CHAPTER THREE
Throw up Thursday started with a bang. It was trash day, meaning the trash had to be collected as early and loud as humanly possible.
I’m naked. The realization of this and another sudden bang of a garbage bin sends me to my feet. The room spins for a moment or two and my mouth begins to water. My stomach makes a gurgling squishing noise that sounds exactly how I feel. The light hurts.
My skin flushes with sweat as my stomach starts to heave.
As I run through the apartment—my mouth filling with vomit—I realize I don’t know where the bathroom is. It also suddenly dawns on me that this is not my apartment.
Panic sends me to the kitchen, where in the sink I empty my stomach and mouth of its contents.
“Good morning,” a voice says between my retches.
I feel too terrible to worry about what I must look like, naked and throwing up in the kitchen sink.
A tattooed god in a tank top walks over and rubs my back. He’s at least 6 feet and has 15 or 20 pounds on Devante. He looks like he’s expecting something. “Still up for what we talked about?”
I puke some more. I’m not sure what he’s talking about but think I have a clue. “I’m not in the mood,” I tell him.
He laughs and I notice he has a dimple. “Figured as much,” he says. “I’m going to have to go.”
“Sorry,” I say. I try to recompose myself as he hurries me sick and naked out of his apartment.
“You don’t have to go,” he says, “but I have to. Sorry to have to leave you like this, but I have to get to work,” he says, pointing in the direction of the window.
“These are your clothes…which you threw up all over,” I think I hear him say. He lays my clothes, wrapped in plastic from the dry cleaners, over a chair. “Coffee and donuts are here on the table,” he says, placing a cup of coffee and a brown bag on the table. “GatorPoweraid is in the fridge.”
I look up in disbelief and desperation. Was he real? And did he really have GatorPoweraid? I squint at him.
I see his nose wrinkle. “Run that down the sink, would you,” he says. “Bathroom’s right there, by the way.” He points to a door I missed. “Think you’ll be okay?”
I focus on him long enough for the room to stop spinning. He has dark features and there’s something masculine and mature about him, though he must be in his late 20’s, early 30’s at the max. The sight of him in his tank top and shorts somehow fills me with some composure. “I think so,” I say.
“Good,” he says. “I’m trusting you to not die and not to do anything worse than throw up down my sink. Can I do that?”
I smile despite sweating and nearly retching again. I give a thumbs up.
“Take it easy and don’t rush,” he says. “But do get to work on time. It’s almost 8. You said to wake you up by then.”
I don’t remember saying that but am glad he did.
“The door locks on its own, just make sure to close it behind you.” He hurries toward the door then stops. He smiles as we both notice my erection; I’m too out of it to be embarrassed. He gives me a wink and leaves the apartment smiling.
I stand there naked for a few moments until I have to puke again. As I do, in the kitchen sink again, I remember why I needed to be up.
“You have to get out of here,” Rachel says, not letting me even come into the lobby. We’re on the street in front of the building, which is ideal, as I may throw up again.
“You reek of unemployment,” Rachel says.
“It’s vodka,” I tell her, “or possibly rum.”
“That’s not all,” she says, waving the air away in front of her nose.
“Yeah, I puked,” I say, and then start laughing.
“Are you still drunk?”
“Possibly,” I say. “Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad, I’m worried. It’s 10:30 in the morning and you show up late for work and drunk—and I think in the same thing you had on yesterday.”
“I woke up naked in someone else’s apartment!” I tell her, excited to spill my guts.
“I’m not surprised,” she says.
“His name is Patrick—or someone in the house is named Patrick. According to the mail. I think it’s him. Anyway, he showed up this morning like a tattooed knight in shining armor.”
“He showed up to his own apartment?”
“He brought coffee and donuts. Boston cream.”
There’s a hint of a smile on Rachel’s face, but it’s overpowered, I think with her worry. “Well if you get fired at least you’ll have had your favorite donut for breakfast,” she says. “Maybe you can get a job selling them.”
I laugh out loud, hysterically.
“You need to go home,” she says. “That wasn’t even funny.” She rolls her eyes. “You’re drunk. On a Thursday morning. On the verge of being fired.” She looks at me with pity and concern in her eyes.
I’m suddenly weighed down with her sobering disappointment. I try to compose myself and be a little more professional. “I have to meet my new Texas boss,” I tell her.
“I’m implementing Cuddles protocol,” she says. “Go home, bathe and brush your teeth. And get some sleep. You’ll meet him tomorrow.”
I feel something between a drunken man and confused boy. I hug her, thankful that she tolerates me either way. “I love you,” I tell her.
She looks at me like she doesn’t believe me, but she knows I’d say the same thing sober. “I love you too,” she says, “though just barely.”
“I have to go back up,” she says. “Don’t be like this tomorrow.”
By Thursday night, after much sleep and GatorPoweraid at my own place, I’m feeling nearly human again. But here’s the problem with drunken nights of stupor. Occasionally you end up dancing on a bar, sometimes you wake up sleeping on a bench in a subway station. If you’re lucky, you wake up to a tattooed god impersonating the perfect man of your dreams, who brings you coffee, knows your favorite donut, and dry cleans your pukey clothes. If you’re unlucky though, you end up leaving your phone in said Mr. Perfect’s apartment and being so drunk that you fell asleep in the cab from his place and can’t remember where he lives.
It hasn’t been completely hopeless. Rachel was much kinder when I called her later in the day. We joined efforts to find the phone, as she’s worried I could be fired for losing it in the first place. But you don’t get far in sales without thinking fast and being able to do some sleuthing.
Here’s what we’ve tried:
1) Tracking the phone using the installed phone finding feature. All of the corporate phones are equipped with the software. It led us back to the club, where the phone wasn’t; it was just the last place the phone had any battery.
2) We tried calling the cabbie, as I saved the receipt, which had the necessary info to track the car and driver. No luck.
3) I checked with Devante but he had no idea what happened after he dropped me off at home around midnight. He was as shocked as Rachel to find that the night had somehow continued on. He’s also leant a had in the search. He searched the hookup sites and even had the bright idea to place a Missed Connections ad on CraigsSite. We didn’t find him but the ad did elicit lots of support, all hoping I find my phone and more importantly, this mystery man of my dreams.
Here’s what we know after all of that: he lives in Queens. The only reason we know that is because the cabbie logged the trip, which originated somewhere in Queens. It’s about as helpful as knowing that a tree grows in Brooklyn.
By Friday morning I no longer wish I were dead. At least not because of a hangover. But there, sitting in Rachel’s office, is an entirely different reason to want to jump.
Matthews is an asshole that in all honesty, I was surprised to see in the room. He, Rachel, and I were on-boarded at the same time. He and Rachel stayed here in the US, while I went off to do the European training rotation.
“Missed you at the planning meeting yesterday,” he says.
“I was out, but I didn’t have that on my schedule,” I say.
“It was impromptu. Check your email,” he says, “just sent you the minutes. I’m proposing we work together.”
A burning rage is starting to spark.
“Team Teamwork,” he says, holding his hand up for a high five. It was our team name during the on-boarding exercises.
I smile, remembering to keep my friends close and enemies closer, and I high five him. “Team Awesome,” I say, one-upping his corporate corniness.
“I can tell you the plan since I’m right here. Or do you want to have a look at the minutes?”
Mason walks up before I can answer.