Author:
shrift
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Date Posted: 14:57:53 06/08/03 Sun
***
4. I Never Talk to Strangers
Danny sits by himself in the cafeteria on Wednesdays. Normally he brings his lunch and eats in his cubicle, but Abby made him promise to eat in the CSC cafeteria once a week. Everyone in the building works different hours, so it's never completely empty when he goes.
Danny hates it. But he goes, because Abby scares him.
"Hey."
He keeps his head down. Nobody ever talks to him unless they want to borrow one of the extra chairs.
"It's Dan, right?"
Danny looks up, blinking, feeling that shiver of panic in his blood, and it's just Jeremy. He knows Jeremy. It's okay. He swallows around a dry bite of sandwich.
"Y-yeah?"
Jeremy stands too close, the fluorescent light reflecting oddly off his glasses. "Yeah, I was wondering if you had the stats on that LPGA stuff I e-mailed you about this morning?"
"Um, yeah, I, uh --" and Danny has to look away, because Jeremy's making eye contact. "I've got it all ready, um, up-upstairs. I can go get it --" He shoves his chair back and it makes a loud squeal on the tile.
And suddenly everyone's looking at him. Looking at him like he's a freak. He is, Danny knows he is, but he'll never get used to people looking at him and knowing, like he's naked with 'freak' tattooed all over his body.
Okay, so Danny has one small tattoo on his body, and if he has his way, his mother will never know about it.
Jeremy raises his hands in placation. "Hey, it's no rush. I mean, we don't actually go on the air for," he glances at his watch, "another eight hours."
"Good point," Danny says. Jeremy smiles like he understands, and Danny thinks that maybe Jeremy does know a little bit about being a freak.
"Are you done?" Jeremy asks. "I can go up with you. It's kind of on the way for me."
Danny takes a deep breath. "Yeah, okay."
The trip up is okay except for a few tense moments in the elevator, and they're just about to Danny's cube before he remembers why he doesn't ever want anyone to come into his office. But they're in his cubicle before he can think of a reason not to be, and Jeremy sees it.
The wall.
It's not what you think, he wants to say, only that would be a huge, flaming lie.
His wall is covered in magazine pictures and newspaper clippings, all carefully arranged with thumb tacks, and it's a scary, lame, single-white-male-stalker-freak shrine to Casey McCall.
Jeremy just raises an eyebrow and then ignores the wall of Danny's secret shame, and for that, Danny could kiss him. He could, but he won't, because if he does, Natalie will have his balls smashed in a video editor before he could hum the intro to "Ol '55."
Danny hands Jeremy the folder and then stands there awkwardly, hands in his pockets, as Jeremy shuffles through the folder's contents.
Jeremy mutters under his breath and then says, "This is really good." He snaps his fingers dramatically. "I have something for you upstairs. I'd planned to research it myself, but Dana has me producing a segment on miniature golf as some kind of sadistic punishment for invoking the spirit of Thespis --"
At Danny's look, Jeremy shrugs and says, "It's... a long story."
"Yeah," Danny says carefully. He knows. His life is one long story.
Jeremy shakes his head. "Anyway, I have something for you. Come up with me. It'll just take a minute for me to get it together."
Danny's pretty sure his face is going as pale as white rice. "Oh no. No. I-I --"
Jeremy gives him the weirdo look. "Um..."
Danny hates going up there. He hates it more than the cafeteria, because Natalie and Dana Whitaker and Isaac Jaffe are sharp people and they see things. See too much. He was pouring coffee one day after running some stats up to Jeremy and Natalie and his cuffs weren't buttoned, and when he turned around, Isaac Jaffe was standing behind him with a sad expression on his face.
He saw the scars. He didn't say anything, but Danny knew.
Danny's been very careful since then to wear long sleeves or a jacket. And he really doesn't want to go upstairs.
"Seriously," Jeremy says. "It'll only take a minute." Jeremy takes him by the arm, and Danny is trapped. Doomed. He is dead Danny walking.
He breaks out into a cold sweat on the elevator. Danny hasn't puked in a while from nerves, but he might today because the bile is already burning the back of his throat. He suddenly, desperately wants to call Abby and blabber his problems in one long breath, but his cell phone is on his desk downstairs.
The elevator dings and Jeremy steps out. Danny follows because the walls are starting to press in on him and he's not feeling athletic enough to try escaping through the roof hatch. Dana Whitaker strides past, her eye glasses pushed up into her blonde hair. She stops suddenly and backpedals, giving Danny a hard stare.
"Who's this?" she asks, squinting at him.
