Sticky Stuff

by

David Obuchowski

I FIRST ENCOUNTERED THE STICKY STUFF in a grocery store parking lot. I was just about to get in my car when I saw what I thought was a rather sizable chip in my windshield. That was a real problem because my car is old and foreign and, though it’s not a particularly desirable car in this country due to its relative obscurity and also because automotive shops have neither the inclination nor the ability to service the marque and also because people generally have no taste and wouldn’t know style or engineering if it ran them down in a crosswalk, it’s in excellent condition. I am not considered a cultured individual. I am not well read. I don’t have an artistic bone in my body. And while I’m hardly a gearhead, I am able to appreciate just how lovely and unique this car is. Even now, almost forty years after it rolled out of the factory, it’s still an impressive feat of engineering and timeless bit of styling. This much I know, even if others don’t.

Naturally, I pride myself on keeping that car running smooth and looking good. So what if you can get a chip filled? Even after it’s filled, it still looks like a chip. It’s a big glaring flaw, right there in the pristine glass. Sourcing a whole new windshield would be expensive and time consuming. I was not happy.

But when I put my fingertip to what I thought was the chip in the glass, I very quickly discovered that it wasn’t a chip at all. It was a perfectly round bead of clear liquid – about the size of a contact lens – that tricked the eye. Its parabolic meniscus appeared to curve inward. Relief that the glass wasn’t damaged was quickly replaced by confusion and disgust. This liquid wasn’t water. It was far too thick to be water. I pulled my finger from the glass and a string of the viscous fluid followed it for about an inch before it snapped and collapsed back into the tiny pool.

I opened my trunk, which had in it a jack, an empty plastic gasoline jug, rags, latex-free nitrile gloves, fuel injector cleaner, transmission oil, some basic tools like a socket wrench set and screwdriver, and about a dozen various spare parts, all OEM and in their original packaging. Whenever I come across parts for this car at a good price, I buy them, seeing as how scarce and dear they can be. I tore a paper towel from the roll and wiped my fingertip. Wisps of white fiber from the paper towel clung to my finger, glued there by the sticky stuff.

I drove home, careful not to curl that finger around the steering wheel, which was covered in leather the colour of a deep, dark, vintage port wine. When I got home, I washed my hands vigorously, paying special attention to my fingertip, and then I cleaned my windshield with soap and water and then Windex.

Whatever the hell that sticky stuff was, it was disgusting.

THE NEXT TIME I ENCOUNTERED THE STICKY STUFF was when my boss, Steve Galen, called me into his office and confided in me that our biggest client was threatening to leave if we couldn’t erase his tax liability. Galen & Galen was practically a monopoly in this city thirty years ago. Anyone with more than a moderate amount of wealth used them, and any thriving business, as well. But in the last ten years, the firm had fallen on hard times. Everyone – businesses and individual clients – were using more intuitive, powerful, sophisticated software. When they hired me, I took the place of four senior accountants because that’s how much the workload had dropped. And it was clear, the margins were still tight.

My boss leaned over the desk and tented his fingers. “We can’t lose this guy,” he said barely above a whisper as he stared straight into my eyes. “Cannot. Lose him. Not an option.”

“Yeah but he makes money hand over fist,” I told him.

“That’s why we can’t lose him, Paul.”

“No, but I mean, he’s barely got business expenses. He doesn’t have any dependents. The guy just knows how to trade stocks. Tough to offset that.”

He nodded. “Well, that may very well be. But we’ve got to find a way to make it so he doesn’t owe a thing. Hell, a refund would really be a nice surprise. That’d sure make him happy,” he said with something close to wistfulness.

“That’s not going to be easy,” I told him.

“And it’s gotta be,” he cleared his throat, put on a pair of reading glasses, repositioned himself in his chair, and said in a quick mutter barely above a whisper, “above-board.”

You just said that to cover your own ass. You didn’t even want me to hear that, did you? You just said that so if anyone came asking you could claim that you told me, but you don’t mean a fucking word, is what I wanted to say. Instead, all I actually said was, “Hmmm.”

