by Lex Chase
It was enough of a surprise to send Benji stumbling into the bookcase. He heard the sound of shattering glass as something hit the floor, and his stomach swooped with the familiar sensation of falling as he started to go down.
Chapter Two: MILAN
A warning hum vibrated low and deep inside Patrick’s ears. The metallic scent of ozone followed. He rolled over in his MILAN bed, savoring the MODENA memory-foam mattress. Five more minutes. C’mon, just five more minutes. The CASA shoppers can hold their horses. The would-be Martha Stewarts and Nate Berkuses were the worst with obsessing about color coordination and feng shui. Because they saw it in a magazine, they were all of a sudden the next HGTV Design Star.
He tucked the black-and-gray duvet up under his chin and kicked it off his legs. Optimal for regulating body temperature, though never logical.
Click-click-hmmmmm. The overhead fluorescent lights announced their unwelcome luminosity into Patrick’s darkened sanctuary.
“Goddammit,” he groaned and buried his face in his pillow. He had at least ten minutes before the shoppers arrived. Fifteen at best. It always took them ten minutes minimum before they trickled into his showroom.
The fluorescent light wasn’t as kind in letting Patrick have his blessed ten minutes more of solace to relish the happy ending of his dream about the cute guy in the café he’d seen for all of three seconds last week. His gut clenched with the last bits of recollection of the dream. The cutie had been a screamer, for sure. It was always the innocent-looking ones.
He was dancing on the edge of drifting off once again when he had an unfortunate sense of spatial relations and tumbled naked ass over teakettle onto the floor.
“Fuck,” Patrick mumbled with his face planted in the thin carpet.
“What do you think of the MILAN frame?” an older woman said just over his head.
He scowled, eye-to-eye with her obnoxiously blingy and blinding Yellow Box flip-flops. It was way too early for this bullshit.
“It’s on special,” a young, bubbly blonde said, her neon pink Converse sneakers coming across his line of sight.
They both stood over him, dangerously close to kicking out his teeth, blissfully unaware of the crumpled pile of sleepy naked man between them. By the power of elementary-grade deduction, Patrick put together the mother-daughter connection.
“The frame color needs some tweaking, but the mattress is perfect. And the gray-and-black duvet makes a great accent,” the daughter said.
Did no one notice the guy in the middle of the CASA showroom?
Out of one dream about a sexy rendezvous, and waking up naked in CASA. Terrific. Just what did he eat last night? Must have been the meatballs, and the sweet tomato jam was probably laced with opiates from that one weird guy who got fired a week ago.
Patrick pulled himself up, standing between the pair as they considered his MILAN bed. He scrutinized the mother with a myopic squint, close enough to see the stray white hairs on her chin. She didn’t give him a single glance.
The mother brightened. “Let’s see what the delivery fee is.”
And then the daughter committed the ultimate atrocity of lying upon his bed. She rolled over to her side, her body meshing into the impression left by his.
Oh no.
Oh hell no.
“It seems a little… lived in?” The daughter wiggled on the mattress, trying to get comfortable. “I think a CASA employee has been sleeping here.”
Patrick crossed his arms. “You get your happy ass out of my bed and go feel happy inside somewhere else.”
Neither of them blinked. Mother. Fucker.
They went on obliviously chattering as the daughter continued to smear herself across his beloved bed. He had broken in the mattress perfectly. There was a notch at his shoulder and knee he had carefully cultivated.
The mother scrawled through thumbnails of room plans. The daughter gestured, and the mother nodded. She pointed at Patrick, and he tensed his grip on his upper arms. They made eye contact, and he counted the seconds until recognition.
“I think it’s too big,” the mother said regretfully.
Patrick took a quick downward glance at himself and then back at her, unamused. “For you? You bet it is.”
“What do you think of the PALERMO frame over in the corner?” she asked her daughter.
He palmed his face. Seriously? This was seriously happening?
“Ooh, I do like that,” the daughter said, and together they headed to the far corner of the showroom.
