button-down

I don’t remember how long we sat together like that, perched in the middle of the room on wooden chairs like little kids isolated somewhere as punishment. He looked at my hands, took the right one, and ran a finger over the bandaged fingers, saying nothing. He got up after that, kissed me on the mouth, and made an omelet from the sundry contents of my refrigerator. He spent the night in my bed, sleeping in a pair of boxers. He hung up his button-down in my closet, ironed and ready for a second day of wear. I slept well that night.

27

Regardless of the fact that I couldn’t quite imagine my boss holding a girl like that, kissing a girl on the mouth, I had enough confidence in him to assume he could do both. But I couldn’t figure out about Mary Anne and Scout. What was between them? I didn’t ever feel I could trust her take on Scout. He never said much. Did they really say so little to each other? Or did she choose to leave most of his words out?

I arrived at Samuelson early the next morning, to put most of the cits back and restock with new ones. I thought I was alone, but when I rounded the corner near the water cooler, I saw Dan. He was looking something up in one of the old unabridged books when I passed him, my hands already full of pilfered cits. He straightened with a slow and graceful movement that reminded me of a quiet surprise in a nature show—a silent hazy veldt, a giraffe lifting its head unexpectedly out of bushes.

“Good morning,” he said, blinking at me. I resisted the urge to thrust the cits behind my back.

“Morning,” I mumbled. “How was your holiday?”

“Quite good,” he said thoughtfully. He looked a little distant, as if thinking back to specific, delectable moments from his Christmas. He turned again to his dictionary without volleying back the requisite holiday pleasantry. As I made my way back to my desk, I remembered that I’d been meaning to ask for the twenty-eighth off. I should’ve asked him weeks ago. I almost turned back to him, but decided to get my bearings first. This was my second time caught red-handed, pulling an unusual number of cits out of the files. It probably meant little to him, but it was making me nervous.

My phone buzzed later that morning.

“Billy,” Sheila said. “Line three. A question about ‘venial’ and ‘venal.’ Can you take it? Sounds pretty straightforward.”

“Alrighty,” I said, clicking over.

“Hello? Editorial.” I did my best to chirp.

“Billy,” someone rasped on the other end. “It’s Phillips.”

“What? Where are you calling from?”

“Shh … now. Don’t say my name, son. Just act natural. I’m calling from home. I wanted to talk to you. Since I don’t know your extension, I trotted out the old ‘venal’ versus ‘venial’ just as a ruse for Sheila. Grace tells me you’re taking the sadder, gentler calls these days. The old folks and the confused children. Cliff’s still getting the loonies. For now.”

“Is that so?” I sighed.

“So I tried not to sound too nuts. But I disguised my voice. Listen. I don’t want to keep you, Homer. I just thought you should know something.”

Mr. Phillips paused and breathed heavily.

“It was Needham,” he whispered. “In the editors’ library. With the lead pipe.”

“Sir …”

“Seriously, though. I just wanted to let you know that I might have tipped Dan off a little.” Mr. Phillips hesitated. “At the Christmas party, I made a few cracks about a ‘Splintered Winecup.’”

“Excuse me … a what?”

“Splintered winecup. Someone’s plastic cup had rolled onto the floor, and Dan stepped on it by mistake. I kept calling it ‘The Splintered Winecup.’ I think the reference went right over Dan’s head, but—I know how secretive you two kids have been, and I thought you might just want to know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make trouble for you.”

“Hmm. I see …”

“He really didn’t seem to notice. He seemed pretty loosey-goosey after a glass or two of wine. But now that the holiday hoopla is over, see, it just came to mind.”

“That’s interesting,” I said, trying to maintain a customer-service tone. “We’ll make a note of that and file it under ‘discretion.’”

“What’s that?”

“Discretion,” I said firmly. “D-I-S-C-R-E-T-I-O-N.”

“Are you worried? You shouldn’t worry, son. Dan is a kind fellow. The whole Mary Anne business was ages ago. He probably wouldn’t be much more than tickled if he knew what you’d been up to. At least—well, maybe ‘tickled’s’ not the right word, but I don’t think he’d be—”

“It’s difficult to say,” I interrupted. “Sometimes it’s hard to find the right word. The human heart is perhaps more complex than any language.”

“Okay, Homer. I get it. You want to get off now.”

“That’s what I’m saying, sir.”

“Have a good one,” Mr. Phillips said.

“You too, sir. Thanks for calling.”

The phones were busy that morning.

I flipped through Teaglass cits and eavesdropped as Cliff handled an especially difficult call:

“Yes. That’s correct,” he was saying. “Our latest CD includes an audio feature. You can hear the pronunciation of any word you select, just by clicking on it.”

I banded up the last of my “C” words and took out deep-six.

“That’s correct. Our office is indeed in Massachusetts. But our pronunciation editor is a linguistics expert, and he certainly doesn’t work exclusively with regional pronunciations in our area. And when there are significant, widespread accepted variants in pronunciation of a single word, both are listed in our dictionary. In those cases, you’d be given both pronunciation options on the audio feature. But none of the words is pronounced with any particular regional twang, I can assure you of that—”

I flipped through deep-six, silently thanking Providence for giving this call to Clifford and not to me.

“Actually, sir, the pronunciations were recorded for us by specially hired actors.

“… To be honest, I don’t know where they’re from.

“… I can assure you that they sound nothing like Ted Kennedy.”

At that moment, I caught sight of the familiar Teaglass heading.