“You can handle it. You’re the smartest guy I know,” he said and gave me a wink.

And yet you must think I’m pretty fucking stupid if you don’t think I know your game here. If the IRS doesn’t come snooping around, you win. But if it does come snooping around, it’s my ass on the line. Lose my certification. Fines. Hell, maybe even jail time. I gave him my best approximation of a smile. “Not going to be easy,” I said again.

“I know,” he said. “It’s sticky stuff.”

It was right when he said that when I put my hand under the chair to pull the lever, which would allow it to rock back. But when I touched the handle, I put my hand in something wet.

“Ah, God,” I said in surprised disgust.

“What is it?”

I looked at my hand, and saw it was coated with some sort of clear fluid. “There’s something wet under this chair.” I pressed my fingers together and when I tried to pull them apart, they resisted, as if they were coated in honey gone stiff. “Christ, it’s sticky.”

“Probably the grease or whatever they put in the cylinders of those things.”

“Cylinders?” I asked, confused.

“Yeah, you know, the thing that makes the chair go up and down.”

“Oh. Right,” I said. Though it didn’t seem like a correct theory to me. “I gotta wash my hands,” I said.

“Then you’re going to work on that tax return.”

“Yeah.”

“And he’s going to be very fucking happy when we tell him that Uncle Sam’s going to be sending him a check.”

“Steve –”

“Very. Fucking. Happy.”

“Right,” I said, clenching my fist, and feeling the sticky stuff squelch in my palms.

I left his office and I passed Melissa’s desk.

“Paul!” she whispered.

I took two steps back. Melissa’s our receptionist. I hired her. Well, I didn’t actually hire her. I don’t have the authority to do that. Steve did the actual hiring. But I was the one who had known Melissa in the first place. She’d been my daughter’s nanny. Then, after my divorce, she was my daughter’s tutor. Officially. She was also unofficially a person to keep my daughter company. A companion, I guess. After my daughter graduated, Melissa had a hard time finding a job. Really, she wasn’t looking very hard. But that was because she was working on a novel, and had even managed to land an agent. I didn’t blame her. To get some corporate job would rob her not only of time, but energy. So I suggested she come in as a receptionist. There was so little work to do, I told her, she could spend most of her day writing.

She leaned over her desk and said, in a quieter whisper, “How’d that go?”

“How’d what go?” I whispered back.

“Whatever that was. He’s been in a real mood lately. Figure something must be up.”

“Oh, it’s fine.”

She looked at me with a look that seemed to suggest she knew I wasn’t telling her the whole truth. Her glasses were slightly too big for her face. They somehow made her look even younger than she was.

“Seriously. It’s nothing. Just boring accountant stuff.”

She arched an eyebrow over the frame of her glasses, which were not brown, but tortoise-shell.

My ex-wife, Heather, was convinced I was fucking her. Or, if not fucking her, then actively trying to. Entirely false. I never once acted inappropriately. I never flirted. I never, for a second, entertained the idea of pursuing her. I could give you a dozen different reasons why I never did – it would have been morally wrong; my daughter looked up to her too much, so it would have been a betrayal of my own child; there would be no way of pursuing her without exploiting an existing power dynamic; et cetera et cetera and so on and so forth.

“Forget about me. How’s the novel coming along?”

She sat back and sighed. “Not you, too,” she whined.

“What?” I asked her. The sticky stuff in my enclosed fist felt as if it might be squeezing out from between my fingers, but I enjoyed talking to her too much to just run off.

“My agent keeps asking me for the new draft.”

“So what’s the hold up?”

“I don’t know . . . work, I guess?”

“Nice try.”

“Well, and I’ve been going out more lately.”

“Melissa,” I said in a lightly scolding tone.

“What? It’s your fault! You’re the one who got me a job and now I have a steady paycheck! What else am I supposed to do with it?”

“Uh, stick it in a high-yield CD? Contribute to an IRA? Invest it? Do you really want to ask me, an accountant, what you should do with your paycheck?”

Melissa laughed.

