Chapter SIX

 

 

Raymond

 

LEXIS LANGUAGE Solutions was one of two jobs that called me back. They paid the most, despite offering the position I wanted the least.

Office clerk.

I showed up for orientation with all the enthusiasm of a guy about to get his nuts waxed. Michael said I was being a brat. David called me ungrateful. Nunzio agreed that the job was lame but cheered me on by saying it would be insanely easy.

Not expecting to land a full-time position within the first month of my job hunt, I didn’t have much to wear. The office was business casual, but Michael insisted I borrow clothes from Nunzio so I didn’t go into work wearing jeans and sneakers like a jibaro. Before my first day, I’d snagged some items that would tide me over for a couple of weeks, and now I was trying not to tug at the collar of my button-down as the HR assistant showed me around the office.

It was, simply speaking, a stereotype.

“It’s not the fanciest space,” Sandra confided.

No shit. The walls were varying shades of gray, puke-green, and off-white. No ornamentation, artwork, or plant life. Even the cubicles were undecorated by their owners. Everything was the same.

“Viktor plans to remodel next year.”

Judging by the vacant looks on the faces of the office drones, I was willing to wager that LLS’s CEO wasn’t the type to spend money to make his people feel anything less than self-loathing about where they’d landed in life. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe those glazed looks of indifference masked people who were super gung ho about their wack jobs.

“Uh-huh.”

“This is the Individuals Department.” Sandra paused at the back of the office. I always imagined departments to have their own offices, but at LLS, they were denoted by a separate row of depressing cubicles. “This is where the cool kids are at. Everyone wants to get in this department.”

I stared dubiously at the seven people manning Individuals. They didn’t look more upbeat than anyone else in the office, but they had at least decorated their crappy row. There were some random scenic posters on the wall, and a tired-looking cowboy hat hanging from the ceiling light. I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to signify.

“Why?”

“Because we keep it interesting,” one of the seven piped up—a woman with long black hair and a red dress. It looked like she was going to a party instead of communicating with freelance translators for small-time translation jobs. “Maybe you’ll find out how.”

I didn’t care, but I smiled. Hopefully it passed muster. I was working hard on not looking like an asshole. David had nagged me all morning about my too-serious face as he fussed over my outfit. It would have been endearing if it wasn’t so annoying, and I’d interrupted his mother hen routine by demanding a kiss good-bye. It hadn’t happened, but the startled look on his face had made it worth it. And for just a fraction of a second, I’d considered doing it anyway. It would have given me something to think about on my new, boring commute. Not that our short make-out session the other day had ever left my mind.

The taste of him was imprinted on my tongue, and I relived that kiss every time I jerked off. The memory was seared into my frontal lobe. Even now, my body tingled as I stood in front of this band of miserable office drudges and thought about the sensation of David’s crotch aligned with my own. As an experiment, our trial kiss had gone pretty damn well.

Blinking, I stared down at the lady in the red dress. Getting hard while doing the introductory rounds would get me fired—though I wasn’t sure if that was a bad thing.

“Rosalie, this is Raymond,” Sandra said. “He’s our new Phillip.”

“Ohh….” Rosalie nodded, looking pensive. “That was fast.”

“Is that the guy I replaced?” I asked.

“Yeah. He was our other jack-of-all-trades,” Sandra said, leaning against the sandpaper-like wall of the cubicle. “Very sweet guy.”

I groped around in my bag of canned responses to find one that might be applicable. “Did he work here long?”

“Yes, for about a year.”

I didn’t have a ton of experience in professional environments, but I was almost positive that about a year didn’t constitute a long time to have been employed at a company. Even a drudge factory like LLS.

“Come by after work,” Rosalie said as Sandra started away. “We’ll give you the lowdown on our happy hour schedule and events.”

“Uh. Okay. I’ll come get the… lowdown.”

We bypassed more cubicles and approached an empty office separated by a glass wall. Inside were outdated computers with box monitors and various pieces of clunky audio equipment. The wires were tangled together in a knot beside the desk, and binders were haphazardly stowed away on a beat-up tan shelf. An ideal work environment.

