used to sit at the doorway next door. Lou gave me a job.’
Alfred’s face broke into a smile, the relief more than obvious on his arrogant face. His demeanour shifted and he became the big man of the fraternity again, knowing that his position wasn’t threatened by a homeless man.
He laughed as he turned to Lou, making a face and using a tone that he didn’t even attempt to disguise in Gabe’s company. ‘You gave him a job, Lou?’ he said, turning his back on Gabe. ‘Well isn’t it the season to be jolly, indeed. What the hell is going on with you?’
‘Alfred, just leave it,’ Lou replied, embarrassed.
‘Okay.’ Alfred held his hands up in defence and chuckled to himself. ‘Stress affects us all in different ways, I suppose. Hey, can I use your bathroom?’
‘What? No, not here, Alfred, just use the restrooms.’
‘Come on, don’t be a dick.’ His tongue sounded too big for his mouth as it rolled around his words. ‘I’ll just be a second. See you around, Gabe, I’ll try to aim my coins at your cart when you pass by,’ Alfred joked, giving Gabe the once-over again. He smirked and winked at Lou before making his way to the toilet.
From the office, Lou and Gabe could hear loud sniffing.
‘There seems to be a nasty cold going around this district,’ Gabe smiled.
Lou rolled his eyes. ‘Look, I’m sorry, Gabe – he’s, you know, don’t take him seriously.’
‘Oh, nobody should ever take anybody seriously really, you can’t control anything but what’s inside this circle.’ Gabe’s arms made a movement around his body. ‘Until we all do that, nobody can be taken seriously. Here, I got you this.’ He leaned down to the bottom tray of the cart and lifted up a Styrofoam cup of coffee. ‘I owe you from yesterday. It’s a latte, the machine was back working again.’
‘Oh, thanks.’ Lou felt even worse, now totally conflicted as to how he felt about this man.
‘So, you’re going for dinner tonight?’ Gabe undid the brake on the cart and started to move away, one of the wheels squeaking as he pushed it.
‘No, just a coffee. Not dinner.’ Lou was unsure if Gabe wanted to be invited. ‘It’s no big deal really. I’ll be in and out in an hour at most.’
‘Oh, come on, Lou,’ Gabe smiled, and he sounded alarmingly like Ruth. Oh, come on, Lou, you know this one. But he didn’t finish the sentence in quite the same way. ‘You know these things always turn into dinner,’ Gabe continued. ‘Then drinks and then whatever,’ he winked. ‘You’ll be in trouble at home, won’t you, Aloysius,’ he said, in a sing-song voice that chilled Lou to the bone.
Gabe exited the office and made his way towards the elevator, the squeaking of the wheel loud in the empty hallway.
‘Hey!’ Lou called after him, but he didn’t turn around. ‘Hey!’ he repeated. ‘How did you know that? Nobody knows that!’
Even though he was alone in the office, Lou quickly looked around to make sure no one had heard.
‘Relax! I won’t tell anyone,’ Gabe called back to him in a voice that made Lou feel far from reassured. Lou watched as Gabe pressed the call button for the elevator and lingered by the doors, while the elevator began to rise from the ground floor.
The bathroom door opened and Alfred exited, rubbing at his nose and sniffing. ‘What’s all the shouting about? Hey, where did you get the coffee?’
‘Gabe,’ Lou replied, distracted.
‘Who? Oh, the homeless guy,’ Alfred said with disinterest. ‘Really, Lou, what the hell were you thinking, he could wipe you out.’
‘What do you mean, wipe me out?’
‘Come on, were you born yesterday? You’ve taken a man who has nothing and put him in a place where there is everything. Ever heard of a thing called temptation? Actually, forget I asked, it’s you I’m talking to,’ he winked. ‘You give in to that every time. Perhaps you and the homeless man aren’t so different,’ he added. ‘You look alike, that’s for sure. Maybe sing “Feed the Birds”, or something, and we’ll see,’ he laughed, his chest wheezing, the result of a forty-a-day habit.
‘Well, that says a lot about your upbringing, Alfred, that your only reference to a homeless person would be something from Mary Poppins,’ Lou snapped.
Alfred’s wheezing broke out into a cough. ‘Sorry, pal. Did I hit a sore point?’
‘We’re nothing alike,’ Lou spat, looking back down at the elevators to Gabe.
But Gabe was gone. The elevator pinged and the doors opened, revealing nobody inside, and with nobody to step in. In the reflection in the mirror that lined the back wall of the elevator, Lou could see the confusion written all over his face.
At five p.m., at exactly the same time that Lou should have been leaving the building in order to get home for Lucy’s school play, he instead paced the floor of his office. From the door to the desk, from the desk to the door, and back again. Over and over again. The door was wide open, prepared for Lou’s eventual catapult launch down the corridor and into Mr Patterson’s office, where he would announce he was unable to meet Bruce Archer for coffee. Not unlike Mr Patterson, he too had family commitments. Tonight, Laurence, his daughter was going to be a leaf. For some reason it made him weaken at the knees. Each time he reached the doorway he stopped short, and instead he’d turn around and continue his pace around his desk.
Alison eyed him curiously from her desk, looking up from her typing each time he reached the doorway. Finally, the sounds of her acrylic nails against the keys stopped.
‘Lou, is there something I can do for you?’
He’d looked at her then, as though realising for the first time that he was in an office; that Alison had been there all along. He straightened himself up, fixed his tie, and cleared his throat.
‘Eh … no, thank you, Alison,’ he said, more formally than he’d meant, so intent on convincing her of his sanity that he came across as a drunken man trying to appear sober.
He began pacing towards his desk again but then stopped himself and poked his head outside the door. ‘Actually, Alison, this coffee meeting …’
‘With Bruce Archer, yes.’
‘It’s just coffee, isn’t it?’
‘So Mr Patterson said.’
‘And he knows that it’s me that’s going to meet him?’
‘Mr Patterson?’
‘No,
