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ELI STARED AT HIS TO-do list. Fewer items got checked off than usual. His mind was buzzing as he tried to process the new information.
I came in Bo’s face. Shit.
Embarrassment warred with arousal. Eli sat in his cheap swivel chair and pulled in under his desk to hide the way his pants were tenting. The anguished sound of glass being cut and ground in the finishing shop thirty feet away mirrored his internal state.
He’d have to talk to Bo. He’d apologize – but how to phrase something of this magnitude?
How about, “Sorry I came in your face.”
Or, “I talked to my friends – who’re not my friends anymore – and they said that...”
Or even, “Thank you for stripping naked and getting me in the shower, Bo. And for icing my balls. You’re the best coworker ever!”
Eli groaned in exasperation. Getting laid shouldn’t have all these dire consequences. He just pictured Bo, all geared up and standing by the furnace, long punty in his hands. Between gathers, with all the guys around, he could tell him they need to talk. Yeah, like that was going to happen.
Eli glanced at the clock. Five minutes to four – the shift would end and Bo would go home to his cute little house in Sharpsburg. He’d shower and change his clothes...
The image of Bo wet and naked did little for Eli’s composure. He looked at his to-do list again. Pot 16 still had stones, even after increasing the melting temperature by twenty degrees. The stones looked a lot like ceramic fragments to Eli, but he had yet to convince the foreman of that. Eli had even worked out a viable theory and had shared it with Paul in the lab, who was going to share it with his boss. People in this little company were territorial, though, and it wasn’t Eli’s place to order changes in the melting process.
Having to jump through the hoops was infuriating.
And he’d have to talk to Bo about Pot 16, which sucked hairballs. There was no way Eli could hold an intelligent conversation with Bo before he managed to clear the air somehow.
The claxon sounded. The shift was over. Five more minutes and Eli could stop hiding in his office, tucked deep under his desk. Bo would be gone.
––––––––
BO WHACKED THE BUSINESS end of his punty against the brick floor three times and lifted it up to have a closer look. The small ball at the end of the long, steel rod still had few small fragments of the problematic glass, stuck just where the ball and the rod connected. He brushed those off with a wire brush, wiped his tool with a leather glove, and put the punty away.
The guys were drifting out, hollering their good-byes and have-a-good-weekends. On a regular Friday, Bo would’ve been among them, rushing off for his shower and a nap, followed by dinner and beer before he went out.
“You stayin’ late for brownie points?”
Bo turned, glancing at Freddie. “Nah. Not interested in that. Just...” Bo yawned. “The place is so peaceful with everyone gone, y’know? Just the melt in the pots, the furnace burners firing in the basement... and it’s so quiet. Not like usual.”
“Yeah.” Freddie nodded. He was older than Bo by ten years or more, a presser, and had three kids with his high-school sweetheart of a wife. “It’s like when the kids go to sleep and I just wanna stay up and be quiet for a while. Jean will read her book an’ I’ll be surfin’ the web, reading up on the football draft. That’s our typical Friday night, y’know.”
The punty was put away. Bo glanced on the clock on the wall, wishing Freddie would move on. “Sounds nice.”
“What’re you doin’ tonight?”
“My band has a rehearsal. We played last Friday and we’re playing tomorrow.”
“Okay then, rock on!” Freddie chuckled, then grew serious. “Oh, Pot 16 samples went through the Lehr 2 already. How’s the cooperation with staff going?”
Bo shrugged. “Y’know. Goin’.”
“What, the new guy ain’t no good?”
“He’s good,” Bo said, looking down, kicking a stray piece of broken glass he should’ve swept up by now. It skittered along the ancient, filthy brick floor, breaking the tranquil silence. “It’s just... he keeps asking all these questions, an’ I don’t really have any explanation. He’s got the book-learnin’ and I’m just a guy who watches the glass melt.” And that just about summed up why Eli Winkler was way out of his league.
