Outage

Outage By J.M. Snyder As administrator for the swimming pool at the gym where he worked, Matt diLorenzo could have lived without the paperwork that came with the job. His idea of filing was stapling a check stub to a receipt, then opening the middle drawer of his filing cabinet and tossing the paper inside. Every receipt he’d received for the past two years sat in that drawer, like layers of the earth’s surface, the oldest ones settling to the bottom while the fresher, newer purchases stayed on top. Maybe it wasn’t the best way to store files, but it worked for him. Roxie, the gym’s receptionist, once saw him digging through that cabinet for a copy of a bill he knew he’d paid and wondered aloud why the whole thing didn’t just turn to compost in the drawer. “That is a mess, Matt,” she said as she peered into the cabinet. Gingerly, as if afraid of being bitten, she stuck her hand in and pulled out a piece of paper from somewhere around the middle of the stack. “Roxie!” Matt cried. “Jeez, just get my files all out of order, will you? I’ll never be able to find where that went.” She tossed the paper at him; it seesawed in the air before landing on the unpaid invoices cluttering his desk. “This is not a filing system,” she pointed out. “This is a disaster area.” “Not everyone went to secretary school like you did,” Matt groused. That earned him a hard smack on the back of his head. Sometimes, when he was around Roxie, Matt wished he had his lover’s super-powered telepathic ability, if only for a little advance warning when she decided to strike. Matt tried to save the paperwork until late Friday afternoon. That way he had an added incentive to get it done—he told himself whenever he finished paying bills, he’d give himself the rest of the day off. Unfortunately, the invoices, pay requests, timesheets, correspondence, purchase orders, and checks he had usually took several hours to sort through, verify, distribute, write, or file. He never left before five on Friday. Never. It was a good thing his lover Vic Braunson worked third shift, driving a bus for the city until eight or nine every evening, or Matt would hate the desk work even more for keeping him from hurrying home to start the weekend off right—dinner with his man, then a little cuddling on the sofa, and after that, some loving in the bedroom. Or the living room. Or the dining room, even, if things heated up early. Matt wasn’t picky when it came to s*x. With Vic, anytime, anywhere was Matt’s motto. God, he loved that man. One Friday in late January, Matt sat at the desk in his office, the window before him allowing him a view overlooking the placid waters of the gym’s pool. He had the checkbook open in front of him, and a pile of invoices he hadn’t yet managed to get through. The clock on his desk was ticking down—in less than thirty minutes’ time, he’d be free. Part of the reason it was taking him so long to do the invoices was that his mind wasn’t on the task. It was at home, in the kitchen of the apartment he shared with Vic, riffling through the cabinets in search of something to make for dinner. He thought he might have some ground beef in the freezer; a can of tomatoes, some beans, some onions and peppers, and chili might be on the menu for the night. The weather was wild and cold this time of the year—on his way into work that morning, there had been flurries, and there was talk of a heavy snowstorm over the weekend. Vic liked Matt’s chili, which was thick and hot and delicious… And suddenly he wasn’t thinking about chili anymore. His appetite piqued, and not just for food. A faint ding from the computer on his desk alerted him to new e-mail. Thankful for any distraction from the invoices, Matt turned to the screen beside him, where Outlook was already open. A new message appeared at the end of the long list of messages in his inbox—his e-mail filing system was even worse than his invoice filing system because he didn’t have one. Every message he’d ever received stayed in the inbox. Roxie had once asked how he knew which ones he needed to address, and Matt had pointed out the little color-coded arrows Outlook used to mark e-mails that had been replied to or forwarded. “And when new mail comes in,” he had explained, “it’s in bold, see? So you know you’ve read it when it’s not.” The look she had given him could’ve curdled cheese. “I know how the damn program works,” she had snipped. “What I’m saying is you need to move the messages out of your inbox into folders so you can find them easier.” “You hit Control E.” Matt had hit the buttons to show her the Find function. “It’ll search all the messages for you.” With a sigh, Roxie had rolled her eyes. “You’re incorrigible. Would it kill you to make just one stupid folder?” Before Matt could reply, she’d leaned down, grabbed the mouse from his hand, and added a folder beneath the one marked INBOX. The folder still sat on the taskbar in Outlook, creatively named “New Folder.” It sat empty—Matt was damned if he would add anything to it. He’d delete it but knowing Roxie, she’d just add it again the next time she stopped by his desk. Speaking of, Matt thought, opening the new e-mail message. It was from Roxie, and the subject line had the word FWD in it, so he suspected the e-mail was nothing but a waste of time. One of those chain letters people sent, or a