The Passionate Attention of an Interesting Man (18 page)

Trent wandered through the room some more. Then: “You really know stuff, huh?”

C. J. nodded, swiveling around in his chair to watch Trent, dressed to captivate in cutoffs and a mesh tank top.

“So what’s this handbook?” Trent asked, coming to a stop beside the desk. Placing his hand atop C. J.’s head, he said, “Show me on the screen.”

C. J. paused, enjoying the feel of Trent touching him: something intimate from someone so distant. They say it was like that in the Old Days, when you’d get an unsigned mash note from a coworker and have no idea who had sent it. Turning to the computer as Trent took back his hand, C. J. clicked onto Amazon for a manual. “Style and clarity,” he said, scrolling and clicking. “Think of the office as a video game and the book as your strategy guide…Ha!
This
one!”

Things went well between C. J. and Trent after that. The big guy remained a lout, suspicious of novelty and disinclined to change his mind about anything no matter how wrong he might be. Still, he appreciated C. J.’s sacrifice in time and concentration in helping Trent on his office reports. Better, the boss liked what Trent was doing. His third report was
very
commended.

That was the day C. J. found a live mouse in one of his desk drawers. It startled him motionless, as the mouse, strangely unaware, kept harmlessly plugging along the path it had chosen for itself amid C. J.’s colored paper clips and post-it pads. Closing the drawer, C. J. emailed the office manager to effect a cleanup of his desk and quit for the day. “Personal emergency.”

Could this be a crazy accident or more harassment? Had his unknown pursuers, defeated by the change in C. J.’s schedule, taken all this time to arrange another strike on him?

“What are you doing home so early?” asked Trent, as C. J. walked in.

“Do you really care?”

“I’m deputy head of section, aren’t I?”

C. J. halted and tried a glare. It had no effect, so: “I’m not in the mood for another of your—”

“Don’t you mouth off at me, Colin!
Hey
! Where do you think you’re—”

“Let go of me!”

Pulling C. J. around to face him, Trent said, “Don’t you fucking dare show me your back when I’m—”

“I don’t work for you, Trent!” cried C. J., shaking Trent off and backing away from him. Trent followed. “And what are
you
doing home, while we’re at it?”

“I got a gold star on my book report.”

“Right, your office report that
I helped you on
? Because this is how you thank me?”

“I was trying to before you started fucking around with me!” Trent grabbed C. J.’s arm again. “
Huh
?” he emphasized.

“How…about…letting…go of me?”

“Put a please on it first!”

“Not to you!”

As if it had all been a merry stunt, Trent released C. J., throwing his hands up with “I swear I’m true blue, Professor Colin of the manners squad here!”

Heading for his room, C. J. stopped, turned to Trent, and said, angrily measuring out his words, “You know what, Trent?” But then he gave up. He just went limp and started back to his room. “Forget it,” C. J. told him.

“Actually,” said Trent, following C. J., “what I wanted to tell you, Professor Colin…Lookit, are you listening to me?”

“No,” said C. J., opening his closet.

Trent slapped the side of C. J.’s head—lightly, just enough to annoy.

“Cut it!”

“Now you’re listening. Yeah, and you dislike me even more than usual, right?”

“I don’t dislike you usually,” said C. J., getting out pajamas and bathrobe.

“Oh, I’d a-said you do, mostlies. And others do, too. Dislike me. Hey, he’s so noisy and full of himself, right? A boxer in the ring. Pounding at you, sweating.”

C. J. turned down the bedclothes, laying out his pajamas.

“Now, some chicks will quite simply hate me about it, so it’s cute when they learn to like me, after all. You sleep in pajamas, Colin? In the day?”

“I thought I’d take a nap,” said Colin. “So, if you don’t mind…”

“I do mind. Since I been thinking along certain lines here. Such as what happens to me if my man Colin stops helping me with my office reports? Am I gonna be worse off, when the, like, entire quality of my writing goes clunkorama? Could that be a plan of Colin’s, now?”

Colin just looked at him.

“How about an answer there, Mr. Fixit?”

