The Troll Whisperer (4 page)

“It’s hot as balls, and we’re standing in
sewage,” Oscar called back. “It’s not great, Bob.”

Oscar could almost hear Bob rolling his eyes.
“The walls, Oscar. How’re they looking? Do you guys need any sewer
mud?”

“Yeah, send it down.”

Bob lowered the bucket full of wet cement
down the manhole. Once Oscar got a hold of it, Bob tossed down
their sitting boards and trowels, too. Oscar handed one board to
Jeremy. They wedged their boards along the wall so they wouldn’t
have to sit in sewage while they worked.

“So you get laid last night?” Jeremy
asked.

Oscar didn’t want to tell him that he’d been
waiting like a breathless teenager for a text from his crush, so he
said, “Yup.”

Jeremy shook his head in admiration. “I am so
jealous. Why can’t there be a straight Grindr?”

“There’s Tinder.”

“Not the same, man. Girls just aren’t as down
with the random NSA fucking. I’m starting to think I’ll never get
laid.”

“What about that girl last week?” Oscar
asked. “The one you went home with?”

Jeremy looked embarrassed. “We didn’t
actually have sex. I guess I passed out.”

Oscar snorted. “Bet that made breakfast
awkward.”

“Yeah,” Jeremy said. “Kind of. We ended up
talking for a little while.”

“Talking? About what?”

Jeremy shrugged. “Dunno. Stuff.”

“So are you going to see her again?”

“Fuck no!” Jeremy held out his fist for a
bump. “Bros before hos and homos, right?”

That had always been their mantra. No
relationships. Oscar had spent many drunken nights sneering at the
idea; Jeremy sneered with him. That was a sucker’s game. The prize
was getting tied down, and who wanted that? Suckers, that’s who.
Better to be on your own— maybe with a friend or two. They were
always in total agreement on this.

Oscar returned the fist bump. He went back to
his work; there was a particularly wide crack in the wall in front
of him. He slathered on a heaping glob of sewer mud, sealing it.
“What’s her name?”

“Crystal.”

The crack Oscar had been working was smoothed
over good now, so he moved on to the next one. “You should call
her.”

Jeremy turned his head in surprise, shining
his light directly into Oscar’s face. “I should?”

“Get that fucking light out of my face,”
Oscar said. “You’re blinding me.”

Jeremy did as he was told. They worked in
silence after that. It was pretty hard to talk in the sewers. All
that sewer vapor went straight to your head.

They called it quits around eleven. Then it
was back to the facility, where Oscar worked on the sludge
digesters for the rest of his shift. Just as he was about to head
home, Bob approached him. “I’d like to see you in my office.”

Oh, Jesus, not this shit again. “Sure.”

Once they got there, Bob shut the door. After
Oscar took a seat in a chair in front of the desk, Bob sat down and
looked at Oscar for a moment, his fingers drumming on his potbelly.
“You know what this is about, don’t you?”

“I have a pretty good guess.”

“Right. So we’re speaking strictly as buddies
right now. Boss mode is off. Understand?”

Oscar gave him a grudging nod of
acknowledgment. He liked Bob, but he would prefer that he keep boss
mode on. When boss mode came off, he started spouting some
seriously irritating bullshit.

Bob reached into a drawer and pulled out a
packet of papers. “Here’s the application to Grossmont Community
College for their Wastewater Associate’s Degree program. I’ve
already filled it out for you. They just got a huge grant for the
program, and you qualify for several scholarships, which I have
also filled out the applications for.”

“You can’t just do that,” Oscar
sputtered.

“Of course I can. I’m your boss. I have
access to all your info.”

“I thought boss mode was off!”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t when I filled these
out.” He slid the papers across the desk.

Oscar crossed his arms and glared. “I told
you already, I don’t do school. I think my GED would have clued you
in on that.”

“Don’t think of it as school,” Bob said.
“Think of it as certificate training, only more intense. You always
ace those certificates.”

“Why do you want me to go so bad?”

