Work Text:
Pinned to the wall behind his head is an unframed photograph, of two men cheek to cheek. One man is grinning wide, thick-framed glasses skewed on a squarish face she thinks she recognizes, from some Netflix special that kept popping up at the top of the page. And the other, Mr. Kaspbrak, unsmiling but pink-cheeked and expression like he is biting his cheek trying not to.
“Do you like comedy?” Mariam says lightly. She sits with her back straight, hands open-palmed on her lap, because she read once that type of body language indicated honesty and sincerity.
“What?” Mr. Kaspbrak says, and for a moment Mariam is afraid she might have crossed a line with the small talk. But he doesn’t look offended, just confused.
“That’s Richie Tozier in the picture, right?” She gestures vaguely to the wall behind him, and he twists in his chair, turns his head to peek at it.
“Oh,” he says, turning back. “I suppose I do.”
He supposed. It was his picture. This, along with most everything about the man, confuses her read on him. She couldn’t tease much of anything personal out of him, nothing to strike up some light-hearted banter, make a connection. His desk was neat, few trinkets to tell what sort of person he was, only a picture frame facing away from her, an empty mug shaped like Gromit from Wallace and Gromit, and a messy stack of papers by the side.
“Anyway,” Mr. Kaspbrak continues, glancing down at her resume. “I see here you graduated from Berkeley. Good school. What have you been doing since then?”
She gives her spiel, about working and volunteering for nonprofits, teaching for a little bit on the side. He nods as she speaks, hums when she says something particularly interesting, makes a couple notes using one of those pink pens with the fluffy tops. She tries not to smile seeing him pull that out, but he seems to notice, laughs a little softly, almost fond, and tells her they were a gag gift. Besides this, big eyes and the thin pinkish scar on his cheek she noticed first about him, there is nothing else particularly characteristic about him.
In the end, and she is confident of this despite his overall poker face, he is impressed by her. His grip is firm when they shake hands, and she tries not to buy into the indication of a limp versus firm handshake, for sanity’s sake, but she still feels reassured. He leads her out of his office, and she notices as they walk that he has a slight but noticeable limp, leaning just a bit too far to the right.
He tells her to keep an eye on her email for the next week or so, and sure enough, he offers her the position, which she takes, pops open a bottle of champagne in her new, white-walled apartment and everything.
–
Mr. Kaspbrak is blunt, sort of mean but not like he means to be, voice fluctuating between barkish and gentle, like he was trying to make up for it. She takes it in stride, using his feedback to better her work, and he is especially pleased not when something is perfect to begin with, but when she takes something imperfect and returns it to him better. He says as much, albeit in not so many words, to keep up the good work, and her cheeks heat with satisfaction, and she works even harder.
On her days off, she calls her parents and reassures them she is doing well, making good money, impressing her boss. We miss you so much, they say. They ask her again, lightly but intending her to feel guilty about it, why she stayed in California after graduation when she promised she would come back home. People in California smoked too much marijuana. And it was too white for girls like you to ever be comfortable. When are you finally going to come visit?
She feels tired, consoling them. More tired than work ever made her but maybe just in a different way. Bone-deep. Of the heart. She makes promises to them she won’t keep, that she will visit soon, call more often than once a week, and feels that dutiful guilt, consolidates it, packs it neatly away to deal with later, or never, and says goodbye.
She calls her old university friends, off changing the world in different ways. Sofia wants to visit in two weeks, asks if she can stay with her, and she says yes, of course. She would love that, which is true. She scrolls through social media mindlessly, opens up a Netflix tab and Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier is at the top, a snippet of his special playing automatically. Normally she would scroll down and away, but this time something compels her not to.
He talks about his boyfriend, partner, soulmate—can’t seem to decide on what to call him and laments at the difficulty of choosing. About how he brakes for birds and then flips them off passing. He talks about his childhood, some convoluted metaphor involving an alien clown she is too tired to parse out the meaning of, self deprecates, waxes poetry about his boyfriend/partner/soulmate again. She can easily tell by his voice, his face and everything else about how he is when he talks of him, or else he was a very good actor, that Richie Tozier was very much crazy in love.
