
talk to machines
? And, perhaps more to the point, why do Computer Boy and his crimple have to haunt my every waking moment?

So we're at one of these office-wide happy-hour deals, which are supposed to build company morale, though what they tend to do is reinforce the sense, at least between Brisby and myself, that we are being
bribed into silence.
Of course Brisby ducks off to some fiancée-engineered function, like the good little monogamous soldier he is, leaving me fully vulnerable to the forces of office tooldom, against which I have only drunkenness as a defense, so that when something lands on my hair I flail around in this slightly trashed girlie spasm and smack into what feels like a tree limb with skin. There's Computer Boy and his cinematic teeth and he does this drowsy thing with his eyelids, some kind of demiwink, which makes him look like a cat in the sun.

Ciao bella,
he says. Did I scare you?

I thought you were a fly, I say.

Maybe I am. Maybe I'm a Spanish fly.

Oh please, I say. Go ask the wizard for a brain.

Which you might figure would shut his piehole. But no, he has to speak, some ridiculous I-don't-even-know-what rap about, oh Christ,
something.

What happened to your fan club? I say. For the last hour Marcie the Production Ho has been shoving her C-cups in his face
and even as we speak she's across the room sending me the official that-my-man death rays, which only makes the whole thing more pathetic, because there's no angle in competing with a chick who lists nipple piercing on her résumé under
Other Skills.

What are you drinking, he says.

G & T.

He shakes his sweet, vacant head.

Gin, I say slowly, and tonic.

Gin, he says. Does that make you want to sin?

Actually, it makes me want to chop your head off. Does that qualify as a sin? Or is that more like a public service?

But good old Lancey, he's not one to give up too easy. He keeps asking questions. Like he read a book once that said: Ask lots of questions. Chicks dig it when you take an interest in their lives. When did I start at the paper? How did I get into reporting? Where do I live? You can tell he's not really listening, which neither am I, thanks to the drinks.

Then he starts this whole touching my hair thing, playing with my hair, and I tell him to knock it off, not very convincingly. His eyes droop a little and he shoots me his
look of false contrition,
but in such a way that rather than noticing how supposedly sorry he feels, what I notice is the muscles flaring out from his neck, these twin blades of muscle, almost like gills. Jesus, does Lancey work out his neck? Does he go to the gym with a specific neck regimen? It occurs to me in this horrible flash I'd prefer not to classify as an epiphany that he's probably strong enough to bench press my entire (naked) body with his neck. I could plop myself down on his upturned face, his wet, white teeth, and he could neck-press me.

I look around helplessly for Brisby or someone else from editorial, who'll snicker the whole thing away. But there's no one left
except the horny ad rats in their commission grins and the sulky face-mangled production scum. Marcie? Where the hell is
Marcie
?

Computer Boy moves in for the kill and I can smell the white Russians on his breath, sweet and milky and boozy and his rotten cologne/deodorant and his gorgeous throat pullying away as he swallows. But just as I'm about to be carried off onto the sea of stupid love, this little yeoman of respectability tosses me a line and I say: How old are you? Tell me how old you are.

How old do you
think
I am?

I don't know, Lance. Seven?

Twenty-seven, he says. In December. Why, how old are you?

Which, I mean, how can you reach twenty-seven in this culture without figuring out that this is a
bad
question? How does that happen?