“Seriously, there’ll be plenty of time for going out. Get that revision done, give it to your agent and celebrate that. And when she sells the book, go celebrate again. Meantime, buckle down and make it happen.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” she said, pushing her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose.

“I know I’m right. I also know that most writers try and fail to get as far as you already have. You’ve written a great first draft –”

“Third.”

“Third draft. You’ve landed a killer agent. Don’t get distracted when you’re this close to this finish line.”

“You’re right. No more going out until it’s done and delivered.”

I nearly asked her to shake on it, then I remembered the sticky stuff in my hand. “That’s what I like to hear,” I said, and I gave her a firm nod of my head.

“Thanks for the pep talk, Paul.”

All of those reasons I said I never pursued her – they’re all true. But put those aside. Even if we were perfect strangers, it would have been no good. I’m too old, not good looking enough, not successful enough, not smart or insightful or inspired enough. Hell, I’m probably not even skilled enough in bed.

Only thing interesting about me is my car. Problem is, no one else seems to think it’s interesting.

THE THIRD TIME I CAME ACROSS THE STICKY STUFF, I was in bed with Deirdre, my girlfriend of four years. We’d been having sex. As usual, she had gotten right up to the edge of coming, and then her body tensed up and froze, and I felt her legs squeeze against my cheeks for a moment before they went slack. She whispered, “Stop stop stop stop stop.”

“Stop? You’re so close, though,” I said from between her thighs.

“It’s not – I can tell, it’s not going to happen,” she sighed.

“Are you sure? You want me to switch up, I can –” I had no idea what I was about to offer, but I was game for anything.

“It’s not going to happen. I’m sorry. It’s not you. It’s not even me,” she sighed in frustration. “It’s these new fucking meds. Exactly what Olivia told me. Can’t cry, can’t come.” Olivia was her hair stylist, and Deirdre generally regarded her as a bit of a nutcase except for the occasional thing about which she took her extremely seriously. I could never tell why she would think Olivia was crazy for one thing, but not another. Deirdre laughed about the absurdity of Olivia’s claim that pasta had less carbs if you refrigerated it overnight and then reheated it, but she wholly believed her when Olivia said that black tea cancelled out the effects of alcohol on your liver as long as you drank an equal amount of tea and cocktails. Olivia had told her once that the antidepressant she was on made her unable to cry or to have an orgasm. Can’t cry, can’t come. So now, even though it was an entirely different medication, Deirdre was convinced it was the same thing as what Olivia had explained.

“Maybe your body just needs to adjust to them.”

“You might as well finish,” she told me. “What do you want? Should I suck you off? You want to come inside me? Want me to just use my hand?” She might as well have been asking me what I wanted to watch on television.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Don’t pout,” she said. “It makes me feel worse.”

“I’m not pouting,” I told her. “It just seems like you’re not into it.”

“I’m into it,” she said flatly.

“OK,” I said. I didn’t want to fight about this. I didn’t want to fight at all. “You want to get on top of me?”

“Do I have to? I pulled that one muscle in my workout . . .”

“No that’s fine. Why don’t you turn around, then.”

She turned and got onto her knees, and I fucked her from behind. I closed my eyes, and all at once, the fantasies rushed in. There are times where I can fantasize about specific things, but then there are other times where my imagination – or id – takes over, and I’m powerless but to just watch it all flash before my eyes. That’s what happened in this moment. I was no longer fucking Deirdre. Instead, it was Melissa. I was fucking her from behind as she was hungrily lapping my ex-wife’s pussy.

I knew this is what you wanted and I wanted it, too, my ex-wife said in a voice accusatory and seductive.

Melissa reached up to feel Heather’s breast and then she lifted her head from between Heather’s thighs and looked at me through those glasses and whispered, Please Paul, fuck me. Fuck me, Paul, fuck me.

That did it. I came in less than a minute.

When I finished ejaculating, Dierdre quickly slipped forward, separating herself from me, swung off the bed, and headed to the bathroom to clean herself up.

The pleasure of the orgasm quickly gave way to a feeling of shame tinged with nausea. Christ, I needed a drink.

