The Kissing Game (6 page)

“Yes, I think so.”

He pokes out his lips slightly. “I mean you gotta turn out all
right to get into Stanford,” he grunts. I sense he’s talking to himself more
than me at this point. “Robert was the only one of my foster kids who went to
college, and the only one who visits me now. The others are off with their real
families, living their own lives.”

Mr. Spencer pauses to scratch his head and suck on his lozenge. It
smells of medicine.

“You know Robert took extra classes in high school and skipped a
grade?”

“No.”

“That helped get him into Stanford. Plus he wrote a college essay
about his life. Wouldn’t let
me
read it, of course, but the admissions
lady from Stanford called our house afterwards, personally, and left a message
on the answering machine, in tears no less. Said she’d never heard a story like
his before. Said she didn’t know how someone could go through so much in life
and not be outright crazy.” Mr. Spencer chuckles. “Huh, looking back, I don’t
know how I got this lucky. I’m just a plumber by trade, but look at me now.” He
gestures around the small room and then at me. “I got a pretty secretary delivering
me slippers, and I get to live in one of the nicest senior homes in San
Francisco, with a view of the bay. We get trips to museums and Golden Gate Park
and Union Square at Christmas time. Aside from living alongside Mr.
Poop-his-pants, I’d say I’m doing alright.”

Mr. Spencer opens the drawer and pulls out another lozenge.

“I’m talking your ear off, aren’t I?” he asks. “My medicine makes
me blabber. Robert says I need to let other people talk. Tell me about
yourself.”

I can hardly speak. Thoughts trail through my head like cold, dark
mountains. The quarters of my brain that believed Robert came from a rich
family with connections that got him into Stanford are being crowded out, run
over, and squished. They’re being replaced with alien images of a motherless
boy living with a makeshift family, a child hiding dark secrets he never talks
about, and a young man who writes an essay that makes strangers cry.

“You look shocked,” Mr. Spencer says. “Most people are. Robert
doesn’t like me talking about him, which is why I never get invited to any of
the firm functions. I don’t want to go anyway. Lawyers are dull as soup. But
I’m proud of him. He’s not my boy, but he is, you see. He’s the closest I’ll
ever have to a son and better than most, I think. He’d make any father proud.
I’m sure he doesn’t sound like the Robert you know. Doesn’t surprise me though.
Robert is a cruel mule on the outside. He’ll kick you faster than he’ll be nice
to you, but if you grab a handful of that mane and look hard into those eyes,
you’d see a different person. You’d see the boy I see.”

He waves a cautionary hand out in front of him. “You alright
there? You look a little off. I’m sorry, what is your name again? I can’t even
remember if you told me your name.”

“Caroline,” I say. “My name is Caroline.”

“Robert talks about you sometimes. Not very often, but he says
things.”

“What does he say?” I blurt, a barren feeling growing in my
stomach.

“Oh, I can’t remember. Can’t remember at all right now. Ask me six
hours from now and I’ll remember. My medicines kick in in the morning and I
can’t remember anything until mealtime. I knew you who you were though because
of the red hair. He’s talked about your red hair before.” Mr. Spencer leans
back into his bed and pulls out a power cord. On the end of a cord are buttons.
He presses the green one and the bed transforms into a kind of mammoth chair.
Mr. Spencer leans back and takes a book off his nightstand. On the cover is a
man holding a gun.

“But you don’t remember what he said?” I ask.

“No, no. Have you ever read John Grillan? Great author, writes the
best mysteries. I like to try and solve it before the end. I never get it right
though. I’m just not conniving enough to think like a bad guy which is why I
can’t figure out who did it. Robert says it’s good for my memory to keep
trying. This one is about a man who’s married to a woman he thinks is a normal
housewife. I suspect she might be a killer though. We’ll soon find out, won’t
we?” he asks the book more than me. With thumbs that look like misshapen little
clubs, he finds his spot in the book and opens it.

“I’ll let you get to your reading,” I say, standing and
deliberately stopping to check the weather outside the window. The sky holds
slumped, dangling clouds, frozen in place.

“Nice to meet you, Caroline. Come by again. I like to have
visitors. Lunch is a good time. I always have my lunch in the little dining
hall if you ever want to join me. They make pretty good turkey enchiladas on
Tuesdays.” He opens the nightstand drawer and retrieves his reading glasses.
Then he pops them on, looking above them to totter his fingers at me.

“Bye Mr. Spencer,” I say.

“Bye, Caroline. Close the door tightly on your way out.”

