"D-man!" cried Troy when I entered his office. "What have you got?"
"Not much man," I said. "What have you got?
"Oh, man,” Troy said. “I got crushed last night, D-Man. Totally crushed.” He was reclined low in his swivel chair, his long legs crossed jauntily at the ankles and propped up on his desk.
"I haven’t seen my bed before two for the past three nights. But last night got really ugly, eating spaghetti at some shithole diner in Wheaton at 3:30 am." He lifted an invisible fork to his mouth and then blew out air, as one might do stone drunk and half-asleep.
"Don't know how you can still do that. College is over, man.” A small guilty smile crept on my face. "Any interesting developments?"
He glanced at the office door behind me, which I hastily closed. "Yeah, we had some good things going on last night," he said. "Some real good things.”
"Really?" My voice rose a bit higher than I wanted it to, so I tried to regain control with a nonchalant “Ah.”
"Yeah, I mean, I didn't crush it or anything, but there's some definite potential there."
I shook my head, not disapprovingly. "The doubleheader last week, now this...you're tearing up the city. What happened to the other ones?"
"Welllll, one of those was purely a one-night affair, after getting totally, totally crushed. And I gave her no indication it was anything but that. Now the other one...” He took his legs off his desk and sat upright, lowering his voice. "I don't know, she might be little pissed at me. I think she expected a call by now. I don't know. I still may call her. It could happen."
"But the new one, from last night. What's her story?"
“Egyptian, getting a Ph.D. at Georgetown. Her father’s a diplomat, some shit like that. Her name’s Ahadi. I might bring her to Coop’s party.” He leaned back and put his legs up. “So what have you got? Anything?”
“Not much,” I said. “Quiet weekend.”
The universe of Troy Luttman conquests could usually be reduced to two types. The first is a sexy tippler in New York shoes who smokes slow cigarettes in high-truths-in-low-quarters kind of bars. The second is a sexy Capitol Hill intern in professional dress with matching pearls and teeth, who possesses an unshakable sense of entitlement and ambitions wildly disproportionate to her talents.
I hear of Troy’s exploits every Monday, when I stop in his small office at the National Association of Suburban Planners (NASP) here in Washington, where we both hold jobs as entry-level program administrators. (He once noticed I use my middle initial -- Ralph D. Stallo -- on work-related documents, and has called me “D-man” ever since). I must admit I am drawn to his stories of pursuits, captures, and subsequent retreats, despite my embarrassment over having so little to share in return. I know how to listen: when to ask questions, when to flash a “you-bastard-you” grin, when to interject with a "No way!" or an "Oh, man." But underneath these rote gestures, I am usually clinging to a platitude that goes something like: looks and style I will concede you, Troy, but anyone really worth knowing will soon realize there is precious little upstairs.
Yet there are occasional Mondays when, for reasons unknown, I find myself in a more generous frame of mind. I let go of the platitude and, feeling free, climb into his story as an invisible camerado, forgiving his transgressions and cheering his successes. In the most sordid of situations, I still remain a silent sympathizer: if you are ridiculous, Troy, then I am ridiculous too.
Either way, Troy fascinates me. Envy, pity, admiration, contempt -- I feel it all toward him, often at the same time. Trying to figure him out is a thousand times more interesting than my job, and it is where I put my best energies when I am here in the office.
But on that particular Monday, I wasn’t feeling very generous. Ahadi, in description, sounded like a sophisticated citizen-of-the-world, genuinely interesting. She didn’t sound like she belonged in either category of the Troy conquest universe; she sounded like someone worth knowing. That got under my skin.
Reverie
That Monday, like most Mondays, Karen, my girlfriend, called me at work late in the afternoon. After the usual exchanges, her voice turned mischievous.
“So...did you see Troy today?"
Karen loved the sanitized versions of Troy's stories I sometimes offered her. Inexperienced as a boyfriend, I came to a theory that girlfriends loved stories about the travails of the unattached. I enjoyed these brief commissions as Troy's portraitist because I liked having the power to paint him as a frivolous figure. Occasionally I even dabbed a few pointillist drops of contempt onto the canvas, but since this entailed a certain degree of guilt I never went hog-wild and made him look completely pathetic.
"Yeah, he's chasing a new one now."
"A new one? What happened to the other two last week?"
I decided to blacken him. "They were one-night stands, basically. Though I don't know if they understood that. It was classic Troy -- he told me he hadn’t slept with two different women on consecutive nights since college, to make it clear that that was, like, par for the course in college.”
Immediately after saying this I was flooded with embarrassment, as if I had told too much and betrayed Troy.
“That sounds pretty obnoxious,” Karen said.
“Well, yeah, I mean, I could be wrong. Maybe he is letting them know up front that these things are casual, and they
“Oh!” she said. “Sorry to interrupt, but I forget to tell you. I remembered that Oscar Wilde said ‘crushed.’ I forgot which play it was, but a character says, ‘I got crushed at a party.’ Maybe that’s where Troy got it,” she said. “But he uses it in different ways, right? To get drunk, have sex”
I could picture her smile broadening and the color in her pale face rising a little. Our relationship had its origins in long phone calls such as these. We had known each other through a mutual friend, and one night Karen gave me a quick call for some trivial reason and we chatted away an hour. Her voice was like rare music: half Susan Sontag, half Ricki Lee Jones. Every weekend, I willingly let her drag me through a series of museums, teahouses, and flea markets. She contains an astonishing amount of humanity for someone barely five feet tall. I think of her as a walking civilization.
