“How did your date go?”
Wilson smiled at his phone. “Badly,” he typed. “Same old thing. Meant too much to me, lost my cool, chased her off before the movie.”
Three smiley faces laughed until they cried on his screen. “You got no chill. Why can’t you just let it happen? Obvs she’s into you if she’s going out with you.”
“It means too much to me. I get scared I’m gonna blow it, and that’s what makes me blow it.”
“You idiot.” Heart, heart with stars, heart. “Bring me with you next time. Stick me in your pocket.”
He laughed at Beth’s suggestion, then flinched as a passing coworker glared at him. “So you can feed me lines? Like Cyrano?”
“No, just to keep you company.”
That image stayed with him after they finished texting, throughout his work day. A cute little woman curled up in his chest pocket, long black hair, a sundress. Barefoot. Sleeping peacefully, like in a Japanese sketch. He had no idea what Beth looked like: they’d struck up a conversation online that moved to text messages. Wilson tugged his shirt pocket open, trying to picture her nesting in there, wondering how she thought of such a thing.
The loudly cleared throat startled him out of his seat again. “Have you finished with the deduplication?” Lynn was looming over him once more. He hadn’t heard her come up; he felt her tone was unnecessarily harsh.
“Yes, I’m finishing the last fifth now.”
“Hogan County?”
“Hogan, Tyler, and Lambert Counties, yes.”
Her frown deepened. “Then get started on cleaning dead records, older than three years.”
He nodded. “I’ll have dedupes finished tonight, I’ll start that first thing tomorrow.”
“Tonight.”
His mouth fell open. He checked the clock on his computer.
“I know what time it is. You can put in an hour of dead records, then let me know how long the whole thing will take you tomorrow.” She stormed off, then turned at the last second. “This doesn’t count as overtime, so don’t ask.”
Wilson’s hands rested lifelessly on his keyboard. He stared out the window at the end of the aisle. Leaden skies hung over an industrial wasteland, slashed by four lanes of highway and a fifth under construction. Closer than that was the strange processing plant whose purpose he couldn’t learn. Five wide chimneys like cauldrons belched sulfuric clouds every other day, ruining smoke breaks and lunch hours. He watched the puffy streams of toxicity dreamily reach upward until they were almost on par with his office. He sighed and resumed searching for redundant client entries from a printout. If there was an easier way to do this, Lynn kept it hidden from him.
He slipped his phone into his chest pocket, to feel the weight of his friend
* * *
“No, I got home,” he said, shutting his front door with emphasis. “I haven’t had time to check voicemail, I was stuck—” He juggled his phone between ears as he shucked his jacket, filled a jelly-jar with water, and walked around the apartment to water a dozen failing plants. “I’m not taking sides, I haven’t had time to listen yet, that’s all. I’m not ignoring you. Yes, that sounds bad. No, it does, it’s awful. But I have to wonder what Lonnie would say if he knew that’s how you saw it.” He went back to the kitchen for a refill. “I’m not taking anyone’s side, but he’s my brother and I have a hard time… No, I’m not calling you a liar. I didn’t call you a liar, Mom.” Standing in the center of his living room, in his garden-level apartment, he inhaled deeply and slowly and clenched his eyes so tightly they produced water.
“No, of course. Yes. Yes, I know.” In the glow of the kitchenette’s light Wilson poked at a fern’s fronds. These things were supposed to be hardy, but one crunchy orange extension crumbled in his fingertips. The money plant beside it wasn’t doing too well either. That figured. “You’re right. No, I’m sorry, you’re right. I won’t tell him anything, no.” He apologized a few more times before hanging up. He clutched the phone, looking for a blank spot on the wall to throw it, when it buzzed in his hand.
“Hey kitten” glowed in blue highlight. Was Beth psychic? In one line he greeted her, complained about his mother, and asked how she was doing before setting his phone down to heat up leftover franks-and-beans. He returned to find “then you probably won’t wanna talk to me tonight” and nearly spat molasses across the room.
“No, I’m just venting! I’d love to talk with you.”
“I’m not exactly a ray of sunshine tonight.” Thundercloud, thundercloud with lightning, falling drops of rain.
“Are you okay? Talk to me. What’s going on?” He ate his franks-and-beans tensely while waiting more words to appear.
“I’m just being dumb.”
“Talk to me.”
“Sometimes I don’t feel like I belong in this world.”
Wilson laughed, relieved. “Believe me, I know what you’re talking about.”
“Do you?”
“Sorry, go ahead.”
“It’s like this world wasn’t built for me. Everyone else fits here and I’m the only one struggling to make it work.”
He stared at the words. Beth was one of the most together people he knew. Easy-going, cheerful, smart. “Did something happen?”
“And it’s like everyone only wants one thing from me. You know what I mean. Like that’s all I’m good for. Maybe they’re right.”
“You know that’s not true. You’re full of all sorts of wonderful things.
Laughing until crying. “You’re only saying that because you haven’t seen me.”
“But it’s true. You show me every day, when work gets me down or my family’s being assholes.”
