Two - Let the Games Begin

“I’m getting married.”

Tom sat behind his desk, shocked.  When Will said that he had news on a Monday morning, Tom assumed that Will had broken his personal record for pitchers of beer in a night at the hole-in-the-wall bar that he frequented in Georgetown called The Old Maid (Will’s record was seven – and he was very proud of it).  Will getting married was the last thing that Tom expected.

“Well, aren’t you going to congratulate me?” Will asked.

“Yes, of course,” Tom stammered, “congratulations.” 

Tom stood to shake Will’s hand. 

“It’s just…”

“It’s just that you didn’t think that I was the marrying type.”  Will said, grinning at his friend’s awkwardness.

Tom was suspicious.  “Are you fucking with me?”

“Absolutely not,” Will said, feigning indignation, “I’m insulted that you would think such a thing.”

“Is Melanie pregnant?”  Tom asked, only half-joking.

“Fuck you,” Will responded, “and I never said it was Melanie.”

“What the fu…”

“Ok, now I’m fucking with you.  Of course it’s Melanie and no, she’s not pregnant, smart ass.  In all seriousness: I’m thirty years old, we’ve been together for four years… it’s time to settle down and live like a mature adult.”

Tom studied Will for a minute, thoughtfully.

“You were drunk when you proposed, weren’t you?”

“Well yeah,” Will said, “but that doesn’t diminish the other thing I said.”

They both laughed.  “You know,” Tom said, “I’m thirty years old, too.”

“Yeah, but you’ve always been mature, you don’t need a wife to prove it.  You do need to get laid a little more often, though.”  Will responded.

“Thanks.”  Tom said, voice dripping with sarcasm. 

He sat back down behind his desk as Will started for the door.  Tom’s office was devoid of personal touches; he had become paranoid during an economic downturn when several of his co-workers were laid off.  He took all his personal belongings home so that he’d never have to suffer the indignity of being escorted to his car, carrying a box full of junk.  He had survived those layoffs and now felt fairly secure in his job, but he’d learned valuable insight into The Way Things Worked and the sparseness off his office was a reminder to himself to never get too comfortable.

Will stopped at the door and turned back to Tom.

“Do me a favor and don’t mention it to Doug yet.”  Will said.   “He’s going to make a big cheesy deal out of it and I’m not quite ready for that yet.”

“Ok, sure.”  Tom said.  “Do you have a date set?”

“That’s another reason I don’t want to tell anyone yet: I don’t want to set any expectations.  I’m still trying to convince Mel to just do a Vegas wedding.”

Will gave Tom a ‘whatcha gonna do’ shrug and left the office. 

Tom knew he should feel happy for his friend, but he couldn’t help but feel a little jealous.  Even though Tom hadn’t been in a serious relationship for a few years, he always assumed that he would get married before Will.  Now he felt like he was being left behind.

Stacy appeared in his doorway just as Tom was trying to shake himself free from those thoughts.  She had been with NASA for three weeks, but she seemed as comfortable as though she’d been there for three years, which still annoyed Tom. 

“Hey, what’s up?” Stacy asked.

“Oh, same as always, I guess,” Tom said, turning towards his computer as though he was really busy and didn’t have time to chat.

Stacy either didn’t get the hint, or didn’t care.  She came in and flopped down on one of the chairs on the opposite side of Tom’s desk.  He really wanted to ignore her and continue working, but he was incapable of handling the resulting awkwardness, so instead he turned to her, hoping that his phone would ring or Doug would stop by or an earthquake would hit so that he could get out of the conversation as quickly as possible.

“Did you see the new Section Three data that came in for my project?”  she asked.

The question annoying, but Tom couldn’t guage her well enough to be able to tell if it was calculated.  There was no reason that Tom would see the data for her project and he suspected that she was asking just so she could brag about how great the project was going.  On the other hand, she was still fairly new, Tom did have access to the data if he had wanted to look at it and perhaps she merely didn’t know if he would look or not.  He wasn’t sure enough, yet, to call her out on her little game.

“No.”  Tom said simply, leaving the door wide open for Stacy to tell him all about it.

It was a one-sided conversation that left Tom feeling that she was, in fact, trying to rub her project in his face.  There were moments when he had his doubts and thought that he might be paranoid, but her smugness was inescapable.  Finally, she stood up to leave.

“Oh,” she said, turning back with a smirk, “how is Dale?”

Tom had been thoroughly annoyed when Will let Stacy in on their inside joke about picking the new employee that would wash out the quickest.  She immediately began chiming in on the jokes and never missed an opportunity to bring up Dale.  As soon as she got involved, Tom no longer found the humor in the joke, but again, he couldn’t bear awkwardness, so he continued to play along.

“I think Doug is going to transfer him to your project, where a man of his talents would fit in better than in my group,” Tom said, attempting to tease, but sounding colder than he intended.

Stacy didn’t appear to notice.

“Hardly, he couldn’t hold the jock of anybody working on my project,” Stacy said as she left the office smiling.

The perfect retort about Stacy’s team all needing to wear cups because she’s such a ball-breaker came to Tom about thirty seconds too late.  Just as Tom was contemplating how to preserve the put-down for later usage, Dale showed up at his door.

“Hey, boss,” Dale said, not looking Tom in the eye, “can I ask you a question?”

Tom sighed to himself, but tried not to let his irritation show.

“Don’t call me that, Dale.  Just call me ‘Tom’.  What’s up?”

“Well, I was hoping that you would let me leave at 3:30 this afternoon.  I’ve got this thing with my girlfriend at the uh… well, the doctor said that…”

“That’s fine,” Tom said, interrupting, “Take the time you need.”

He had absolutely no desire to know the intimate details of any medical issues between Dale and his girlfriend.  In fact, he was slightly depressed that Dale, of all people, had a serious relationship. 

“Thanks, I really appreciate it.  It’s just so hard to schedule these appointments around…”

Again Tom interrupted.  “Don’t worry about a thing, Dale.  I’ll talk to you later,” Tom said, turning back to his computer.

“Wait,” Tom said as Dale turned to go, “I need a favor from you, too.  I need you to access the new data from Section Three for Project Trumpet and print off a copy and bring it to me.”

Dale looked a little confused.

“You mean in the ‘Houston’ folder on the shared drive?”

“Yeah,” Tom said, “that’s right.  Just print a copy off for me, will you?”

“Ok, I’ll be right back with it.”

Tom knew that Stacy would be monitoring access to the data and he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of looking at it himself.  But if Dale accessed it, that could be explained by Dale not having any idea of what he was supposed to be doing.