Night of the Himbo Ch. 01

"Nah, I've got these scratches on my back that are driving me crazy."

"Scratches? How did you-" Alice stopped, and Mike could hear the penny drop. "Oh."

"Too much information?"

"No, no, it's just- I'm sorry, Mike. I just remembered a call I have to make." And she was gone.

Damn it, he thought. Alice and Zuzu were definitely together.

The rest of the week confirmed it. Alice avoided him, only occasionally looking at him -- studying him, almost -- when she thought he wouldn't notice.

Mike sighed. This was the price of a one-night stand. He was involved in their couple drama without ever having been in the same room with both of them. In the end, he decided there was nothing to do but let it go, hope that things between Alice and Zuzu were okay, and that he and Alice could get back to their work-friend status somehow, someday.

It would have been harder to deal with if he hadn't been feeling so good.

Tuesday morning, for the first time in forever, Mike woke up before the alarm. On impulse, he blew the dust off his old sneakers and went for a walk. West on Valley Spring, north on Colfax, west on Moorpark. Before he realized it, he wasn't walking anymore; he was jogging, sometimes even running. He finally had to turn back to get to work, but with energy left over.

The energy carried through his commute and into the office, where he assigned the day's script load in record time, raced through his own projects, and cleared his desk by 3:00. Relaxed and focused, he went into the department budget and cut out a few expenses that he'd been hesitating about forever (like the deadweight son of one of the senior agents, who could now be paid for by another department, or by daddy, for all he cared) and reallocated the money to bring on another freelancer fulltime.

And I owe it all to some good old life-affirming sex, he thought. Thank you, Zuzu, wherever you are.

Over the next two weeks, the wellbeing became Mike's new normal. It was almost like he'd been rewound back to his thirties. His sense of smell seemed sharper -- not always a good thing in the San Fernando Valley in August -- and his back (a problem for years) was spasm-free. He could follow two or three conversations at once -- helpful during the agency's social events, and something he hadn't been able to do since his thirties.

And (unless he was crazy) people were responding to the new attitude. Agents stopped by more often in person to get his take on their projects. Even Martha and Traci, the agency's notoriously glossy and hard-shelled front-desk team, smiled at him in the mornings.

Finally, three weeks after what Mike now thought of as "That Monday," Alice showed up at his office again.

"Howdy, stranger," he said.

"Uh, howdy," she smiled nervously.

"Are we okay?" he asked.

"About that..." she handed him an envelope. He took it dubiously.

"Am I being served?" he tried to joke.

"No, God no, Mike. This is me saying I'm sorry that I've been...whatever. Look, I have a travel reservation that I can't make. It's a hotel up in Cambria -- isolated, gorgeous. You can go up there, relax, beat the heat."

"Really, you didn't have to."

"It's already paid for. Otherwise, it would just go to waste."

He took the envelope. "All right," he said. "But the important thing is that we're okay."

"I hope so," she smiled.

It was only later on that he realized how wistful, even sad, it was - that smile.