He’s funnier than she thought he would be. Which makes sense, since Mr. Kaspbrak was a fan, and the only way to make sense of that was if Richie Tozier provided a sort of niche, witty type humor. Which this is, sort of, though veiled as something a little different for general consumption’s sake, probably. She doesn’t laugh out loud, but she exhales out of her nose as it plays longer, which she allows it to.
She could have sworn though that Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier used to have a different kind of act, remembers his name thrown around in college a couple times, frat boys liking him in their blindingly worshipful way, most everyone else finding his jokes outdated and therefore offensive. Trashy, she remembers, like the name so implied.
Which, as it turns out, he was, once upon a time. Because she googles him and he is 6’1 and forty seven years old and boxy, sort of handsome in a way that you only realized after looking at his face for a while. He is openly gay, came out publicly six years ago in a somewhat lengthy but still confusing twitter thread, dropped off the face of the planet for two years, and then reappeared with a new brand, new special, a new person. But his old material is gross, overtly sexual, and womanizing. She cringes watching it, and exits out of the video quickly, before she starts to hate him on principle.
He is a changed man, though, says as much in his interviews but not only that it shows, too. Something about almost dying, repressed memories, some vaguely convoluted, dramatic story she has a hard time following. There’s an entire reddit thread about it, actual conspiracy theories about what happened to him, tracing him back to some little town in Maine, grisly murders, theories that maybe he knew someone that was killed, or something of that sort.
Mostly though he talks about his mystery man. His boyfriend/partner/soulmate. The meanest, sweetest guy on the planet, he says. In his most recent interview he has announced their engagement. He talks like he’s the luckiest guy in the world, which is sweet, and sort of rare to hear from someone with that kind of net worth. Mr. Kaspbrak, Mariam thinks, has decent taste in comedy.
–
One week before Christmas day the office holds a themed work party. Mariam dresses in a red dress and feels good in it, wears dangly earring shaped like christmas trees and gets a couple compliments on both, from Mr. Kaspbrak, who likes the earrings especially, and Natalia who works in marketing, and a woman named Beverly Marsh, who knows Mr. Kaspbrak and who is beautiful in a hard-to-look-away kind of way, an old friend visiting for the holidays.
Mariam drinks too much eggnog, kisses Mr. Kaspbrak on the cheek when they accidentally step underneath mistletoe, which he is surprisingly sweet about, and chats nonsense with the rest of the office for an hour or two. She feels good, and doesn’t much care if the alcohol was the cause of it. She feels warm, and social, and like a person established, who knew who they were and didn’t think so much about it.
Eventually though, as things usually go, she needs to breathe, and to be alone. She steps out into the hallway, pulls out a stick of gum from her little black purse and leans against the wall. She listens to the low hum of party chatter from inside, and hears amongst that, the distinct and nearby sound of someone else speaking over it.
She doesn’t mean to eavesdrop. It just so happens to happen. Mr. Kaspbrak is hunched over in the corner of the hallway, speaking softly into the phone pressed to his ear. And she doesn’t want to leave yet, nerve endings still a little sensitive, still a little overstimulated to return back to the party so soon.
“I wish you were here.”
His voice is louder in the empty hall. He must not think anyone is around. She feels vaguely guilty to be hearing this, but too curious to allow it to stop her. There is a pause as the person at the other end speaks.
“I know,” Mr. Kaspbrak says. “You’re just stupidly good with people, and I’m. Trying not to be an asshole.” Another pause.
“Stop being so nice to me—it just makes me miss you worse.”
Christ, she should probably leave. But she feels like the soles of her shoes, black flats with tiny bows because she never learned to walk in heels, are glued to the floor. She’s never heard Mr. Kaspbrak speak outside of the office, with such sincerity, softness, even teasing. She has a very specific and rare realization that this person in front of her existed outside of her own schema of reality, another version, maybe multiple versions, that she knew absolutely nothing about.
