But he got the Dev E. Loper joke right away, told me I was “pretty funny for an old dude,” and that was it. I was hooked on this kid.
It doesn’t hurt that he is, quite literally, the smartest person I have ever met.
“You wanna rematch?” he asks.
“Nah,” I tell him, wandering over to the fridge to grab a water. “I’m good.”
“You OK, man?”
“Why?”
“Dunno. You seem less… Andrew-y than usual.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I mean I know we don’t know each other that well, but you just seem down. Tell Papa Dev what’s up.”
Precocious doesn’t even begin to describe this child.
“Oh.” I groan, flopping down over the Roman arm of one of the fluffy chairs with the cow hide motif our designer picked for the break room. Wouldn’t have been my first choice, but it is very Denver-ish. “Everything’s fine. I think I’m just tired. Didn’t sleep so well last night.”
“Why? New place?”
“Nah, it’s not the place. It’s… I dunno. It’s everything. But you know what? You don’t wanna hear my bullshit.”
“No, man. I do. I find you fascinating.”
“Yeah? Why?”
He shrugs. Not an answer, but OK. “Seriously, what’s going on?” he asks.
I sigh out in puffs of breath. “Oh, I’m just adjusting to the newness of everything happening at once, I think. I don’t always do well with change.”
“Why not?”
“Not sure. Always been that way. My dad died when I was a kid, and then my mom sent me to boarding school, so I was always on the move, and you know, basic Psych 101 whatever. And then I sort of found the thing I love, the thing that makes me feel purposeful—which is art—and then that didn’t go the way I thought it would and now…”
“Ooooohhhhhh,” he says, like he just cracked a programming code.
“What, ooooohhhhhh? Ooooohhhhhh what?”
“The rock climbing thing. I get it now.”
“Hell are you talking about?”
“Your rock climbing obsession. The one that kept you in the middle of Moab while we were opening the offices so that a nineteen-year-old working in his first job in the real world was left to rally the troops and give a rousing speech welcoming a hundred and fifty employees to THE FUTURE of the audio-visual revolution.”
“I heard it was a great speech.”
“It was OK. But the point is that it makes sense now why you’re so addicted to it.”
“Yeah? Why’s that, Sigmund?”
He leans down to me. “The rocks don’t move. The mountains are stationary. They’re timeless. Impassive. Constant. And when you’re scaling one—or whatever the hell it is you do—you can feel confident that it’ll stay where it is. I mean, you know, unless there’s a rock slide or avalanche or whatever. Then you’re screwed.”
I crack open my water, look at him, shake my head. “You always been like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like you.”
He shrugs again. Again, not an answer, but…
“I met a girl.” Was that me? Jesus. Wow. I was not expecting to blurt that out.
“Ooooooh.” Again with the “ooooooh” from this guy. “Do tell.”
“Tell what? Nothing to tell, really. I met this girl on the freeway. I borrowed her phone charger. Turns out she works in the building. I gave her her charger back. Turns out she also lives in my building. I asked her to dinner. She came out with me and my friend Pierce. I tried to walk her home. She got weird. I think she may be a prostitute on the side. She kissed me on the cheek. I kissed her on the mouth. She pushed me out of the elevator into my apartment. I thought all night about going downstairs to ask her what the fuck. But then I remembered I don’t actually know which apartment she’s in. So I jerked off to her a couple of times. Then the next thing I knew, it was morning. And I’m kind of out of sorts. That’s all.”
He chews at his bottom lip for a moment before saying, “Cool, man. OK. I got work to do. See ya,” and starts off.
“Wait,” I call. He stops and turns. “I need you to do something for me.”
“What? Not some weird sex thing?”
“What? No! Why would you…? How are we coming along with IN-VERSE?”
“OK. Not bad. Why?”
Before I get a chance to answer him, my cell rings. I look. Holding up the phone, I say, “This is why. I’ll tell you more later. Oh, and I’ll probably be up for that rematch when I feel less cloudy.”
“OK. But I wasn’t even playing with my dominant hand, so—”
“Go work, man.” He leaves. I answer the phone. “Bonjour.”
“You see this shit?”
“Oh, not bad. You? How was the stewardess?”
“Flight attendant. Jesus, man. Join us in the twenty-first century.” The guy is confusing sometimes. “Have. You. Seen. This?”
“I don’t know what this is.”
“Come to my office.” And he hangs up. In turn, I hang my head. I draw myself up from my seat, and as I cross to head up to Pierce’s office, I glance out through the huge picture windows at the unmoving and constant mountains outside.