“This is the fishbowl. When we have a transcription job for you, you’ll be working in here.”

“Will I be doing a lot of transcribing?”

“Maybe a couple of times a week. Most of your energy will be spent with the facilities team and in the mailroom. That’s why I keep calling you the jack-of-all-trades. Your primary role is to keep this office running smoothly in different capacities, but you will also pick up the slack for various departments when it’s needed. We may even have you look at Spanish translations from time to time.”

I was tempted to tell her I couldn’t read or write well in Spanish but knew the information would lower my value by half. Maybe it wouldn’t come up. If they didn’t have a billion Spanish-speaking translators on their list, they had problems that I couldn’t fix by pretending to proofread an English-to-Spanish public service announcement.

Sandra introduced me to the IT team—composed primarily of guys who seemed more awake and energetic than anyone I’d met so far—and finally led me to the area that would be my new base of operations. To my surprise, it was less of a drag than the rest of the place. It was an open area near the break room and kitchen, but several yards away from the majority of the other staff. Instead of cubicles, there were regular desks facing a window. It afforded a good view of One World Trade Center, but I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Ground Zero creeped me out, and the new skyscraper looked like a chrome torpedo.

“You’ll be working here with Eugene and Karina. Eugene is out sick, and Karina is messengering something across town for Viktor.”

I looked at the desk that would be mine—metal, dented, but with a dope dual-screen computer. I wondered if it could run Borderlands. “I thought I was supposed to be trained by Eugene today?”

“Karina will start training you as soon as she returns,” Sandra reassured me. “For now, just settle in and get yourself acclimated. Someone from IT will come set up your computer and get you onto the network.”

Getting myself acclimated to an empty desk meant sitting my ass down and powering up the computer. It booted in under a minute, and I started poking around to see what kind of goods they had installed in the bad boy. There was an impressive amount of RAM, but a shitty onboard graphics card. Definitely not gaming material.

When the guy from IT didn’t show his face in the first ten minutes of me dividing time between staring out the window and clicking randomly at the computer, I decided to nose around the hard drive. For whatever reason, they hadn’t wiped the machine or the browser history after what’s-his-face quit or got fired. Going through his e-mails in Outlook wasn’t a big thrill, but I got a clearer idea of what the hell he’d done—ordering and distributing supplies, contacting vendors and maintenance staff, and transcribing documents a few times a week. Nothing too intimidating. Or interesting.

His browser history was more fun. I found the guy’s Facebook and his Twitter, and it didn’t take much backtracking to realize he’d quit within the last month or so.

 

@philinnyc: so glad to be out of that fucking hell hole

@philinnyc: LLS peeps should know that unless you ride V’s dick, you’re on the shit list and he WILL find a way to ruin you

 

Looked promising. And sadly that was the most exciting part of my day.

At four o’clock, I vacated the office, forced myself to say good-bye to people I didn’t care about and had nothing in common with, and rode the train to my new apartment with a head full of doubts. Getting a job had been a relief for all of a week, but now it felt like a mistake I couldn’t undo without looking like an asshole. It was drudgery, pure and simple. Maybe being on the docks wasn’t glamorous, but I’d never felt like the odd man out when working on a shipment with a gang of dudes a lot like me. To the point, gruff, blue-collar, and none of the fake office personas that I’d already sniffed out after a single day.

On the docks, I hadn’t felt weird for sounding a little hood. I hadn’t stumbled over attempts to code-switch from my typical way of speaking so I could sound proper to the folks in Manhattan. It was a skill Michael and Nunzio had mastered by the time they were out of high school and entering college. But I’d never even considered there would come a day when I’d have to pretend I was anyone other than myself. And I had never stressed so much over my tats. Now, I kept my sleeves rolled down even when sweating at my desk while the central air didn’t do more than rattle the vents.

If being an adult amounted to spending my life doing miserable shit just to get by, I wanted a rain check. One day of working for Viktor, and I already felt like everything about my life that was interesting and enjoyable would be quarantined to specific boxes that could only be opened at certain times and occasions. The outlook was pretty fucking grim.