In person, however, our physical chemistry leaves something to be desired. But she seems to like me, so at age 28 I have decided to make a concession to maturity and enjoy a relationship based on compatibility, with hopes that the rest will come in time. So far that time has not yet arrived.
I wanted to get the conversation off Troy. “Did I disturb you last night, with my tossing and turning?” I said. “I just couldn’t
Through the doorway of the supply room across the hall, I could see the arms of Licia Lupino, braceleted and bare, adjusting a document on the copy machine.
“What?” Karen said. “You couldn’t what?”
“Um, hey, listen, I’ve gotta go. One quick thing: A guy here, Paul Cooperman, is having a party Friday. Do you wanna go?”
"I can't,” she said. “That's the night my sister’s in town."
"Oh right, yeah," I said. "Okay. Talk to you later. Bye."
My eyes were fixed greedily on the supply room doorway, waiting for Licia to pass through.
Her face, per usual, had something more than prettiness, some ethereal quality. The best I could come up with is that it exuded serenity -- the graceful slope of her nose, the lightness with which her lips rested against one another. Nose and lips harmonize with my favorite feature: the shadowy half circles under each of her eyes, endearing signs of fatigue darker on some mornings than others. These circles represent, according to a theory of mine, an inner life so active it disturbs her sleep. All interesting people have trouble sleeping.
I barely know her. In her three months here at NASP (she works in the public information office), I have yet to get past polite conversational banalities. What little information I have of her, I have solicited from Desiree, another co-worker of mine, a true friend. Licia, Desiree tells me, works assiduously during the evenings on a master’s degree in art history. She views the world of NASP as merely a way station--made tolerable by the money--until she can pursue her grander passion.
All of a sudden, Licia was in front of me, pointing down to the middle column feature on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, lying on my desk.
"Did you read this story?" she said. "I couldn't believe it."
"Oh, yeah, I read that this morning," I said. "It was funny." I actually hadn't read it, so I snuck a glance at the headline. Something about a forger painter making a mint.
"I mean, if the guy is such a brilliant copier, why doesn't he paint his own work?" she said, rising to the topic. "A little sick, to want to fool people that much, you know?"
"Yeah, really." I regained my composure enough to realize this was an opening. "Hey, speaking of painting, are you going to see the Vermeer show? I saw some of his stuff at the Rilks Museum in Amsterdam a few years ago. He's amazing. I can't wait."
"God, I've been so busy, I haven't even seen the Homer Winslow show yet." She shook her head and smiled. "And speaking of busy, I've got a mountain of work on my desk that keeps getting bigger," she said, starting a slow turn toward the door.
“I hear ya," I said, desperate to stop her momentum. "Hey, are you going to Coop’s party Friday?"
She stopped turning. "I think so. I have a friend in town so I might come late, after my friend leaves. But I told him I'd try to stop by. Are you going?"
"Yeah, I'm gonna go. It should be fun. You should check it out if you get a chance."
"I think I will," she nodded. "Well, back to work. Have a good day."
A short visit, but long enough to propel me into a Licia reverie, heightened by my lack of sleep the night before and cup after cup of wretched office coffee, which sometimes makes tiredness feel like love.
Cascade
"Man, this humidity keeps making my shorts ride up," Troy said to me as he stiffened his walk down 17th Street. "I might have to go for the mega pick."
We were headed to Potomac Park and our first Friday softball game. At the corner I saw Coop walking toward us. My heart sunk. Coop, the office clown, was thought to be hilarious. But his jokes could be viciously pointed, and I always got the feeling he smelled blood when he was around me.
"Coop!" Troy said as he came near. "So, is your party going to rock tonight or what?"
"It depends on how much of the work crowd shows up," he said. "I don't know if people are gonna feel uptight, partying with their co-workers. Which is lame.”
"Don't sell the work crowd short, Coop," Troy said. "There's a couple of honeys in our office. It might be worth getting them loosened up a little."
I saw Coop looking at me. "I didn't know you were playing this year, Stallo."
Something was coming.
"Sure, we got everybody this year," Troy said. His large hand grabbed the back of my neck. Warm. I felt like a protected son. "I even tried to get David Slaughter, but he never got back to me."
"Oh, man, not Slaughter," Coop said. "I don't want to go near that guy. Everytime I go into the eighth-floor bathroom, he's in one of the stalls, blasting away. He's gonna blow himself through the ceiling! I mean, I drink a lot of water and I'm in there a lot, and every fucking time I'm in there I see his big clunky shoes under the door."
I thought the insult pretty low, but my disgust was half a teardrop compared to the sea of relief I felt at not being Coop's target. But I was also anxious to hear Troy's reaction. Usually Troy was brilliant at staking out the cool position in a group bull session. But he also didn't take cheap shots at easy prey like Slaughter, who was considered the office eccentric.