I pull the door tightly shut and make my way down to the street,
which seems to be full of the silhouettes of mortal men, their dark caped
shapes moving in and out of buildings. They all have closed umbrellas in their
hands. A drift of gutter smoke rises out of the sidewalk as I glide past.

Realizing I won’t have time for a real lunch, I roughly ransack a
small convenience store along the way. There I rustle up a half turkey sandwich
and a bottle of water. On the street, I eat and walk while the wind whines
through my open raincoat. All the time my thoughts are fully shaped and
ever-moving. I wonder how I could have worked for Robert for two years and not
known about his gnarled past. I ask myself questions. Does this truth make
Robert’s assistant-trampling acceptable? Does his past excuse him from somehow
and fuel his cruelty? Does he deserve special treatment because his mother was
a meth-addict? Has being abandoned just made a bad person? Is he the bad guy? Or
am I now the bad guy for sending the video?  And why would Robert send me on
such a personal errand now, when he never has before? I coax my thoughts,
trying to come to some palpable resolution, but the questions just circle, like
a merry-go-round without end. They cling to nothing.

After arriving at the office, I barely have time to haul what I
need down to the street, where Robert is standing there, holding the door to
the town car open. The car sits idling on the curb. A patch of sunlight shines
on the building across the street, making several windows crimson, gold, and
rose. I see the sun also hits Roberts face, banding and flaring across his
cheeks. I wonder, does his loveliness bear the mark of kindness? At the
thought, nervousness boot-heels my stomach. The feeling is almost unbearable.
Hurrying through the lobby doors and along the concrete walkway, I hold my
documents tightly and wrestle my thoughts.

What is he going to say to me? Will he say it now or wait until
later?

Once I sit down, I watch Robert’s arms swing as he lopes around to
the other side of the vehicle. As he gets inside, the air feels butchered. The
driver sits silently studying his mirrors and preparing to pull into traffic. Soon
we begin gliding through rain blown streets occasionally littered with sodden
trash. Robert doesn’t look at me. He just looks toward the Transamerica
building, with its rooftop pointing toward deepening shades of sky in every
direction. He only says in a quiet voice, “Buckle your seatbelt.”

“De que tocan a llover, no hay más que abrir el paraguas.”

If it starts raining, one has nothing to open up one’s umbrella.

At the 555 California building, Robert and I stand on opposite
sides of a conference room. On the floor around us white boxes are piled almost
to the ceiling along the walls. They completely cover the conference table.
Only the window remains unhindered. On the other side of the tinted glass, dark
fog shapes itself around skyscrapers.

The client, a yellow-haired short man in a brown suit looks at us
over the box-strewn conference table.

“Well, I’ll leave you two to sort through these,” he says, his
eyes cutting around in the room as if he is uncertain about leaving the boxes
in our care. “We’ll be needing you to make copies for yourselves of the
relevant materials, of course, but do keep everything essentially in this
room.”

“Fine,” Robert nods. The short man exits the glass conference door.
It shuts itself as he totters down the hall.

Robert puts his hands on his hips. He surveys the white boxes as
though they are many children looking at him at once.  

“You start on that end,” he orders. “We’ll mark them with letters
that designate the addresses. All boxes relating to the Folsom Street properties
get an F, those for Market Street properties get an M, and so on. Put the
letters on the lower half of the boxes. We’ll send out for copies in shifts.
Meanwhile, get the copier guy over here. What’s his name?”

“Conrad,” I say.

“Yes, get him over here now. Tell him to bring a van and several
of his best crew. We can’t lose anything.”

“Right.”

 I leave the conference room and step over to the receptionist,
where I use her phone to call Conrad. When I return, Robert is sitting on a
chair at the far end, only his perfect hair peeking above the boxes on the
conference table. I briefly wonder what this situation would look like in
reverse—if he were my assistant and I were the lawyer. I contemplate how
delightful it would be to make Robert do all the copying himself.

Without speaking, I organize the boxes at my end of the room. We
carry on in silence for a while, only the sound of papers shuffling and boxes
sliding, before Robert speaks. His thick-lashes don’t hide the snow-blue of his
eyes when he pauses and looks across the room at me.

“We should talk about last night,” he begins. The tone of his
voice makes me think he’s going to apologize, but then he adds, “You were
really out of line.”

