Cube Sleuth (2 page)

Of course, at this moment, I am still sure this will not go beyond flirting.

We talk about nothing in particular, barely paying attention to each other’s words. She rolls her chair closer every minute or so until our knees touch. She puts her hand on my thigh. Those long red fingernails. The cinnamon gum clicking in her mouth. Her voice sounds even better when she lowers it and speaks a few inches from my ear.

She tells me she likes men like me. I say, “I like my women like I like my suits: double-breasted.”

She throws her head back in a violent fit of laughter.

Our conversation circles itself, and then Eve presses her lips to my left ear lobe. “I’ll let you do anything you want to me. Anything.” The ten words every guy longs to hear. That second “anything” really does it for me. She presses her palm against the highest peak of my tented jeans as she gently bites down on my ear lobe and drags her teeth to the edge.

She leans back in her chair to gauge my reaction.

As I stare at her sitting with her arms folded against her stomach, her biceps subtly pushing her breasts together, I imagine that my eyes are blank, my mouth open, and my overall expression says
doy
. Whatever I look like, Eve is highly amused.

I should wonder what brought on this out-of-the-blue aggressive sexual proposition. Should wonder if anyone walked by in the brief moments when her hand was on my dick. Should think about Nancy and how much better my life has been since the day we met. But all I can think about is what Eve looks like naked, and how much time in my work day I can kill with a good old-fashioned affair.

I think to myself that it’s a shame Eve isn’t married, because that would make the affair more dangerous and more interesting.

Eve tells me that I’m skipping whatever lunch plans I have, that we’re going to go for a drive.

* * *

Four seconds after I sit down at my desk, Ron drops into my guest chair. “Why did I eat by myself today like a leper?”

I lean in and whisper, “I was in my car, parked next to a cemetery, in the backseat, being fellated by Eve Mothit.”

“Well, that is, um, a legitimate excuse. Rude, but legitimate.”

“If you told me a story like that, I’d confidently call ‘bullshit.’ Why do you believe me?”

Ron smiles, taps his pointer finger on the end of my nose. “Because, Bob, you have the look of a man who’s just had a life-changing experience.” He calls me Bob because he knows I hate it. “Your face is euphoric and bewildered at the same time. You look sort of how how my cousin Ray looked when he came into the waiting room to say ‘It’s a girl!’ But with a little less oh-my-God-I’m-in-charge-of-a-tiny-human-being and more my-balls-are-happy-right-now.”

An image flashes in my mind of the expression on my own brother’s face when he came into the waiting room to say “It’s a boy!”

I tell Ron the whole story and ask his opinion.

“Nancy’s a beautiful sweetheart. Another one like her won’t come along again. So I think you’re a retard. But it’s your life.”

I nod. A wave of panic from hearing someone else say what I already know rises in my chest like heartburn, but I try my best to ignore it.

Ron reaches into his pocket. “I was planning to give you this at lunch, but you were off getting your knob gobbled.” He hands me a wallet-sized glossy of his smiling face. In the picture he wears a button-down shirt, unbuttoned almost to the navel, his pale chest exposed, fair wisps of chest hair only between his pecks. He has this hysterically lecherous smile, which he describes as his I-like-to-pork-chicks-and-I-own-a-van face. On the back, he’s written
FOREVER YOURS, RON
. All three o’s are hearts.

I laugh out loud, not bothering to cover my mouth since Keith is out. The picture is funny by itself, but what kills me is that Ron went to Sears Portrait Studio in this outfit and actually posed like this in public. He has no shame, and I admire that.

Ron picks up my wallet. “Put this in your wallet and make sure it’s in there at all times. I will do random searches to make sure.”

“OK.”

“Promise me. Swear on your mother’s ashes.”

“My mother isn’t dead.”

“Swear on her future ashes.”

“No. But I do promise.” I slip the picture in next to a picture of Nancy and a picture of my nephew.

* * *

I intended to keep the photo forever, to move it from wallet to wallet for the rest of my life. But I lost the picture, and by the time I realized, it was too late to ask Ron for another one.

I stand hunched over in a cardigan and a pair of bifocals in front of Ron’s TV in his mother’s finished basement. The TV is an old furniture piece that weighs more than Ron and I combined. The couch and love seat are a deep orange corduroy. I wish I lived down here.