Patrick offered a two-finger salute as they stepped past him without so much as a thank-you, good-bye, or holy Jesus. CASA shoppers ebbed and flowed around him. Their voices like a dull cresting wave underscoring the Muzak drifting over the sound system. He ran his hands through his messy dark hair and sucked in a long breath.
“Can we bring back the cute guy?” he asked the fluorescent lights, as if they were distant gods. “We liked the cute guy.” He pointed at the lights. “He did that thing with his tongue. You know, that thing.”
Of course, the lights didn’t answer. Ah, well. The employee showers beckoned.
For the humor and variety of it, Patrick followed the completely opposite path through the CASA showrooms. His bare feet slapped the concrete floor with a confident gait. It was like an absurd fever dream born from too many benders on fish-bowl margaritas. Every day he awoke in CASA, and every day no one ever noticed him.
At first, he’d panicked. Of all the places to wake up in every day, CASA wasn’t exactly in his top five. Or top two thousand, for that matter. If he had to spend all of eternity somewhere, could it at least have been Tahiti? He’d worked out the theories hundreds of times. Too many CASA meatballs before bed seemed like the most plausible one.
It was like he was living the punchline of a joke but didn’t know what the joke was supposed to be. Now, he strutted about with his dick out for all to see.
He dodged a harried mother carrying her toddler to the nearest restroom. She muttered under her breath to her husband that the poor little girl had messed herself. The husband nodded and hurried with their overfull shopping cart of items that they’d never find a use for.
Turning a corner into the living room displays, he saw little old Agnes sitting primly on the GENOA sofa. Her tiny silver bifocals sat at the proper angle on her sharp snooty nose. Her knitting needles flew fast and furious as she knitted and purled her way through yet another scarf. The woolen baby-pink scarf flowed from her needles to her feet.
He felt the scalding jab of her judgmental sideway glance.
He stopped next to her and looked out over the showroom as a young woman considered sofa coverings and her husband wilted with her unending indecision.
Agnes didn’t look up from counting her stitches. “Patrick.”
“Agnes.” He watched the couple.
“Don’t you have work to do?” She knitted another row.
“Always.”
The young woman thrust the fabric samples at her husband, forcing him to act remotely enthused.
“There’s someone in the café,” she said and then counted the stitches again. “He’s a darling.”
“Darling, eh?” Patrick crossed his arms. “That code for something?”
Agnes looked up at him over the rims of her bifocals. “Meaning you better not be inappropriate.” She shot a pointed glance at his crotch. “Well. More than you already are.”
Patrick smirked. “Of course. I’ll take a shower, at least.”
“You’ll need more than a shower.” Agnes resumed knitting, the universal gesture of old-lady dismissal.
Patrick continued on his way. “Agnes.”
“Patrick.”
Over his shoulder, he extended his middle finger in the universal gesture of “screw you.”
Lisa from Kitchens stepped through the entryway of the employee lounge as Patrick stepped past her, barely brushing shoulders. She shivered and recoiled from the slight touch and then hurried on without a word
.
On his way to the showers, a young, freckle-faced teenager practiced his greetings in his locker mirror. “Welcome to CASA! How may I help you? Did you find everything all right?” He tried his most chipper smile.
Patrick winced. So perky it resembled Barbie’s dead-eyed Cheshire grin. He checked the kid’s name tag. “Tommy,” he told himself, committing the name to memory. “You poor bastard. You haven’t succumbed to the depravity of rabid consumerism yet.”
Tommy tried smiling again in the mirror, and Patrick appraised his new effort.
“Better,” Patrick said, thumbing his chin.
“I can do this.” Tommy clapped his hands like a wrestler ready for a match. In the case of a skinny eighteen-year-old, it just appeared adorably dorky. “I got this.”
“Totally got it, bro.” Patrick waved behind him and headed into the showers.
He bit his lip as he forced the stubborn faucet to turn. Patrick was rewarded with the deliciously scalding and delightfully high-pressure water. Mist rose from the floor and banished the chill of the overworked air-conditioning.
