Page 11 of Center of Gravity

Alex arched a brow. “I’m kind of surprised you know who Banksy is.”

“I don’t know much, just the basics. Got accidentally sucked into a doc on him one time.” With Sean, in fact. Or, well, while I was waiting for him to finish showering once. I remembered it distinctly because he’d gotten out of the shower, glanced at the program, and rolled his eyes.“That guy’s not an artist. Just an opportunist.”As if he knew anything about art. From there, we’d gotten into a ludicrous argument that ended with him beneath me in the bed.

“I need to eat,” Alex said. “Otherwise, I just want to create something that…feels right.” His mouth twisted up.

I longed to touch that silver ring, to feel the place where it met his lip. I should have been able to remember how it felt scraping against me, but I couldn’t. And that bothered me. God, I needed to just get laid again and get it over with. And not by him.

“What does ‘right’ feel like with art?” I wondered if it was instinctive, the way I’d felt when I’d taken my first accounting course in college.

“I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. Maybe I should say…more like a legacy. Like Eames. Maybe not that big, but solid work. Work I can stand by and feel good about.”

His fingertips busied themselves creasing a piece of newsprint in a kind of chaotic, nonsensical origami. I liked his hands, wondered what he looked like when he was creating art.

“Do you have anything good so far?”

Alex laughed. “That’s basically what all four years are geared toward: a body of work. Last semester of senior year is all prep for the final, which is the senior show in the college’s gallery.”

“So you’ve got a little while, then?” There were ten years, give or take between us, I guessed. Enough that the way I’d grown up was a completely different animal than the Facebook era he’d cut his teeth on.

“In theory.” Alex seemed hesitant.

“You don’t think you’ll have enough?”

“I think I could’ve, but I dropped out.”

I found this surprising. In spite of the lip ring and the jocularity, the focused way he worked struck me as the trait of a guy who saw things through to the end.

“Why?” I asked, ignoring the fact that this was exactly the kind of personal territory that I’d meant to avoid.

“Finances are a squeeze right now. Hence the multiple summer jobs.”

“What else do you do?”

Alex abandoned the crazed origami and corralled a few figurines closer, beginning to wrap once more. “Telemarketing for a couple of weeks. That was just a temporary gig. Awful, too. It sucks talking to people who really, really aren’t excited to hear from you. Or the ones who are too old and lonely to know that they don’t need whatever it is you’re pushing. To be honest, I was shit at that job. I got too invested in the people, didn’t want to bullshit them, you know?”

I didn’t, but I could understand it, so I nodded. I liked his zest, and I had an idea he’d be just fine at whatever he ended up doing.

Alex stood up to close the box and I followed suit, ripping free a strip of tape and sealing the flaps as he held them down. I was a bit sad this would likely be our last conversation. It was the first social encounter I’d had in months that wasn’t encumbered by job talk or condolences on my parents.

“Maybe I should have gone after something more reliable. Accounting, like you.” His eyes flicked up to meet mine again. There was something playful in the action, though, almost like a wink. He was flirting now. Absolutely, if endearingly subtly, flirting. He caught his lip ring in his teeth in a sly way that threatened to undo me, so I leaned over to finish the box and moved onto the next, basking in the feeling like I’d been starved of sunlight.

“Pride and Prejudice, seriously?”

I laughed that time.

4

Alex

Running looked good on Rob. Mr. Macomb, I reminded myself, because there was a weird disconnect between trying to think of him as a client versus the man standing in front of me with nicely-toned calves and running shorts I wanted to peel off. Preferably with my teeth.

I’d been attracted to some of our clients before, had even slept with one, but they were other twenty-somethings like me, not a guy with a legit career, home, and probably a 401k. It was clear he’d lumped me into the young guns stage of life, and I was almost certain that my stubborn attraction to him was just the hazy, older guy run-of-the-mill fantasy that would go poof in a few days, just as I’d mostly forgotten him after that night in the club. Testing the waters with a little flirting had given me results that were inconclusive, but should I really have been expecting that much from a guy who was packing up his dead parents’ home? Either way, I’d looked forward to coming to work today, so there was that.

While Tom headed outside to wait in the truck, I picked up my clipboard and went down the list to make sure we’d completed everything.

The boxes of stuff Rob was keeping were stacked in the living room. We’d removed the pieces of furniture he’d wanted to get rid of and shuffled around some other pieces. I’d given him the receipts for the things he’d donated, so I thought we’d covered everything.

While I went down my list, he turned away, staring at the empty bookcases. An old set of encyclopedias was the last thing to go and I could tell he’d hesitated over those. The way his focus was glued to the shelves suggested he was reconsidering the wisdom of his choice.