“You got experience,” Freddie said. “Hell, I got experience, too, but he ain’t houndin’ me. I’d tell him what’s wrong with the damn glass, but nobody’s askin’ me!”
“What?” If there was information out there, Bo would dearly love to bring it to Eli along with his annealed samples.
“I’ve seen this happen over an’ over again.” Freddie’s brow grew dark. “All I can say is, follow the money.”
Bo watched him turn and go, tossing a backward wave.
Follow the money.
He chewed on that one while he collected three squished glass discs from the exit chute of a lehr. The huge machine’s steel mesh conveyor belt was turned off for the weekend. The gas jets still burned inside its enclosed steel tunnel, turned down but not all the way off. Maintenance would come in on Sunday and turned the heat up to correspond to Monday’s production schedule. There was only so much they could do in terms of saving energy during the weekend production pause. A lehr that size took two days heating up to where they needed it to be, and the same went for the pots of glass. Temperature control was an art as well as a science at Zimm Glass.
Bo walked past the silent hot floor, through the abandoned finishing shop with its big grinding wheels now motionless and cooling water streams turned off, and up the dim hallway toward the quality control rooms.
He saw light pour through the open doors of the three staffers that comprised the QC department. He peeked inside Joe’s office and found it empty. Claire was behind her desk, entering data into her big desktop computer, chewing gum and bobbing her bottle blond hair to whatever music she was streaming through her earbuds.
Eli Winkler’s office was next.
Bo knocked on the doorframe and peeked in. “Hey.”
Eli jerked his head up as though he’d seen a ghost. “Bo?”
“Brought you some samples from Pot 16,” Bo said. “They’re annealed.” He took in Eli with one long gaze, sitting behind his desk and staring at a piece of paper of some sort. His desk, as well as the credenza behind him, were cluttered with pieces of glass. Different colors and shapes, different products, some he probably worked personally. They all had pieces of paper tacked to them with a piece of tape, and they generally sat on a pile of papers of some sort.
“Uh. Thanks!” Eli came to life the smallest bit and his face flushed. Then again, Eli’s pale skin colored a bright pink every time he’d seen Bo this last week.
Bo gave an internal sigh. He was making the guy uncomfortable. Who’d be comfortable after something like that? And waking up wrapped in a coarse blanket, naked, on a strange sofa – yeah. Not good. “Have a good weekend,” he said in a voice that sounded resigned even to himself, and turned to leave.
“No, Bo. Wait.”
He turned.
“Would you sit?” Eli looked intensely uncomfortable. “And... and close the door. Please.”
Bo nodded, shut the door with a gentle click, and settled in a padded guest chair. Eli’s office was now all silent. There was no ticking of the clock, no humming of a computer fan. No radio. The fluorescent tubes poured pallid light overhead, casting a bluish tint over everything, even Eli’s pale skin.
Just as Bo cleared his throat to break the silence, Eli’s chair creaked as he leaned back in it. “I talked to the guys today,” he said.
“The foreman?” Bo frowned. He hadn’t seen Eli on the hot floor long enough for any conversation.
“The two guys you saw at the club. Last Friday.” Eli’s eyes moved to the left and down a bit, and his blush intensified.
“Yeah?” Bo leaned forward, propping his elbows against his splayed knees. He’d been right. The episode had been preying on Eli’s mind.
“So they’re not my friends anymore. I... They...” Eli brought his hands up from under the desk and ran them up his face and into his hair, and Bo realized Eli must’ve been gripping the armrests of his chair since he walked in.
“You don’t have to talk ‘bout it,” he said in a gruff voice.
“I just wanted to apologize for, well... they told me what I did to you when you cut that thing off me.” Eli crumpled, elbows on his desk and face in his hands. His shoulders sagged and he shrank into himself, as though he wanted to disappear.
“Oh fuck, man!” Bo groaned. “They didn’t have to give you the details!”
Eli peeked from between his fingers. “Is it true?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you hate me?”