"Yeah, I was in there this morning," Troy said, shaking his head, "and I got totally Slaughtered."
"Oh, man," Coop said.
"Yeah, I had just gotten in there and opened the paper, and I heard someone coming in. I saw the shoes and I just go ‘uh-oh, uh-oh, this could get ugly,’” Troy said. He grimaced. "It was hideous."
I was disappointed, but not confident enough to buck the crowd. "Yeah, Slaughter came into my office yesterday," I said. "Someone put a magazine that was for me in his mailbox, and he just walked into my office holding out the magazine, not saying anything but just making these sounds like ‘uh,uh,uh.’”
Coop chortled. "That's what he does," he said. "He comes into my office sometimes to look at a map I have on my wall, and he just makes those sounds and his head jerks a little when he makes them, like a fuckin’ retard."
Everyone was silent for a few seconds. We crossed the street.
"Hey, but don't sell Slaughter too short," Troy said. "I see him sometimes in Desiree's office, shooting the breeze. He might be a covert operator."
"With Dezzy Dyke?" Coop said, sneering. "C'mon, even Slaughter has standards. She looks like Dennis the Menace. Hey, I’m gonna go buy a water. I'll meet you guys at the field."
Troy and I kept walking and soon we reached the park. It felt good walking next to him through the quiet green, two warriors in sloppy athletic clothes, ready for our contest.
About 50 yards in, Troy started fishing around in his backpack. He took out a rolled-up baggie and a small pipe, four inches long.
"So D-man, care to join me in a brief pre-game celebration?" he said casually. "I'm a man of substance."
Even in the middle of a wide-open field, the pipe created some intimacy between us, which I liked. And the unfashionable, dirtbaggy connotations of smoking pot in the 1990s, especially for those out of college, momentarily deflated Troy's image a little in my eyes. I liked that too.
I gave a ridiculously long "Ummmmmmm..." followed by, "I think I'm okay right now."
He had loaded up and was flicking the lighter. As he inhaled, the lump inside the small bowl flared orange like a misshapen firefly.
"I've got a story about Desiree, D-man, that absolutely cannot be repeated," he said.
"Absolutely," I replied, high on anticipation.
"A few years ago I was crushed one night in Samantha's, I mean, I was completely..." his face contorted grimly..."fucked up, totally crushed, and I made out with Desiree at the bar."
"No way," I said.
"I mean, I was so crushed I actually made a date with her for the next night. And then when I went to pick her up and saw what she looked like sober, I was HORR-ified."
I immediately had feelings so contradictory I could have been two or three separate people. I resented Troy for his comments about Desiree, one of the few office people I actually liked, but in almost equal measure I felt sorry for him, that he would actually say something so crude and so cruel.
But I also felt dizzy, like I was seeing the world from a new plane. When we hung out, the roles had always seemed clear -- he was Hamlet, and I Horatio. Yet walking next to me now was a pot-smoking derelict who embraced women even I wouldn't embrace (I hated to say it, but it was true). I stared at him while we walked: goofy cap, razor stubble, torn shirt, dingy socks. Inside my chest welled a great cascading feeling, like I'd swallowed a waterfall.
Grace
I walked up the long stone stairs of Coop's house, zigzagging my way around the drinkers and talkers and kissers sitting in groups of twos and threes. I felt heady with self-image reevaluation. The idea of Troy as a boorish derelict was fixed in my mind. I knew Karen wouldn’t be coming, and I was looking forward to seeing Licia in a social setting.
Music blasted from the top of the stairway. The bass line seeped through my skin and started pounding the inside of my rib cage.
Coop stood at the door with a beer.
"Stallo! You made it." He stood there looking at me. I got the sense he was looking for something to mock. I needed a distraction.
“What's this playing?" I said, pointing vaguely upward.
"Sugar, man, Sugar," he said. He looked drunk, or at least very buzzed. "File Under Easy Listening. FUEL. It kicks."
"Cool."
I walked past him and took in the room. It was full, and vaguely threatening. This wasn't the work crowd; too young, college-young, younger than me. I didn't recognize a soul. A few faces turned toward me and I stared back. At best, their expressions were indifferent. In a few seconds I went from feeling mildly out of place to immensely self-conscious, verging on panic. I slipped through the throng toward the kitchen and made myself a triple vodka tonic.
"Hey." I heard a small voice behind me, straining to be heard while I was pouring. I wheeled around. Desiree.
"Hey!" I said.
She poked my stomach lightly with her index finger. "I'm glad you made it. How are you? Where's Karen?"
For the next half hour I clung to Desiree's company, jump-starting the conversation when it faded by introducing new topics with great avidity so she wouldn't walk away. Two of her friends, both attractive, joined us, and I became almost relaxed, chatting and laughing and passing my empty glass from hand to hand. Someone switched CDs on the stereo and a new song came on, with two guitars ringing out in unison, pushing to the sky. They reached a majestic pitch and I felt elated, like my heart was expanding.
I looked around and the room had changed. Clothes clung to bodies with a grace I hadn't noticed before. Gestures seemed enchanted. In the corner someone lifted his glass and took a sip. I wanted to congratulate him on a job well done.
