The Passionate Attention of an Interesting Man (19 page)

It took a few weeks, but C. J. finally told Robin what had happened. Almost all of it.

“Man, that is one
sensualized dude” was Robin’s view of it. “If he was a gal, he could be Miss Bergen herself. I don’t care for the excessive force in the scene, but you boys of the posse do like your business rough. You think he’ll come through about the harassment?”

“If anyone can, I guess. He has incredible resolve. One of those ruthlessly accomplishing guys, and I have to admire that. They always seem to…they get what they want from life, don’t they?”

“But why did he think you had office news? So much intel flies around this campus, you never know if there’s any substance to it. Could they be offering you a promo? So soon?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

Robin thought it over. “Want to come up to my place? It’s time you saw a suite.”

It wasn’t the flat itself, though it was lavish: sitting room and “media center” beside the standard kit, along with the firm’s patented space-age
featurettes, including a one-stop laundry that ran itself, from wash to dry.

And it wasn’t the way Robin had personalized it, not least with a ton of photos on the grand piano.

“This is like 1952,” said C. J., scoping the pictures the way one reads through the menu of a gourmet restaurant. “Who are all these wonderful people?”

“Family.”

“Siblings?” C. J. liked looking at other people’s family pictures; someone once told him it was his nicest quality. “Cousins and such?”

“Everyone.”

“And a grand piano. I should have learned, I’ll bet.”

“It’s a max social tool. Years ago, they sold lessons that way. Like, you sit down and play the Best Song Oscar and take over the party. Strictly a guy thing, of course, because it’s chicks who respond to music when a male’s in charge. Hetero chicks. No true gal ever fell for art, if I can share another secret of the trade. And it’s my misfortune, because I do have the gift.”

Knowing that C. J. was about to invite her to play, she waved him away and said, “No, come with me instead—something I need to show you.”

Robin led C. J. into a small room off the media center, furnished with nothing but a desk and a computer terminal.

“Tap in,” she said. “First your section. Now search ‘Events.’”

C. J. did as told, and a long menu of
clickworthy entries materialized, under options from “Leisure” and “Church” to “Health” and “Eros.” Each offered data on what C. J. had been up to lately, complete with video life captures.

“You couldn’t cut into this on your home screen,” Robin told him. “It’s stat-restricted to the boss and suite-holders.”

C. J. now searched Trent’s name and did a little spying under “Health.” There was a site count on Trent’s pool and gym history, right down to the machines he used at what weight.

“Shocked, right?” said Robin, looking over C. J.’s shoulder. “But there’s no personal stuff. One tiny viol of privacy, and Human Resources would get on you like the fold on the wolf. All you can view is public events, same as they have on video cameras all over cities now. Everywhere, young man. With tape and Google, there’s no such thing as a secret any more. But you can see the boss’ angle—he wants his promos to know what’s happening in our world, from the pools to the Hoedown Club. What the new talent is up to, size ‘
em up. Initiative? Smarts? If they’ve got quality, it’ll show up in everything they do. Tap yourself in again, but this time…No, go ahead.”

C. J. went back to his data, searching the heading that Robin pointed at: “Echelon.”

“That screen,” she directed. “Click there.”

And that’s how C. J. learned that he was on a five-list for a suite.

“Tower One,” C. J. read out.

“What number are you?” Robin asked. “On the list.”

C. J. said nothing.

“Tell me, big boy. Read a girl the script.”

C. J. was thinking about this.

“Yep,” she went on. “You have made it in your, what? late twenties? Suites generally go to thirty-
somethings, or at least those with a long history here. What have you been up to be so favored, hey?”

Staring at the screen, C. J. got out a bit about his programs and billing rates. Robin looked on as he checked to see if Trent was up for a suite as well, perhaps in the same tower.

Trent was not up for a suite.

“You can’t bring your roommate along, can you?” C. J. asked.

