Lashings of Sauce

Post Mortem by Jordan Castillo Price

Post Mortem by Jordan Castillo Price

Equals sum A1 through A1133, and why was the damn cell throwing an error? Arthur Mubarek rubbed his eyes. Normally, finessing a spreadsheet was as easy for him as falling off a bicycle, but not now. He’d been out of sorts all week. On Monday he missed his bus. On Tuesday he brought the wrong container and ended up with nothing but gravy for lunch. By Friday, it was a shock he’d even made it to work showered, dressed and breathing. Usually Arthur had a mind like a steel trap, but lately his attention had been diverted to the impending disaster of his upcoming double date. Opposite his ex. Who’d been the one to dump him, and now, evidently, presumed he was so pathetic he needed to be set up with any gay man who had a pulse.

A bit scrawny, but he’s a nice enough bloke. Since everyone knows you’re a right royal prat, it’s not as if you can have your pick of the lot, can you?

Arthur glanced at the clock. Nearly five. Too bad he wasn’t authorized for overtime, like anyone with a job in the private sector would be. Then he could call his condescending ex and cancel the whole mortifying evening. But the Royal Mail was as unlikely to approve overtime as they were to send Arthur to an Excel workshop that actually taught him anything he could bloody well use. While the overtime excuse would clearly be a lie, maybe there would be a way to cancel the date without going into too much detail. Maybe…if he texted his regrets.

He pulled out his mobile. Can’t tear myself away—go on without me…

“Mr. Mubarek, sir?”

Was it that daft Federal Express carrier, the American with the blindingly white teeth who was always getting lost? Again? Arthur glanced up, and instead found a trainee in red dithering in his office door. Too bad. The FedEx chap did pretty good justice to a pair of navy shorts…even if he couldn’t figure out the lay of the office building to save his life. “Well? What is it?”

The young man in red stammered. “It’s…there’s…”

“According to procedure, you’re to present your issues to the manager.” Arthur turned away to finish his text. He sensed the trainee lurking there and pondered how long it would take him to go away.

The trainee was persistent. “But, sir, I am the manager.”

Arthur looked more closely at the lad he’d mistaken for a trainee, since he appeared to be, how old—twelve? Arthur glanced down at the text he’d been trying to compose and sighed. It was far too curt. If only there were some way to bow out gracefully—but unfortunately, if those words existed, Arthur had no idea where to find them. When he looked up again, his eyes fell on a name badge. “Mr. Pike, is it?” Arthur pocketed his mobile, steepled his fingers, and adopted a tone of deliberate patience. “What seems to be the problem?”

Pike’s cheeks coloured. “Well, it’s…um…no one can make out the label. Return address, neither.”

“Then chuck it in with the other undeliverable post.”

When Arthur pulled out his mobile again, it wasn’t with any intention of finishing his text. He did look in its direction, though, as he waited to see if Pike would take a cue and leave him alone with his date-dread. But Pike did not. He lingered there in the thick silence, unwilling to let the matter drop. Arthur humoured him a third time, and said, “Come on, then, out with it. What’s the real problem?”

Pike’s cheeks blazed. “If you could just…have a look, sir. Like, now.”

Arthur stood, muttering, “Bugger it,” under his breath. He wasn’t sure if he meant the text, the spreadsheet, or the blind date that promised to be perfectly ghastly. All of the above, he supposed. He pocketed his phone yet again and followed Pike out of the office. They were down the hall and about to turn towards the sorting room when it occurred to Arthur that Pike was still walking, directly past the sorting room door. Arthur followed, all the way to the lifts in the lobby.

Something was definitely amiss. Maybe everyone had realized they’d forgotten his forty-second birthday (just as they’d missed his forty-first) and chipped in a week late for a pack of party hats and a cake. Or maybe the dreaded blind date had sent a mortifying bouquet of flowers to the workplace in an attempt to come off as debonair. Arthur decided against asking any questions that would make it obvious he was in the dark. Although he was being led somewhere like a lamb to the slaughter, he reasoned that if he kept his mouth shut, he’d be able to act like whatever they were springing on him was no surprise at all.

