The Cubicle Next Door (39 page)

“It is. It’s fine.”

“Any plans for the summer? Now that you’re on your own. For a while, anyway.”

I put my sandwich down again. “No. Why? Do you have a suggestion?”

“You could go to the ocean.”

“I don’t know…”

“It’s not like you have your grandmother to worry about anymore.”

“Listen, I said you were right, but I didn’t say I wanted to wallow in it, okay?”

“Okay. Just making conversation.”

The problem was, I didn’t want to make conversation. What I really wanted was for him to put his arms around me and make the world go away. I wondered what he’d do if I were to lay my sandwich aside and claim his lap as my own.

I picked my sandwich up again just in case my body started getting any ideas.

“Anything wrong?”

“No.” Yes. Almost everything was wrong. And I didn’t know how to fix any of it.

We went to church together on Sunday. Everyone seemed pleased to see me. Told me how sorry they were that my mother had died. How happy they were that my grandmother had gotten married. Even the priest came up to give me a hug. I threw a look at Joe afterward. He just shrugged.

Monday morning began normally enough.

Joe brought a huge cup of coffee into his cubicle.

I tried to convince him not to set it down near his keyboard.

He laughed at me.

I ignored him.

But then he asked for my help. “Hey. You over there?”

“I’m here.”

“Could you give me a hand?”

I got to my feet and scrambled onto the desk. “What’s up?”

Joe was standing in the corner of his office near his coat tree. He had unzipped the top of his flight suit and shrugged out of the arms. Now he was in the process of tugging at his blue shirt.

“There are easier ways to bring it into submission.”

He paused and glanced in my direction.

“I could find a match. The threat of annihilation might work. It’s only polyester, right? Total meltdown.”

“It’s not the shirt. It’s the wings. And the jump wings. I want to make sure they’re lined up before I go to the bother of completely changing uniforms.” He turned around to face me, buttoning the shirt. “I can never get them on straight. Help me out?”

I jumped off the desk and went over to his side. “What do you want me to do?”

“Are they straight?” He took a deep breath, planted his feet and stood at attention.

And I stood there looking at that broad expanse of chest. Those wide shoulders. The closely shaved neck that had one nick just beside the Adam’s apple. The smooth stretch of skin from his chin toward his cheek. Those clear blue eyes.

I blinked. Blushed. “Um?”

“Are they straight? Are they lined up?”

“Are what lined up?”

His shoulders slumped. “The wings!” He straightened up again as I reined my eyes in.

“No.”

He muttered something, started tearing at the buttons on his shirt. “I knew I should have done this at home.”

My hands flew toward his. He was going to pop those buttons if he wasn’t careful. “Let me.”

His hands stopped as mine covered them.

I looked up into his eyes. Saw them staring down at mine. He’d never seemed quite as tall before.

He moved his hands, fell back into attention.

“Okay. Now what do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know. I can’t see the stupid things. I don’t know which way to tell you to move them. But both the tops and bottoms have to line up.”

I stepped back. Took a look. Figured out which set of wings to move in which direction and then peeled that side of the shirt away from his body. It left his standard white V-necked T-shirt exposed, stretched tight across his chest. I swallowed. Tried to concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing.

And it needed concentration. Both sets of wings were attached to the shirt by a series of prongs and frogs. I pulled the frogs off and looked around for someplace to put them.

Joe was looking down the tip of his nose at me. He was still standing at attention. But he was smiling. I could see his dimples.

“Can you make yourself useful?” I held the frogs up so he could see them.

He held out a hand I could drop them into.

I looked again at the outside of his shirt. The trick would be to shift the wings about one millimeter in a single direction without rotating or otherwise skewing them. “Do they teach classes on this? Tactical Dressing 101?”

Joe snorted.

“Why don’t you just set these up and leave them on the shirt? It’s not like you’re ever in blues.”

“I did. I washed this shirt last week. First time in two years.”

I looked up into his eyes. He was laughing at me.

