Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [11]
“I keep telling you, I’m straight.”
“I know. You keep telling me,” he said seductively. “The closet is a lonely place, Corky.”
“The water bottle thing happened because of my reaction to Ms. Nuckeby.”
He paused, apparently confused. “What reaction?”
“The…you know…the erection reaction.”
“You got an erection because of a girl?”
“Yes, because of a girl!”
“Wow. I figured you were thinking about me. Or Mervin.”
“I—am—straight!”
“Since when?”
“Since always!”
“Then what about that video?”
“You’ve seen the video?”
“It’s on my desktop right now. I watch it all the time.”
I heard him click something with a computer mouse and pause while he absorbed.
“That video is not allowed on company property.”
“You did this, and you claim to be straight.”
“I’d been drinking!”
“Alcohol reduces inhibitions, Corky. It doesn’t change your orientation.”
“I thought he was a girl!”
“He has a beard.”
“I’m straight, I’m straight, I’m straight! Can we get back to Ms. Nuckeby?”
“You got an erection because of a girl—then made her stay and watch you do the nasty to a water bottle?” He paused and considered it. “She should sue.”
“No, she shouldn’t,” I said, my voice squeaking as a life of potential moneylessness flashed before me like an independent film with big name actors about ugly, drunken, mean people; the ‘arty’ kind of movie everyone thinks is ‘brilliant’, and ‘moving’, and a ‘surefire winner’ because they don’t actually have to live it.
Then, finally, something in his answers seeped through the porridge I like to call a brain.
“Is that why she called?” I asked, choking on the words. “To sue?”
“What, Wisper? No! She called because she was afraid she had done something wrong by walking in mostly naked. She was afraid she’d get fired. I tried to tell her that if she could make a homosexual hard, she should be extremely proud. But maybe not so much.”
“Uuumm. Manschingloss. Does she think I’m gay?”
“Everyone thinks you’re gay. There’s video, remember?”
“I thought he was a girl!”
“And you claim a pretty thing like Wisper got you hard. Can you understand our confusion?”
“I was drunk!”
“In the Viewing Room?”
“In Mervin’s locker! I…” Suddenly something hit me. “Wait a minute. Did you show her the video?” I asked, humiliated, clasping my hands over my face and saying a silent prayer that even Manschingloss could never be that thoughtless.
“Of course I showed it to her.”
“Of course you did. So she thinks I’m gay. And that I like hairy men. And that I’m going to fire her.”
“Boy, does she. Which is good. Otherwise she’d sue.”
I considered what he’d said and realized he was probably right. She would never want to go to court and have it on the public record that the idiot who could mistake a hairy man for a woman—even when drunk—had become sexually aroused by her. I suppose I should have left well enough alone at that point, but I really have no common sense.
“How can I get in touch with her?” I asked.
“Why?”
“I need to talk to her.”
“About what?”
Good question.
“Do you have her number?” I asked.
“What am I? HR?”
Then I heard horrifyingly familiar, intimate moaning and slurping sounds in the background.
“Sooo.” Manschingloss asked, clearly distracted. “You’re not gay?”
I hung up and called HR. They had no home phone number for Ms. Nuckeby. She had come to them through one of the smaller agencies outside the city, and they wanted me to remind her, when next I saw her, that she still hadn’t given them her tax ID number. I made a mental note to do so, filed it under ‘Things To Promptly Forget’ and hung up, very frustrated, in more ways than one. I was about to call Manschingloss and fire him just because he used crinoline, when a nagging thought in the back of my brain bitchslapped me.
Manschingloss was two floors above me. I could still reach Ms. Nuckeby before she escaped the building.
I raced for the doors of my office, threw them open and ran out into the usual madness beyond: secretaries, designers, seamstresses, delivery men, all of whom gasped and