Ron sits on the floor with his legs folded under him, a notepad on his lap. “Just do it from the cop pulling you over.” Ron starts to giggle and looks away.

I point at him accusingly. “What are you laughing at?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me what.”

“The show’s two weeks away and it’s a sketch, not a play. It’s just funny that you’re already in costume.”

“I told you, I’m an outside—”

“Outside-in actor. I know. I know.”

I tug on the neck of the cardigan that I borrowed from my grandfather. “The costume helps me get into character. I’m not making
you
dress up. Let me do my thing.”

“I just laughed, Bobby. Take a chill pill.”

“
You
take a chill pill.”

“Good one.”

“Your
mother
’s a good one. For having sex… with.” We both start giggling.

“If my mother was home, she’d kick you in the dick. Do the friggin’ scene already.”

I hunch over again in preparation for my lines. In my mind I picture myself as a bald grandfather with drooping jowls.

“Then I hear—” I clear my throat and start again with my raspy, droopy old man voice. “Then I hear sirens. ‘Oh shit,’ I think to myself. ‘It’s the fuzz.’”

“Don’t curse” Ron interjects. “It’s funnier if he’s sweet.”

“Then I hear sirens. ‘Fiddlesticks,’ I think to myself. ‘It’s the fuzz.’”

“Yes! That’s actually better than what I wrote!”

“Right, some of my ad libs are good. I know that already. Can I please get through three sentences without you interrupting?”

Ron nods with mock solemnness. He’s handsome in a way I wish I could be: chiseled jaw with a cleft. Just the right amount of stubble all the time. Full head of hair that’s always perfectly tousled, like he slept on it but as if his bed is actually a gifted stylist. Lean and muscular. A lazy but consistent alternative-rock wardrobe made up of many ironic T-shirts that hug his lithe frame. I, on the other hand, have no discernible style: I just wear clothes. And he’s funnier than me. I kinda hate him for it.

“Thanks, that’s why I got you the notepad. Now shut up and write it down.”

Ron nods somberly again, folding his hands as if in prayer. “Proceed.”

“Then I hear sirens. ‘Fiddlesticks,’ I think to myself. ‘It’s the fuzz.’ I turn to Angelique and ask her to try not to act too prostitute-y—”

“This is—”

“Ron, I am going to stab you in the clavicle if you don’t let me get through this!”

Ron giggles and repeats
clavicle
in a whisper.

* * *

I came up with the name Not For Mixed Company for the sketch comedy duo Ron and I formed. My inspiration came from the fact that whenever I used to make an off-color remark at any social gathering involving more than my nuclear family, my mom would say, “Robert, that’s not for mixed company.” Mom insisted on calling me “Robert,” even though everything about me screams “Bobby.” Mom never let me say “hate.” I had to “strongly dislike” someone. This repression of my free speech at an early age, of course, is a big reason why most of my remarks are off-color now.

Ron had written the entire show that we were rehearsing:
Love from Every Position
. Seven skits, two monologues, one song, and three ridiculous interludes. Some of it was raunchy and offensive, some of it touching to the point of corniness. In case you couldn’t tell, I was rehearsing my monologue, playing a grandfather who tells the story of being arrested with a prostitute that he’d picked up to deflower his twenty-five-year-old grandson.

* * *

Ron flips over the index card he’s reading from. “And then we just tour the city like we didn’t grow up here.”

I scrunch my nose. “That’s it?” I have my cardigan unbuttoned and my bifocals in my hand as we take a soda break in Ron’s kitchen.

Ron nods, grinning.

“How is that romantic?”

“It’s
funny
. She’d rather laugh then get a heart-shaped box of chocolates and some jewelry. The romantic part is all in the planning. The costumes and the props. Trust me.”

“OK, give me Option Number Nine.”

“That was Nine.”

“Oh. Give me Option Ten then.”

Ron stands on his chair and opens his arms like a king surveying his land. “Option Ten I’m calling, ‘Excalibur.’”

“Is this where you pull a dildo with a sword handle out of her cooter?”

