the smartest person i ever met was a boy named bentley. we worked together. he drove a little orange pickup truck and smelled like pencil shavings. you could ask him anything at all and he'd turn, giving you his blank look, small lips parting as if to gasp, and say, 'well, urugay,' (or whatever the correct answer was). the rest of the employees would spend our minutes around the water cooler erecting elaborate gameplans for the day, or updating each other on his multitudinous successes. we would look up facts on our lunch breaks, or before stopping by the bar after work, trying to stump him. we never succeeded.
i don't know how he was alluring - he shouldn't have been. once i noticed him at a gallery, while i was still in a sad phase where i tried badly to appreciate art. eventually i gave all that up and complied with the tastes of others. gustav klimt's the kiss hangs over my bed. i have two schiele prints in my living room, one that i saw in elaine from seinfeld's bedroom and one that happened to be half price.
after that, i noticed he was at all the art shows i went to see. i would hang around plied with drinks by older men who knew all the right names but never why they liked what they did. sooner or later, he always showed up. i began to go out of my way to catch him. and, sure enough, he was at the galleries for the retired wealthy. he was at the museums of native american art and armenian art and basque art, the ones i'd always found boring. whenever a new show came in, every relevant first thursday, i could find him. i lucked out, found him on the weekends at his favorite haunts, the art museum and the modern art museum, the out of the way galleries with unpopular backroom collections just taking up space, unsellable even dirt cheap. sometimes he would catch me, but the most i got for my trouble was a polite inclination of his head before he absorbed himself again in whatever happened to be three inches from the tip of his nose.
at work, i became the instigator of new twists to our game. construction, the history of the hospitality industry, what color were european wedding gowns prior to the victorian era? i stayed in at night (except on thursdays) to pour through rare trade magazines and obscure webpages. by then, i knew well i couldn't do so much as delay his infallible answers. i lived to walk into his cubicle, perfume full blast, blouse unbuttoned just enough, and wait for him to give me more than everyone else got. finally, he did.
'well, red,' he answered, and turned back to his computer. then he placed his hands on his desk and turned back toward me. 'you know,' he said quiety, very slowly, 'i'm not oblivious to what you do.'
my esophagus froze. i'd been worried before about my disturbing new stalking actitivies. i forget now how i rationalized it. maybe i told myself it was research, just part of the game.
'let me ask you a question. all this shit you find to quiz me on, do you remember any of it? you've asked me a dozen questions a day since i've worked here. do you remember any of the answers? do you even remember what the questions were?'
my self-esteem turned off the red alert. i suprised myself. none of the pre-stalking queries came back to me, but i remembered the ones since. 'yes. in the meno, what is the question socrates poses to the slave boy? what is the speed of light? how old must elephants be before they can be weaned away from their mothers? what is the key difference between euclidean geometry and non-euclidean geometry? who was the first director of the fbi? who is the youngest published author of the past century? which cultures don't give their children middle names? where are the majority of the world's paperclips produced? what is the best source of calcium for adult humans? what changes occur during the androgen wash in male fetuses?'
my lungs collapsed. i swallowed a breath and prepared to continue on to the second week of april. he was still staring at me, right into the secret depths of my temporal lobe, mouth ajar, eyes like oceans. for the first time, i noticed his lashes, pale like honey wheat bread and long. just below his left nostril was a tiny dark mole that could easily be mistaken for a stray piece of lint or dust, but not for a booger. i had to swallow again. suddenly i was high on something. i believed he'd seen me.
'what are you doing friday?' i asked.
he brought perfect flowers. not the sad cheap carnations that come from safeway, and from test tubes in el paso before that. poppies and marigolds. i made steak. it turned out he was a vegetarian. we ate the salad and we started on the gin. by the time dessert was over, we'd dispensed with the accoutrements of gimlets and were passing the bottle back and forth. we had moved the two feet from the kitchen table to the couch. our shoes had made it to the four discrete corners of my studio apartment.
'you know,' i slurred, 'i've never gotten you.'
he kept the same blank look when he was drunk, but it became more quizzical. it was totally endearing. 'gotten me how?'
'i'm very good at reading people. i'll bet you.. a hundred bucks you could name a person in the office and i could tell you what they do in the bedroom they're scared shitless of having the boss find out.'
'well..' over the past months, i'd become increasingly distraught that he didn't wear glasses, because every time he said 'well..' like that, there seemed to be something quite crucial missing. 'honestly, i don't.. you know, get laid very often. i suppose i haven't had time to develop any scandalous predilections.' his brow flexed, his nose crinkled vaguely.
'no, no, that's not what i mean. i mean.. i mean i just don't get you. i can't read you, even superficially, let alone guess what your personal kink is.'
he said it in the sweetest, most innocent way imaginable, staring off and up, as though he were putting great effort into finding an answer. 'i think i'd like to maybe take you up the ass,' and he gave me a little willing smile.
all the microscopic parts of muscles in a body that are constantly in quivering motion stopped cold in mine. my uvula ceased to function and a mouthful of gin slipped into my windpipe unmolested. thankfully, i sprayed it all over the floor instead of all over him.
'what?' i inhaled.
he turned an instant and splotchy violet. 'i mean, i didn't mean that.. i didn't mean to say you.. jesus. fuck. i'm sorry. fuck.' he stood up, upper torso cutting little half circles through the air in the room as he searched out the location of his shoes.
i watched him do this, gripping the armrest in a superfluous attempt to keep from falling off the couch, and i did get him. i started to laugh. he looked at me like i'd slapped his homonculous.
'it's ok,' i half-gasped, stopping myself, 'you've just never said anything like that to me. i wasn't expecting it.'
this is the part i woke up ashamed of. i pulled him back down to the couch and crawled on top of him. he sat completely rigid, waiting for me to punch him or give him a wedgie, i suppose. and i kissed him. and it went from there.
the next morning i woke up naked in my bed to see him quietly sneaking out the door, shoes in his hand. my rapidly maturing hangover called me back to the land of nod. i dreamt of grade school classrooms and the manual pencil sharpeners on the windowsills. i would have called him, but i'd never gotten his phone number.
i didn't see him again until monday. i knocked on his cubicle, leaned myself against it with a cocky hand on a cocky hip.
'good morning, bentley,' i said in my best purr.'did you have fun friday night?'
he turned to me, blankfaced.
'well, yes.'
and he went back to his typing. |