And there it is—the enormous elephant in the room, just floating
there between us. Only in my head the elephant wears a metal chain on its foot
that ties it to the ground. 1

In my memory, the elevator kiss replays, and the more I think
about it, the clearer my memory captures it. Still, I’d rather be condemned to
live out some ancient curse than to look at Robert’s face right now. I can only
keep my fingers moving and attempt to concentrate on the task before me:
organizing boxes. Yes, that’s what I’m doing. Organizing boxes. I mark the one
in my lap with a giant “F” before putting it with the other “F” boxes.

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” I say. “I don’t know what got into
me. I don’t usually drink.” His proximity seems too close although he’s across
the room. I can feel my own skin cells heating up. This is the terrible part
about being a fair-skinned redhead. When you’re embarrassed, your whole body
turns lava red, not just your neck or face. You can’t hide it.

Meanwhile I can feel the anger blowing from his side of the room
and half expect him to be wielding a guillotine. After all, he has to know the havoc
it would cause for anyone to find out that we kissed. He has to be worrying
about his career right now.

“That can never happen again,” he states, unequivocal. His voice
sounds deeper than usual, like a judge issuing a verdict, if that judge were
tall and lovely. Outside the conference room window, the sky darkens to a milky
charcoal, leaving only the artificial lights to illuminate him, but Robert
could be wearing the ugly black cloak of the grim reaper and still be beautiful
in any light.

“Absolutely,” I say, a good assistant. Does he sense the bad
attitude emerging? I feel empowered by taking action. The thought of hurting
someone who has hurt me so much is like eating after a very long period of
famine. Maybe this is what I need to change my life—a little decisive, albeit dodgy,
action. I’m no longer milk-toast for Robert. No longer his wounded pet. I’m a
person, with thoughts and feelings, who exists outside of his realm of
influence. 

“Another thing,” he continues. Oh no. “I hear you’ve been looking
into finding work elsewhere in the firm. Is that true?”

Of all the things he might say to me today, this question was not
on my list. How did he find out about my applying for another job in the firm?

“I’ve looked,” I choke out, a convict being sentenced. I feel that
I should continue talking, but what else can I say?

“Why?” he asks.

I hear his fingers stop walking through the files. With a file box
in my lap, I sit there in the chair, my fingers drifting nonstop through it.
Because you’re a horrible person to work for, I want to say, because you’re just
a horrible person, period, but my confidence only goes so far and then it flops
down and dies. Like a weak little lizard.

“I don’t know,” I reply.

There’s an immense silence. I can hear Robert resume skimming the
files. He pauses to take off his suit jacket and roll up the sleeves of his
white dress shirt. He loosens multicolored tie. Across the table, I glance at
his shirt but not his face. He really is very pretty if you can avoid hating
him so much.

“There has to be a reason,” he blurts. “One doesn’t seek work
elsewhere without reason.” His voice is hot sand.

“It doesn’t matter, does it? I didn’t get the job, so…” I’m
actually arguing with him; it feels alien. Our arguments are always one-way: he
yells at me and I retreat to lick my wounds.

 “And why the Public Relations Department? You have an interest in
working in PR?” He asks as though only boil weevils work in PR. “You’ve never
shown any inclination for a desire to work in PR.”

“Not necessarily.” I attempt to avoid sounding as though I’m five
years old and don’t know what I want in life. And then I wonder why I didn’t get
that job in PR. Is it because the PR department called Robert? And what did
Robert say about me? If my last evaluation is any indication, he likely said
that I was as competent as a stick.

“If you want to find work elsewhere, all you have to do is tell
me. I can certainly help make that happen.”

“That’s not necessary,” I say.

And there it is again. The dragon fuming beneath the surface. He
can only keep it in check for so long. I picture his beautiful shell of a body
slipping away like a fake suit and the dragon beneath unfurling itself,
stretching out its body. The head would reach the ceiling and the wingspan
would take up the whole conference room. I imagine the emerald green scales and
cat-like eyes. The dragon would flap his wings once and make some dreadful
squealing growl like Godzilla approaching Hong Kong. With teeth barring, out
would come his forked tongue and he’d shoot flames straight across the
conference table, erupting all the boxes before lighting me on fire. Then the
dragon would somehow manage to stride across the flame-laden table to bite me
in half.  

Anyway, why should he care that I want to work for someone else?
Does it matter so much to him that he keeps
me
under his thumb? Does it
give him pleasure to ruin
my
life specifically? Can’t he ruin another
person’s life just as easily and enjoy doing so just as much?

Besides, I have already solved my problem. I won’t be working for
him for long, that’s for sure. Whenever the firm lets an attorney go, the
assistant fills in for people who are out sick or on vacation—until another position
opens up. So I will just float, like a raft on the ocean. A blissfully free and
happy raft.