I felt a large hand slap the back of my shoulder. I turned abruptly and saw Troy, with an enormous crooked grin on his face. His right hand clutched a half-empty bottle of Tequila. His left hand was still on my shoulder, heavy, as if he needed some support.
"D-man!" he cried. He was still smiling, relishing the lush, blurry comfort of his drunkenness. Next to him stood a woman so beautiful I almost laughed. She had long black corkscrew curls and a snug top that stopped short of her waistline, exposing two inches of taut olive-toned flesh. She had her hand hooked on one of the back loops of Troy's jeans.
He motioned toward her with the Tequila bottle. "D-man, this is Ahadi," he said. "Ahadi, this is Ralph D. Stallo. D-man. A fine man."
He leaned toward me. I felt his long hair tickle my neck. "I am so fucking crushed right now, D-man," he whispered, his breath warm on my ear. "So fucking crushed."
Confessional
At 9:15 a.m. Monday, I walked into the office kitchen, desperate for coffee. Coop, who was peering into the refrigerator, looked up. I felt obligated to say something.
"So, was your house okay after the blowout?" I said.
"Pfffffffft," he blew out air, contemptuously. "The whole thing was pretty tame, if you ask me. Why'd you leave so early? Past your bedtime?"
"Yeah, I guess." I smiled weakly.
Troy cruised in, moving quicker than usual. "Yo, gentlemen," he said.
"Luttman," Coop said, "how you doin? You recovered from Friday yet?"
"Ah, that was nothing," he said, pouring himself coffee. "I was fine the next day. I'm crushing on deadline now, though," he said, filling his coffee cup. "D-man, stop by later, after I'm finished with this goddamn grant proposal."
"Yeah, I will," I said to his back as he walked out.
"Now that's a guy who knows how to party," Coop said after Troy was gone. "Comes with a babe and a bottle of Tequila, kills the bottle, and leaves with another babe."
"Yeah? Someone else?" I said, my voice way too high. "When I left, he was still with Ahadi."
"That's what happens when you leave a party at fucking ten-thirty, " Coop said. "That Iranian one, or whatever the hell she was, took off, but Troy stayed. Then Licia came by late and they left together. She said she was giving him a ride home because he was drunk, but c'mon."
Nauseous and dizzy, I buried my face inside my mug and took a huge gulp of coffee. It scalded my tongue and I was glad for the pain.
Back in my office, I had the uncontrollable urge to paint Troy for Karen again. I wanted to be a crazed Jack-the-Dripper, scooping up huge handfuls of paint and splashing furious swirls of contempt all over the canvas. I called her and made a lunch date.
On my way out to meet Karen, I broke down and wandered down to Troy’s office. I had to know.
I peeked in, nervous as hell.
"D-man!" he said. "Sit down man, I'm off deadline."
"Hey," I replied, staying in the doorway. "I was just in the kitchen talking to Licia," I said, startling myself with the lie and at a complete loss as to what to say next.
“Oh really,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. "Yeah, um...pretty tall, isn't she?"
It was such an absurd thing to say that I prayed he would answer quickly and not let the words hang in the air for long.
"Yep," he said, looking at me poker-faced while he leaned back and put his feet up on the desk. "One long drink of water."
The bottom fell out of my stomach. I didn't have the heart to continue.
"Actually, I gotta run," I said. "I'm meeting Karen for lunch." I felt like a cringing mass of instability.
His face turned puzzled.
"Alright D-man, whatever," he said. "Go crush it."
Delirious
"So, how was the party Friday?" Karen said to me as we waited in the lunchtime crowd on the corner of K Street and Connecticut Avenue.
I was half-focused on the conversation, at most. Everything felt oppressive -- the heat and the humidity and the sidewalk beaten by purposeful strides and the blades of sun that danced on the chrome of the turning cars. As the sweat began to form, I started arranging phrases of maximum degradation in my mind, readying a picture of Troy so dark that Karen would disdain him forever. Her opinions were always so worthy; she had the power to right the cosmic balance between Troy and I.
The signal had just changed and the cars on Connecticut Avenue, set back about 20 yards from the corner, were just starting to accelerate toward the intersection.
“Oh, my God, you should have seen Troy,” I said. “He showed up”
“Hey,” Karen said, pointing. “Isn’t that him?”
It was Troy. He had broken from the crowd of pedestrians waiting on the far corner, and was crossing the street in a near dead sprint in front of the approaching cars. He looked so vigorous -- knees pumping high, tie blown back like a rudder -- that I imagined his body radiating concentric circles of energy that would sweep through all of downtown, changing the rhythm of the streets from a joyless military march to a delirious, beer-soaked swing.
I've crossed that corner at least twice a day for the last two years and never once did I see someone try to beat the light. No one would want to. A few people on the sidewalk glared; they thought he was an idiot. Troy couldn’t care less.
As he came closer he slowed a little, looked me in the eye, and grinned. Then he drew back his head and laughed -- a triumphant laugh, a who-else-has-the-balls-to-do-this-but-me laugh -- and slapped me on the back as he ran by.