“Yeah,” Mr. Kaspbrak says, his voice like he is smiling, words punctuated by pauses every now and then. “Yeah, she’s here. You asked her to come see me, didn’t you? Uh hu. I know. Okay, yeah. Fuck off. Okay. I love you.”
Another longer pause, and he laughs and Mariam realizes also that she doesn’t think she has ever heard him laugh in the office before, besides a soft, subdued kind of chuckle. This is lighter, bubbly, entirely uninhibited. “That’s a little overkill, don’t you think?”
At this point a trickle of deeper, more pronounced awareness seeps into her, and she realizes again she really really should not be hearing this. It was just that she had never heard him this way, never seen him outside his office version of himself and it was nice to bear witness to it. To know that someone could be so good at their job, so intent and focused and hardworking, almost to a fault, and still have a life outside of that, someone to love and who loved them back, someone to smile into the phone at and mess their hair up listening to. Mariam feels a hazy longing for it, and an odd, distinct yet pleasant assurance of something, seeing his hair stick up as he runs his hand through it, laughing again.
Maybe she was being creepy, thinking this. Definitely creepy listening to it. So before the conversation ends, Mariam leaves the hallway, returns back to the party. And Mr. Kaspbrak returns ten minutes later, a little less tense than before, whispers something to Beverly Marsh that makes her smile bright and then goes out of his way to socialize, shake hands, chat about Christmas plans.
And she watches this and wonders who the woman is, that was going to marry him, because his right ring finger glints with a gold band, and she had seen the post-its on magazines for cake and suits and venues on his office desk when she came in to talk with him, and even answered a question about flowers he asked of her once. And sometimes during a meeting she caught him twisting the ring with his thumb, and looking off into space like he was thinking of something else before snapping himself back into reality. Who, she thought, made him so gooey, and sweet and unabashed at a nerve-wracking party after just a short phone call, and made his voice sound that way, and his cheeks and nose dusted with a ruddy, pleased pink?
Maybe she was being close-minded though, presumptuous, an asshole like Mr. Kaspbrak apparently thought he was and like everyone told her he was, too. Maybe he was a nicer man that he let on, and simply chose not to show that in the office, and so people assumed he was just that way all the time. And maybe he loved just as much as everyone else loved. Maybe even a little more than, from the look on his face when he checks his phone, and sees a message that could only be from her, and slips it back into his pocket, biting his cheek not to smile.
–
Sofia comes to visit, and Mariam takes her to the Saturday farmer’s market on her day off, wandering around with a knit basket she used only for such occasions and a bag of caramel kettle corn they dip into as they roam the stalls, holding up glass earrings, sampling honeys and jams, getting Tarot reading from a nice old lady with a smokey voice. The sun warms quickly, so they buy iced lemonade, too, freshly squeezed, and sip at them on a grass patch by the waterfront for a little while before Mariam gets up to buy some fruit to complete the picnic.
She meanders through the stalls, searching for just the right fruit and finds a stand with strawberries, blueberries, raspberries sold by the paper carton. She stops there, accepts a sample from the lady working, and then reaches for the most piled high carton of blueberries. Her hand accidentally bumps someone else’s, reaching for the same berries, and she draws it quickly away.
She looks up, apologizing, straight into the face of Mr. Kaspbrak, who is frowning before his face slacks up, recognizing her.
“Oh,” he says, startled. “Hello, Mariam.”
“Hi, Mr. Kaspbrak.”
“Uh, you go ahead,” he says, gesturing towards the berries. He looks a little like he is mourning their loss, though.
“You should have them,” Mariam says, and picks up the carton next to it before he can try and insist otherwise. He thanks her awkwardly, picks it up and then pays the lady for hers, too, before she can stop him.
“Thank you,” she says. “I didn’t know you came to the farmer’s market.”
“Oh, my fiancée really likes the buskers. And it’s the only place I trust to buy produce. Grocery store organic is bullshit, you know.”
She has never heard him use the word bullshit before, much less to refer to organic produce. He sometimes cursed at work, but in the most unfathomably formal way she ever knew someone to. And that one time she caught him mid-brawl with the semi-functional coffee machine. And also once in the parking lot when he noticed a new ding on his car door. So maybe he did curse at work.