The apartment was empty when I arrived, but David had been working on it all day. He’d finished unpacking, and he’d even invaded my space and put away the rest of my clothes. I felt like I should be irked by him rummaging through my things, but I couldn’t deny that I kind of liked it. He was the only person who went out of his way to do random things that he knew would either make my life more convenient or happy. And I’d begun returning the favor. Going to the store after work, cooking for both of us, and I’d even started using a vaporizer so the apartment wouldn’t reek of weed when I smoked. Things were getting quite domestic.

Stripping off my work clothes, I made a mental list of things to do to loosen the kinks that had coiled in my system during the day.

Shower. Smoke. Food. Music. Once the list was checked off, I could decompress. Maybe even enough to kick back with David.

My hope of relaxing was quickly dashed. Once the rush of water from the shower ceased, I heard voices on the other side of the bathroom door—two male, one female. Damned David. He’d brought home friends.

The gnarls of tension that had just eased out of my body after thirty minutes of standing beneath the hot water, returned with a twinge of annoyance. I had two options: leave the apartment as fast as possible, or not make an attempt to hide how mad I was that I had to keep up my work persona in my own home.

The voices got louder. The woman laughed. I listened by the door, trying to gauge whether they were leaving or settling in for a while, and nearly slipped on the wet floor when someone knocked.

“What?” I growled.

“I have to use the bathroom!”

“Too bad.”

David kicked the door. “I have to pee!”

I cracked the door open. We glared at each other, and I jerked him into the bathroom with me.

“Why are there people in my house?” I hissed, locking us inside. “I’m in a bad mood.”

David squeezed past me, his bare arm sliding against my wet one in his rush to the toilet. I averted my eyes and glowered into the mirror. Listening to David take a piss wasn’t part of my plan, but it happened anyway.

“It’s my house too,” he said. “And they wanted to see the place. I’m not going to become a recluse just because we live together now.”

“You’re not a recluse if you live with me.”

“So you should be my only friend?”

Yes, I thought spitefully.

He flushed the toilet and turned to me, exasperation evident in the pursing of his lips. It was irritating, but his appearance put a damper on my desire to throttle him. He was dressed for the beach—trunks that didn’t even hit midthigh, a tank top, and flip-flops. His bare skin was flushed rosy in some places and tanned in others. I bet he smelled good—like sunlight and salt water.

“I guess someone had a good day. Must be nice.”

“Oh please.” David shoved me out of the way and washed his hands. “You’ve worked for eight hours and you’re already bitter.”

“That job sucks.”

“You haven’t even really started it yet.”

“I don’t have to. It’s an educated guess. I kept expecting to find someone hanging from a bathroom stall or to go postal and whip out a semiautomatic.”

“You are so dramatic.”

Outside the bathroom, someone was playing horrible music. The kind of stuff better suited for Starbucks than the living room of a guy with too much attitude and too little patience to wade through the keening wails of pseudocountry singers in order to get to his room. My expression must have gotten stormier because David dropped the lecture and leaned against the sink. He didn’t seem to mind that my dick and balls were covered by a scant few inches of terry cloth.

“Don’t be mad. They want to meet you.”

“That’s their business.”

“C’mon, Ray.” David smiled all charming and sweet, his brown eyes opening up wide. “I fixed up the whole apartment. Don’t I deserve to have some fun?”

“You could have had fun with me.”

He opened and closed his mouth, not knowing how to take my statement. I wasn’t even sure how to take my own statement. I’d meant we could have ordered in and chilled with a movie, but now that he was looking so uncertain, there were other ideas popping up left and right.

More experimenting. Kicking back with him settled on my lap. Figuring out if I just liked nurturing my oral fixation or if I wouldn’t mind him tugging my dick while our tongues slicked together. And maybe his tongue could glide down lower. See how that felt with another man.

The kid is a gold medalist at deep throating.

I stepped back to give David room to vacate the premises. He did it with halting steps.

“Just—just try to be nice.”

