Shooting Stars (4 page)

“Come on, two extra pancakes,” Jake says.

She looks around to make sure no one hears him. “I can’t. I’ll get in trouble.”

“No one is going to know.”

“I can get fired. I need this job.”

Jake puts his hand on the counter to ease her worries. He probably read about that technique in a
Maxim
or one of his other semi-douchey monthly men’s magazines. “You think I’d let your boss fire someone with such a sweet smile?” She could get fired and, even if Jake had any pull with her boss, he probably wouldn’t even notice she was gone until he wanted extra pancakes again. Not to mention, if they hired someone who looks as good as or slightly better than her he wouldn’t give a fuck.

Maria blushes at his seemingly kind words. She plops three extra pancakes onto his plate.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” he says as he walks away after caressing her face.

“Papi, are you gonna call me tonight?” she whispers.

Jake stops for a split second, because he does hear her. But he keeps on walking without responding. She goes back to serving the next customer, believing he will call.

“When are you gonna stop messing with that poor girl?”

He turns around, not knowing I was right behind him the whole time. “Hey, give me a break. I only mess with her for two reasons: head and pancakes . . . both with a lot of syrup.” He smiles. We both laugh. He always has a way of phrasing things. I had no idea they were fucking yet. Thought he was just getting free shit. I should’ve assumed it anyway with his track record.

“Took you long enough to get here. I thought you were calling out again and I’d have to actually pay for my breakfast,” he continues.

“Use me much? Glad to see you care about my well-being. I could’ve been in a ditch somewhere fighting for my life after a horrific accident with a tractor trailer.”

“Or glued to the couch, playing Xbox. Which is the likelier scenario,” he says.

“Touché.”

I grab an apple from the fruit section as we get in the register line.

“You’re not even going to eat that,” he says.

“It’s all about the principle.

“He’s with me,” I say to the checkout clerk while pointing to Jake as we walk out without paying.

Getting free food at the cafeteria for life is my most successful venture since starting at STD. I challenged the company, saying they were causing a monopoly on food in the building because they were forcing me to pay for food in the cafeteria. I simply explained to them how they could not guarantee if I placed my lunch in the community refrigerator no one would put boogers, pubes, or other foreign objects in it when I’m not watching. It was too tough for them to rebut. So after two long months of sending daily e-mails to the corporate office, they gave in and created this little free-lunch card for me, like I’m in second grade.

“What’d you get into last night?” I say.

“Had to go to my tailor’s and pick up some new suits I got altered. What do you think?” Jake strikes a few generic model poses, while I laugh and shake my head. “Hey, you gotta look the part. You know I can’t go the Dockers route. It has to be
GQ
.” He stops posing. “What’d you do?”

I pause and try to remember. Last night feels like so long ago. “Nothing really. I started to read this new book, but then I wasn’t really feeling the first two paragraphs, so I put that down. I picked up an issue of
Newsweek
and flipped though that for a few minutes—”

“That subscription is such a waste. They sit in a pile underneath your coffee table until you throw them away. Why’d you get them?” he says.

I say nothing.

“Now I remember why you got that subscription. Some man rang your bell one Saturday afternoon, selling subscriptions to fix the roof of his church. Didn’t you get a four-year subscription? Didn’t even know they had those. That shit is like a car lease,” he says.

I was hoping he forgot that story. Jake has a tendency for remembering all of my embarrassing mishaps. But that wasn’t the only reason, just the biggest reason why I got
Newsweek.
As I was approaching my thirtieth birthday, I thought it was about time I kept up with current events and world affairs. Makes good for dinner conversation or simply shooting the shit with strangers. Not being lost when other adults are talking seemed like a step I needed to make. Who knew I wouldn’t actually want to read them?

“You lead an exciting life, my man,” he says.

“That’s not all. I got a phone call from an Army recruiter. So we talked for a little while. About forty-five minutes or so.”

“About what?”