“You think I’d…You’re actually accusing me of—”

“I’m only asking, man. Christ, why do you fucking fight with me every little—”

“Leave me alone, Trent!”

Furious, Trent grabbed C. J., who immediately began to struggle, crying, “You stop right now! You
stop
! Let go and…” Still struggling but silent now, C. J. gradually wound down, still in Trent’s grasp, shaking his head and panting. “I can’t…” C. J. got out at last. “Because I can’t…”

Trent let go of him, and C. J. retreated, reaching the bed and absent-mindedly picking up the pajama top. “I want to take an afternoon nap,” he said. “Yes, whether you like it or not. So how about getting out of my room?”

After a moment, Trent came up to C. J., took the clothing from him, and dropped it on the bed.

“This isn’t like you, son,” Trent told him. “Sure, I have shoving matches all the time. Like, hooray, it’s time for another. But you don’t never have them, so tell me what’s wrong. And a nap? At your age, that’s like saying you want to be dead. Lie down there, go silent, wait for nothing. What’s that about, huh? I was going to talk office reports with you, which, like, I need your help again, but that’ll wait. Just you now tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

Trent half-smiled and smoothed out C. J.’s hair.

“Colin, I can make you tell me if I want to, and there’s fucking not a thing you can do to stop me. But ho, man. Maybe I can help. You’re helping me, right? Just tell Uncle Trent now. Is it office stuff? The boss?”

C. J. picked up the pajama top and bottom, saying, “I don’t want to talk about it,” but Trent once again tossed them away. Adding the robe to the pile, he sat on the edge of the bed, taking C. J. down to sit in front of him, hemmed in by Trent’s legs. Holding C. J. with an arm around his torso, Trent said, “Don’t make me hurt you, Colin.”

“It’s not about the office,” said C. J., trying to concentrate on how badly he felt but distracted, lulled, by proximity to Trent. “It’s nothing you need to know.”

“You’ll talk now, I say.”

Trent tightened his grip on C. J., using his free hand to take hold of C. J.’s forehead. It was unpleasant rather than painful.

“Stop, Trent. Please?” C. J. put a pleading hand on Trent’s arm, to no effect. “It’s not office stuff, okay, but I’ll tell you, all right?”

“Start now.”

“I’m being hounded by bad guys. They…they do things to me and I don’t know who they are.”

Trent took his hand off C. J.’s head and loosened his grip across C. J.’s chest. “What do they do?” he asked.

C. J. told him everything, from “Fagot” to the mouse in his desk.

“Faggot misspelled, huh?” said Trent. “An imperious clue!”

“That’s a misuse of the word ‘imperious,’ which really—”

“The culprits have to be in section, right? Or they wouldn’t have access to your desk like that.” Patting C. J.’s stomach—apparently the signal to get up—Trent rose, taking C. J. with him by holding his sides till they were both on their feet.

“Could the mouse have been an accident?” C. J. asked.

“In this sterilized police state? They must have gone to the next county to find a mouse the fuck at all.”

Funny, wasn’t it? No “So you’re a
fag, huh?” from Trent. No “You’re gay?” He seemed only to see a problem that called for a solution. Picking up the pajamas to look them over as if he’d never seen a pair, Trent said, “I can take care of this, Colin. I think I even know who might be behind it. This place is so damnitall happy that the stupids don’t have any way to let loose. Some guys just need to be stirring up trouble for someone. They yearn to be riled up. If not the pay, then the chow. If not the…who the heck knows? The fucking chess club. Or some guy’s different from me. Hey, Joe. Bill. Carstairs. The other stupids. Some guy’s different from us, let’s get him. Huh, Colin?”

C. J. didn’t say anything. He watched Trent press the pajama top against himself in C. J.’s mirror, moving the arms around. Posing. Holding his chin as if he were Rodin’s
The Thinker
. Waving hello at distant friends.

“See, I could have sworn you were holding out on me on an office thing,” Trent went on. “It’s why I was so interested. I been hearing certain rumors.”

“About what?”