“Whatever.”

Standard response. I couldn’t think of anything more when every neuron in my brain was focused on keeping my dick from springing up beneath the towel. David rejoined his people, and I worked on yanking a comb through my hair. The tugs at my scalp killed my growing hard-on, and by the time I finished, it was safe to face David’s friends.

A tall woman with wavy auburn hair was joined by the equivalent of a walking, talking Ken doll. He was probably a few years older than me, had black hair that reached the nape of his neck, piercing blue eyes, and some serious bone structure. He was also ogling my goods like he’d never seen a half-naked Puerto Rican before. Maybe he hadn’t. Or, judging from the beaded rainbow bracelet around his wrist, maybe he just liked the view.

“David wasn’t kidding,” the woman commented.

“Karen!”

“It’s true!” she said, unabashed. “We’ve been dying to meet you, Raymond.”

“Yeah?” I looked away from the Ken doll and approached the corridor leading to my room. “Why’s that?”

“David talks about you all the time.”

“I do not….”

I wheeled around. The Ken doll’s eyes were riveted on my tats, especially the cursive scrawled along the side of my torso.

“What’s he say about me?” I asked. “Good shit?”

“All good shit,” Karen reassured. “He considers you a close friend.”

“He better.”

David looked relieved, and I wondered what he was so worried about. What else would she have repeated?

“I’m Oliver,” the Ken doll piped up. “Everyone calls me Oli. I’ve known David for a couple of years.”

“Oh.” Good story, bro. Don’t care. I backed toward the corridor. Oli’s eyes slid down my chest, paused on my abs, and centered on my towel. The dude wasn’t even trying to be subtle. I bit back a smirk and turned away without bothering to say good-bye.

“Feel free to come back and join us,” Oli called after me.

I didn’t reply, but I was in the sanctity of my room for all of three minutes before David barged in. No knock, no call at the door. He just intruded as if he had an existing, open invitation. It served him right that I was bare-assed naked.

“Jesus.” David turned away quickly. “I thought you’d be dressed by now.”

“So sorry. I didn’t know your majesty would be gracing me with your presence.” I slid into a pair of boxer briefs and snapped the elastic to signal it was safe for him to look. “What can I do for you?”

“Are you going to come out?”

“Nah.”

“Why?” He nudged the door shut with the back of his foot. “They want to get to know you. And there’s food.”

“What kind of food?”

“Sushi.”

I made a face. “That’s what you’re bribing me with?”

“I got you fried rice and spring rolls.”

“What about soup?”

David’s mouth curved up into a smile. “Yes, darling. I know your order by heart. Especially since you’re phone phobic.”

It was tempting. Free food that I wouldn’t have to prepare. “Can you bring it to me?”

“Raymond!”

“David,” I mimicked, rifling around in a drawer and pulling out a pair of cotton shorts. “Stop trying to make me like your stupid friends. I don’t make you hang out with mine.”

“You don’t, but I want to. I like your friends.”

“I don’t even like my own friends.”

“Liar.”

I shook my head, put on the shorts, and turned to jam my phone into the dock. Operation drown out annoying humans and get lit was in full effect until David came up behind me and rubbed his face against the back of my neck. I’d been right. He smelled like suntan oil and the ocean.

“Please?”

“The cute kitten shit only works if you’re an actual cat or if I’m getting some ass.”

David buried his nose in my hair and wrapped his arms around me. “Come on, Ray….”

The pleading and warm touches reminded me of how nice this evening could have been if we were alone, which only made me more resentful of his need to drag other people into the equation. “Unless it ends with your dumb Ken-doll friend sucking my dick, you can forget it.”

David stopped nuzzling me and went rigid. “Are you joking?”

“Should I be? He’s hot.”

He dropped his hands and backed away. “Okay, then.”

Turning, I caught the flash of irritation that crossed his face. “What? You’re the one who said I should experiment.”

“And you think he would experiment with you? I don’t think so.”

“Why not? I’m not good enough for him? He seemed to like what he saw.”