“That’s easy stuff. You’re strong, you just need someone to remind you.”
“You’re strong too.”
Laughing face, heart, mouse. “I’m a little potato. You could hold me in your hands. Keep me safe.”
His own heart beat faster. That imagery again, it must mean something to her. “I would do that, if you wanted. I’d hold you to my chest like a shy, scared mouse.”
“Would you be gentle with me?”
“Of course.”
“Would you protect me from all harm?”
“With my life.”
“Would you kiss me?”
He reread the words, trying to imagine kissing someone whose looks were unknown to him. Was it a trick? He worried a piece of pork product from behind his canine with a fingernail. His friend was in pain, it was an exceptional night. “Yes, I would.”
“COW FUCKER!!!” Three laughing-until-they-cried smiley faces, and she didn’t respond to anything he wrote for the rest of the night.
* * *
WIlson’s phone vibrated in his jacket pocket, on the bus; he scrambled to fish it out before it burst into song. “Hey, I’m on the bus,” he said in a low, determined tone. “Yeah, she called last night. I don’t know what she’s pissed about, but she… Yeah, she talked about that a bit, but… No, I’m not hiding anything from you. I’m not taking anyone’s side, Lonnie, for fuck—” Mortified, he made an apologetic face to the old woman sitting beside him, then tried to shield the phone behind his shoulder. “I can’t do this now, I’m on my way to work. What? No, I can’t, I can’t.” His face froze as he listened to his brother’s story, then he closed his eyes and sighed. “I didn’t know that. No one tells me anything. All right, I’ll go get a coffee somewhere, but thirty minutes, that’s all I can spare.”
An hour later, Lynn was waiting for him at his cubicle, perched on his desk. “You missed the morning scrum.”
Oh fuck, that’s right, he thought. The Wednesday team meeting. Wilson had totally forgotten what day this was. “I’m really sorry about that, it was an accident.”
“Everyone asked. You held everything up for 15 minutes while we waited, and then we had to go ahead with it because some of us are actually trying to get business done around here.”
“I’m really sorry, there was no need to wait.”
“You appear to be okay.” She looked him up and down, folding her arms.
He started abruptly. “What? Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”
“You said you were in an accident. Where was it?”
“No, I was at a coffee shop.”
Lynn arched a sculpted eyebrow. “There was an accident at a cafe?”
“No, there was no accident. It was…” His cheeks burned. “Stupid family drama. It’s hard to explain.”
“What you do on your time is your business,” Lynn said, standing. “You’re going out for coffee on company time, paid company hours, and that’s a problem.”
Wilson glanced at a couple coworkers, walking slowly by. “I can make up the time. In fact, last night—”
Her eyes narrowed. “Did you think that you were buying extra time by staying late last night? That’s not how that works around here. You’re going to make up your two hours tonight.”
“But I was only late an hour.”
“You watch your tone with me.” She leaned in close to his face and bared her gums. “I don’t know why you think you’re irreplaceable, but you’re not. Management isn’t pleased with the work you’ve been doing, and now you pull something like this? See me at the end of the day.” She would have rammed his shoulder if he hadn’t dodged as she stomped off.
His phone buzzed and sang in his jacket pocket as he fired up his computer. “Mom, I’m sorry, now’s really not a good time. No, I’m not gonna get fired.” It was his bad luck to catch Lynn’s eye as she walked past with one of the VPs. “But I might if I keep having to take phone calls during work.” He ducked behind his cube walls and rubbed one of his temples. “He called me. I didn’t call him, he called me, and he really sounded like he was in trouble. We didn’t even talk about you, Mom.” He stammered and defended himself until he decided it would be easier to hang up on her and manage the shitstorm later.
“Goddamn it,” he whispered, trying to recall his login. When it didn’t work three times in a row, Lynn came to mind. Did she tell him he was fired?
His phone buzzed on his desk. Rainbow, sun, rainbow. “I’m in your area. Can I pick you up?”
He stared at the words, then looked around the office. “How do you know where I live?”
“Yes or no?”
He laughed drily. “Yes. A million times yes. Get me the fuck out of here.”
Hearts.
Thunder, but outside.
Wilson stumbled toward the windows at the end of the aisle. It had been clear weather on the bus and the skies were blue now. More thunder, and voices started to rise around the office. There was the processing plant, steaming on a Wednesday morning, and then five toes descended from above and fit neatly into each large chimney. Then it burst and crumbled into dust. Another bare foot swung forward, covering the cars stuck at an intersection downtown.
Wilson stared, pressed against the glass. He followed the feet up slender calves, to knees that disappeared beneath the hem of a sundress. He looked up in time to see a large hand rush at the building, at his floor. Like everyone else, he leaped back when the windows shattered, their frames buckled and shrieked; unlike anyone else, he stepped up to the waiting fingertips that shoved his row of cubicles aside.
Maybe Lynn was shouting his name. He certainly forgot his cellphone, in what was left of his desk.
The fingers wrapped wholly around his body, gently, protecting him. He grinned up at the brilliant smile between two waterfalls of raven-black hair. And then they went away.