“Ouch.” I’d stabbed myself with one of those fiddly prongs. I held out my finger to take a look at how deep the puncture was, to suck the blood if there was going to be any. The last thing Joe needed was a nice blood stain on his shirt. The wings popped out of Joe’s shirt and bounced on the carpet.

We both reached down to pick up the wings and bonked heads in the process. Straightened up.

“Ow. You have a hard head!”

“Sorry. Here.” He held out his hand. “Want me to do it myself?”

“No.” I put a hand to his chest. “Stop fidgeting.”

He stilled in an instant.

I could see the previous holes in the fabric. If I could match those prongs up with the holes, and then pull them out and move them ever so slightly…But without being able to see underneath the wings while I was doing it, the task was impossible. “You’re going to have to take it off.”

“What?”

I held out a hand. “Take the shirt off.”

He grabbed the plackets of the shirt and held them together. “I don’t think so.”

“Come on, Joe. I can do it in two seconds if I can do it from the other side.”

“Nope. Not without some music.” He began humming a striptease and gyrating his hips.

“Joe, cut it out. Just give me the shirt.”

He slipped a shoulder out of the shirt, rotated it, and slid it back beneath the material. He turned around and did a cute little shimmy with his butt, holding up his shirttails so I’d have an optimal view.

As if I didn’t already have it memorized. And I didn’t need to be taunted. I grabbed a shirttail. “Nice act. Save it for Broadway. Give me the shirt.”

He two-stepped away from me, still humming. Still tugging that shirt back and forth.

I let go of the shirt.

He bent forward. Bent back. There wasn’t an extra ounce of fat on his body. And the way he was twisting and turning showcased the effect of those T day workouts.

“Give me the shirt. Now.”

He stopped. Grinned. “No. Catch me.” He dashed around the cubicle wall and into my side of the office.

I’ll never know why I did what I did. Chalk it up to momentary insanity. I rounded the corner, hopped onto my desk, took a flying leap, and landed on Joe’s back, clasping him around the torso with my arms and legs.

“Hey!”

I turned my hands and reached them up over his shoulders. Leaned close so I could talk directly into his ear. The man’s head was so thick, I wasn’t surprised he hadn’t understood me earlier. “Give me the shirt. Give it to me now!”

“No!”

I reached an arm across his chest and tried to tickle him in the ribs.

He clasped my forearm and held it just off his body. “That’s not playing fair.”

“Well, neither are you!”

“You’re the one who jumped on my back.” He gave my forearm a tug and pulled me forward.

But I wasn’t about to be dropped onto the floor. I locked my legs around his waist. Ha. I wasn’t going anywhere.

And then, quick as a snake, he dropped his shoulder and pulled me around so I was facing him, my legs still locked around his waist. His arms were around me, clasped at my back. “You caught me. Guess I have to give you the shirt now.”

The thing was, he wasn’t laughing anymore. And he wasn’t smiling. He was serious.

And while Dimple Joe is cute, Serious Joe is devastating.

I stayed there, looking into his eyes. I was so close I could count the flecks of white in them.

Then it happened. His gaze dropped from my eyes down to my lips. When he looked back, there was a question for me to answer.

And I just couldn’t do it.

I unhooked my legs and slid down his chest. He enfolded me in his arms and held me close for a moment. He took a deep breath and then he let me go.

I pressed the wings into his hand. “Do it yourself.” I turned on my heel without looking at him and walked out into the hall. I didn’t stop until I’d achieved the safety of the women’s restroom. It was only then that I discovered how tightly I’d been gripping the wings.

I had four puncture wounds in my hand.

They were all bleeding.

THE CUBICLE NEXT DOOR BLOG

One bird v. two

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

That’s what I’ve always believed.

I’m a low-risk kind of person. I have a job working with equipment. It never has opinions. It always does exactly what I ask it to do. I wake up every morning facing a day that is completely predictable. And I like it.