“Nope. And you can’t turn down a suite if they offer it, either. Not if you wish to prosper hereabouts.”

C. J. nodded. Turning back to the screen, he clicked some more, bringing forth shots of Trent: in the office, on the grounds, charming a damsel poolside.

C. J. let out a long breath and said, almost in a whisper, “Will you just look at that beautiful monster?”

Lightly petting C. J.’s shoulder, Robin said, “You left something out of the story, didn’t you, pal?”

More or less at that moment, unbeknown to C. J. and Robin, Trent himself was in a meeting with his superiors—yes, on a Saturday. It seems that questions had arisen about the order of names in the five-list for the next suite. An emergency of sorts. All the concerned section heads and their deputies had been summoned, and, when C. J.’s name came up, Trent spoke for the first time, and at length.

After noting C. J.’s abilities, Trent proceeded to take his candidacy apart. C. J., he explained, was—these are the words he used—“emotional” and “unstable.” He relied too much on instincts and hunches and not enough on hard market data. True, his guesses could prove spectacularly successful, or why was he on the five-list at all? Still. C. J., Trent claimed, dealt in luck practice, in sorcery. “
Witchmaking” was the word Trent used, a coining all his own—and he reminded those present of a recent catastrophe in which a business launched a line of lifesaving drugs in uniform packaging, without the size and color variations that strengthen I. D. security. Staff at a prominent hospital had confused doses because of the look-alike presentation and nearly killed a few patients, including the relative of a celebrity. The tabloids had kept the news in cycle for a week, and why? “Witchmaking,” Trent repeated. “Flying without instruments.” Then, with the tiniest wink of an eye: “Litigation to follow.”

Of course, none of what Trent said about C. J. was true. Further, office politics shake a rich cocktail of envy, challenge, and sheer bloody
No you won’t because I’m here, too!
Trent’s head of section, who had nominated C. J. in the first place, countered Trent, defending C. J.’s candidacy with stinging power.

Trent sat through it with his company-player smile fixed in place while touring about with his private demons. That busy little C. J., huh? Picked his allies just fine, right, such as helping that big stupid Trent with his pathetic paper work that makes him so proud. Earns him respect from the high and
mighties running around the place. Muscle-trash Trent! Then watch that C. J. sneak away to a suite as Trent crashes without the C.J. word skills. No loyalty to that kid, no stuff, no just-plain-to-heck fuck!

His face unreadable to the others, Trent took part in the show-of hands vote and bustled off at the adjournment. A suite, huh? Yeah, and we’re
gonna see about that!

C. J. was in his room by then, composing a letter to Trent, to take up this very matter of the suite. C. J. planned to summarize what he termed his “interaction” with Trent—C. J. avoided the word “relationship” as presumptuous—and explain how he felt about the possibility of moving out.

It was a fearsome job, because everything C. J. wanted to say was forbidden. He has learned about the blade of honesty, how it turns against you all too often. Truthtellers go around wrecking lives. People avoid them, especially people like Trent. What mistakes we can make with them!—as for instance when C. J. told Trent that no one was harassing him any more.

Trent looking at him with an indecipherable expression. “Well, I found about it, didn’t I?” Trent told him. “Like I knew I would.”

“Who was it?” C. J. had asked.

Trent separating laundry in his room, piles on the bed, a year’s supply of Speedos. “Don’t even bother, Colin” was his answer. “Don’t waste time with that kind. They’ll never get it.”

Trent turning from his clothes on the bed, facing C. J., shirtless Trent.

“They’re never smart. They never listen to anything. They miss out on promotions, they get asked to leave, and nobody knew they were even here. On the planet earth.”

Trent whistled once, short and shrill, timed to a jerking of his right hand, whisking clean.

“Yes, but…” C. J. couldn’t let it go. “What did you do to get them to stop?”

“I told them what I’d do to them if they bothered you again.”

