The Sexpert
“Oh, I am definitely having a bad fucking morning. But one thing’s got nothing to do with the other.”
“Really? ’Cause it feels like maybe it does.”
“Can you help me find out who this person is or can’t you?” He points over at his computer screen.
I sigh the sigh of a friend. A friend who swore a private oath to his brother that he would always have his back. “Yes. I can help you.”
He grabs me and kisses me on both cheeks. I always think of the French thing as kind of a joke because he came to America when he was, like, four, and has only even been to Paris for visits and stuff, but Pierce takes it all very seriously. Just like he takes everything.
“Stop kissing me now, thanks.” He does. I back up and look him in the eye. “Can I ask you something?”
“Does it matter if I say no?”
“No,” I tell him, then continue, “Is the magazine going under?”
He looks at me like I asked him if he’s really Aquaman or something. “Le Man is my baby. I don’t want to be too dramatic—”
“Since when?”
“—but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that this is my life’s work. This is something that I told my father was important. Even with the death of the publishing industry, even with other, more established men’s publications closing shop, there was a place in the world for a sophisticated and sexy magazine for men. That men would buy. That men would care about. That would compete with the likes of Vogue, and GQ, and Vanity Fair, and…” He pauses. His eyes drift off to the mountains somewhere and he looks lost for a second. Sad, maybe. “Le Man is not gonna go under. K? It’s not. So…”
I press my lips together and slap him on the shoulder. “OK, man. Good deal. I’ll help you. I’ll find your mystery saboteur. K? I’m on it.” I’m not sure that I actually can. At least not yet. And I’m less sure that’ll it’ll matter all that much if I do. But I said I would and my man clearly needs to feel like there’s something hopeful about the view he’s facing. And if I can help grant him that for a little while, so be it.
I start to leave, and he asks, “You excited?”
“About what?”
“All of it. Being here. Running things. Living in the TDH. All of it.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I am. I feel like…”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m making a fresh start. I feel… I dunno. Invigorated or something.”
“Yeah? That mean you’re finally gonna start getting laid again?”
“Dude…”
“Because if not, I heard there’s an order of Franciscans that might be recruiting.”
“Goodbye.” I start to leave.
“Hey, wait, I’m just fucking around. I think it’s good that you took some time off. Even if it was a total overreaction in my opinion.”
“Think you’re the guy to lecture someone about overreaction?”
“No, I mean it. I like that you went out and got in touch with you. Or whatever the fuck you do in the desert. That is what you do, right? You touch yourself?”
“Goodbye.”
“No! Wait. I’m sorry. I just… Seriously, I just worry about you dying alone. Like, literally. Like falling off a mountain or some shit and dying alone.”
“Well, then you should come climbing with me.”
“Fuck that. I look like a Sherpa to you?”
“Goodbye.”
“Let me introduce you around. I know some hot chicks who’re into all that outdoorsy shit.”
“Let me just… get settled. K? Besides, I already met a girl, if it makes you feel better.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“The girl who loaned me this.” I hold up the charger.
“The dumb broad who let you steal her shit on the highway?”
“I didn’t steal it.”
“It was hers, and now you have it. Did you pay for it?”
“Dude—”
“I don’t write the laws! Stealing is stealing. Speaking of… help me find this Sexpert bitch!”
And we’re back to that.
“I will. Cross my heart. But I gotta go. I’m supposed to be giving some rousing speech to the troops or something.”
“Rouse them into helping me bring this bitch down,” he says.
“Sure. Should totally get ’em fired up. Launching an assault on a faceless internet person in order to save the rep of a men’s magazine? Who wouldn’t be stoked to hear that first thing in the morning? That’s some real Saint Crispin’s Day shit.”
I don’t wait for him to throw a golf club at me—I open the glass door and head out. I pass Myrtle, who somehow makes me reflexively cover my crotch with my hands as I walk by where she’s bent over, adjusting her stockings and eyeing me with a look that’s half-amusement, half-tiger-stalking-prey. And as I’m glancing back over my shoulder at her to make sure she’s not going to follow me and drink my blood or something like that, I bump into someone and drop the charger I’m still holding onto the ground.