And then you came along. And now I have to work with you. You always have opinions. You never do what I tell you to. Just seeing you does the strangest things to my heart. And I have no idea what will become of you. Or me. Or us.

You have put the entire universe of my life into question and you’re asking me to risk it all.

I want to. How I want to. But I can’t.

Not yet.

Posted on May 29 in
The Cubicle Next Door | Permalink

Comments

Classic psychology told us individuals seek to minimize risk in their environment. But psychologists have now identified a new breed of thrill seekers who, in fact, thrive on risk. Although not everyone fits this new identity, it can be said that taking risks is the only thing which allows you to define yourself.

Posted by:
NozAll | May, 29 at 07:27 PM

Only by risking much can much be gained.

Posted by:
philosophic | May 29 at 08:01 PM

I’m the opposite, TCND. I always went into hyperspace when I played asteroids.

Posted by:
justluvmyjob | May 29 at 09:46 PM

Here’s what you can do: keep the one bird in your hand and buy a BB gun. With any kind of practice, it won’t be long until you can have all three.

Posted by:
theshrink | May 29 at 10:23 PM

Maniac. That’s how serial killers get started! Does PETA have a hotline?

Posted by:
survivor | May 29 at 10:37 PM

Forty-One

I
n my vast experience with men, my emotions had always been manageable. Sure, I had been attracted to Rick, but I had never jumped on top of him.

I needed to talk to someone. I chose Adele. I went to her house after work and asked my question as soon as she let me in the door.

“How do you fall in love with someone?”

“Well…it’s a little difficult to say. Because no one ever plans on falling—over love or anything else. It just happens. If you knew how it happened, then you could avoid it. But you don’t. So you do. Here, try one of these cookies.” She reached into a cookie tin and fished out a neon blue cookie in the shape of a star.

I took it from her and nibbled at one of the edges. “But it seems that if you were going to do something so…out of control, you’d want to make sure you were…kind of…in control about it.”

“There’s lots of ‘in control’ about love, but that usually comes later. When you find out he’s a stubborn old man who won’t pick up his socks no matter how many times you ask him to or leave the toilet seat down or fold the newspaper up when he’s through. But the falling in love is different. Falling is a feeling. Loving is a decision. Of course, you can fall in love with lots of people, but you don’t have to make the commitment to love them. To marry them. That’s the part you can be in control about.”

“So how would you know if you
weren’t
ready for a relationship with someone?”

“Weren’t
ready?”

“Just to be safe. I mean, you wouldn’t want to be in a relationship if you weren’t ready for one. Right?”

“Well…I don’t know about that.” She took a cookie for herself. Ate the whole thing before she resumed talking. “Would you like some milk?” She was already halfway to the refrigerator, so I didn’t tell her no.

She took two jelly jar glasses from the cupboard, poured a glass for herself and one for me, put the milk away, brought the glasses to the table, and sat down again.

“Now, what was it you’d asked me?”

“About being ready for a relationship.”

“That’s right. Well. It seems to me that although you have to be the right person for a relationship, that being in a relationship with the right person will also change you. For the better.”

“So you’re saying I don’t have to be ready?”

“I’m saying you don’t have to be perfect. We’re talking about Joe, right?”

I nodded as I picked up another cookie.

“Do you want to be ready?”

“Yes.”

“Then you will be. And when you are, you will feel it.”

“Could you be a little more specific? I don’t want to feel, I want to know. When?” What I really wanted was a crystal ball kind of prediction. Dates and times. I was sure there was someplace in this town I could get one.

“This is life, Jackie. Think about how many things we know. And then think about how many things we don’t. Sometimes you have to give up what you know in order to have what you can feel.”

I was already shaking my head. “That doesn’t work for me. I’m a ‘bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’ kind of girl.”

“That’s how you know that you’re not ready for a relationship with someone.”

“So what you’re saying is, when I become a ‘two in the bush is worth one in the hand’ kind of girl, I’ll be ready?”