There's nothing like being left alone. It can feel great when you need it, and it can rip your guts out when you don't... even though it's the very same thing. I had messed up my unpaid internship by accidentally fondling the ass of the CFO in the elevator, on purposely giving him a blowjob in his office, and then recreationally doing an on-camera remote masturbation session with him... in his bed. Then, I told him about the fun facts of my freakish bear trap vagina that closed up whenever anything tried to penetrate it, because he was too good of a guy not to tell him and let him get involved with someone like me. Then, nothing. I was left alone. Again. Life went on. I delivered food, pretended to be on important calls with audiobooks, and counted down the days until I could get control of my trust fund. It wasn't even that hard. I had nothing left. I just didn't care anymore.
I know you're wondering about the stick he gave me. The thing he gave me to care for. Believe it or not, it didn't die. I changed the water a couple times. I didn't have anything to mist it with, so I just ran it under some water every day and that seemed to be good enough. It hadn't changed much. It certainly hadn't changed into the beautiful flowering branch that Forrester drew on the sheet of paper with my name on it at my cubicle. His kind gesture in the vase at my desk was still just a stick. Sometimes, despite our best intentions and all the faith in the world, a stick is just a stick.
Forrester had ghosted. A week had gone by and I never saw or heard from him. He never called me after I turned off my phone and left his condo without the shirt I'd come to get. No chat notifications, no flirty texts, not even a lunch order... and that was good, of course. That was great, even. It was just what I wanted. I was fine with that. I never had patience for that whole thing where two people who didn't connect had to pretend at the office that everything was fine. Why can't it be fine that everything isn't fine? What is it about a workplace that requires fake fineness?
You know who else didn't play the fake fineness game? Trudy. That woman? She just let her not-fine flag fly. "Where's the shirt?" she asked one day, as I handed her her Strawberry Poppyseed with Chicken salad.
"What shirt?" I asked, too thrown off to remember to be on a call with Valerie Solanas.
She raised a skeptical eyebrow at me. "The shirt Mr. Forrester lent you. The shirt you were *supposed* to leave in his bathroom. The shirt you *said* you would bring back a week ago. Mr. Forrester keeps six white dress shirts in his cabinet at all times. There have been only five there for a week now. So, where is the shirt?" she snapped.
I shrugged. "I dunno. Ask Forrester. It's his shirt."
"I can't. He's been working from home and is only available for emergencies. So, you're saying Mr. Forrester knows where the shirt is?"
I sighed and pinched my nose. "He asked me to go to his place for a shirt. I went. If it's not in his cabinet, that's his business."
"He had you go to his place?" she said, her eyes sharpening as if she had finally caught the lie in my dastardly shirt plot. "Alright, then... what is the doorman's name?"
"Daryl was on duty when I went," I said, picking a sleep seed out of my eye with my middle finger. "Big guy. Looks like Idris Elba. Hates durian."
Trudy's face changed slightly, concern coloring her eyes. "You really have been there, then..." she said. She shook her head. "He's never worked from home this long before. The last time he disappeared this long was when his wife..." she trailed off.
My stomach lurched. "When his wife what?" I asked. Not that I really cared about what Forrester's wife did. A wife which Forrester apparently had. Not my business, really. It's just that the wives of gods tend to take it badly when mortals grab their husband's ass, give them a blowjob, and then masturbate in their bed. Other than that, I was fine with Forrester's wife. Fine. Fine, fine, fine.
Any charming and informative answer Trudy was getting ready to give me about Forrester's wife was pre-empted by her phone ringing. She answered it and I began pushing my cart away to go hand out more lunches. The cart was stuck, though, because for reasons unknown to me, Trudy was holding onto it.
"Yes, she's here... no, she didn't bring you a Green Goddess... yes, it's been piling up - do you want me to... okay... okay, will do. Say, did she ever return your shirt? Mmm hmm... uh huh... yeah... say, are you going to end this bullshit story anytime soon? Yeah, I didn't think so... I'll send her over with it this afternoon, she can pick up the quarterlies then and bring them in tomorrow. Anything else? Okay... yeah, well not if I see you first." Then, Trudy ended the call and looked up at me. "Come back here at 4:00 - you'll be bringing his mail to his place, picking up the quarterlies and bringing them to me tomorrow. Tell Daryl you're there for the arm-wrestling championship."
That evening, Forrester's door opened before I even knocked... Daryl must have told him I was coming after he showed me how to 'hook' to leverage my opponent into using their bicep instead of their pectoral muscles to keep their arm from being pulled down. Daryl also clarified for me that kicking your opponent in the balls was not regulation play in the world of arm wrestling.
"Here's your mail," I said, holding it out to Forrester and keeping my eyes fastidiously on the hall outside of his apartment. I felt him take the bundle from me, and then it somehow felt right for me to examine the rug in the hall. Yup. It was definitely a rug. I noticed in my peripheral vision that his feet hadn't moved. He was also barefoot. It's strangely intimate to see a person's bare feet after you've only seen them in the armor of business shoes. Why hadn't he said anything yet? Was he looking through the mail?
I chanced a look up to his hands to confirm the mail theory, but they were just jammed in the pockets of his jeans. The mail sat un-examined on a small table next to the door. He really should say something, I mean, this was just intolerable. Even if you're pretending everything is fine, you say something when someone comes to the door with a bundle of your mail. How was I supposed to know whether to be on the offensive or defensive if he didn't say anything?
I thought about just leaving, but then I remembered that I needed to get the quarterly reports for Trudy, and somehow telling her that I didn't get them was a fate worse than standing in front of the bare feet and jeans of the man who last saw me masturbating in his bed. I wasn't sure if the rest of Forrester's body was even there, really. I looked further up his torso, and saw he was wearing another dress shirt, but this one was looser... because it was unbuttoned completely, showing his chest and stomach with a slight line of hair going from his navel down under the band of his jeans. Holy mother of god. A slight whimper came out of my mouth, but I coughed quickly to cover it and went back to examining the hallway.
