I went away excited and half-scared. What if she didn’t see my note? What if she did and thought it was stupid? I was so nervous that I didn’t go back to her desk that day.
“I really shouldn’t have sent it, Andy,” I said that night to the green fly. He was perched peacefully at the edge of the center rim of a small saucer. I had filled the inner depression with a honey and water solution. I was eating a triple cheeseburger with bacon from Wendy’s, that and some fries. My pet fly seemed happy with his honey water and only buzzed my sandwich a few times before settling down to drink.
“Maybe she doesn’t like me,” I said. “Maybe it’s just that she’s been nice to me because she feels sorry for me. But how will I know if I don’t try and see if she likes me, right?”
Andrew’s long tubular tongue was too busy drinking to reply.
“Hi,” I said to Lana the next morning.
She was wearing a jean jacket over a white T-shirt. She smiled and nodded. I handed her Mr. Averill’s “Insurance Tips” newsletter.
“Did you see the paperweight?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, without looking me in the eye. “Thanks.” Then she picked up her phone and began pressing buttons. “Hi, Tristan? Lana. I wanted to know if—” She put her hand over the receiver and looked at me. “Can I do something else for you?”
“Oh,” I said. “No. No,” and I wheeled away in a kind of euphoria.
It’s only now when I look back on it that I remember the averted eyes, the quick call, and the rude dismissal. All I heard then was “Thanks.” I even remember a smile. Maybe she did smile for a brief moment, maybe not.
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the next week I deposited little presents on her desk. I left them while she was out to lunch. I got her a small box of four Godiva chocolates, a silk rose, and a jar of fancy rose-petal jelly. I didn’t leave any more notes. I was sure that she’d know who it was. During that time I stopped delivering to her desk. I saved up all the junk mail for Friday morning, when I’d deliver it and ask her to go out with me.
Wednesday evening I went to a nursery on the East Side just south of Harlem proper. There I bought a bonsai, a real apple tree, for $347.52. I figured that I’d leave it during her Thursday lunch, and then on Friday, Lana would be so happy that she’d have to have lunch with me no matter what.
I should have suspected that something was wrong when Andrew went missing. I put out his honey water, but he didn’t show up, even when I started eating a beef burrito from Taco Bell. I looked around the apartment, but he wasn’t anywhere to be seen. There was a spiderweb in the upper corner of the shower, but there was no little bundle up there. I would have killed the spider right then, but he never came out when I was around.
That night I wondered if I could talk to Lana about Andrew. I wondered if she would understand my connection to a fly.
“What’s that?” Ernie asked me the next morning when I came in with the bonsai.
“It’s a tree.”
“Tree for what?”
“My friend Willy wanted me to pick it up for him. He wants it for his new apartment, and the only place where he could get it is up near me. I’m gonna meet him at lunch and give it to him.”
“Uh-huh,” Ernie said.
“You got my cart loaded?” I asked him.
Just then the Lindas came down in the elevator. Big Linda looked at me and shook her head, managing to look both contemptuous and pitying at the same time.
“There’s your carts,” Ernie said to them.
They attached their earphones and rolled back to the service elevator. Little Linda was looking me in the eye as the slatted doors closed. She was still looking at me as the lift brought her up.
“What about me and Junior?”
“Junior’s already gone. That’s all I got right now. Why don’t you sit here with me?”
“OK.” I sat down expecting Ernie to bring up one of his regular topics, either something about Georgia, white bosses, or the horse races, which he followed but never wagered on. But instead of saying anything he just started reading the Post.
After a few minutes I was going to say something, but the swinging door opened. Mr. Drew leaned in. He smiled at Ernie and then pointed at me.
“Rufus Coombs?”
“Yeah?”
“Come with me.”
I followed Leonard Drew through the messy service hall outside the couriers’ room to the passenger elevator that we rarely took. It was a two-man elevator, so Drew and I had to stand very close to one another. He wore too much cologne, but otherwise he was ideal for his supervisory job, wearing a light gray suit with a shirt that only hinted at yellow. The rust tie was perfect, and there was not a wrinkle on the man’s clothes or his face. I knew that he must have been up in his forties, but he might have passed as a graduate student at my school. He was light-skinned and had what my mother called good hair. There were freckles around his eyes.
I could see all of that because Mr. Drew averted his gaze. He wouldn’t engage me in any way, and so I got a small sense of revenge by studying him.
We got out on the second floor and went to his office, which was at the far end of the mail-sorting room. Outside of his office there was a desk for his secretary, Teja Monroe. Her desk sat out in the hall as if it had been an afterthought to give Drew an assistant.
I looked around the room as Drew was entering his office. I saw Mona looking at me from the crevice of a doorway. I knew it was Mona because she was wearing a skimpy dress that could have been worn on a hot date.
I only got a glimpse of her before she ducked away.
“Come on in, Coombs,” Drew said.
The office was tiny. Drew had to actually stand on the tips of his toes to get between the wall and the desk to his chair. There was a stool in front of the desk, not a chair.
By the time he said “sit down,” I had lost my nervousness. I gauged the power of Mr. Leonard Drew by the size of his office.
“You’re in trouble, Rufus,” he said, looking as somber as he could.
“I am?”
He lifted a pink sheet of paper and shook it at me.
“Do you recognize this?” he asked.
“No.”
“This is a sexual harassment complaint form.”
“Yeah?”
“It names you as the offender.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Lana Donelli . . .” He went on to explain all the things that I had done and felt for the last week as if they were crimes. Going to Lana’s desk, talking to her, leaving gifts. Even remarking on her clothes had sexual innuendo attached. By the time he was finished I was worried about them calling the police.