Down they went, passing the second floor, and the mezzanine, until finally the lift settled, with a defeated lurch, in the basement. The doors creaked open. Pike’s gaze flicked toward Arthur, then slid away, and he forged intrepidly on. If there was cake involved, the staff had damn well picked the least appealing place in the building to have it. No one visited the dank, dim level but the caretakers and the poor sods in Heavyweight. If this was the floor Pike worked on, it was no wonder Arthur didn’t recognize him.

Pike strode to the door marked Overflow, paused, and swallowed nervously. “Right in here, sir.”

Arthur peeked through the door. There were no flowers, no party hats or cake.

But there was a very large parcel in the centre of the room.

The crate rested on a pallet like a relic on its dais. The atmosphere around it was hushed, and the lighting dim. Arthur looked up towards the ceiling and saw a few lamps needed changing, that was all. Still, the atmosphere in the dank little room could hardly be called anything but reverent. “What’s the problem?” Arthur asked, wondering if maybe he was just disappointed now because on his way to the basement, he’d sold himself on the idea of cake. “If it’s over the weight limit, you need form 12-D.”

“Oh, it’s over limit,” Pike said. “But me and the boys, well, we thought you’d want a closer look before we did something rash.”

“Me? What on earth for? I’m the Data Analyst.”

Pike stepped up to the huge parcel, glanced down at it, then treated Arthur to a beseeching look. “If you would, sir. Please.”

It was all a bit far to go for a lark. Most of his co-workers would find him too off-putting to go through all the effort of cooking up such an elaborate ruse. And something about young Pike’s eager reticence seemed a bit too sincere to be an act. Against his better judgement, Arthur closed the gap between himself and the crate, and he looked.

The bill of lading was, indeed, illegible. But the markings all around it? Eye. Falcon. Waves. Ankh.

Of all the stupid…“You mark up a big box with this bizarre attempt at hieroglyphics, and because I’m Egyptian, that’s supposed to be funny?”

“We didn’t—”

“And you’re the manager? That’s what you do down here in the basement? Draw on the big boxes and drag down people from the executive floor to take the piss—”

“No, sir. I didn’t, sir. I’d never take the—”

Arthur brandished his mobile. “We’ll see what the district supervisor thinks about the way you handle your time.”

“B-but the scan.”

Arthur paused with his finger hovering over the memory dial. “Scan? What scan?”

Pike’s fair cheeks were scarlet now, his hands shaking as he held out a clipboard. “We did a scan—on account of that stolen Nazi art they found in Croydon and the raptor teeth them other blokes tried to smuggle outta Germany…” He glanced down at the hastily-scrawled hieroglyphics, then met Arthur’s gaze again helplessly.

“Surely you’re not telling me there are mummified remains in this parcel.”

Pike swallowed. His Adam’s apple bobbed.

Arthur decided no one was that good an actor. He snapped the clipboard out of Pike’s trembling hands and glanced over the printout. The X-ray was very grey and poorly focused, but Arthur had to admit—the long thing did look an awful lot like a femur, the jumble of stuff in the middle could be read as a ribcage, and the round thing most certainly resembled a skull. He let out a low whistle. Mummified or not, he was dealing with human remains. It could be relic-smuggling, or a strange accident, or even a murder. How exciting it would be to take part in a genuine bust. He’d be interviewed for the local paper. Maybe even the News at Ten.

He’d have a damn good excuse to skip the double date, as well.

“Right. Well, it’s a good thing you set it aside. Paperwork will be a nightmare, but then again, it always is. It’s form 77-R you’ll want…or is it 76-R? I’ll print up a copy of each while you open it up for inspection.”

“We…ahem, I…was hoping…”

Arthur looked up sharply from the clipboard. “What?”

