Dry_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [65]
Ideas come easy to me. But this is not so for Rick. He struggles. I can write a script—and a really good one—in a few minutes. I’ve created campaigns over tuna sandwiches with Greer. But Rick needs to fester for a while. He needs days, sometimes weeks. And even then, he often doesn’t come up with anything that great. Usually something he’s recycled from some old issue of Communication Arts magazine.
And all of a sudden I can picture him in my office after I have left for the day. I can see him fingering the boards. That faggot. He thinks he’s so good. He’s just a fucking lush, he would say. And then he’d leave the sticky note.
“I can’t believe you got here before I did,” Greer says, suddenly standing in my doorway, winded from her brisk walk from the train.
“Check it out,” I say, gesturing toward the computer.
She walks around the desk and looks at the note. She leans in to read it. “Maybe somebody has a crush on you,” she says, looking up.
“A crush?” I say. I pull the Pizza Hut board back out and place it in the front. I stack the boards neatly against the wall.
“Well, yeah. Maybe somebody likes you.” She smiles slyly. “Maybe it’s that new account guy,” she says. “You know, the one with the goatee.”
“Greer, this isn’t about a crush. It’s somebody being a jerk.”
Greer plucks the note off the screen. “Why do you always have to be so cynical?” she says. “Maybe it’s not some big joke. Maybe somebody really does want to meet you for drinks. Maybe you should go.”
I tell her about the storyboards being examined.
“That’s ridiculous,” she says. “The cleaning woman probably moved them to dust. God knows you never clean in here.”
“I think it’s Rick,” I say.
“Rick? Why would he do something like that?”
“Think about it, Greer. The beer ads, the fake concerned looks, and now this. You and I both know what a pathetic loser he is. He’s not above doing something like this. He’s looking for ideas to steal.”
Greer considers this. “I don’t think Rick is creative enough to think of something like this,” she says. “I mean, Rick’s a jerk. But a harmless jerk.”
I’m not so sure. So all day long, I keep an eye on him. I watch him for signs of guilt. We pass in the hallways, and I make eye contact. He makes eye contact back and smiles. But he doesn’t look away, which to me would implicate him. I’m tempted to confront him, but if he didn’t do it, I really would seem like a crazy alcoholic faggot.
I also make sure to walk past the new account guy’s office at least twice, just to see if he looks up. I walk casually, as if out for a stroll. Just to see if by some far-flung chance, Greer is right, that the note is for real and the guy really does have some sort of crush on me. But the third time I walk by, he looks up from his desk. “Can I help you with something? Do you need me for some reason?”
I step into his office. “Um, I was just wondering if you have the competitive beer reel,” I say.
He smiles. “Nope, not with me. But I could get a copy for you. I’ll make sure somebody drops it by your office.”
I notice a framed picture of a beautiful woman on his desk. She is on the beach, laughing into the sun, the straw hat on her head about to blow off. “Never mind,” I say.
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
Later, when I tell Greer that the note wasn’t from the account guy, she says, “That picture doesn’t mean anything. It could be his sister.”
“Greer, even if his sister were Christy Turlington, he wouldn’t have a shot of her like that on his desk. Trust me. It’s his wife or his girlfriend.”
“Maybe,” Greer suggests, “he’s confused. Maybe he’s engaged but doesn’t really know if he can go through with it.