“He was telling me about all the great things the Army can do for my life. He must’ve had the wrong number, because I think . . . well, now I know he thought I was in high school. As soon as I told him I was thirty-two, he got really upset, muttered something about eating camel flesh during Desert Storm. I didn’t mean to lead him on,” I say. Jake laughs hysterically. “He said he’ll be waiting for me to come home tonight. Said he was gonna trace my number and come find me. Will he follow through? Who knows, but what kind of selling tactic is that to a potential recruit? I mean, if I was seventeen, I definitely wouldn’t trust him with my future goals and aspirations.”

A loud voice breaks up our conversation about Army recruiting procedures: “You doggie dudes came out for breakfast and didn’t holla at a brotha?”

Jake and I turn around. It’s Floyd Grafton, a late-fifties portly white man with peppered gray hair, wearing a navy-blue pinstriped three-pieced suit. But more importantly, he’s the president of the entire Northeastern Operations at Schuster, Thompkins, and Dykes (our office is the only office in the northeast).

Floyd thinks we’d come get him for breakfast, because he believes we’re a lot closer than we actually are. He’s our boss, so we have to be nice to him, but it ends there. And his pitiful attempts to seem urban when talking to me are a bit off-putting and a tad racist.

“We were going to come and scoop you up, but we thought you’d be busy this morning,” Jake says.

I nod my head in agreement to build a unified front of deceit. We gotta keep him on our good side, even if his behavior, for the most part, is disconcerting.

“Good point, J-Smoove, you know I’ve been planning like a muthafucka for the quarterly town-hall meeting today,” Floyd says.

He never calls us by our regular names. It’s always a grossly unhip nickname he’s made up and no one else follows. It would help if the names were consistent, but they change daily and he never remembers them. I believe he talks to all of the young minority employees that way, and to Jake because he’s always seen with minorities.

Pointing to me, Floyd says, “And I have big news for you today, K-Deazy.”

“Can’t wait.” Neither of us knew there was a town hall today, and I don’t do a decent job of faking it.

“I got that new Hov album last night, and boy is it banging,” Floyd says. “Played it in my Bentley on full blast while driving in this morning. It’s got me juiced!”

I can tell he’s not lying by the devilish red hue of his face. And as ethnic as he’s always attempting to sound, his age and culture always end up showing, and he uses a word like
juiced
. It’s like cornball old-white-dude Tourette’s.

“You had the new Bose speakers bumping?” Jake says.

“You know how I do Jake Boogie. And I gotta thank you again for setting me up with your car stereo installation guy. He hooked it up!,” Floyd says.

“Anytime,” Jake says.

“I was using the song for inspiration for the quarterly meeting today. Hov freestyles all his rhymes when he gets in the recording booth, so I’m gonna freestyle my presentation,” Floyd says.

“Nice,” I say.

“You hear it yet?” he asks me.

I have no idea what or whom he’s talking about. After all these years of working for him, he still doesn’t realize I’m strictly an alternative-rock guy. It’s simply my personal taste and a product of growing up in the suburbs. If he wants to talk about Ben Folds, I’m game. All about the Benjamins? Crickets. I don’t know shit about, or play, basketball, but ask me about the English Premier League and I won’t stop talking. My only response is to nod in agreement; he senses I’m lost.

“You know, Hov? Jiggaman? Jay-Z?” he continues.

The last name he said is familiar. I don’t know the other two guys, though. But as I’m drowning to find a response, Jake throws me a life jacket. “Kev isn’t up on that, but I heard the album. And you’re right, it’s off the hook.” Bucking all stereotypes, two white men discuss rap music while a black man stands confused. They exchange a pound, which looks ever so awkward coming from a fifty-year-old gray-haired white man dressed like a modern version of the Monopoly man.

Our bullshit conversation is soon interrupted as Chloe Ramsey approaches. A tall blond with long toned legs peeking out of a black business pencil skirt, her glasses making her look librarian sexy. Not to be confused with a porno actress playing the role of kinky librarian for a scene. There’s not excessive cleavage or boobs smashed into her blouse, but she walks the fine line up to that point and teases it. She looks at that fine line and begs for it to sexually harass her. Then, saunters away. All three of us are thinking the same thing, because we all know she’s attractive. And you kind of get that feeling when you’re with a group of men and we’re all on the same page about a woman. If someone told me she was the best-looking woman to ever graduate from Cornell, I couldn’t argue, even without proof.