message full of lolcats, which Roxie had just recently discovered, or some such nonsense. But if there was anything Matt wanted at the moment, it was something to make the last half hour of his day fly by. Silly pictures of kittens with funny, misspelled captions might be worth a laugh or two. At least he wouldn’t have to tackle the bill for cleaning the pool. But the message was work related, for once. The forwarded part was a confirmation for enrollment in a one-day workshop on Office Management, and above that, Roxie had written, Hey Matt, wanna go? My treat. “You gotta be kidding me.” Matt shook his head as he scrolled through the message. Accounts receivable and payable, checkbook balancing, purchase ordering, inventory and stock management…what the hell did he need a workshop on this for? He ran a pool—he was a lifeguard first, a swim instructor second, and an office manager only when the job called for it. He didn’t need to be told how to run the pool’s finances or fill his invoices. If it ever got to the point where he couldn’t manage it, he’d hire a secretary and stick to swimming, which was what he did best. Instead of replying to the e-mail, he picked up the phone and dialed zero for Roxie’s extension. It rang four times, clicked as the system tried to route him to another number, then began ringing again when it deposited him back to the operator. Which was Roxie. After almost a full minute, she answered the phone with a surly, “What? It’s quitting time already.” “You still have fifteen minutes,” Matt told her. “Listen, about this workshop—” Roxie’s voice warmed when she recognized his. “Hey Mattro. Your clock is slow. Shut down the waterworks and get your tailfins up here, what do you say? We can race each other to our cars, if we don’t slip on the ice outside.” “Is it still yucky out?” Matt asked. Then, remembering why he called, he added, “Listen, this e-mail you sent? You’re not serious about me going, are you? Because I’m not really an office manager—” “You’re telling me.” Roxie laughed, a bright sound that hurt Matt’s ear. “I’ve seen your files, mister. If anyone needs that workshop, it’s you. And since Clyde says I have to go, I’m dragging your sorry, unorganized ass along with me.” Clyde Edwards was the gym’s general manager. Matt might have met the man two or three times, usually at the annual staff Christmas luncheon. Clyde was supposed to co-sign all checks on the gym’s bank account, but Roxie had a stamp with his name on it, as well as an electronic image of his signature. Whenever Matt ran out of checks, she always made sure Clyde’s John Hancock was already printed on the new ones. Employees received yearly cost-of-living raises across the board and managers like Matt had to submit their own quarterly reviews. Sometimes, in his more devious moments, Matt secretly suspected that Roxie ran the gym herself and the guy she called Clyde at the holiday luncheon was her grandfather, released from the nursing home long enough to be paraded around the staff before being sent back for another year. Her mentioning Clyde’s name didn’t exactly instill Matt with fear. “When is this thing?” he grumbled. Glancing over the e-mail, he moaned. “Tuesday! Roxie—” She interrupted him. “It’s the dead of winter, Matt. You’ve had three people in that pool today, three. I know because they have to go through me to get back there. And with the storm they’re predicting, I seriously doubt you’re going to have a sudden influx of swimmers next week.” “I don’t know,” Matt warned. “I can find some if I have to.” “Call in one of your pool girls,” Roxie said. That was her term for the college students Matt hired as lifeguards, and the derogatory tone of her voice indicated exactly what she thought of them. “Hell, ask Vic to come in and sit by the pool for you that day. He’ll scare off anyone who might want to take a dip so you don’t have to worry about him not being a licensed lifeguard.” Matt sighed. He already suspected he wasn’t getting out of this easily. “He has to work.” “He’ll take off,” Roxie countered. “Ask him, you’ll see. He’ll do it for you if you want him to. Where you ever found a man like that, I don’t know. E-Harmony has nothing on you guys.” Matt struggled to suppress a grin. “Way to break through my defenses, Roxie. Just mention Vic and you know I melt. You know I met him here.” “If I were a gay man,” Roxie threatened, “you’d have a fight on your hands, boy. I’d do my best to steal him away.” “I keep telling him you like him,” Matt said. “He won’t believe me.” “So you’re going?” Matt frowned, confused by Roxie’s sudden change in topic. “No, I—” “Too late.” Her voice was triumphant, as if she had somehow just won an argument Matt hadn’t even known they were having. “You’re already registered. That e-mail’s your confirmation.” “No,” Matt said again. “I thought…” He scrolled through the e-mail, saw his name, and swore softly. “Damn it, Rox. Just because you have to go doesn’t mean I have to be miserable, too.” She laughed once, loud. “Ha. That’s exactly what it means. Now clock out already and come up here to walk me to my car. It’s one minute after five. If I slip on that ice, I want to have something big and strong to grab on to.” Matt grumbled, “That’s what Vic said last night.” Roxie’s raucous wolf whistle whooped through the receiver as Matt hung up the phone.