Page 6 of Pierced

“Buuuuut what? What are you saying? Are you saying I can’t play cool? I can play cool, mon ami. I am Mista motherfucking Cool!” I flop back down on the sofa to make my point. But my goddamn waistcoat bunches up again. It drives me crazy when it does that. I try to tug it down. It won’t sit right. So I stand again, straighten my jacket and vest, and lean casually on the arm of the sofa.

To show how fucking cool I am.

Andrew stares at me the whole time. He might blink once.

“Mista motherfuckin’ Cool,” I reiterate. For effect.

He comes around the side of his desk, walks over to me, and takes me by the hand.

“What are you doing? Why are you doing that? Don’t do that. What are you doing?” I ask, as he draws me down next to him on the sofa.

“Bro,” he says, like you talk to someone standing on the edge of a building to keep them from jumping. “Maybe you need to take some time off.”

“Time off from what?”

“Um… all of it. Work. It’s been a rough few months. You might be a little burned out.”

“I don’t get burned out,” I tell him, trying to stand. But he pulls me back down. He’s really strong. That rock-climbing shit must work.

“I know, I know,” he says, patting me. (I hate being patted.) “But you’ve had a lot on you with the whole Eden thing. And what that did to the whole Myrtle thing. Hey!” he says, with a clap. “Have you even been to Paris this year? I don’t think you have. You should go to Paris. Isn’t it always grounding for you?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because… you’ve told me it’s… always… grounding. For you.”

I manage to pull free from his grip and stand. I look at him sitting there.

“Gotta be honest… I came down to my best friend’s office to chat about an employee problem and shit is starting to feel like an intervention, man.”

He nods. Sighs again. (Seriously, I’m worried about him.) And then he says, “Well, couple things. One, Myrtle is not an ‘employee.’”

“She isn’t?”

“I mean, she is, but she’s more than that.”

That catches me by surprise. Because he’s right. But I have tried to keep it to myself. So I don’t know how he knows that.

“How do you know that?” I ask. Obviously.

“C’mon, man,” he says, standing up as well. “I saw how she looked at you. And how you looked at her. Before…”

He doesn’t finish the sentence with, Before you falsely accused her of trying to ruin your company and publicly humiliated her, but I assume it’s implied.

“Do you remember when you had that team-building thing?” he asks.

I pause, remembering. “Which team-building thing?”

He doesn’t so much sigh now as he blows out through his lips. I’m going to get him to see a pulmonologist I know.

“At the rock-climbing gym? The one you had to try to ferret out who the Sexpert was? You gave a big speech? Any of this ringing a bell?”

“Dude, I give lots of speeches and do lots of things.”

“It was the day you told me you thought Myrtle was the Sexpert!”

“Oh. Oh, the day she was wearing the leggings with the cutouts and the tube-top. I think she also had on pink climbing shoes. Her hair was pinned back with a brass hair pin. Nails were fire-engine red. That day?”

“Yes!” he says, way too excited if you ask me, pointing his finger and kind of jumping.