Patrick groaned deep in his throat as the water hit just the right spot between his shoulder blades. He reached for the shampoo dispenser and took more than enough for his short hair. Eyes closed, he imagined a place in the tropics with a cabana and drinks with little paper umbrellas. He worked the suds into his hair and let himself drift into the space of a dream within a dream.
“Shit!” Tommy screamed and burst into the showers.
Patrick startled and jerked his sudsy fingers from his hair. “The fuck?”
Tommy darted for the faucet, narrowly missing the boiling stream of water, and then flicked off the tap. He sighed as if he had averted some nature of crisis.
Patrick scowled. He just wanted a shower. Couldn’t he take one without getting fucked with?
He clenched his jaw and forced the faucet on again. The hot water flowed once more, and he ducked his head under the stream.
Tommy shrieked like a child confronted with a terrifying yet completely harmless insect. Perhaps a moth. Patrick had never been particularly fond of them. Tommy lunged forward to shut it off again, but Patrick growled and smacked his hand away in warning. Tommy reeled back as if brushed against by said spooky moth, and Patrick’s vision went fuzzy from the touch.
They both stopped for a moment as the water ran. Their eyes met, and the suds slid from Patrick’s hair, down his shoulders, and then over his chest. Tommy blinked, his lips pursed in an O as he stared at him.
Patrick pressed his lips together as Tommy hesitantly reached out, intending to touch him. Patrick gestured to his waist. “Either you’re going to join me, or you’re going to teach customers how to use Allen wrenches. Because this ain’t gonna suck itself.”
Tommy jerked his hand away, and his lips wiggled into an embarrassed line.
“Really?” Patrick arched a brow.
Tommy’s answer came by way of his bolting from the employee lounge.
Patrick shrugged. “Whatever.”
Once he was suitably clean, he scored some proper jeans from the Lost and Found. It always amazed him what people left behind at CASA, or what they did to leave them behind. He’d found a prosthetic leg once. The guy probably wouldn’t be getting far on foot after that.
Tommy had left his locker open. A glaring yellow CASA shirt hung, neatly pressed, with three others. No one pressed their shirts. And no one kept that many spares.
“D’aw,” Patrick said as he took one of the shirts. “Tommy has a mommy.”
He pulled it over his head and then adjusted the sleeves. Right length, but a bit too small for him. Tight across the chest, and the sleeves stretched to the limit on his arms. He looked more like a bouncer with a bizarre choice of Halloween costume than an actual cashier. At least it was “proper.” Agnes would be pleased. Dried-up hag.
Patrick’s mood soured the moment he hit the café floor. The old man was back again, sitting in the corner all alone and lost in thought. The bastard never had anything better to do. He sat there for hours with a plate of meatballs he never ate. In front of him was the latest Wall Street Journal crossword puzzle and a pen. The WSJ crosswords were Patrick’s drug of choice. He noted that the puzzle was blank and the pen new.
He snorted. “Stop trying to look smart,” he said to the old man as he loomed over him.
The old man threaded his fingers together, refusing to be cowed by Patrick’s intimidation.
Patrick stiffened at the sound of a chair scraping the ground. A young guy settled at a nearby table alone, looking much like a lost kitten bewildered by such a big new world. He smiled, bright and genuine, at Patrick. Narrowing his eyes, Patrick gave a little wave in reply. The guy waved eagerly in response.
He was definitely a cute one, for sure. Even better than the guy in his dream. Maybe this day wasn’t such a wash after all.
Patrick turned back to the old man and then crouched over him to whisper in his ear. “I’ll deal with you later.”
He stepped away and crossed the floor to the infinitely more pleasant and definitely doable guy. Uninvited to his table, Patrick took the initiative, spun a chair backward, and straddled it.
The guy didn’t speak immediately but instead seemed to just be pleased to be in CASA.
No one ever came to CASA alone. CASA was a purgatory best faced with a quest companion, usually a spouse or next of kin.