David’s flush darkened, and he turned away. “If that’s the way it is, then you should come out and try to make it happen.”

“Fine. Maybe he likes boricua dick as much as you do.”

David froze with his hand on the doorknob. “Fuck you, Raymond. You’re a real asshole.”

“Thank you.”

He stormed out and I stared after him, more pissed than was reasonable considering I’d started it. But his doubt only made me want to try. Not bothering with a shirt, I trailed behind him and plopped down in an armchair near Oli, who was sitting on the rug. He looked up at me with a big, bright Crest smile.

“I heard you started a new job today,” he said. “Did you like it?”

“No, but it’s a job.”

I scanned the containers of takeout on the coffee table. It wasn’t immediately obvious which ones were mine, until David shoved a couple of them to the edge of the table without looking at me. His movements were so sharp I thought he was going to throw it on the floor. Even Karen looked at him oddly.

“That’s how I feel about my job sometimes.” Oli leaned forward to grab my soup. His shirt rode up in the back, flashing part of a tattoo. It looked like the tips of black, tattered wings. “I’m a programmer. I spend my day working on software for a startup that’s making other people rich.”

I took the soup and shot a look at David, who seemed quite fascinated with his chopsticks.

“At least you get paid decent,” I said. “I don’t feel bad for you.”

“I get paid okay, but I probably could make more at another company. Sometimes I think about going back to school to take some business related courses, but….” Oli shook his head. “Working through a degree the first time wasn’t fun, and I would never have time for night school, let alone homework.”

The comment made Oli considerably more attractive. Even if he was a whining-ass white-collar piece of shit. “I’m with you there.”

“College is important,” David said testily. “Especially for kids today.”

“College is a scam.” I pointed my spoon at him. “Aren’t you the one always bitching about your loans?”

“And aren’t you the one always bitching about your lack of a job you enjoy?” David stabbed his sushi, still not looking up. “If you went to school, you could choose something else.”

“That’s not always true,” Oli argued. “A lot of people I know are still in the red when it comes to salary versus loan payments, and it’s even worse for people your age. It’s not as easy as you make it sound.”

“I’m not talking about your moronic friends who went to Ivy League colleges to major in philosophy. I’m talking about—”

“Judgmental much, David?” Oli raised an eyebrow. “Don’t forget, you went to an Ivy too. For teaching. You could have gone to a state school.”

“David likes to be fancy.” The look David shot me was full of venom, but I grinned in response. “Don’t front. You know it’s true.”

“Go to hell.”

“Whoa, okay, boys.” Karen seemed to regret having agreed to dinner at our apartment. She was casting bewildered looks at David and more furtive glances my way. “Why don’t we change the subject? For example—Raymond, I heard you were waving the Q in the LGBTQ.”

My self-satisfied smile morphed into a sneer. “You can’t keep my business to yourself, can you, David?”

David flinched. “I didn’t—”

“Gossipy little fuck.”

“It’s not gossip if I’m talking to my close friend, okay?” If David had been pink before, now he was on fire. “Goddammit, Karen. Now he’s upset.”

“I’m sitting right here, you jerk-off. Don’t talk about me like I’m not in the room.”

“Calm down.” Karen made the time-out gesture with her hands. “It’s fine. It’s my bad for bringing it up. I didn’t realize you were uncomfortable with it. If you’re going to be angry, be angry with me. It was thoughtless.”

These people were out of their damned minds. Maybe on their planet it was okay to discuss their business in front of strangers, but not on mine. In my world, things like that were private. If David repeated everything I said to his ridiculous friends, I would be saying a lot less. And if I had to preface every statement with a warning to not share it with others, there would be no point in talking at all. I was torn between returning to my room and pouring my soup over his head.

“I’m sorry,” David said, a note of pleading in his voice. “I was just—it was….”

Oli patted my knee. “Don’t fret. I was questioning until I was eighteen. Then I realized dick was amazing, went wild, and have been a practicing pansexual for the past decade. Back then, the glory of Grindr would have helped in my quest to delve into the unexplored side of my sexuality. All I had were AIM chatrooms.”