I went to the counter where, in addition to four different kinds of bitters, she kept two bottles of gin – Plymouth and Sipsmith – a bottle of Aperol, a bottle of Belvedere vodka, a bottle of Woodford Reserve bourbon, and a bottle of Martini & Rossi sweet vermouth and dry vermouth, as well.

“Want a drink?” I called out.

“Sure,” she said from the bathroom.

“What do you want? Gin and tonic? Martini? Old-fashioned?” It was like an echo of when she’d asked me how I wanted to come.

“Whatever.”

“Whatever?”

“Yeah, whatever. Whatever you’re having.”

“I’m having an old-fashioned.”

She came out of the bathroom, wearing a thin, silky robe. “Then I’ll have an old-fashioned,” she said, and then she went back into the bedroom.

I filled each glass with ice and filled them halfway with bourbon. Then I put a couple dashes of chocolate bitters and a couple dashes of orange bitters in each. Maybe it wasn’t really an old-fashioned, but it was close enough. I stirred the drinks with my finger and realized – as I was swirling the ice and liquid around – that this was a finger that had just been in her vagina and her asshole. I quickly grabbed a brass-coloured stirrer from a shot glass next to the liquor and dipped it into a drink. Now if she asked me if I stirred the drinks with my finger – something she’d seen me do countless times and found to be fairly disgusting – I could plausibly deny it by pointing to the used stirrer.

I sucked the booze off my finger and then dried it on a dishtowel.

“Drinks,” I said as I came back into her bedroom.

She took one from me as I sat myself down in the bed. We clinked the glasses together and we drank. She took a small sip. I took a large one, and then I took another large one.

“You OK?” she asked.

“Work, I guess,” I said, thinking that I was covering for myself. Then I realized that I wasn’t sure what was bothering me. I certainly felt guilty about my fantasy that not only featured our former nanny, but also my ex-wife. But then, I also felt pretty ashamed of myself that I wasn’t good enough to get Deirdre off. And I was frustrated that here we were, four years on, still just doing the same old thing we’d been doing all along: having a few drinks, having sex, and making small talk. Might as well have been four months. We hadn’t gotten any more serious. Most we ever did together was take a weekend trip here and there. After four years, I would have liked to imagine a future. Instead, it felt like we barely knew each other. But then, on top of it all, I guess I hadn’t been lying: there was also the issue of work, too.

“What’s going on at work?”

“Steve wants me to do the impossible. This guy’s gonna owe a ton of money because he regularly makes a killing in the stock market. I mean, I swear to you, he’s gotta have inside information the way this guy trades. Anyway, Steve wants me to make it all go away. Get him a refund, even. He’s our richest client.”

“If he’s so important, why doesn’t Steve handle it? It’s his name on the sign.”

I shrugged, but I knew damn well why.

“What?” she asked, well aware that I had a theory.

“It’s obvious.”

She rolled her eyes. She looked cute when she did that. I endured another wave of self-hatred for not being able to make her come. Christ, was it really the meds? Maybe so. It’s not like I had never made her come. Then again, when it did happen, it always seemed like it was more her and her intense concentration getting herself over the edge than anything I was doing. But hadn’t I just done the same? Jesus, what a pair, the two of us.

“OK, it’s obvious,” she said. “But humour me.”

I took a drink and exhaled, and then I explained my theory.

She rolled her eyes a third time. “People cheat on their taxes all the time and they don’t go to jail. They pay a fine.”

“This is different. It wouldn’t be an honest mistake.”

“Doesn’t that seem a little extreme? I mean, I can see how this would be a pain, but you make it sound like they’re putting you in an impossible situation.”

“They are, Deirdre. That’s exactly the problem. The firm has everything to gain, and I have everything to lose.”

“Everything?” she said, as if to say God, how pathetic!

“Yes, everything. My job. My credentials. Not to mention, you know, going to jail,” I said. But as I was saying these things, I was really thinking about how sad I’d be to not see Melissa everyday. Or maybe even ever again.

“You need to go to a different firm. Why don’t you go get a job with one of those big places. Deloitte. KPMG. EY.”