Pike was wringing his hands so brutally Arthur worried he might hurt himself. Pike’s gaze darted down, touched on the hieroglyphics, then came up timidly to meet the stern look Arthur was no doubt projecting. Pike’s mouth worked a few moments, then finally he resigned himself to coming out with it. “But what about…the curse?”

Arthur’s stomach sank. “The curse. Yes, of course.” The first time anyone at the workplace had made any friendly overtures towards him in months, and it turned out the bastard was taking the piss after all. “Run along, Mr. Pike. I’ll handle it from here myself.”

Pike continued his nervous act, stammering and shuffling and glancing anxiously at the parcel, but Arthur would have none of it. He planted his hands on his hips and gave the little twit his darkest glare, scowling fiercely, until Pike stammered and shuffled his way out of the room, and Arthur was alone.

So. What to do? This Pike i***t couldn’t have orchestrated the prank by himself. It was nearly five, but it seemed a call to District Supervisor Hobbes was in order after all.

Then again, a call this late on a Friday wouldn’t exactly endear Arthur to Hobbes, either. Particularly since he really didn’t have anything to report other than a large box with some insulting doodles on top.

Besides, maybe Hobbes wouldn’t do a damn thing about it, anyway. Maybe he’d think it was amusing.

At the very least, Pike and his crew were responsible for horseplay during their shift…although they’d probably insist they did it all on break. Fine. Misuse of Royal Mail property, then. Packing tape didn’t grow on trees. Arthur had just filed the benefit-cost analysis last week. He knew.

The caution labels were pricy too, and this thing was covered in them. Fragile: Handle With Care. This Side Up. Perishable. Urgent. Nothing about human remains, though Arthur supposed there wouldn’t be much call for a label like that. Besides, the purported scan was only part of the whole hoax.

What about the address label? It was covered in the same illegible hand as the bill of lading—Ship To: scrawl scrawl scrawl.

Not “Post To,” Arthur realized. “Ship To.” Which meant it was not domestic mail.

Well…that didn’t prove anything. There must have been a stash of odd labels somewhere in Heavyweight. Maybe the other shippers who were always hauling things in and out left behind a stock of sundry stationery like serious boyfriends left toothbrushes in the medicine cabinet after the fourth or fifth date. If you were lucky.

Arthur picked at the corner of the Fragile sticker. It peeled up, though a bit of cardboard fibre clung to its adhesive.

He checked his watch. He should have clocked off five minutes ago.

He sighed.

While the thought of foiling whatever booby-trap the tossers in Heavyweight had managed to rig was appealing, if he ever again wanted to find a second toothbrush in his own medicine cabinet, he supposed he would need to leave the phone calls and paperwork until Monday morning and get on with his dreadful date. It was with some regret that he turned out the lights and pulled the door shut behind him.

“Hello?”

Arthur paused in the hall. The basement’s acoustics were terrible.

“Hello?” Very muffled, but more panicked this time—and definitely coming from the Overflow room.

If that didn’t take the biscuit. Those pathetic dogsbodies had hidden one of their own inside the crate to pop out and terrorize him. It would be sweet revenge indeed to leave the man taped in a cardboard coffin all weekend—but with this new development, there was no way Arthur was going to let the matter slide now. He knew just the form—number 553-MC, employee misconduct—and he planned on having at least two names to write on it. He swept back into the room and turned on the lights. Snatching a box cutter from a nearby shelf, he held the blade aloft and prepared himself to gather a second oh-so-satisfying name to accompany the unfortunate Mr. Pike’s.

“So,” Arthur lectured the crate as he bent over the carton and slashed through the tape. “You’ve been found out—and lucky for you. I could have left you here to rot and you’d be stuck phoning your friends to come and uncrate you. Whoever you are, I certainly hope you’re not dressed like a mummy.” He hauled open the lid. “Because that would only embarrass us…both.”

There was, indeed, a man in the box, but he was not dressed like a mummy. In fact, he was wearing a rumpled suit. And a very chagrined expression.