"This is Dan," Jeremy says. At Dana's silence, he continues with, "From downstairs in research."
"Really," Dana says, drawing it out like she's auditioning for a Raymond Chandler movie.
"You've met him before," Jeremy says. "Many, many times."
Dana squints even harder. "I have, have I?"
"Yes! There are witnesses who will attest to this fact!" Jeremy says, flinging his arms wide and waving them in a fairly accurate imitation of a drunk pigeon.
Danny watches their conversation like a Wimbeldon audience, idly wondering if he can make a break for the stairs before anyone notices.
"You are a paranoid freak!" Jeremy is spluttering, his face red.
Dana snorts. "I shall disregard everything you say because it's clearly a plan undermine my self-confidence. You wouldn't happen to know of any other Roman gods who'd like to make my life a living hell, would you Jeremy?"
"Thespis is Greek and a ghost," Jeremy says, "and this conversation is over. Dan?"
Danny trots after Jeremy in order to get away from the freaky lady who is clearly in need of therapy even more than Danny is.
He waits patiently while Jeremy roots around in his neat desk, piling smooth pieces of paper spotted with post-it notes into a file folder. Jeremy hands Danny the file, and then starts loading Danny's arms with books, maps, and even a half-full projection slide carousel.
"Um," Danny says, feeling the pile shift precariously.
"You don't happen to know anything about mountaineering, do you?" Jeremy asks.
I was born and raised in New York City, Danny wants to say. Kind of short on the mountain ranges here.
"Uh, no. No, I --" he says instead.
Jeremy smiles at him. "I'm sure you'll do fine. I think you'll find the history of Mt. Everest just as captivating as I do."
"Captivating," Danny repeats, slowly losing his grip on one of the folders sliding between the crook of his arm and his ribcage.
"Jeremy!" Jeremy and Danny both turn to see Natalie poking her head out of the conference room.
"Yes, Natalie?" Jeremy asks at a slightly less painful decibel.
"Move it or lose it!" she says. "Conference call in thirty seconds."
Jeremy swears under his breath. "Can you take this to Casey for me?"
"Oh, no, I --" Danny protests, but Jeremy drops the video tape on top of the pile anyway.
"It's right through there," Jeremy says, heading toward the conference room. "Thanks!"
"Kill me now," Danny says, but no one's around to hear.
He may have a wall devoted to Casey McCall, but actually getting near the guy? The mere thought terrifies him. Every time, he starts thinking about all the things that could possibly go wrong, and really, the possibilities are endless. What if he does something stupid? What if he says something stupid? What if Danny can't say anything at all?
Danny drops his clutter onto Jeremy's desk chair and breathes deeply for a full ten minutes before he approaches Casey's office, and he only stops the deep-breathing because his vision starts to fade a little at the edges, and he might as well stop calling it deep-breathing and call it hyperventilation.
He knocks on the office door and tries not to pass out. At the silence, Danny knocks again and says, "H-hello?"
Danny turns the door handle and peers inside the room. It's dark, and it appears to be empty, so he lets out a breath he doesn't realize he's been holding and walks inside. The office is neat and clean, smelling faintly of Old Spice cologne. A thick dictionary is open on the desk and the first word on the page is 'pumpernickel'. He puts the video tape on the ink blotter, arranging it carefully in the center.
The lights come on, and Danny jumps so hard he's surprised that the ceiling tiles are intact.
Casey McCall's at the door, wearing a pair of jeans and a blue button-down shirt and looking excruciatingly handsome. "Hi," Casey says, staring at him quizzically.
"I brought a tape," Danny says, blinking so rapidly that it's making him dizzy. "Jeremy. From Jeremy. I brought a tape from Jeremy."
Casey smiles, and Danny feels the entire surface area of his skin go hot. "Thanks, uh...?"
"D-d-d --" Danny tries to say, and the flush just gets worse. Sometimes he thinks he should declare himself mute and learn sign language, even if Abby thinks his stutter will get better once he deals with some outstanding "issues".
"Dave!" Casey says, nodding his head. "That's it, right? Thanks, Dave."
Danny has an older brother named Dave, an older brother who is taller, smarter, and better looking, and Danny's teachers at school constantly called him by his older brother's name. So do elderly aunts, people on the phone, his dentist, and even his own mom sometimes.
He thinks he should be used to it by now.
"Yeah," Danny says faintly as Casey sits down at his desk and unlocks his computer screen. Casey immediately begins typing in Word. "It's -- I'm Dan. Danny."
Casey looks up at him blankly, then he seems to register what Danny's saying. "Yeah, sorry about that," Casey says. "I'm really bad with names."
***
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