“That’s where I started when I got out of school. I hated it. I told you that. That’s where I worked throughout my marriage and I was miserable. When Heather and I divorced, I wanted a fresh start. I wanted to work at a place where I didn’t have to deal with the bullshit office politics.”

“How’s that working out?”

I didn’t answer. I just took another drink and then set the glass down on the bedside table. Then I put my hands on the covers and immediately experienced the now-familiar feeling of putting my hand in something wet and sticky. “Shit,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Put my hand in, I don’t know, sticky stuff.”

“Did you come on my covers?” she asked, genuinely annoyed. My boss was asking me to do something that could send me to prison, and she rolled her eyes. But there was a chance I got some semen on her covers, and now she was practically indignant.

“No, I came inside of you!” I said.

“Well then what the hell is on my covers, Paul?”

“I have no idea!”

She let out an aggravated and impatient sigh. “It’s jizz. Obviously it’s jizz,” she said. “Christ, now I have to wash my duvet. Such a pain in the ass.”

“I didn’t come on your covers. The covers were down at the foot of your bed. I came inside you. Even if some dripped out when you got up, it would have dripped out on the sheets.”

“But you just put your hand in it!” she said, apparently astonished that I was suggesting it could be anything other than what she thought it was.

“It sounds weird, but I’ve been finding sticky stuff everywhere. Windshield of my car. Under the chair in Steve’s office. Now this,” I said. I felt distant all of a sudden.

She took a moment to try to make sense of what the hell I was talking about. “Sticky stuff?” she finally asked.

I closed my eyes, shook my head, gathered my focus. I didn’t have it in me to argue. Plus, I realized I sounded ridiculous. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll wash your duvet.”

“I’ll wash it,” she said quietly, perhaps a little guilty over just how angry she’d gotten at me.

“No, I’ll wash it. I did it, so I’ll wash it.”

“You don’t know how to do it. I’ll do it.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

The storm was passing. “It’s fine. Just watch it next time. It’s gross.”

“I’m going to wash my hands,” I told her.

When I returned to the bed, she was looking at her phone, idly scrolling through Instagram or some such app. I took another sip of my drink.

“Can we talk about our relationship?” I asked.

“What about it?” she asked.

“Maybe taking a step? Moving in, I mean.”

“Really?” she said, sounding eerily similar to how Melissa sounded when I’d asked her how her novel was coming.

“Yes, really. Why are you surprised?”

“Because we’ve talked about this so many times before. This,” she gestured with her hands toward the general vicinity of us, the bed, the room, “is good. And you know why it’s good. And you know that I’m right.”

She was referring to how we were both survivors of terrible marriages. Both divorced with kids out of the house – her son skipped college and went straight into an apprenticeship with a fairly large electrician outfit in town. Pretty soon, he’d be making just as much money as me, if not more. Software can’t install GFI outlets in your kitchen or an EV charger in your garage. Meanwhile, my daughter was like Melissa. She was an English major. Some days she’d say she’d support herself as a teacher. Other days, she’d say she’d go into marketing or public relations. Other days, she’d tell me she’d just work in a coffee shop. Either way, her big goal was to get an MFA and be an author. You know, like Melissa, she’d say.

Funny how much I could admire Melissa and her pursuit of her passion, but when it came to my own daughter, I thought, why couldn’t she be an electrician like Deirdre’s kid?

Deirdre was right, of course. We had both been miserable with our spouses, and though we loved our kids, marriage had felt like a mouse trap. Not the kind that snapped shut and decapitated you or cut you in two. More like a glue trap, where you can still eat and breathe but you just can’t get out. You’re stuck. Until someone finally comes along and throws you out.

But it felt different with Deirdre. We wouldn’t inspire any great love stories, but we wouldn’t make each other fucking miserable, either.

“This works because,” and here she gestured again, “of this. I’m sorry.”

“You’re not sorry.”

“I’m sorry if it’s disappointing to you.”

“Yeah but you’re not sorry you don’t want to live together.”

“You’re right I’m not,” she said plainly.

“Then don’t say you’re sorry,” I said.

“Don’t pout,” she told me.

