“You look,” said Karl, “like crap.”

Simon couldn’t open his eyes; in the night, spiders must have woven thick webs over them. Small mice had taken up residence in his mouth and throat, and his entire body had been left in a smokehouse. It was the only way to make sense of how bad he felt.

“I think I drank too much last night,” he told his brother.

“That would explain why you’re on the floor, I guess. I hope you didn’t drive home.”

Simon pulled his eyelids open. “I’m on the floor? I thought I was in bed.”

“You didn’t even make it to the couch.”

Indeed, there was the couch, three feet away. Simon groaned. “Oh, god, what a night.”

If anything, the guilt was stronger than the hangover. Surely he hadn’t really danced with a stranger, and wound up back in a dark hallway with him? Surely all of that had been a dream? That wasn’t the kind of thing Simon did, ever. Last night had been a one-time exception to his usual rules about personal responsibility…did he have to break all those rules at one time?

Karl sniffed superciliously. “It’s not like anyone in the world has real problems. Not like there’s hunger and starvation, or civil wars, or crushing poverty. No, you have the real problems that need to be washed away on a flood of booze.”

“If you could just give me twenty minutes to wake up before the sermon.”

Karl sat on the couch, his mug of coffee steaming. “When I think about all the hell Mom and Dad give me about not being as responsible as you, and then see you passed out on the floor like a homeless drunk… I should call them. Where is your fancy bourgeois phone with the camera? I’ll take a picture of you and send it to them.”

Simon struggled to get onto the couch. The inside of his skull resounded like a bell. “Trust me, this was all because I’m the good responsible boy. I got bad news at work yesterday. Awful news.”

A flicker of Karl’s eyebrow betrayed a world of worry. For some reason that cheered Simon up a little. Karl might be as judgmental as a Puritan pastor, but he was still Simon’s brother. He still cared.

“What happened in that dungeon of industrial capitalism?” Karl asked him.

The hangover made it a blur, but with enough scowling and squinting, the memory came into focus. At first it was just the memory of the hallway—the handsome stranger, the passion, the confused but powerful lust—but he shook his pained head and focused on the correct memory.

“They called me upstairs yesterday afternoon. The first time I’ve been up there since the Old Man died, and Archie Cray took over.”

“Summoned to the lair of the Evil Crays,” whispered Karl.

When he’d been the personal assistant for Leonard Cray, it was the best job Simon had ever had. Not the easiest, certainly. Leonard was a prototypical absent-minded inventor, brilliant but very bad on the mundane details, prone to calling Simon at three in the morning to talk over extravagant new ideas that he needed written down so that he wouldn’t forget them. It should have been a nightmare, but Leonard’s excitement was infectious, and Simon had left every conversation feeling that they were on the verge of some great discovery, a breakthrough that would change every household in the country. In the voluminous notes he’d taken down in the wee hours for his boss, there were thermostats that could sense whether anyone was home, light switches that could be controlled from across the room using hand gestures, even a carpet whose fibers vibrated to shake all the dust and dirt into a special filter so that the floors would always be clean.

“I miss Leonard,” said Simon. “The place just hasn’t been the same without him.”

At least he still had a job. He’d been shuffled from department to department after Leonard Cray’s death. Nobody was quite sure what to do with him. Simon wasn’t a salesman, wasn’t particularly good at handling numbers…in fact, his primary skill seemed to be the encouragement and soothing of overheated genius minds, which wasn’t in high demand.

“So you got called upstairs…?” Karl prompted.

“By Archie Cray himself. Oh, he hates me, Karl. Despises me for my connection to his brother. You know he was always trying to nudge Leonard out of the company. I have a job for you, he told me.”

* * *

“I have a job for you,” Archibald Cray said to Simon. Simon’s hand reached up to his tie and twisted the end of it. Nerves.

“I’m very happy with the job the company found for me down in Records, sir,” Simon said. “Please don’t think I’m unhappy there.”

Archibald brushed the comment aside. “I believe I have something you are more suited for,” he said. “Something more within your sphere. I know you haven’t always fit in well at Cray Reliable Electrics, Simon.”

“I’ve really tried, Mr. Cray. I think if you asked Mr. Reynolds, he’d tell you I’ve been working very hard, and--”

“I’m sure. I’ve kept you here out of loyalty to my brother, and perhaps we’ll make something out of you yet. But for now, I need you. My nephew, Leonard’s son, has decided to join the company.”

Evan Cray. He’d never met Evan before—just his cousins Ash and Callum, who were something of a legend among Simon’s friends, like evil princes out of a fairy tale. But Simon had certainly heard about Evan, over and over. Leonard would interrupt inventing, setting down the soldering iron to sigh. You will not believe what Evan got up to over the weekend. He’s going to be the death of me, Simon. And Simon would obediently listen to the details of the latest scandal.