Patrick saw neither a ring nor an indication of offspring. Perfect. He pointed his fingers like a gun at the guy and smiled, full of smugness. “Don’t tell me. Derrick, right?”
The guy smiled crookedly, confused by the question. “Sorry? I’m Benjami—Benji.” He nodded. “Benji. Only my mother calls me Benjamin.”
Patrick sucked in an overdramatic sigh and snapped his fingers. “Dammit. Swore you looked like a Derrick. I’m usually so good at that.”
“So, you’re psychic.” Benji smirked.
“No.” Patrick pulled a face of mock hurt. “I’m Patrick.”
“But your name tag says Tommy,” Benji said, glancing at his chest.
Patrick blinked and patted the plastic tag. “So it does.” He pointed a finger and pressed his lips together, assuming a stern expression. “So you’re not a Derrick. But I promise I’m 100 percent psychic.”
“Oh really?” Benji glanced out the tall windows. The sunny day filled the café. Robins busied themselves building a nest on the ledge. “So, what am I thinking right now?”
Patrick grinned. “You’re thinking you need to try out the MILAN bed up in the bedding showroom.”
Agnes was going to fucking kill him.
Chapter Three: PROLUNGA
Could anything compare to the smell of plastic and particleboard in the morning?
Well, lots of things probably could. Queequeg Coffee, for one. His mother’s freshly baked apple pie. The Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day basil soap that he hoarded every time it was in stock at Scope.
The candy apple red circle décor motif of Scope seemed to try to take the edge off the unconscious suggestion of a military sniper’s laser targeting. But it was easier ignoring the odd, checkered past involvement of the founder’s political leanings. A senator of questionable morals founded Benji’s favorite office supply store. It was his CASA of office supply needs. How politicians got into marketing everything from bedding to pencils was a strange tale.
But CASA had none of those torrid stories and scandals. The Italians had seen to that. CASA had its host of urban legends. From babies being born to weddings, it was all the talk of social media. CASA was definitely in the top ten of Benji’s favorite places.
Benji inhaled deeply and let the scent wash over him. Everything about CASA screamed fresh start and endless opportunity. It was pretty much impossible to feel anything but optimistic when standing in a CASA. For him, at least. The couple sitting a few tables over probably didn’t agree, judging by the angry way the woman was turning pages in the thick CASA catalog in front of
her while the man stared off into space, balancing one of the nubby golf pencils the store provided on his knuckles.
There was a family of six against the back wall. The parents traded exhausted looks over the heads of the four kids chattering eagerly about Bambini Mondo.
Benji smiled at Patrick-Not-Tommy, and he returned it with a slow, easy grin like he’d heard a dirty joke he was eager to repeat.
“So, what do you do, Patrick-Not-Tommy?” Benji skewered a meatball and gestured with it like the pointer he used for the kids to sound out their ABCs.
He obviously didn’t work in the café since he wasn’t wearing the black chef’s uniform. And even though he had the right shirt on to work the floor, his jeans weren’t the CASA uniform kind.
God. How sad was it that he knew what the freaking CASA uniform was? He definitely spent too much time here.
“Patrick,” he said as he picked at his thumbnail. “You need to stick with me here, Derrick.”
“Benji.”
Patrick waved a dismissive hand as if he were swatting away flies. “Benji’s a terrier with a series of kid movies. Derrick is a guy I could get behind.”
Benji coughed and concentrated on his knuckles. How could this guy just waltz in here and make everything drip with innuendo? He’d never keep a straight face in front of the kids tomorrow.
“I said,” Benji said, trying to get things back on track, “what do you do?”
“Work.”
“You’re helpful.”
Patrick’s grin broadened. “Always.”
“Patrick…,” Benji started, surprised when a young woman with a dour expression spoke. When had she walked up? Christ. He needed to sleep more.
“Karin.” Patrick sat up straighter. “Meet my new charge. Derrick, this is Karin. Karin, Derrick.”
“Benji,” Benji said again with a grunt.
Patrick waved him off. “Derrick’s just a little confused right now. Bonked his head on the cart return, you know.”