He starts going on about organic produce then, how the whole thing was a marketing scam to overprice people for the same exact produce as nonorganic, and how regulations for organic farming were ridiculously lax, and Mariam listens, a little distracted by his attire, general gesture and character, before his phone dings with a notification. He slips it out of his pocket, grimaces at the notification.
“Sorry,” he says. “I have to go stop someone climbing my fiancée for a photograph. It was good to see you, though. Maybe you can meet each other another time. The cheese stand at the end just there is excellent, by the way.”
Which is a lot in one go. Climbing his fiancée? Like… a tree? Was that supposed to be innuendo? How did he know she liked cheese? Scratch that. Everyone liked cheese. This was not something singular to her. He pronounced fiancée with the accent, unlike most other people she knew. Mariam nods, feeling a little dazed.
“Sure, I’d like that,” she says. “See you on Monday, Mr. Kaspbrak.”
He leaves then, and she makes her way to the cheese stand and buys some expensive cheese and a jar of fresh raspberry jam to go with it, which are both really quite excellent. She thinks, walking back to where Sofia is waiting for her, about Mr. Kaspbrak wearing faded jeans and a flamingo-printed button up too big for him, unbuttoned over a white sleeveless shirt. And that his cheeks were pink like he had spent too much time in the sun that whole afternoon. And also, that she should do some research on organic produce when she gets home.
–
That Monday, Mariam works through a slog of gross paperwork, organizes her excel spreadsheet via color-coding, and sips at cold coffee. She makes notes, checks and sends emails, eats lunch early and goes for a short walk around the building before returning.
Not five minutes after she sits back down, back aching dully, a man enters the office, tall, broad-shouldered, hair dark and curly and disheveled but almost like it’s on purpose, and holding a plastic bag of takeout in one hand, an iced drink in the other. She blinks at him twice before she figures out why he looks so familiar to her.
“Hello,” Richie Tozier says, casual as ever, and now standing directly in front of her desk.
“Um, hello,” Mariam says, and then, stupidly, smacking herself mentally upside the head for it, “aren’t you famous?”
Richie Tozier grins, and it looks just like the photograph in Mr. Kaspbrak’s office, but this time in actual person. “Unfortunately,” he says. “Eddie in a meeting?”
“Eddie?”
“Right,” Richie Tozier says like he has realized something. “Mr. Kaspbrak?”
Oh. Of course. Mr. Kaspbrak had a first name. He was, in fact, a real, actual human. She had just never heard it used before, let alone shortened to a nickname. Eddie. It fit, despite her initial inclination to think otherwise. Better than Edward at least, better even, than Mr. Kaspbrak.
“Oh, yes,” Mariam says. “Did you have a meeting scheduled with him?”
She can’t think of a reason why Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier would need his risk analyzed. And also how he got past Grace the front desk secretary. There wasn’t much risk in comedy, and the sort there was they usually ignored for a terrible and often offensive punchline.
“I guess so,” Richie Tozier says thoughtfully. “Could you let him know I’m here? Grace is out and my phone is dead and he always says I mess up his groove when I barge in in the middle of something. My face distracts him or something.”
“Um,” Mariam says, trying to understand all of that. “Sure thing, Mr. Tozier.”
He sort of winces at that title, and she does, too. She pages Mr. Kaspbrak.
“Mr. Kaspbrak, there’s a Richie Tozier here to see you?
“Richie?”
“Yes.”
“What’s he—okay. Give me two minutes and you can bring him in.”
She hangs up. “He says two minutes,” she says to Richie Tozier, who nods, leans awkwardly against the closest wall, and sips at the drink in his hand even though she can see “Eddie” written clearly in black sharpie on the cup, and so it must belong to him. She can smell the food from here, and regrets her vending machine lunch, stomach grumbling.
“Want some?” Richie Tozier says, because she was probably gazing longingly at the food like a starved wolf. “I got an extra curry because I couldn’t remember if Eddie ate breakfast, but he can just have mine.”