“No, but that idea’s not half bad. I call it ‘Excalibur’ because it’s so regal. I pick her up at noon in a horse-drawn carriage—”

“This is expensive!”

“This is true love, you donkey fart. So, I pick Helen up in a horse-drawn carriage. And she’s wearing the ball gown Belle wears in
Beauty and the Beast
. That’s her favorite movie. I—”

“You have to get the gown made? That’s also expen—”

“Donkey fart: shut it.”

“I’m sorry. It’s so rude of me to interrupt you every fifteen words with some inane comment.”

Ron smiles.

“See what I did there?”

“Yes, donkey fart. And I’m dressed like Prince Adam. And I need you to—”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. I need you to dress up like Lumière.”

“Who?”

“The big candelabra guy. Would you do it?”

“For seventy bucks I’d do it.”

“Well worth it.”

“This is getting so effing expensive for you, Ron…”

I check the time on my cell phone and notice that it’s Valentine’s Day today. If I had a valentine, I might care. But Nancy of course dumped me for cheating on her with Eve.

* * *

Ron met Helen the first day of his senior year at Penn State’s Delaware County campus. He had just transferred there from the main campus so he could live at home with his widowed mother, while she took care of her dying father. According to Ron, Helen was the first face he saw on campus and it was love at first sight for both of them. The catch was that Helen was in a relationship with a creep named Theo.

Helen and Ron became instant best friends. He described her as a normal-looking girl who all of sudden became beautiful when she smiled. She cursed like a Tourettic sailor and liked to do magic tricks. Over the next four years, Ron had a series of pointless relationships that ended when the girl failed the test she didn’t know she’d been given: could she make Ron forget about Helen?

When Ron and I formed Not for Mixed Company, Helen told Ron that Theo had been hinting he was going to propose. I asked Ron what he would do if that happened. Ron smiled and said, “Murder-suicide. The old if-I-can’t-have-you-no-one-can ending.” As usual, he was kidding, but after his death I went over that conversation again and again, unsuccessfully trying to recall the exact inflection with which he had spoken those words.

In response, I gave Ron the only advice I could: “Tell her you’re in love with her. What other play do you have, really?”

“It’s pointless. She already knows. Theo knows. All our friends know. It’s the kind of pathetic secret
everyone
knows, but that no one mentions when I’m around.

“Even worse: all her friends want us to be together. Her parents, too.

“Even worser: I know without a doubt she loves me back.”

“Don’t say ‘worser.’”

Ron smiles. He says made-up words like this because he knows it makes my editor-mind twitch.

It ends up that Helen started thinking about life married to Theo, a chauvinistic, racist homophobe who by the way, legitimately thought G.W. was just what this country needed. Anyways, Helen realized what she really wanted. She drove to Theo’s house and dumped him. She told Ron it was the only time she had ever seen Theo cry.

Helen leaves Theo’s place and drives straight to Ron. She calls him on the way—it’s 2:30 in the morning—and tells him to brush his teeth and meet her on his porch.

Ron waits for his true love with minty-fresh breath and a confused but hopeful expression. He has no idea what’s going on.

Helen drives up, walks to Ron, kisses him for what feels like forever, then tells him she’s single. She plans to spend the next six weeks getting her shit together emotionally, and at the end of those six weeks, Ron will take her on their first date. Helen hops back in her car, tells Ron he looks adorable with bed head, and drives off.

* * *

“OK, give me your notes. You look like you gave yourself carpal tunnel during my monologue.” I slip my bifocals into the breast pocket of the cardigan.

“I don’t have any notes written down.”

“You were scribbling furiously the whole damn time!”

Still kneeling in front of me, Ron turns his notepad around and tilts it up so I can see that he’s drawn a picture of a unicorn with my face. I laugh until my abs hurt. Then he gives me his actual notes—copious and committed to memory.

This is my last rehearsal with Ron. The last time I would see him alive outside of Paine-Skidder. My last happy memory with my best friend.

He died the next day, twelve days before our debut performance. Sixteen days before his first date with the only girl he’d ever loved. Other than the day you hit the lottery, I can’t think of a less convenient time to blow your brains out.

My company would have a much easier time making a list of the days I was on time for work than of the days I was late.