Floyd clears his throat as I bask in her fresh citrus-smelling perfume.

“Hi, fellas,” she says. Always chipper like a Reese Witherspoon rom-com character.

“Good morning.”

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

“You look awfully nice today, Ms. Ramsey,” Floyd says.

He never calls me by my last name. Why can’t she get her own ridiculous nickname?

“Thank you, sir. I got up extra early today. Couldn’t get much sleep in anticipation for your town hall. I’m not sure how you’re going to be able to top last quarter’s. You know, sometimes I still chuckle to myself when I think about your dolphin joke.” She makes a crazy facial gesture that must’ve been a part of the joke.

Floyd grins. “All I can do is try.” He’s eating this bullshit up. What dolphin joke? Has there ever been a funny joke that included a dolphin?

“I only wanted to say hello. I have to get back to my desk and finish some work before the meeting starts.” Chloe leaves the group, as all three of us watch her walk away. Eventually Jake and I stop looking. We don’t want to look like total office pervs. But Floyd doesn’t get the message and still stares at her. Must be one of the perks of being the man in charge.

“We should get going too,” Jake says. This snaps Floyd out of his Chloe’s-ass-induced daze.

“Yes . . . yes, that’s a good idea. I’ll check you guys out on the flip side,” he says.

Jake and I disperse back to our working areas. “I gotta go eat my food before this meeting starts. Come and get me before you go,” he says.

We don’t have the same job. He’s a technical systems analyst, so he doesn’t sit by me. The techies have a section all by themselves on this floor, but closer to the elevators. I once sent an e-mail on Martin Luther King Jr. Day to the entire office stating techies, administrators, and customer service all sitting in their own areas was indeed segregation. That’s not what Martin would’ve wanted, and I questioned if they were going to have water fountains with signs on them next. Only two people got the joke. Jake didn’t go to a four-year college like me; he went to one of those technical schools that beat you over the head with their commercials about learning a skill post–high school. It must’ve worked, because he makes significantly more than me. Fancy suit versus wrinkle-resistant Dockers.

Our office is set up pretty strangely. Everything, from the walls to the furniture, is either gray or white. I’ve never been inside of a mental institution, but I can imagine the color scheme is close. Each cubicle has a low wall and there’s nothing impeding your line of vision. So you can clearly see not only the person sitting in the cubicle attached across from you but everyone all the way to the back wall of the entire floor. Have to pick your nose? You better duck underneath your desk, or everyone will see it. Either that or be a midget. And we do have one of those. They claim the office was designed this way in order to endorse the feelings of community and solidarity. It’s more like no privacy for eight hours of your life each day. Must be some type of European concept. The ceilings are extremely high, and the lustrous fluorescent bulbs make the lightly colored desks and white walls glow like something out of a science-fiction movie. If someone from ten years ago came out of a time machine and into our office, they’d think they’ve been transported into the far distant future instead of into a shitty office complex in suburban New Jersey full of miserable people only a mere three presidential terms later.

What did Floyd mean by having big news for me? I wonder if it’s the promotion. I think that’s what he meant. Being in the dark is killing me. I don’t think I want to go to the meeting now. But I have to. He’s already seen me, and he knows I’m here. I think it has to be something good. Floyd wouldn’t play me like that. We’re friends. I mean, in his mind we’re friends, and that’s what matters.

I get to my desk and see it’s exactly as I left it when I escaped the office yesterday. I think the cleaning crew refuses to fix it up now. I throw my jacket over the wall of my cubicle. Then, I stop for a minute. I look over at the cubicle next to me. I see a young man in a suit who looks no older than fifteen.

I look over at Dolores, a forty-something chain smoker with the voice of an aged Delta-blues singer, who sits across from me, and ask, “Who’s this?”

She gets up, wearing one of her trademark free-flowing silky outfits that makes her look like she’s going to an Egyptian slumber party at a pharaoh’s house. “Don’t know, why don’t you ask him?” she responds.

The young man stands up and extends a hand to me. “Good morning, my name is—”

I cut him off and go back to Dolores. “Where’s Earl?”