"Not much man," I said. "What have you got?
"Oh, man,” Troy said. “I got crushed last night, D-Man. Totally crushed.” He was reclined low in his swivel chair, his long legs crossed jauntily at the ankles and propped up on his desk.
"I haven’t seen my bed before two for the past three nights. But last night got really ugly, eating spaghetti at some shithole diner in Wheaton at 3:30 am." He lifted an invisible fork to his mouth and then blew out air, as one might do stone drunk and half-asleep.
"Don't know how you can still do that. College is over, man.” A small guilty smile crept on my face. "Any interesting developments?"
He glanced at the office door behind me, which I hastily closed. "Yeah, we had some good things going on last night," he said. "Some real good things.”
"Really?" My voice rose a bit higher than I wanted it to, so I tried to regain control with a nonchalant “Ah.”
"Yeah, I mean, I didn't crush it or anything, but there's some definite potential there."
I shook my head, not disapprovingly. "The doubleheader last week, now this...you're tearing up the city. What happened to the other ones?"
"Welllll, one of those was purely a one-night affair, after getting totally, totally crushed. And I gave her no indication it was anything but that. Now the other one...” He took his legs off his desk and sat upright, lowering his voice. "I don't know, she might be little pissed at me. I think she expected a call by now. I don't know. I still may call her. It could happen."
"But the new one, from last night. What's her story?"
“Egyptian, getting a Ph.D. at Georgetown. Her father’s a diplomat, some shit like that. Her name’s Ahadi. I might bring her to Coop’s party.” He leaned back and put his legs up. “So what have you got? Anything?”
“Not much,” I said. “Quiet weekend.”
The universe of Troy Luttman conquests could usually be reduced to two types. The first is a sexy tippler in New York shoes who smokes slow cigarettes in high-truths-in-low-quarters kind of bars. The second is a sexy Capitol Hill intern in professional dress with matching pearls and teeth, who possesses an unshakable sense of entitlement and ambitions wildly disproportionate to her talents.
I hear of Troy’s exploits every Monday, when I stop in his small office at the National Association of Suburban Planners (NASP) here in Washington, where we both hold jobs as entry-level program administrators. (He once noticed I use my middle initial -- Ralph D. Stallo -- on work-related documents, and has called me “D-man” ever since). I must admit I am drawn to his stories of pursuits, captures, and subsequent retreats, despite my embarrassment over having so little to share in return. I know how to listen: when to ask questions, when to flash a “you-bastard-you” grin, when to interject with a "No way!" or an "Oh, man." But underneath these rote gestures, I am usually clinging to a platitude that goes something like: looks and style I will concede you, Troy, but anyone really worth knowing will soon realize there is precious little upstairs.
Yet there are occasional Mondays when, for reasons unknown, I find myself in a more generous frame of mind. I let go of the platitude and, feeling free, climb into his story as an invisible camerado, forgiving his transgressions and cheering his successes. In the most sordid of situations, I still remain a silent sympathizer: if you are ridiculous, Troy, then I am ridiculous too.
Either way, Troy fascinates me. Envy, pity, admiration, contempt -- I feel it all toward him, often at the same time. Trying to figure him out is a thousand times more interesting than my job, and it is where I put my best energies when I am here in the office.
But on that particular Monday, I wasn’t feeling very generous. Ahadi, in description, sounded like a sophisticated citizen-of-the-world, genuinely interesting. She didn’t sound like she belonged in either category of the Troy conquest universe; she sounded like someone worth knowing. That got under my skin.
Reverie
That Monday, like most Mondays, Karen, my girlfriend, called me at work late in the afternoon. After the usual exchanges, her voice turned mischievous.
“So...did you see Troy today?"
Karen loved the sanitized versions of Troy's stories I sometimes offered her. Inexperienced as a boyfriend, I came to a theory that girlfriends loved stories about the travails of the unattached. I enjoyed these brief commissions as Troy's portraitist because I liked having the power to paint him as a frivolous figure. Occasionally I even dabbed a few pointillist drops of contempt onto the canvas, but since this entailed a certain degree of guilt I never went hog-wild and made him look completely pathetic.
"Yeah, he's chasing a new one now."
"A new one? What happened to the other two last week?"
I decided to blacken him. "They were one-night stands, basically. Though I don't know if they understood that. It was classic Troy -- he told me he hadn’t slept with two different women on consecutive nights since college, to make it clear that that was, like, par for the course in college.”
Immediately after saying this I was flooded with embarrassment, as if I had told too much and betrayed Troy.
“That sounds pretty obnoxious,” Karen said.
“Well, yeah, I mean, I could be wrong. Maybe he is letting them know up front that these things are casual, and they
“Oh!” she said. “Sorry to interrupt, but I forget to tell you. I remembered that Oscar Wilde said ‘crushed.’ I forgot which play it was, but a character says, ‘I got crushed at a party.’ Maybe that’s where Troy got it,” she said. “But he uses it in different ways, right? To get drunk, have sex”
I could picture her smile broadening and the color in her pale face rising a little. Our relationship had its origins in long phone calls such as these. We had known each other through a mutual friend, and one night Karen gave me a quick call for some trivial reason and we chatted away an hour. Her voice was like rare music: half Susan Sontag, half Ricki Lee Jones. Every weekend, I willingly let her drag me through a series of museums, teahouses, and flea markets. She contains an astonishing amount of humanity for someone barely five feet tall. I think of her as a walking civilization.
