Almost Halloween

“Are you going to the cookout?” asks Patty, that useless dumb sign spinner in front of the sex toy shop, wearing a backwards baseball cap over hair that falls past his shoulders.

“Are you going to get out of my life?” I demand, knuckles tightening on the handle of my briefcase. Italian leather, reminding me of home.

“‘Scuse me for being neighborly,” Patty mutters.

“I bet your real name is Patrick,” I mutter back.

Hell no I am not going to the cookout. I’m already irked enough that a truck full of some goddamn pumpkins has decided to park itself just down the street. If this high school dropout lowlife thinks I’m going to actually go out of my way to spend time with the lazy vermin that occupy this building, he can think again.

During my lunch break, I call Henry.

“Hiya, old pet! What the hell are you doing tonight, hah? Billiards? Scotch? Matinee?” I twirl a ballpoint pen that should be a fountain pen.

“Do you, um, know what ‘matinee’ means, Richard?” Henry asks in a quiet voice.

“Of course I know what matinee means. I went Ivy, same as you. So what’s the deal uptown tonight? Is there some fantastic Halloween party I have yet to hear of?”

“Richard, I think I should probably not be talking to you,” Henry mumbles.

“What? What? Did you just say...peacock in food? Speak like you’re from this country, buddy, hah?”

“I said, Richard, I should probably not be talking to you.”

I swallow a lump. “Why not?”

“Harris is, uh…” Henry pauses, and I can almost see the fool press the phone to his chest and glance around the office nervously. “...Harris is...frankly, he’s pretty P.O.’ed.”

“B.O.’ed? What happened to that bottle of Ralph Lauren: Red, White & Blue that I got him?”

“P.O.’ed, Richard. Pissed Off. He, as you may very well know by now, has been with Jen for some time. And he thinks you’re harassing her.”

I don’t know what to say. “But that’s ridiculous!” I gasp-laugh, my voice growing more desperate by the second. “Do tell me, Henry, why and how he could ever have such an absurd and obscene thought as that?!”

“Well for one, dude, I think it might have something to you with that bloody foot picture you faxed her,” Henry speaks quickly, “and, uh, those late night voicemails?”

“What late night voicemails?”

“Maybe you don’t remember. We all heard one of them one night when we were at Jen’s. You sounded pretty drunk. Blackout drunk. So it makes sense that you wouldn’t remember.”

My life is a movie, and the camera zooms in on my face but the background grows further away, and the audience is dizzied. “What...are...you...saying? You mean you were all at Jen’s?”

“Yeah, and you called, and she didn’t pick up, and then we all heard your message on the answering machine.” There’s an uncomfortable pause that jabs me, prods me like a knife to say something to fill the void, but I can’t. I’m stunned. “So, uh, so that happened.”

“What was I saying?”

“Oh, you know, the usual. ‘Oh baby, I miss you so much, I’m so hot for you,’ um, ‘I love you, you shouldn’t have left me’...etcetera.”

“Henry, you have to listen to me: that wasn’t me.”

“But I was there. It was.”

“No, you are mistaken. It wasn’t. I swear to you.”

“Richard, we were friends. I know your voice. I know your voice when you’re drunk. Anyway, it’s not that big a deal. We all thought it was pretty funny. Jen was just rolling her eyes. Harris was the only one who wasn’t laughing.”

“Thanks for the silver lining, Henry. Wow, I really feel so ecstatically happy and am really not worried at all that I’ve gotten the entirety of the K&K office to think that some drunk voicemail was me grobbling for Jen’s affection. It fills me with such joy to know that she and Harris are in relations together and that he doesn’t want you to communicate with me.”

“Hey, Richard. C’mon.”

“I am the luckiest man in the world,” I smile, its every curve and line etched and drawn and filled and sparkling with tears.

“Well like on the bright side, we’re no longer crying over the stock market.”