“I didn’t realize Evan was interested in the company,” Simon said.

Archibald laughed, a loud but humorless sound. “Oh, trust me, he isn’t interested in the least. But he’s a young man, and young men are made to be molded for their place in the world. In his own way, however, he has as little head for business as his father, and that’s where you come in.”

Simon swallowed nervously. “Me, sir?”

“I hate to say this about my own flesh and blood, but Evan needs a babysitter. Someone to keep him out of trouble while he learns the ropes of the company. Naturally I thought of you.”

There was a pause, where Simon wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to say thank you, except it hadn’t sounded like much of a compliment. He nodded.

“This is a very important task, you see,” said Archibald. “The Crays have always been a united front. We are an old, old family in this area.”

Well, yes, thought Evan, that’s why the town is called Cray’s Creek.

“Evan and his cousins are truly the last of the Crays,” Archibald continued. “If the company is to stay in the family name, which it must, Evan has to take his place here. You’d be doing us a great favor, if you could keep him on the straight and narrow long enough for him to fit in.”

“I don’t mean to speak ill of anyone,” said Simon, “but Mr. Cray, from what I’ve heard, Evan is a little…wild?”

Again that barking laugh. “Indeed.”

“What if…I mean, what if he isn’t interested in learning?”

“Then you’ll convince him to be interested.”

“Right, but if I can’t?”

Archibald’s eyes went cold and emotionless, shark eyes. “If you can’t help me with this, Simon, then I would have to question your loyalty to the company.”

Oh. So it was a threat. It didn’t have to be spelled out further than that. If the babysitting of Evan fell through, then Simon would be out of a job.

“I’ll do my best,” Simon said quietly.

“See that you do,” said Archibald.

* * *

“Typical,” said Karl. “That’s what these capitalists always do. Let their children run rampant, only reeling them in when it’s time for them to take their place on the throne. Meanwhile those of us who do real work are forced into more and more precarious positions.”

Simon’s eyes narrowed. “Could you save the communist commentary for later? I’m dealing with an actual problem here. I’m going to lose my job. This Evan guy is a freaking nightmare. Sometimes I think that’s what drove Leonard to work so late every night, trying to escape the shame of having a wastrel like that as a kid.”

“At least now I know why you came home that drunk. I imagine there will be much more of that in the future.”

Simon groaned and put his head in his hands. “I hope there’s not more of that,” he said. “Oh god, I’m so embarrassed.”

“Buck up, little cowboy. The proletariat has to indulge in the sauce every once in a while, just to stay sane.”

“Not that,” said Simon. “Not the going out and drinking part. What happened next.”

Karl said, “I’m not sure I want to know.”

“I met a guy.”

“Now I really don’t want to know.”

“I met him while dancing.”

“You danced? But Simon, you’re so stiff and proper. You’re a human scarecrow.”

“I know! But you know how it is, when you really need to escape, and the music’s loud, and you just let yourself get carried away?”

“No, I do not know how that is.”

“So I was dancing, and there was this guy, and oh god, Karl, he was so hot. I couldn’t keep my hands off of him.”

“I don’t want to hear about this!”

“It was so awful! We ran to this secluded little spot—”

“Ugh.”

“Well, anyway. You can imagine what happened next.”

“I assure you, I’ll need years of therapy for this conversation.” Karl rose and refilled his coffee in the kitchen. “So when do we get to meet the young man? Presumably you’ll be bringing him home for parental approval?”

Simon slowly shook his head.

“Oh,” said Karl. “But you’ll be seeing him again?”

“I don’t actually know his name. Or anything about him.”

“Simon!”

“I know! I know! It was totally unlike me! But I got swept up in the moment, and you just don’t know, he was so beautiful! I couldn’t help it!”

Karl shook his head. “Well, at least you don’t have to worry about seeing him again. As little as you go out, you’ll never run into him.”

“That’s the one bright side. It’s so embarrassing. I don’t know what he must think of me, of what kind of person I must be. Ugh! No more of that. From here on out, it’s back to being good old responsible Simon.”

Karl lifted his coffee cup. “I salute your return to righteous boredom!”

In a way, it made Simon feel better, now that he was sober enough to think it through. What happened last night was a one-time thing, never to be repeated. He’d never see the guy again, and never have to face his totally out-of-character actions. A relief, really. He wouldn’t moon over the guy or anything like that, wouldn’t have to worry about what to say to him the next time they met at a club. There would just be no more meeting! A perfect, final bit of punctuation to the craziness of yesterday.

“Did you save me any coffee?” he asked his brother.