In person, however, our physical chemistry leaves something to be desired. But she seems to like me, so at age 28 I have decided to make a concession to maturity and enjoy a relationship based on compatibility, with hopes that the rest will come in time. So far that time has not yet arrived.
I wanted to get the conversation off Troy. “Did I disturb you last night, with my tossing and turning?” I said. “I just couldn’t
Through the doorway of the supply room across the hall, I could see the arms of Licia Lupino, braceleted and bare, adjusting a document on the copy machine.
“What?” Karen said. “You couldn’t what?”
“Um, hey, listen, I’ve gotta go. One quick thing: A guy here, Paul Cooperman, is having a party Friday. Do you wanna go?”
"I can't,” she said. “That's the night my sister’s in town."
"Oh right, yeah," I said. "Okay. Talk to you later. Bye."
My eyes were fixed greedily on the supply room doorway, waiting for Licia to pass through.
Her face, per usual, had something more than prettiness, some ethereal quality. The best I could come up with is that it exuded serenity -- the graceful slope of her nose, the lightness with which her lips rested against one another. Nose and lips harmonize with my favorite feature: the shadowy half circles under each of her eyes, endearing signs of fatigue darker on some mornings than others. These circles represent, according to a theory of mine, an inner life so active it disturbs her sleep. All interesting people have trouble sleeping.
I barely know her. In her three months here at NASP (she works in the public information office), I have yet to get past polite conversational banalities. What little information I have of her, I have solicited from Desiree, another co-worker of mine, a true friend. Licia, Desiree tells me, works assiduously during the evenings on a master’s degree in art history. She views the world of NASP as merely a way station--made tolerable by the money--until she can pursue her grander passion.
All of a sudden, Licia was in front of me, pointing down to the middle column feature on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, lying on my desk.
"Did you read this story?" she said. "I couldn't believe it."
"Oh, yeah, I read that this morning," I said. "It was funny." I actually hadn't read it, so I snuck a glance at the headline. Something about a forger painter making a mint.
"I mean, if the guy is such a brilliant copier, why doesn't he paint his own work?" she said, rising to the topic. "A little sick, to want to fool people that much, you know?"
"Yeah, really." I regained my composure enough to realize this was an opening. "Hey, speaking of painting, are you going to see the Vermeer show? I saw some of his stuff at the Rilks Museum in Amsterdam a few years ago. He's amazing. I can't wait."
"God, I've been so busy, I haven't even seen the Homer Winslow show yet." She shook her head and smiled. "And speaking of busy, I've got a mountain of work on my desk that keeps getting bigger," she said, starting a slow turn toward the door.
“I hear ya," I said, desperate to stop her momentum. "Hey, are you going to Coop’s party Friday?"
She stopped turning. "I think so. I have a friend in town so I might come late, after my friend leaves. But I told him I'd try to stop by. Are you going?"
"Yeah, I'm gonna go. It should be fun. You should check it out if you get a chance."
"I think I will," she nodded. "Well, back to work. Have a good day."
A short visit, but long enough to propel me into a Licia reverie, heightened by my lack of sleep the night before and cup after cup of wretched office coffee, which sometimes makes tiredness feel like love.
Cascade
"Man, this humidity keeps making my shorts ride up," Troy said to me as he stiffened his walk down 17th Street. "I might have to go for the mega pick."
We were headed to Potomac Park and our first Friday softball game. At the corner I saw Coop walking toward us. My heart sunk. Coop, the office clown, was thought to be hilarious. But his jokes could be viciously pointed, and I always got the feeling he smelled blood when he was around me.
"Coop!" Troy said as he came near. "So, is your party going to rock tonight or what?"
"It depends on how much of the work crowd shows up," he said. "I don't know if people are gonna feel uptight, partying with their co-workers. Which is lame.”
"Don't sell the work crowd short, Coop," Troy said. "There's a couple of honeys in our office. It might be worth getting them loosened up a little."
I saw Coop looking at me. "I didn't know you were playing this year, Stallo."
Something was coming.
"Sure, we got everybody this year," Troy said. His large hand grabbed the back of my neck. Warm. I felt like a protected son. "I even tried to get David Slaughter, but he never got back to me."
"Oh, man, not Slaughter," Coop said. "I don't want to go near that guy. Everytime I go into the eighth-floor bathroom, he's in one of the stalls, blasting away. He's gonna blow himself through the ceiling! I mean, I drink a lot of water and I'm in there a lot, and every fucking time I'm in there I see his big clunky shoes under the door."
I thought the insult pretty low, but my disgust was half a teardrop compared to the sea of relief I felt at not being Coop's target. But I was also anxious to hear Troy's reaction. Usually Troy was brilliant at staking out the cool position in a group bull session. But he also didn't take cheap shots at easy prey like Slaughter, who was considered the office eccentric.