Arthur attempted to place his face—of course it was one of those beefy, blondish, handsome types playing him for a fool, the sort of guy who everyone probably liked—vaguely familiar, though no name came to mind.

The man in the box raised his eyebrows sheepishly. His cheeks darkened slightly under his tan, but even his blush was charming, nothing like the flood of shame exhibited by young Mr. Pike.

Arthur glared.

The man levered up onto his elbow and said, “I can explain.”

Arthur frowned. The man had an accent—an American accent. Which would explain the label. “All right,” Arthur said, “who put you up to this? Was it Phillips? I always knew he had a problem with me.”

“I don’t know anyone named Philli—”

“Or the Customs liaison, Grifson, Gregson, whatever his name is.” How many of Arthur’s co-workers might be in on this humiliating scheme, anyway? “Unless you actually came through Customs. You didn’t…did you?” What if it went even further than the Royal Mail? What if multiple agencies were in on it? Arthur had never gone out of his way to ingratiate himself to his colleagues, but he’d never anticipated his lack of popularity to be so widespread. The thought of so many people at so many organizations going out of their way to humiliate him was enough to make his stomach seize up. “Anyway, security can sort it out. I’ve got better—”

“Wait.” The American sat up and reached towards Arthur, then pulled back at the last moment, as if Arthur’s disdain had singed him. “My name’s Beau…Beau Frazier. And I know this probably looks…well, actually, I have no idea how it probably looks. But before you bring in the big guns, please, hear me out.”

While Arthur was eager to put the whole ridiculous debacle behind him and continue on to the second portion of the day’s mortification, he supposed it would be prudent to determine the key players responsible for setting him up. And besides, now he wanted to hear what this “Beau” had to say for himself. “Go on.”

“It was just so hard to figure out how to approach you, y’know? You’re so striking and intense…actually, you always seem like you’re in the middle of something important. And how many excuses can I come up with to keep stalking around the third floor?”

He smiled shyly, and his bright white teeth cut the gloom of the half-lit basement storage room like a searchlight. Beau was not just any American…he was the American. The one who’d marched past the door of Arthur’s office so many times he appeared to be training for a parade.

Beau went on. “Looking for the time, the bathroom, the elevator, the right guy to sign off on the pallet delivery…heck, I could’ve done all that on the ground level. But I figured if I ran into you enough times, eventually we’d fall into a conversation.”

“And when we didn’t…you scrawled some hieroglyphics on a box and sealed yourself inside.”

“Er…that was my manager’s idea. Sophie, over at the Heathrow FedEx office. This is the first I’m seeing them—she drew them on after she taped me in.” He bent a flap of the sliced-open cardboard so he could see the designs. “Yikes, she’s no artist. Anyway, we thought they would be more effective than the stickers in keeping me relatively safe if the carriers here thought they were hauling something valuable. If we put your name on it, you might get in trouble, but since you were the only Egyptian working here, we figured…” He turned his hands palm-up and shrugged endearingly. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

So not only was this Beau person both gay and available—but he was interested enough in Arthur to concoct such an elaborate scheme as some sort of ice-breaker?

Bollocks.

In his chilliest voice, Arthur said, “You may inform your friends, Mr. Frazier, that my gullible colleagues did indeed route the mysterious parcel to me. Now that you’ve had your fun, I’ll give you ten minutes to dispose of the crate in the incinerator—that’s the last right at the end of the hall, if you possess a sense of direction after all—and then see yourself out before I call security.” He activated the stopwatch app on his mobile, and added, “Starting…now.”

Beau stood and stepped out of the cardboard crate, a shade taller than Arthur, and appealingly broad across the shoulders. And, of course, his muscular calves would be rippling beneath the legs of his trousers—Arthur could just picture them flexing. But instead of using his ten-minute reprieve to gather up the carton, Beau approached Arthur instead. And when a normal man would have stopped and held his ground, Beau kept right on walking, until the two of them were chest to chest. “I’ve got a better idea,” he said. He was so close, Arthur could feel the words playing across his lips. “I think I’ll use that ten minutes to convince you the only thing I was trying to set you up for…was a date.”