“You bought that for Mr. Kaspbrak?”
“Yeah,” Richie Tozier says, sets the drink down on her desk and shifts around in the bag before plopping down a carton of rice and a plastic container of something that smells like utter heaven in front of her. “You’re gonna have to get your own fork or eat with your hands though, sorry.”
“Thank you,” she says, bewildered. “Are you um, friends?”
“With Eddie?”
“Yes.”
“Best. You?”
“I work for him,” Mariam says.
“So, not friends?”
“He doesn’t really smile,” she blurts out. Which is absurd, unprofessional and sort of rude, and also not entirely true, and she has absolutely no idea why she says it or why she says what she does next either, only that something about this Richie Tozier makes her want to spill her guts out to him. He was big, but soft, she thought, with eyes made larger behind thick lenses, and he looked at her like he wanted to listen, like that was the only thing he was here for. Like he had all the time in the world to. Or maybe she was, quite simply, lonely.
“I mean,” Mariam says. “I haven’t seen him smile unless he’s on the phone with his fiancée, or eating.” And that one night at the party, with Beverly Marsh, in a different mood she had ever seen him in and never saw him in again, afterwards.
“Cute,” Richie Tozier says, sort of faraway, a small smile on his face. She plows forward, unthinking.
“And uh, a lot of people used to warn me he was an asshole, when I first started.”
Richie Tozier raises a brow, surprised, a little curious or maybe even amused at the notion. “Are they allowed to say that?”
“It’s mostly just office gossip,” Mariam says with a shrug. “I don’t think he is. An asshole, I mean. Or if he was it was before my time. He just works really hard, and comes off kind of blunt, and people are sensitive so they hold grudges, you know?”
Richie Tozier nods, enraptured, and Mariam looks down at the fancy watch on her wrist, a gift she gave herself with her first paycheck, realizes it’s been long enough, and rises from her chair. “I can take you in now.”
“Cool,” Richie Tozier says.
And so Mariam leads him to Mr. Kaspbrak’s office and Mr. Kaspbrak opens his office door before she can knock, and Richie Tozier waltzes up to him without a care in the world. Mr. Kaspbrak is sort of smiling softly in a way she has not seen him smile before except on the phone with his fiancée that one time, which is weird, and says to him “you’re early.” And then Richie Tozier leans down, their height difference a little bit comical, and pecks Mr. Kaspbrak on the side of the mouth.
Mariam blinks, watches the quick, easy movement of Mr. Kaspbrak’s hand to the small of his back as it happens, watches it then slip away when Richie Tozier moves to enter the room, but tug at the hem of his shirt lightly before dropping entirely. Richie Tozier disappears behind the wall with his bag of food and drink and Mr. Kaspbrak, who is still standing there, looks to Mariam.
“Thanks for bringing him, Mariam. He gets lost easily.”
Which is obviously a joke–it was just a hallway–but it takes her a second to catch on to that. Mostly because it’s not very funny but also because she is too busy reevaluating all previous notions of her boss, and Richie Tozier.
“Uh, no problem, Mr. Kaspbrak,” Mariam says, and the door closes behind him and she stands there just a moment longer, mulling over this new revelation.
Mr. Kaspbrak was engaged. To Richie Tozier, the famous comedian.
She makes her way back to her desk, sits down, types his name into the google search bar. She realizes quickly, that their relationship had been obvious the entire time, and that she only did not see it because, simply put, she did not think to. She thinks, guiltily, that she should take some time to reassess why that might be, to pinpoint whatever biases, normative ideas and such, might have caused this to be a revelation. She thinks also, that in retrospect a lot about Mr. Kaspbrak made much more sense now, and then wonders if that is an appropriate thought, or if it was simply just true.
In most recent news, a tabloid no less, there are paparazzi photos of Richie Tozier at the farmer’s market. He is grinning down at another man, who is dressed in a flamingo-printed shirt billowing out behind him a little, wiping something off his face with his hand. There is another, of the two of them side by side and hand in hand, the inches of height between them stark. Another, of Richie Tozier seemingly fending off a group of young fans by the waterfront, the same little man by his side, unmistakably Mr. Kaspbrak.