"Yeah, I was in there this morning," Troy said, shaking his head, "and I got totally Slaughtered."
"Oh, man," Coop said.
"Yeah, I had just gotten in there and opened the paper, and I heard someone coming in. I saw the shoes and I just go ‘uh-oh, uh-oh, this could get ugly,’” Troy said. He grimaced. "It was hideous."
I was disappointed, but not confident enough to buck the crowd. "Yeah, Slaughter came into my office yesterday," I said. "Someone put a magazine that was for me in his mailbox, and he just walked into my office holding out the magazine, not saying anything but just making these sounds like ‘uh,uh,uh.’”
Coop chortled. "That's what he does," he said. "He comes into my office sometimes to look at a map I have on my wall, and he just makes those sounds and his head jerks a little when he makes them, like a fuckin’ retard."
Everyone was silent for a few seconds. We crossed the street.
"Hey, but don't sell Slaughter too short," Troy said. "I see him sometimes in Desiree's office, shooting the breeze. He might be a covert operator."
"With Dezzy Dyke?" Coop said, sneering. "C'mon, even Slaughter has standards. She looks like Dennis the Menace. Hey, I’m gonna go buy a water. I'll meet you guys at the field."
Troy and I kept walking and soon we reached the park. It felt good walking next to him through the quiet green, two warriors in sloppy athletic clothes, ready for our contest.
About 50 yards in, Troy started fishing around in his backpack. He took out a rolled-up baggie and a small pipe, four inches long.
"So D-man, care to join me in a brief pre-game celebration?" he said casually. "I'm a man of substance."
Even in the middle of a wide-open field, the pipe created some intimacy between us, which I liked. And the unfashionable, dirtbaggy connotations of smoking pot in the 1990s, especially for those out of college, momentarily deflated Troy's image a little in my eyes. I liked that too.
I gave a ridiculously long "Ummmmmmm..." followed by, "I think I'm okay right now."
He had loaded up and was flicking the lighter. As he inhaled, the lump inside the small bowl flared orange like a misshapen firefly.
"I've got a story about Desiree, D-man, that absolutely cannot be repeated," he said.
"Absolutely," I replied, high on anticipation.
"A few years ago I was crushed one night in Samantha's, I mean, I was completely..." his face contorted grimly..."fucked up, totally crushed, and I made out with Desiree at the bar."
"No way," I said.
"I mean, I was so crushed I actually made a date with her for the next night. And then when I went to pick her up and saw what she looked like sober, I was HORR-ified."
I immediately had feelings so contradictory I could have been two or three separate people. I resented Troy for his comments about Desiree, one of the few office people I actually liked, but in almost equal measure I felt sorry for him, that he would actually say something so crude and so cruel.
But I also felt dizzy, like I was seeing the world from a new plane. When we hung out, the roles had always seemed clear -- he was Hamlet, and I Horatio. Yet walking next to me now was a pot-smoking derelict who embraced women even I wouldn't embrace (I hated to say it, but it was true). I stared at him while we walked: goofy cap, razor stubble, torn shirt, dingy socks. Inside my chest welled a great cascading feeling, like I'd swallowed a waterfall.
Grace
I walked up the long stone stairs of Coop's house, zigzagging my way around the drinkers and talkers and kissers sitting in groups of twos and threes. I felt heady with self-image reevaluation. The idea of Troy as a boorish derelict was fixed in my mind. I knew Karen wouldn’t be coming, and I was looking forward to seeing Licia in a social setting.
Music blasted from the top of the stairway. The bass line seeped through my skin and started pounding the inside of my rib cage.
Coop stood at the door with a beer.
"Stallo! You made it." He stood there looking at me. I got the sense he was looking for something to mock. I needed a distraction.
“What's this playing?" I said, pointing vaguely upward.
"Sugar, man, Sugar," he said. He looked drunk, or at least very buzzed. "File Under Easy Listening. FUEL. It kicks."
"Cool."
I walked past him and took in the room. It was full, and vaguely threatening. This wasn't the work crowd; too young, college-young, younger than me. I didn't recognize a soul. A few faces turned toward me and I stared back. At best, their expressions were indifferent. In a few seconds I went from feeling mildly out of place to immensely self-conscious, verging on panic. I slipped through the throng toward the kitchen and made myself a triple vodka tonic.
"Hey." I heard a small voice behind me, straining to be heard while I was pouring. I wheeled around. Desiree.
"Hey!" I said.
She poked my stomach lightly with her index finger. "I'm glad you made it. How are you? Where's Karen?"
For the next half hour I clung to Desiree's company, jump-starting the conversation when it faded by introducing new topics with great avidity so she wouldn't walk away. Two of her friends, both attractive, joined us, and I became almost relaxed, chatting and laughing and passing my empty glass from hand to hand. Someone switched CDs on the stereo and a new song came on, with two guitars ringing out in unison, pushing to the sky. They reached a majestic pitch and I felt elated, like my heart was expanding.
I looked around and the room had changed. Clothes clung to bodies with a grace I hadn't noticed before. Gestures seemed enchanted. In the corner someone lifted his glass and took a sip. I wanted to congratulate him on a job well done.