C. J. was going to extend his hand for a shake, but Trent had turned back to his laundry. To his back, C. J. mouthed, “I love you.”

And Trent stopped what he was doing. Without turning around, once again, as if he knew C. J. so well he didn’t even have to hear words to know what he meant, Trent asked, “What did you just say?”

“I didn’t say anything” was C. J.’s reply. After a bit, he went back to his room.

And now, constructing his letter, he struggled over how much he could put into words. He set it down that men like Trent get taken for granted as little more than models, even when, like Trent, they have hidden resources. He told Trent how much he liked living with him, how…fond of him he was.

That word! Fond: mawkish and pathetic, as dainty as a new saint’s first postcard home. Worse, C. J. closed by saying that he felt so honored to know a man like Trent that he was torn in half about the suite. C. J. left it to Trent to decide whether C. J. would take the promotion or not. Whatever Trent decreed, C. J. would accept.

He left it for Trent to decide! How was C. J. feeling then? Such a submissive—a hungry—act! Virtually exulting in this ceding of power, C. J. sent the email to Trent’s terminal and headed off to a meeting of the German Cinema Club for a screening of and coffee-table aftertalk on Fritz Lang’s
Metropolis
.

Trent was putting the same time to wicked use, brooding and smarting over his failure to keep C. J. from being offered the suite. Trent had not only lost the vote over C. J.’s promotion: his was the only nay. That kind of thing never looks good, and it has an odd way of turning up in your personality file in suggestively euphemistic phrases of disapproval.

After working off some of his anger in a super-session at the gym, Trent tried to arrange for a hookup at the pool. Yet he worked at it like a dilettante, posing and faking and barking up the wrong trees. But then, he wasn’t engaged in hooking up just now; he was in a mood to Settle the Score with Colin, using those words over and over in his head as the evening darkened and the pool closed and the traffic along the campus pathways thinned to stragglers and dog walkers. Yes, and to Trent, striding along now here, now there, deep in the splendor of his rage and just this side of muttering and furtive movements. Sooner or later we all reach this level, reveling in our martyred virtue, letting the wheels turn as we go over every last bit of the treachery to which we have been treated. Yeah, the big dumb guy Settles the Score with you, Colin, you…conniving little…
adviser
. Winning the vote for a suite and probably packing right this very minute as we speak.

He sounds drunk. But Trent really didn’t drink, ever, as he has said. By the time he got back to the apartment, it was late enough for our fine little Colin to be asleep. Likes to get his beauty rest with an early to bed, doesn’t he? Yeah, and the place was dark, giving Trent the satisfaction of banging around blindly, to disturb C. J. His door was half closed and his light out, the usual sign that he had retired. He was afraid of the dark, so he slept with a bit of hall light shining in. Take some dark on me, Colin, Trent thought, shutting the hall light off.

After stripping for bed, Trent grabbed the top of the bedclothes and drew them back savagely, as if sheets and blanket could raise yet more noise in the flat. He suddenly went all still, listening for a response from C. J. Perhaps a sigh of resignation: poor Colin, with his oh, just
unbearable
roughneck roommate. No response. And then Trent thought of a thing to do. He went into C. J.’s room, pulled the covers down, grabbed C. J.’s feet, and swung him around so that he was on his back with his legs on the floor. Then Trent leaned over in the darkness, pinning C. J.’s arms to gaze down at him from real close. If C. J. has been sleeping, he sure wasn’t sleeping now.

“Hello there, Colin,” said Trent, quietly.

C. J., motionless, didn’t answer.

“If you shout, do you know what I’ll do to you?”

“I won’t shout.”

“I’ll tear you apart like a paper doll.”

“I won’t shout.”

Still holding C. J. fast, Trent climbed onto the bed to straddle him. They were motionless and silent for a bit. Then Trent said, “If you’re so clever at everything, how come you’re down there and I’m up here? Huh, Colin? Wearing those stupid lullaby clothes again, too?”