“You. Anyway, we’ll leave this to me. Just go around like normal. Show yourself all over the place, and if it happens again, you come straight to me, understand?” Trent turned to C. J., the pajama top seeming almost to shiver in his grip as he let it down. “Only it
won’t
happen again. That I fucking promise.”

C. J. then said, “I’m sorry we fought just now.” It was not the first time that he aimed to effect a peace by apologizing to the belligerent.

“Yeah? So how about letting me try on these pajamas? I always wondered how they work. Okay with you?”

“They’ll run small on you.”

“Just to get the idea of them, because they look so intelligent, you know? Smart people put them on and get ahead in life. Yeah, I always knew there was a trick to it.”

For some reason, Trent decided to use the mirror in his room, and C. J. dutifully trailed him there. It was a little nicer than C. J.’s. The firm designed the multi-person flats with adjoining good and better rooms, to promote competition, and Trent’s boasted one wall of shelving separated by a mirror than stretched from floor to ceiling. It was very nearly a movie set. As C. J. hung around trying to look helpful rather than mesmerized, Trent stripped and pulled on the pajama pants.

“What’s this string?” he asked.

“You tie it up like a belt. Then, if you tug on the bow, the bottoms just fall.”

“That’ll be cute with the chicks. ‘Hey, darlin’, what’s your name, now? Clothilde? Why, that’s so sweet that I hear music in it, and perhaps would sing of—Ho! Who dropped my pants down through no fault of mine?”

Trent let off a guffaw and C. J. tried to join in.

“Now the top, as we unfold it. Real fresh, I see. Virgin, huh, Colin? It’s college suave in every fine white button there.” Putting it on, leaving it unbuttoned, running a hand over the material with a gentle humming sound, Trent at his ease.

“It’s so smooth feeling,” he said. “Like kissing up for sex. And the top hangs over the pants is my guess.”

Trent admired himself in the mirror.

“What do you say, Colin? The young executive? He relaxes by candlelight, reading love poetry to my sweet
Clothilde, who is swept away. She can’t resist to feel his muscles through the…what is it now, cashmere?”

“Cotton.”

“He says, ‘I could show you the ink on my shoulder caps, only then I’d have to kill you.’ Hell, let’s show her, anyway.”

Grinning like a dancer in a sex club, Trent pulled the right front half of the coat back, then the left. Listening to a beat on his head, his knees bent, he swiveled down, shaking off the pajama top altogether, then addressed the mirror.

“‘It’s like so, Clothilde. You and me have it going, and you know to which I may refer. Am I going to be nice to you, Clothilde? Well, that depends on you, my sweet.’”

This is the fourth time, C. J. was thinking, his dick hard against his pants as he turned away from Trent and walked through the room a bit. I’m in love again, and I’m not going to be able to do anything about it as long as I’m living in this apartment.

“‘Say what, Clothilde? What’s that, now, sweetheart?’” Lazily tracing the contours of his physique with one hand, he took on a mock-ironic tone while waving a finger of the other hand at the mirror. “You say all the guys you know are made of sugar and spice? So now you want to taste a real guy and see what that’s like? You want sex on Mars, Clothilde?”

Fascinated by the way Trent was examining his chest muscles, C. J. failed to notice that Trent had given up his vignette with
Clothilde and was using the mirror to look at C. J. Catching his eye, Trent took hold of the drawstring about his waist and pulled. The pants dropped to the floor, bunching up momentarily as they slid past Trent’s half-hardon. Not unpleasantly, Trent said, “Want to cocksuck me, gayboy?”

C. J. stared at Trent, then shook his head no.

“Sure?”

“I’ll just,” C. J. started to say, but it came out hoarse and he gave it up. Without looking at Trent, C. J. got the pajama suit together to go back to his room, but Trent stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“I’ll take care of that problem for you, Colin, true enough. You can trust me to the bank on it, son.”

C. J. paused, wondering why he didn’t just fall to his knees and get on Trent’s dick. Just do it, he told himself. What are you waiting for, they used to say, an engraved invitation? But he forced himself to turn away and went into his room. And they said no more about it.