“I’m not pouting,” I pouted.

She pulled at the covers on my lap. “Where’s the sticky stuff? I want to see if I can just spot wash it instead of taking the whole duvet cover off.”

“Right around here,” I indicated.

“I don’t see it.”

“Yeah, it was right around here.”

She examined the covers for a little while before giving up. “Maybe it was on your hand the whole time,” she suggested.

Impossible, I thought. But I didn’t have it in me to argue.

THE NEXT MORNING, I walked out to the front of Deirdre’s house where my car was parked and discovered that there was more sticky stuff on my windshield. Not just a tiny bit that amounted to the size of a contact lens. This looked like someone had poured a bottle of corn syrup all over the glass.

Part of me was happy, though. I was glad to be able to show Deirdre. I sprinted back inside the house, up the stairs to where I’d left her in bed. I opened the door and saw the shape of her ass rising and falling slowly, rhythmically from under the duvet, which was up to just above her waist. One of her hands was beneath her chest. Her other hand was underneath her, below her waist. Her hair was splayed out on the pillow in which her face was buried. I could hear her softly moaning as she sucked and blew air through the fabric.

Her breathing quickened and her moaning grew louder until she erupted into an ecstatic orgasm. I’d never heard her come like that. Never. She barely made a sound with me.

“Oh my god fuck oh my god,” she whispered to herself and then she giggled and a moment later her ass was slowly rising and falling again. I quickly but quietly shut the door and crept down the stairs and slipped out the front door. Christ, how long had I been out of the house? Two minutes? Two minutes and she not only gave herself an earth-shattering orgasm, but she was going in for round two. Fucking pathetic.

I OPENED THE TRUNK OF MY CAR, grabbed the roll of paper towels and walked around front, only to find that the sticky stuff was no longer there. Before I could make any sense of it, a Dodge Avenger pulled up. The driver, a young man who appeared to be trying but failing to grow a beard, lowered the passenger-side window and leaned over the passenger seat so he could see and hear me better.

“Haven’t seen one of those in a million years!”

“Yeah, it’s a rare one nowadays,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood to chat, but so few people ever remarked on my car, that I couldn’t help myself. “Very rare.”

“My dad had one of those when I was, like, a toddler.”

“Did he?”

“Sure did.”

“Same trim? This is the sixteen-valve.”

“I don’t know, man,” he said with a chuckle. “I couldn’t tell you. All I know is, it wouldn’t start in the winter and it overheated in the summer.”

Of course. Why did I think this guy was going to be any different than anyone else who remarked on the car?

“He must have had bad luck,” I said, my voice dripping with derision. “These are excellent cars,” I said, as I turned back to the windshield.

“Yeah that must be why they stopped selling them here thirty years ago.”

“They stopped because the people over here would rather buy a piece of fucking garbage like what you’re driving, all because there’s a commercial for it every inning of the goddamned Blue Jays game. Fuckin’ brainless, all of you.”

“Jesus, dude, I wasn’t talking about your mother,” he said, and pulled away.

“Talk about her all you want. I can’t stand the bitch,” I yelled after the car.

“What the hell, Paul?!”

I turned around to see Deirdre in her silky robe standing at the front door.

“Deirdre, I thought you were . . . sleeping.” I had almost said masturbating.

“Even if I was, I’d have been woken up by you yelling at my neighbours!”

“That asshole insulted me!”

She rolled her eyes. “That asshole is my friend’s son and he takes care of my cat whenever I go away!”

“I’m sorry. But he’s still an asshole.”

“What are you doing with the paper towels?”

“I was about to clean –” I closed my eyes and sighed. “Never mind. Nothing. Never mind.”

“YOU’RE LATE,” Steve informed me.

“I am,” I said.

“I’m sure you have your reasons,” he said.

“I do.”

“Do I get to know them?”

“Sticky stuff.”

“Sticky stuff?” he repeated like he wasn’t sure if he’d heard me correctly.

“Yeah.”

“The hell’s that supposed to – oh, I get it,” he grinned.

“Get what?”

“The tax return,” he said, very pleased.