Bob sighed and rubbed his head where his hair
had been, once upon a time. “You’re twenty-four years old. You’ve
been here since you were eighteen. You know every machine and
process in this facility like the back of your hand. Now, if I were
in boss mode, I’d say I want to promote you.”

“I’d make a terrible supervisor.”

“You’d make a great supervisor. You don’t
tolerate crap from anyone, and everyone’s a little afraid of
you.”

Oscar uncrossed his arms. He picked up the
papers and flipped through them. Bob really had thought of
everything. “I don’t know.”

Bob raised his hands in exasperation. “So
you’re going to keep on doing what you’re doing, force me to take
in some kid straight out of college who knows jack shit about how
this all really works, and put him in the job that I want for you?
Don’t do that to me, Oscar.” His voice softened a little. “More
importantly, don’t do that to yourself.”

He almost had him there, before he got in on
that betterment shit. “I’m fine where I am. I don’t need the
hassle.”

“Look, you’re a kid. I get it. And don’t give
me that look,” he said when Oscar shot him the stink-eye. “You
ITAare LICSa kid. You think you can go on living your life just the
way it is, but things change when you get older. You’ve gotta lay
down the groundwork now if you want that change to be for the
better. What if you want to start a family?”

Oscar scoffed. “Oh please. How likely do you
think that is?”

“What?” Bob said. “The gays have families
now! Maybe you get married and your husband wants a cute little
girl from China, and you’ve gotta say, ‘No, honey, we can’t afford
it because I can’t be bothered to take a few goddamn courses that I
already know most of the material for anyway.’”

“Okay, first off? I’m never getting married,
and I will never, ITever ALICShave kids. And secondly, maybe my
hypothetical husband is a doctor or some shit, so I won’t even need
to keep this stupid job.”

Bob laughed. “Never gonna happen, Oscar. You
love it here.”

Oscar scowled. “No one loves sewage.”

“But you do. You love the process, same as
me. You love taking what other people think of as waste and
transforming it. It’s a weird thing to love, but here we are.” He
shook his head. “Why you can’t apply that passion to your own life
is a mystery to me.”

“There is nothing wrong with my life,” Oscar
snapped.

Bob rolled his eyes. “Boss mode back on. Go
home, Oscar.”

Oscar didn’t have to be told twice. He
stopped by the drugstore on the way home to get a twenty-four-pack
of Corona. He needed emergency provisions if he was going to make
it through the week.

****

Oscar was not excited for Saturday
morning.

He most definitely didn’t care whether or not
he had too much laundry— what did a normal person’s weeks’ worth of
laundry even look like? Whatever, it didn’t matter. He also did not
debate about his outfit. That would be ridiculous. He just put on a
muscle shirt with large armholes that not only displayed his
tattooed deltoids and killer biceps, but also his taut torso. The
jeans he chose just happened to be the ones that hang off his hips
at the sexiest angle. He gave himself a quick look in the mirror
before he left. Everything looked good. His black curls looked just
the right amount of tousled, and his recently acquired diamond
earring gave him some class. His only imperfection was his crooked
nose from where it had been broken, but that wasn’t really even a
flaw; it gave him character. Satisfied, he picked up his laundry
basket and headed for Noah’s at the ungodly hour of nine a.m. on a
weekend, which was when Noah told him to drop it off.

Noah answered the door on the first knock and
smiled when he saw Oscar— like, really smiled. Those dimples were
in full display for him.

Oscar resisted the urge to smile back.
Cool
, he reminded himself.
Keep it cool
. “’Sup,” he
said. “Here it is.” He held out the laundry basket.

Noah accepted it. “Great. I’ll drop it off at
your place when I’m done— what was your apartment number
again?”

“No,” Oscar said quickly. He didn’t want Noah
anywhere near that black hole. “No, I’ll just come get them
whenever. Text me.”

“Give me a couple hours.”

“Cool.”

Oscar went back to his apartment. That had
gone pretty well. He played Call of Duty for a little while, trying
as hard as he could not to get excited. Excited was the opposite of
cool. He didn’t want to blow this.

