To the dogs.
You know—belly up.
Speaking of bellies up, I look over as I walk into the building and see my coworker Josh’s car, with Marie’s face plastered across the side of it, advertising erectile dysfunction medication. Turns out he’s picked up more men with this quirky ad wrap than he ever did driving his nicer car, so he’s sticking with what he calls the PickUpMobile.
Get it?
I trudge up the concrete steps. Our office building looks like Leningrad and the Boston Government Service Center building got married and had a baby.
Before I even sling my overloaded purse onto my desktop Josh is standing in my doorway like a sweaty, half-bald vampire living off the blood of the damned.
The DoggieDate Damned.
“How was your date?” he asks, handing me a latte. Ah. There we go. He knows me so well. Almost too well. There are long dry spells in my romantic life where I wish he and I weren’t attracted to the same sex. He’d be the perfect boyfriend. He cooks nice meals, he cleans, he gives a good foot rub and he’s remarkably tolerant of character disordered people.
Don’t discount that last trait. The older I get the more I realize how crucial it is.
“Anal glands,” I say, fishing through my purse for my receipts from yesterday’s mystery shops.
“You touched his anal glands?” Josh says, his voice going through four octaves. “Isn’t that more like a third date phenomenon?”
“No.” I’m distracted by a pink plastic box in my purse. Why is my diaphragm in there? Not that I need it these days. At this point, I should just use it as a flexible shot glass. “Wait. Do humans have anal glands?”
He just frowns.
I clear my throat and look at him pointedly. “This really is your territory. I can’t believe you don’t know the answer.”
“I was a comp sci major. I never took anatomy and physiology.”
I just cross my arms over my boobs and stare him down.
He finally flinches and points to the latte. “C’mon. I brought you coffee. Espresso-based coffee.”
I take a sip. It tastes like pumpkin-mint. I wince.
“This was a freebie from a mystery shop, wasn’t it?”
He goes shifty eyed.
“Joooooossssshhhhh!” I whine.
“What? Carol made me do two of them. The pumpkin-mint taste isn’t so bad if you plug your nose while you drink.”
He demonstrates for me, pinching his nostrils and tipping his head back.
This is not a ringing endorsement for a new product.
“That coffee tastes like pumpkin mint gland.”
“What’s with the anal gland jokes?” he asks.
“The guy DoggieDate matched me to spent most of the date describing how he saved twenty bucks by learning how to express his dog’s anal glands via YouTube videos.”
Josh drops his coffee in shock, the top loosening. Half the liquid pours out, covering the brown, industrial carpet. Remarkably, you can’t tell. You literally cannot tell that eight ounces of whole milk flavored with espresso, BenGay, and rotten pumpkin just seeped into the carpeting here at Consolidated Evalu-Shop.
The room instantly fills with the scent of Lifesavers sacrificed to an angry Pumpkin King.
“Did you kiss him? Sleep with him?” Josh’s non sequitur throws me for a loop.
“Nothing like changing the subject,” I mutter as I fire up my computer. Why did Andrew McCormick’s face flash through my mind when he asked me that question? Certainly not Ron’s.
“Nothing says romance like spreading your dog’s butt cheeks,” Josh says cheerfully.
Greg picks that exact moment to walk in. He looks at Josh, frowning.
“Son,” he says, placing a hand on Josh’s shoulder. “I’m worried about you.”
Josh’s smile falters.
“Maybe you need a little time off.” He gives Josh a sympathetic look. “Unpaid, of course,” he quickly adds.
“I wasn’t—” Josh sputters. “It’s not what—I’m not—we were talking about dating!”
Greg’s frown deepens.
“Quit talking. You’re not helping yourself,” Carol hisses, walking in with a coffee tray filled with what I presume are more coffee disasters. “It smells like an air freshener from a T station bathroom had sex with a pumpkin pie in here,” she complains.
Greg’s phone rings. He answers it, gives Josh a quick squeeze on the neck, and turns away, muttering about compliance and QA into the phone.
Josh turns to me, eyes filled with a strange mix of shame, fury, confusion and impotence.
“This is all your fault!” he cries.
“My fault? How is it my fault you were waxing rhapsodic about dog butts?”
“Hmm, there’s a new motto,” Carol murmurs. “DoggieDate: For people who really love dogs.”
“GROSS!” Josh and I snap at her. The apple didn’t fall very far from the Marie Tree, did it?
“You were telling us all about your date!”
“And....?”
“And what?”
“Did you sleep with him?”
“No.” I shudder.
“Any kisses?”
Any kisses. Any kisses? My microscopic pause as I attempt to figure out how to answer that question in the most honest way possible makes Carol and Josh exchange a look so lecherous I feel like I need a pimp to protect me from whatever they’re planning for me.
“You kissed him!”
“Who?”
“Anal Gland Hands Man!” Carol exclaims.
Josh’s eyebrows go down like The Very Confused Caterpillar. “No, she didn’t,” he says slowly. “She said so earlier.”