Arthur’s heart pounded. “If you’re trying to intimidate me, it’s not going to work.”

“That’s good.” Beau tilted his head, aligning his lips with Arthur’s so they would fit together just so, but he didn’t close his eyes. His gaze was profoundly knowing. “If you were intimidated, I’d feel guilty as hell about trying to do this.”

The kiss was slow in landing, like all the time zones between their circadian rhythms had contrived to stretch out their moment of first contact. Or maybe like Beau was giving Arthur a chance to slip away.

As if anyone could resist the pull of that gorgeous mouth.

Beau wet his lips right before he pressed them to Arthur’s. His mouth was warm and soft, and it felt just as decadent as it looked. It was a gentle kiss, but somehow firm, in that it was unhurried to the point of languor. He teased first at Arthur’s upper lip, and then his lower, with such deliberate delicacy that finally it was Arthur who gave in, and raised the stakes to tongues.

Beau’s gasp, when he let Arthur’s tongue slip past his lips, was small. Secret. Something meant to be shared only with Arthur.

Perhaps even something…vulnerable.

It wasn’t with any intent to grope the man that Arthur latched on to his shoulder—but what a shoulder it was, muscled from all that hauling. And lifting. And squatting. Well, the squatting probably didn’t affect his arms…it was just exciting to imagine. Besides, Arthur had seen hard evidence of the effects of manual labour while Beau strutted around in those tight navy shorts. He ran his fingers over the chiselled curve of Beau’s deltoid, and then lower, over the swell of his upper arm. And he wondered exactly how many dates it would take before he’d get to do the same thing skin-to-skin.

Or even better, with his tongue.

Fortified by Arthur’s obvious enjoyment of his endowments, Beau slipped a hand around Arthur’s waist, and with a fan of his fingers, sent an eager shiver down Arthur’s spine. They’d pressed up against one another at some point during all this kissing and moaning and fondling, and now Arthur found himself straddling Beau’s muscular thigh. And since he was ages away from being an impressionable lad who found himself sporting a clothes-prop in the cinema from seeing a few shirtless blokes in a film…as he finally came up for breath, Arthur was pleasantly surprised to discover that this single (if rather lavish) kiss had left him most definitely aroused.

Beau’s eyes, when he opened them, now seemed more dazed than knowing. And his lips were ever so slightly swollen. “Maybe it was a wacky idea,” he said, “but now you can see that setting you up for some crazy practical joke was the farthest thing from my mind. Right?”

“I’m not entirely convinced,” Arthur said, plunging forward before he second-guessed himself, “though I suppose I could hear you out…over dinner.”

They kissed again to seal this fragile deal, less urgently now, but with the restraint borne of the anticipation of things yet to come. When Arthur finally, regretfully stepped away from the embrace, he realized he’d been holding his phone throughout the entire encounter—and timing it. He glanced down and thumbed off the stopwatch. Nearly twenty minutes…and he could have kept going.

Was it mad to get involved with an American? No worse than tearing open a potential box of human remains in an attempt to catch co-workers out on a silly prank. Given the amount of times Arthur had been treated to a fine view of a pair of tight navy shorts in the past week alone, Beau could be found in London as often as not. And there was plenty of space in Arthur’s medicine cabinet for the toothbrush responsible for those blindingly white teeth, should things eventually come to that.

Beau looked down at the phone and flashed those teeth in a sunny smile. “Are my ten minutes up?”

“They are…but I suppose I might allow an extension.” Security would sweep the basement level soon, and they should probably phone in a reservation if they wanted a table anywhere decent. Although takeaway might be the better option…

First, though, there was a certain something that needed Arthur’s attention. He navigated to the text he’d been mulling over, and rather than heaping on more apologies or excuses, simply hit send. Was it curt? Indeed it was. But since “everyone knew” he was such a prat, he might as well use public opinion to his advantage.