Exactly two hours later, he got a text from
Noah saying his laundry was done. Oscar made himself wait ten
minutes before responding. In spite of all his effort, he couldn’t
help but bound down the stairs with a certain spring in his step,
because the train to Bone Town had left the station.

Oscar knocked on the door and then leaned one
arm casually on the wall to give Noah a good, long look at his bod.
Noah opened the door, already brandishing the laundry basket. “Here
you are.”

Oscar was confused by this development. He
had thought Noah would invite him in to get the laundry. “Uh,
thanks,” he said, accepting the basket.

Noah stepped through the door and locked it.
“I’ve got to run— I’m going to miss my bus. My uncle is taking me
out to lunch.”

Oscar was stupefied. “I thought you were from
New Hampshire.”

“I am, but my uncle lives here,” he said.
“I’d love to chat, but I really do have to go. Good-bye!”

With that, he rushed away. Oscar stared after
him dully. The train to Bone Town had derailed. Had he even been on
it in the first place? He shook himself out of it. Fine.
ITAFineLICS. He stomped up to his apartment. He didn’t need him. He
could get anyone he wanted, whenever he wanted. He fired up Grindr,
but for some mysterious reason, no one nearby was looking for a BJ
at eleven a.m. on a Saturday morning. He hauled out his bong and
took several big hits, which sent him into a coughing fit. As the
coughing faded, his muscles relaxed. He went back to his game,
still feeling disappointed, but hey, maybe he’d have another shot
at him later. They had arranged for weekly laundry days, after all.
But then again, the longer someone was around Oscar, the less
likely they were to want to sleep with him. Oscar should probably
just give up. It had been a dumb idea anyway.

Five hours later, his phone buzzed. He
finished his toke before taking the phone out of his pocket. It was
probably Jeremy, wanting to go out. But it wasn’t Jeremy. It was
Noah.

Hi. Sorry for running out on you earlier. I
really had to catch that bus— my uncle made a reservation so I had
to be on time. I was wondering if you would like to come over for
dinner tonight?

Oscar sat straight up in his beanbag. The
train to Bone Town was back on track! He wrote back
immediately.

Yeah, cool, what time?

Around six?

OK. C U then.

He actually laughed out loud at his sudden
luck, but his laughter quickly died. He was high as balls and
reeked of weed, and Noah didn’t seem 420-friendly. He had two
hours, though. A cold shower would do wonders, for both the smell
and to bring him down a little, so he headed to the bathroom. He
obviously couldn’t wear the outfit he’d picked out before, but then
he realized with despair that he’d set the laundry down in the
living room. All of his clean clothing smelled of smoke now, too.
Plus thinking was real hard at the moment. He stood naked in the
middle of his living room, trying to force his fuzzy brain to
think. At last, a solution came to him:

Febreze.

Yes. That was the solution to all his
problems. He grabbed the bottle that he’d bought when Aneisha had
first started getting on his case. It had never been used, but no
time like the present! He picked out an outfit and sprayed it down.
Then he decided he might as well spray the rest of the clothes.
Actually, the whole apartment could use a good spritzing. Besides,
it was fun; the mist was so light and swirly and made this awesome
noise. He spritzed the beanbag chair, the carpet, his blanket nest
in the bed— even the garbage bags. It was only when he started
coughing that he remembered there was a reason that you couldn’t
Febreze your way to cleanliness— that shit was just as bad a stink
if you used too much of it. He knew that usually, but— well, high
as balls. He pried open the windows and turned on the ceiling fan.
At least the pot smell had lessened.

He glanced at the clock; he still had another
hour and a half to kill. He decided to take a walk to clear his
head and air himself out a little. The worst of the heat had left
the day. He was still pretty high; it made everything seem both
clearer and farther away, like he was looking at the world through
a telescope. As he walked through Hillcrest, he took in the smells
of the restaurants he passed, the chatter of the people on the
street, the short bursts of music coming from cars that passed by.
A cool breeze wafted over his skin. Palm trees swayed. Everything
seemed so… nice. He tried to imagine how Noah saw all of this;
after all, it was new to him. Oscar never really noticed these
things; maybe he should pay more attention.