“But you don’t want to continue working for me—is that it?” he
asks.

The sudden knock at the glass conference room door makes me jump.
I look up to see Conrad the copy guy and his team standing there. Conrad always
dresses like someone who doesn’t make copies for a living, more like a
well-paid stockbroker. He wears a suit underneath a rain coat. His helpers wear
jeans, t-shirts, and rain jackets. One pushes a dolly.

 “Caroline,” he greets, squeezing into the conference room. “Nice
to see you again.”

He shakes my hand as if we’re presidents of small foreign
countries.

“Hey Conrad, thanks for coming so quickly.”

“Robert,” Conrad says, taking the few steps over to shake Robert’s
hand. Robert obliges, but likely only because Conrad makes a point to regularly
shower Robert with gifts. Jars filled with candy. Tickets to sporting events. A
fancy robe at Christmas time. Some people have no shame.

“Conrad,” Robert replies.

Before long, Conrad and his men barrel out, their dolly teetering
with boxes, and leave Robert and me to continue our work alone.

Yet the atmosphere alters. The silence floats like dust while we
make little box cities in each corner of the conference room. As I work, I
sense Robert telepathically dissecting my brain. He’s too smart, you see. He
knows something is up. He senses the change in my attitude. Maybe he realizes he’s
falling off his very high perch. Maybe he’s consumed with worry. Perhaps he even
knows about the cameras in the elevator that likely caught the kiss on tape. His
brilliant mind no doubt simmers with all kinds of terrible consequences. I
almost want to laugh, one of those evil villain laughs, if it weren’t for the migraine
I’m getting from organizing stupid boxes for hours.

Robert glances at his watch and then at me.

“We’ll be working late,” he tells me. “Why don’t you take some Excedrin
for your headache and order us a couple sandwiches?” 

I want to ask him to repeat himself. I’m not sure I heard him
correctly. How does he know I have a headache or that I take Excedrin? Such
knowledge would require Robert to be unselfish, and he is anything but that.

“I don’t have Excedrin with me,” I barely articulate, looking at
him as though he’s the headless child now. “I left it in my backpack at the
office.” I press my finger to my temple trying to comprehend his words, which
trot mystically through my brain, along with the pounding tempo. They seem inaccessible
and without substance.

Then Robert strides past me and out the conference room door, a
scout on a mission. I watch as he approaches the receptionist, a petite curly-haired
woman, whose head barely reaches over her desk. Her face deepens to a shade of
hot as Robert advances. No doubt he is the best looking lawyer who has ever
spoken to her. While his tall frame leans over her desk, they exchange words. The
woman opens her desk drawer, pulls out a tiny paper package, and hands it to
Robert. Robert glides away from her and toward the little water-cooler, where
fills a paper cup full of water. On his way back to me, he passes the
receptionist again. She watches him, too.

Soon standing before me holding a cup of water and Excedrin, he
says, “Here,” looking suddenly benighted with the white glow of the conference
room light over his head.

“Thank you. How did you know I had a headache?” I inquire, taking
the pills and water from him.

“You pinch the bridge of your nose until it’s red. You need take more
breaks, get something to drink,” he answers. He moves back to his side of the
table. “You get headaches from not drinking enough liquids, which makes you
dehydrated. You likely don’t eat enough either, which is why you can’t even
drink a small pina colada without—” and he catches himself. But I notice the
dragon is gone from his eyes. He picks up a box from the floor and sets it on
the conference table. “In any event, you should stop taking so much Excedrin. You’ll
kill your liver over time. If you ate more, you wouldn’t have so many
headaches.” He opens the box and parts the files with his fingers, his eyes
scanning paper.

I’m just staring at him, with the water in one hand, the pills in
the other.  

He almost snaps, “Take the pills and then take a break and order
us some sandwiches. I’ll have the usual.”

“Right,” I mumble, then swallowing the Excedrin.

I stand to go make the call but feel as though I’m lost on a
trail, or as though I have no trail to follow suddenly.

Using the receptionist’s phone, I order Robert’s usual: “A chicken
breast, mayo, mustard, lettuce, and tomato,” but I’m watching Robert in the
conference room as I speak. Then I order a roast beef for myself. All I can
think as I speak into the phone is that Robert has never brought me Excedrin or
water. Not once. Frankly, before this moment, if I had been lying in the desert
dying of thirst and his town car had been speeding past, I would have doubted
he would even toss me a bottle of water out of the car window. When the
sandwiches arrive, we eat like kids in a cafeteria who hate each other.