Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday...
What the fuck is wrong with me, Frank was thinking. Why is that fucking song in my head for no reason? I hate that fucking song.
It was almost four o'clock on, you guessed it, Friday, and Frank was slumped over in his office chair looking at the clock.
No one is in charge of me, he reminded himself. I can go home whenever I want. I don't punch any fucking clock.
He still sat there, though. He opened up his emails. Skimmed them with his eyes. Took in no information.
He got up, looked out one of his windows, sat back down. He drank a gulp of long-cold coffee, it was bitter, and bad. He paid no attention.
He picked up his cell phone, checked his messages. Some bullshit from his wife. Something about golf on Sunday.
Nothing from Morgan.
Too bad Baby Doll is out today, he thought for the millionth time. Having her come up here and suck me off would sure kill some time before...
Before
what,
Frank?
Before I have to walk down the stairs to get to my car, is what he would have answered to himself if he would have had the courage.
Before I have to take the chance of
her
being in the stairs, and...
catching
me? Is that the word? Is that what she does to me when she finds me in the stairwell?
No way he could deal with that thought. It was dismissed.
More cold coffee. More window. More checking the emails for nothing.
More looking at the clock.
Gotta
get down on Friday. Partying, partying, yeah.
***
John stepped into Lynda's office nervously.
Nothing to be nervous about, John, he reminded himself. This is a perfectly normal thing to do.
People do this all the time.
It's fine. It's
fine.
In his hands he had a bottle of wine. Nice wine, nice red wine. A Châteauneuf-du-Pape
actually. There was a little bow on it.
"It's a Rhône wine," was what he was going to say when he gave it to her. "Primarily Syrah and Grenache grapes, with a little bit of Mourvèdre in there. That's what gives it some strong tannins to balance out the sweetness of the Grenache."
That's what the guy at the wine shop had said. John had duly memorized it.
"Thanks so much for getting us the rubber tree for the offices," he was going to say next, in a totally confident way because that was a totally normal thing for a man to say to a woman. "It really means a lot to me. To
us.
But mainly to
me,
you see, because you are beautiful and I love you and I --"
Whoah, John!
Ha ha. Ha ha. Never mind all
that.
Let's stick to the script, John! She's your co-worker and she's married and you have
got
to be cool about this. Get a grip here.
So he stood there in front of her desk, holding the bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
She wasn't there.
He looked around, didn't see her. He looked at his watch, but that was stupid. He looked behind himself for some reason at the door he just came through.
Shit. She might have already left for the weekend.
He read the label of the bottle of wine for some reason, old world Gothic script.
Is it Gothic script if it's French, he wondered.
He felt awkward and stupid.
Maybe I'll just drink the fucking wine in the parking lot, he thought. Fuck me. How am I so terrible at this?
"Can I help you?"
Relieved, he looked up, smiling stupidly.
"Hi," he said with more forced happiness than the situation called for. "I'm looking for Lynda. Is she here?"
The woman shrugged, uninterested. Young and slim. John guessed she might be one of the interns.
"I'm John Claire," he said, nodding along with his own information, cradling the Châteauneuf-du-Pape as if it was a baby or something.
"I'm Wei," she said flatly. "One of the interns. She was here."
Wei gestured around the small office.
"But now she's not."
"Oh," he said. "I, uh... I have some wine for her. A gift. For the rubber tree. We didn't have one, because the ficus died. So now we have the rubber tree. She got it for us. So I have Châteauneuf-du-Pape."
"Oh," she said. "I could, like, give it to her."
"Oh," he said. "Yeah, I guess. That could... that could... sure, I guess."
He reached out with the bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
"It cost like seventy dollars," he said for no reason.
You could literally see her force the scorn from her face.
"That's a lot of money for wine," Wei said. "You must really like that rubber tree."
She tilted her head, regarding him coolly. Her eyes narrowed.
She took the bottle from his hands.
"Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Claire?"
He paused for a second, looking at the young woman, and her flat and neutral expression.
There was something...
"Do I know you from somewhere?" he asked her after a couple of moments. He felt a little short of breath for some reason.
"No, I don't think so," she said.
"Like maybe from a meeting or something here? Or something like that? You seem very familiar to me. Where would we have met before?"