Bo shook his head. “No way, man. You were on something, and you were in pain, and... no. Of course I don’t hate you.” He gave Eli a quick, fleeting grin. “Too bad you didn’t get to enjoy it, yeah?”
“God.” Eli was hiding again. “Fuck.”
“Listen, what else did they tell you?”
Seconds stretched, soundless in this small little excuse of an office.
“The shower part,” Eli groaned. “An’ that you didn’t get any because of me.”
“Uh huh,” Bo hummed. He was curious, and he wanted to pry, even though he knew it was bad manners. “So, you wanna do anything about those two assholes?”
“I already did,” Eli said, showing his face and taking a steadying breath. “I blocked their calls and erased their contacts from my phone. As they watched. An’ I told them about you, and... and what it looked like to you.” Eli paused. “Sorry. I just... if they figure this big, bad rocker’s got them on their shit list...”
“Big, bad rocker?” Bo didn’t bother containing his grin. “Is that how you see me?”
Eli shrugged. “Whatever. I just wanted to thank you for helping me. And I apologize for, um...” The blush was back.
“For painting my face with your awesome load of jizz?” Bo’s internal regulator was out of commission, apparently. Why the heck did he say that? Was he actually flirting with Eli-fucking-Winkler, the pain-in-the-ass extraordinaire?
“For coming in your face, yeah. I don’t even remember doing it. I don’t remember what was real and what wasn’t.”
Bo grew serious. “Yeah. You were asking me if I used a condom, man. And I haven’t even touched you.” Pause. “Well, not in that way. Not on purpose.”
“I remember being on the dance floor and you playing.”
“Yeah, while you were making out with those two. You were in the middle of a sandwich.”
Bo nodded uncertainly. “I just remember your eyes, and the riffs, and the way the lighting behind you looked like a glory hole.”
Their gazes met, and they both burst out laughing at the double entendre.
“But then you went to the bar,” Bo said.
“Yeah, they did some hits outside and came back, and we went upstairs, and that’s where it gets real hazy.”
Bo tried to dampen the anger that began to rise within him. “Oh?”
“Yeah. We watched some guys in the maze, and ended up at the hammock. To support me, they said.”
Assholes. Bo clenched his jaw and nodded.
“And then I remember your hands all over me.” Eli choked the words out. “Sorry. I just can’t tell...”
“I was still playing downstairs,” Bo reminded him. “Did you still hear us play?”
“Yeah! It was fucking awesome!” Eli paused uncertainly and raised his eyebrows, staring at Bo as though something just came to him. A light bulb moment. “I could feel every note, every riff.”
“Oh.” Bo thought a bit. It was as though Eli could feel his music. That might explain a lot. “So you know what they slipped into your drink?”
He was surprised to see Eli freeze.
“Eli?” This was, he realized, the first time he addressed him by his first name at work.
“You won’t tell on me, will you?”
“Tell on you?”
“Matt... he always got me some Ecstasy. I don’t like pot and don’t trust anything else. So I took that part voluntarily, and I did have some beer on top of it, except...”
Good little Eli Winkler, popping pills. Bo didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Before last week, he’d have cackled in grim satisfaction. The little geek had a nasty habit and wasn’t so superior anymore. Before this whole incident, it would’ve fed into Bo’s basest qualities. Instead, confusion and anger ripped through him. Why would a guy as smart as Eli ever take that shit?
“Except?” he asked instead.
“Except this was “sextasy.” It had Viagra mixed in it. They just figured they’d show me a really good time.”
Bo threw his head back. The crack of hitting the plasterboard with his hard skull hurt some. The pain satisfied him.
He did it again. It was easier not to yell and scream and gesticulate if he kept hitting his head against the wall.
“Bo?” Eli’s voice held a note of distress. “Would you please not hurt yourself?”
Bo stopped. “Look who’s talking,” he snorted. “What, you get to hurt yourself by taking candy from strangers, and I don’t get to hit my head against the wall?”