“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.
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