I felt a large hand slap the back of my shoulder. I turned abruptly and saw Troy, with an enormous crooked grin on his face. His right hand clutched a half-empty bottle of Tequila. His left hand was still on my shoulder, heavy, as if he needed some support.
"D-man!" he cried. He was still smiling, relishing the lush, blurry comfort of his drunkenness. Next to him stood a woman so beautiful I almost laughed. She had long black corkscrew curls and a snug top that stopped short of her waistline, exposing two inches of taut olive-toned flesh. She had her hand hooked on one of the back loops of Troy's jeans.
He motioned toward her with the Tequila bottle. "D-man, this is Ahadi," he said. "Ahadi, this is Ralph D. Stallo. D-man. A fine man."
He leaned toward me. I felt his long hair tickle my neck. "I am so fucking crushed right now, D-man," he whispered, his breath warm on my ear. "So fucking crushed."
Confessional
At 9:15 a.m. Monday, I walked into the office kitchen, desperate for coffee. Coop, who was peering into the refrigerator, looked up. I felt obligated to say something.
"So, was your house okay after the blowout?" I said.
"Pfffffffft," he blew out air, contemptuously. "The whole thing was pretty tame, if you ask me. Why'd you leave so early? Past your bedtime?"
"Yeah, I guess." I smiled weakly.
Troy cruised in, moving quicker than usual. "Yo, gentlemen," he said.
"Luttman," Coop said, "how you doin? You recovered from Friday yet?"
"Ah, that was nothing," he said, pouring himself coffee. "I was fine the next day. I'm crushing on deadline now, though," he said, filling his coffee cup. "D-man, stop by later, after I'm finished with this goddamn grant proposal."
"Yeah, I will," I said to his back as he walked out.
"Now that's a guy who knows how to party," Coop said after Troy was gone. "Comes with a babe and a bottle of Tequila, kills the bottle, and leaves with another babe."
"Yeah? Someone else?" I said, my voice way too high. "When I left, he was still with Ahadi."
"That's what happens when you leave a party at fucking ten-thirty, " Coop said. "That Iranian one, or whatever the hell she was, took off, but Troy stayed. Then Licia came by late and they left together. She said she was giving him a ride home because he was drunk, but c'mon."
Nauseous and dizzy, I buried my face inside my mug and took a huge gulp of coffee. It scalded my tongue and I was glad for the pain.
Back in my office, I had the uncontrollable urge to paint Troy for Karen again. I wanted to be a crazed Jack-the-Dripper, scooping up huge handfuls of paint and splashing furious swirls of contempt all over the canvas. I called her and made a lunch date.
On my way out to meet Karen, I broke down and wandered down to Troy’s office. I had to know.
I peeked in, nervous as hell.
"D-man!" he said. "Sit down man, I'm off deadline."
"Hey," I replied, staying in the doorway. "I was just in the kitchen talking to Licia," I said, startling myself with the lie and at a complete loss as to what to say next.
“Oh really,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. "Yeah, um...pretty tall, isn't she?"
It was such an absurd thing to say that I prayed he would answer quickly and not let the words hang in the air for long.
"Yep," he said, looking at me poker-faced while he leaned back and put his feet up on the desk. "One long drink of water."
The bottom fell out of my stomach. I didn't have the heart to continue.
"Actually, I gotta run," I said. "I'm meeting Karen for lunch." I felt like a cringing mass of instability.
His face turned puzzled.
"Alright D-man, whatever," he said. "Go crush it."
Delirious
"So, how was the party Friday?" Karen said to me as we waited in the lunchtime crowd on the corner of K Street and Connecticut Avenue.
I was half-focused on the conversation, at most. Everything felt oppressive -- the heat and the humidity and the sidewalk beaten by purposeful strides and the blades of sun that danced on the chrome of the turning cars. As the sweat began to form, I started arranging phrases of maximum degradation in my mind, readying a picture of Troy so dark that Karen would disdain him forever. Her opinions were always so worthy; she had the power to right the cosmic balance between Troy and I.
The signal had just changed and the cars on Connecticut Avenue, set back about 20 yards from the corner, were just starting to accelerate toward the intersection.
“Oh, my God, you should have seen Troy,” I said. “He showed up”
“Hey,” Karen said, pointing. “Isn’t that him?”
It was Troy. He had broken from the crowd of pedestrians waiting on the far corner, and was crossing the street in a near dead sprint in front of the approaching cars. He looked so vigorous -- knees pumping high, tie blown back like a rudder -- that I imagined his body radiating concentric circles of energy that would sweep through all of downtown, changing the rhythm of the streets from a joyless military march to a delirious, beer-soaked swing.
I've crossed that corner at least twice a day for the last two years and never once did I see someone try to beat the light. No one would want to. A few people on the sidewalk glared; they thought he was an idiot. Troy couldn’t care less.
As he came closer he slowed a little, looked me in the eye, and grinned. Then he drew back his head and laughed -- a triumphant laugh, a who-else-has-the-balls-to-do-this-but-me laugh -- and slapped me on the back as he ran by.