“What the fuck is a Grindr?” I asked, still glaring at David. He shrank away from me with a pained expression. “Sounds like something I use to grind my weed.”

“It’s an app men use to hook up with other men. Kind of like Tinder.” Karen didn’t look intimidated by my mean mug in the slightest. “You can get it on your phone. These two are on it all the time.”

“I do not use it all the time,” Oli protested. “I have more inventive ways of hooking up.”

“I didn’t say you use it to hook up all the time.” Karen put an arm around David. “It sounded like finding a good catch wasn’t as easy as one would assume.”

Now that the conversation had steered away from me, some of my outrage simmered. It didn’t help that David was giving me puppy-dog eyes. His anguish had way too much of an effect on me, but he deserved to suffer.

“There are idiots on Grindr, but it may be good to try things out with an anonymous hookup.” Oli nudged my leg. “Do you want to see the app? I can show you my profile. Or I can help you set up one for yourself if you don’t mind me touching your phone.”

He could touch more than that if it meant getting out of this horrible, tense room.

I stood, wanting to be away from David and his attempts to guilt-trip me. That was his MO. Doing something stupid and then making me feel bad for reacting. I jerked my head toward the corridor, and Oli got to his feet. He didn’t hesitate before following me, and I felt David’s eyes burning into my back until we turned the corner. Once inside my room, Oli stood in the exact position David had been in minutes ago. He lowered his voice.

“Hey, I don’t think he meant to upset you. He didn’t tell me anything about it, but he and Karen are very close.”

“Don’t worry about me and David.” I yanked my phone out of the dock and tossed it at him. “Here. Show me the stupid app.”

Oli caught the phone, eyeballed me like he thought I was going to soften the words with some kind of joke, and then shrugged. “Tall, dark, and dickish. My Prince Charming.”

“I guess.”

“You’re never going to meet anyone on the stupid app if you’re that unenthusiastic.” Oli thumbed around on my phone. “But I honestly wouldn’t care what came out of your mouth if I saw your face on my dash.”

“Lucky me.”

Oli snorted, unfazed. He must enjoy dickish guys. “Come over here and let me educate you, grasshopper. There’s nothing to be uptight about.”

Biting back another scathing comment, I hovered over his shoulder and watched him mess around on the screen. Oli didn’t seem to mind the proximity. He even dropped one of his shoulders back so it brushed against my chest.

A gold-and-black icon appeared on my screen. It looked like a mask. Oli buried it in a group with a bunch of random game icons. At least he seemed to understand my desire for privacy.

“First thing—you need to do your profile. Picture, tribe, stats, and whatever you want people to know off the bat. I’d recommend a body shot and not your face if you’re staying in the closet about being bi.”

“My tats would give me away,” I said dubiously.

Oli’s gaze roved over my body. “You could angle it so only your pecs and abs are in the frame. That’s all anyone needs to message you, to be honest. Guys on Grindr are superficial. They want to make sure you’re their type before they’ll even bother talking to you.”

“What a wonderful community. Real welcoming.”

“Whoever claims the gay community is full of wonderful, lovely people doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about,” Oli said. “Grindr is great, but you have to go into it knowing that people want what they want, and they won’t be shy about putting it out there.”

I jabbed my finger at the profile screen. “What’s a tribe?”

“Just a way to label yourself since we’re all about the labels. Do you identify as clean-cut, jock, discreet, twink, otter—”

“What the fuck is an otter?”

Oli burst out laughing, his voice likely booming down the hall and into the living room. “Never mind. I’d go with jock because you obviously go to the gym a lot, and discreet.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Like—down low?”

“Exactly. Don’t move!” Oli backed away from me and held up my phone, angling it outward and down. He snapped a picture. “When I see discreet, I assume one of two things: closeted and married, or closeted due to culture. Discreet guys are usually down for no-strings, right-now hookups. Back of the car, in the park, or whatever. Not always, but that’s the assumption. Considering your reaction to David confiding in Karen, I’d have to say you fall into that category, baby.”

That really did not sound like a good thing.