She eats her curry, which is delicious.
–
“No, Richie. Not the fennel kind. I will not kiss you if you brush your teeth with that, no. Okay, yeah. Also can you grab those gluten fr—oh, Mariam! I gotta go, Richie. Love you, too. Okay, see you at home. Bye.”
He hangs up the phone, twists his chair around to face her.
“Sorry for interrupting, Mr. Kaspbrak,” Mariam says, seating herself in front of him, laptop in her lap.
“You’re fine, Mariam. He says hello, by the way, and uh, how was the curry?”
“Really good, tell him thank you,” Mariam says, and laughs gently, and they both lapse into a momentary, awkward silence. She should open up her laptop, show him the spreadsheet, get some feedback. This was, after all, what she had come in for. But something else pokes at her insides, distressed and requesting attention.
“Mr. Kaspbrak,” Mariam says. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
“If it’s about the scar on my cheek, it was a rooster fight,” Mr. Kaspbrak says. A joke. Not a very good one, but she smiles. He laughs awkwardly at himself, inhales. “You can.”
“I don’t mean to be unprofessional,” Mariam says, prefacing herself. “You just. You’re really, really good at your job, but you also have a life outside of it. I mean, with Mr. Tozier.”
“You don’t have to call him that,” Mr. Kaspbrak says, with a small laugh. “Go on?”
“Okay, um, you love him, right? And he obviously loves you.”
“Yes.” He says this without no hesitation, no attempt to veil it, and it is reassurance that he was speaking the truth.
“So, how do you do that?”
Mr. Kaspbrak gets that furrow between his brows, like when some numbers on a spreadsheet don’t add up, or someone doesn’t articulate themselves well in a meeting, or he waits too long to drink his coffee and when he takes a sip it’s already gotten cold. His mouth quirks at the side, scar twitching at the slight movement. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean…” Mariam exhales, a little too heavy, thinks of how to articulate herself and comes up short and frustrated. “I suppose I’m just afraid I’ll get so wrapped up in work, because I really do love it, but also because that’s what everyone says is important to be successful in this world, that I’ll forget to, I dunno, find someone.”
“Oh,” Mr. Kaspbrak says, and the look on his face is sort of taken aback. “I’m not so sure I’m the best person to ask.”
She waits for him to go on, because he looks like he will. Almost says something in the silence before he starts.
“Listen. Mariam. I spent three decades of my life wasting it. I did nothing but work, sleep, and eat. That isn’t life, really, I’m sure you already know that. But I thought it was normal. And then I had, I guess, an epiphany of sorts, but in the form of a rather life-threatening injury.”
“I’ve heard rumors about that.”
“I’m sure,” Mr. Kaspbrak says, and seems to find it amusing. “So you know, none of them are even close to the truth. I can’t actually tell you that, for a few reasons but mostly it just wouldn't be a fun rehash, but I spent half a year in the hospital recovering. You’ve noticed my limp?”
“Yes.” She had, the very first day.
He nods. "I have a lot of pain in general. Nothing I can’t deal with but it does get in the way sometimes. That’s okay though, because I learned a lot about myself that year. I remembered a lot about myself, too. And I found Richie.”
Found, he says. Like he had lost him.
“I don’t think you need to tempt death to figure out your life,” Mr. Kaspbrak says. “That you’re asking me this right now, that says it. You already know what’s most important.”
“What?” She asks anyway.
“You’re smart. You work hard. You shop local,” Mr. Kaspbrak says, another joke. He laughs, comes back to himself. “That’s all important. But it’s not life . So what is?”
Love, she thinks, startling herself with the realization. It was love.
“I think I get it now,” Mariam says. “Thank you, Mr. Kaspbrak.”
“Okay,” Mr. Kaspbrak says, and smiles awkwardly, like he doesn’t know what the thanks was for. “Let’s go through your numbers?”
“Yeah,” Mariam says, opening up her laptop. “That sounds good.”