he was attending soon. He was going as Adam
Ant and needed lacy cuffs sewn onto on his royal blue jacket.
Perhaps he might get lucky going into the office when there were
not too many eagle-eyed and needy employees around.
He made a quick stop for a coffee at the
small café next to work and, as he left, he waved cheekily at the
construction workers working on the scaffolding above the café.
There was one burly young soul called Frankie whom he rather liked
and who always wolf-whistled when he walked past. He wasn’t there
today but Leslie waved anyway. There were a few hoots and comments
and he waggled his arse in return.
Normally he wouldn’t have been so
flamboyantly camp in the vicinity of what he imagined was mostly a
heterosexual encamp—apart from Frankie, who’d made his desire to
have Leslie known—but they’d been working there for months and he’d
gotten to know them. He was still on the fence about taking Frankie
up on his offer. The guy seemed very sweet but a bit innocent.
Leslie rather liked them a little more experienced, even older.
Laverne made it a habit to send coffee and
cake over to them every now and then to keep them sweet. She was
philosophical about the noise and dust that swept through their own
offices. “At least if I keep them a bit happy, they’re happy to
return the favour,” she’d said one night. “The other evening, I had
an important gentleman from Japan here and they stopped twenty
minutes earlier with all the drilling and stuff so I could have my
meeting in peace. They scratch my arse, I scratch theirs with
treats. It works well.”
The lobby of the quaint old office building
was quiet, with only the elderly concierge sitting behind the worn,
scratched desk as he read his copy of The
Sun . Stuck on Page 3, Leslie noticed with a grin. The man
waved at Leslie, who walked over to the old lift, the one that
still had the pull-down metal gate, which creaked ominously as it
travelled to the third floor.
“Afternoon, young Larry. You do know it’s a
weekend, don’t you?” He scowled. “Not that them lot next door care.
Bloody noisy gits, the lot of them. Why they have to work on a
weekend, I don’t know.”
Leslie sighed as he waved hello. Sid’s
constant moans at the workforce next door could get a little
wearing. “Yes, Sid, I do. I’m just here to check something
out.”
The concierge insisted on calling him Larry.
No amount of conversation to explain that his name was actually
Leslie had ever got Sid any closer to remembering it. It was easier
to simply accept the name change even though Leslie hated it. It
reminded him of a game called Larry the Lounge Lizard his older
brother Nathan had used to play years ago.
“Well, beware. The cleaners are working up on
your floor, and you know what that young Adrian is like. Bloody
handsy little bastard, wasn’t he, at the last Christmas party? If I
recall, he was all over you like bloody ants on a picnic
blanket.”
Leslie paused. He did indeed remember that
night when Laverne had needed to extricate Adrian’s tongue from
Leslie’s mouth and his greedy fingers from his crotch. Leslie had
been a little under the weather that night and his reflexes at
fending off unwanted attention had been somewhat impaired. The
words ‘voracious octopus’ sprung to mind.
“Oh, thanks for the warning. I’ll do my best
to avoid him.” Leslie pressed the button for the lift and waited.
When it opened, he stepped inside and listened to the sound of
cheesy music as the lift arrived at the third floor.
Leslie waited for the doors to open then
peered cautiously out into the corridor. It was empty. He tried to
tiptoe quietly down the corridor so as to not to attract anyone’s
attention, and he breathed a sigh of relief when he got to the main
office unscathed. He slipped in and closed the door behind him,
locking it for good measure. Let Bad Breath Adrian try and get
through that, he thought with a smirk. As he turned, someone