I sighed and shook my head. “No.”

“No? Not the tax return?”

“No, I mean literal sticky stuff. It was all over my car. Just like the stuff that was underneath that chair in your office. And then, I don’t know. I went inside to show Deirde, but she was . . . still in bed . . . and I came back out and it was gone. The sticky stuff.”

He scratched his chin and took a few steps so that he was right in front of me. “Paul, did I impress upon you the importance of keeping this client?”

“Yes you did.”

“And did I explain what would be required for us to keep this client?”

“You did, yes.”

“Okay, okay,” he nodded. “Because it seems like your head’s not entirely in the game.”

“Steve,” I said, “I was thinking about it and, considering this guy is our most important client, don’t you think it would be better handled by you? You’re a partner.”

He’d prepared for this and so he answered directly. “Too desperate. Then he knows he’s top dog. That gives him even more leverage. Yes, we want him to feel valued. But we don’t want him to think we rely on him.”

I looked out the window, where it was starting to rain. The droplets on the window didn’t roll down like water – they oozed down like slime. Slime. It was an anagram of smile, I realized. I gave Steve a smile and I leaned in a bit. “Is that bullshit, though?”

“Is what bullshit?” he asked, sounding truly perplexed.

“The issue of appearances. Isn’t it really because you want me to do it and if it turns out I broke any rules, you can plead ignorance and fire me and the firm will survive?”

Steve stepped back and glared at me. “That’s a fairly serious accusation. And on a personal level, I’m offended. I think you ought to think very carefully about what you just said, because if you truly mean what you say, we should re-evaluate the employer-employee relationship.”

“Come on, Steve, admit it.”

“There’s nothing to admit,” he said.

“You know, conceivably, I could go to jail if I do what you’re asking.”

“I told you to keep it above-board.”

“Sure you did. Wink wink.”

“You’re getting out way past your depth, Paul.”

“I’d have respected you more if you were straight with me.”

“Paul –”

“I mean, it’s even conceivable that if you were just honest with me, I might have wanted to roll the dice, take some risks, cook the books.”

“Paul –” he tried interrupting again.

“I mean, I’ve never done that. Maybe it would have been exciting. Maybe I would have wanted to put it on the line for once. But you weren’t straight with me. You just stuck me in this situation, expected me to clean up the mess or take the fall, as if I was too dumb to not realize all along.”

“PAUL!” he shouted to finally shut me up. But it was too late. I’d already said my piece. “I believe you have plenty of PTO and sick days. I suggest you use some of it right now, and when I say suggest, I mean, you better goddamned do it and get out of here for the day,” he said through gritted teeth. “On second thought, make it the week.”

I had no desire to be there, either. “Yeah, I think I will,” I said, but before I could say anything else, my attention was drawn away from Steve, whose face was red with anger and quite possibly shame. Outside, the rain – if it even was rain – wasn’t just beating on the window, it was thudding, pounding, buffeting. Cautiously, I walked toward it, afraid the glass might break at any second under the weight and force of the impact of the so-called rain. The window was covered in thick, oozing, mucus-like substance.

Melissa looked up from her computer, wincing as the fat drops slammed into the windows. “Are you seeing this?” she asked me.

“It’s really coming down,” I said.

“It’s so thick,” she said.

“That’s some heavy rain, all right,” I said, doing my best to sound neutral.

“But it’s thick,” she said, aghast. “Like it’s actually thick. Like, like . . .” she was at a loss. “I don’t know. Syrup? Glue? Jelly? God, what the hell?”

I couldn’t help but smile. She could see it. “It’s bizarre, right?”

“My god, that’s an understatement! What do you think it is?”

“I have no idea,” I said, still smiling. “But I had better get going.”

“You can’t go out there!” Melissa said, looking truly concerned for my safety.

“It’ll be fine. Nothing I haven’t dealt with before.” I rapped cheerily on her desk before I turned away and walked toward the door.

“Paul,” she called after me.

I turned.

“Be careful out there, okay?”

I told her I would. But as I opened the door and walked out into the storm, I realized that wasn’t true. That wasn’t true at all.