Chapter 10

Hands sweaty, breath quickening, you realize your anxiety is getting out of hand. The presence of a polycephalic dog should be enough to spawn anxiety such as this, but deep in your heart, you know this isn't the case. Doc's fine. Doc's no problem in fact. Your dreams of bellow-neck women are no problem. Even the thugs from UPMC are no problem. These are all challenges in the physical world and can therefore be addressed directly with running shoes, knives, boltcutters, lockpicking tools, garden hoes, pens, pencils, high-speed internet, whips, chains, cyanide toothcaps, attack raccoons, or any combination thereof.
The problem is Jeffy. The problem has always been Jeffy. Charming though she is, he's always been somewhat of a dominating supervisor. She came on strong to you the first day you were hired, and you've been dealing with his tongue-and-cheek advances ever since. But whose tongue? And whose cheek? At first you thought you knew, but now you're not so sure. The sodium lights blaze through the crooked blinds, creating one stripe of pale orange across Jeffy's bangs, another across one eye and the bridge of the nose, another across the other eye and check, and down, and down. Your eyes follow the topography of shadow stripe down Jeffy's face and neck.
Shit. What a dilemma. Reality hits you. You're horny as fuck, and you know if you take Jeffy home you'll end up having sex. And it'll be complicated. And there'll be drama. And it'll be messy. And it'll be sloppy. And it'll be exciting. And it'll be hot. So fucking hot.
Shit. You realize the long silence has gone waaaaay past awkward o'clock, and all you're doing now is trying to mask your excitement/fear/anxiety by taking deep breaths. Something has to happen now. Once again, you weigh your options, numbered:
1. You say whatever you have to say right there in front of Doc.
2. You insist on taking Jeffy someplace neutral, perhaps with lots of people around.
3. You take Jeffy back to your house and tell her your theory on raccoon-dog conspiracies.
4. You tell him in the kitchen.
5. You tell her in your room.
6. Jeffy on top.
7. You on top.
In the bathtub.
On the floor.
Against the wall.
Shit. No, not shit, like actual feces. Just shit. As in, make the goddamn decision already.
"Actually," you say, "My place it is."
Jeffy's mouth breaks into a quizzical smile, which you can see perfectly by the light of a pale orange stripe. "Seriously?" he says.
"Seriously," you say, "Right now, before I change my mind." There's no bother to lock the door, because with Doc there, anyone would be a fool to try to rob the place.
You bike down the alleyways, despite the higher chance of running into enlarged raccoon gangs or killer cyber-deer. It beats dodging traffic on Butler Street. Up 54th Street, up and up, and still up, and you're always thankful in moments like this that you don't ride a fixie. You lock your bikes to the bottom of the stairs at the top of the hill, where the road ends for vehicles and can only be continued by those pedestrians fearless enough to trek the stairway through the woods. This is the only way to get to your house, and it keeps the riff-raff out. Unfortunately, it's also a life-threatening endeavor every time you need to go home or leave the house. The woods are notoriously a haven for all kinds of creatures who may or may not want to kidnap you and eat you for dinner or plant cyborg parts into you in the name of science. The stairs are also overgrown with foliage and littered with broken glass.
Your leatherman has a battery-operated forcefield though, and you were smart enough to charge it up at the shop. Jeffy carries a taser and a switchblade. You climb the stairs quietly and get to the top without incident. "Great," you think, "that'll just mean double-unluck on the way down I guess."
Your home, as it were, is actually a half-finished house overlooking Lawrenceville. Someone paid an architect a hell of a lot of money several years ago to design this place, and then the money ran out, and the hill started collapsing down into 53rd Street, and the house was abandoned. The first time you saw it, you thought it was the most magical place in all of Pittsburgh. You finished the upper floor so that it's habitable all year round, but in the spring and summer you pretty much spend your house time on the still bare framed first floor, with the windowless exterior walls and the view of the whole city.
"I never get sick of this view," Jeffy says, "So, is there something you wanted to tell me about the raccoons?"
As you lean in close enough to feel Jeffy's breath on your face, you realize that of all the words poised on your tongue ready to come out, none of them have anything to do with raccoons.