Twenty-Three Arya
twenty-three
Arya
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Carley said, staring up.
“Should we be, like, saluting?” Arya asked, following her gaze.
Above them, perched on the downstage truss line, suspended thirty feet in the air, sat a bald eagle.
Like, an actual, symbol-of-America, brown-and-white, living, breathing, Endangered Species Act bald eagle.
It perched there, majestically backlit by the sun streaming in through the huge, floor-to-ceiling windows that made up the entire south wall of the Grand Ballroom.
Beyond, the silver humps of the Kauffman Center rose from the other side of 16th Street.
Arya wondered if Ben was there right now, rehearsing, and couldn’t help smiling.
This week’s pretend date had been to the zoo. The weather had been perfect. So far June had been mild, sunny, and just the right amount of humid where your skin felt good but your balls didn’t get stuck to your thighs.
Apparently, Ben hadn’t been to a zoo in decades.
His eyes had lit up like a schoolchild’s, taking in all the exhibits.
Arya had grown up going to the zoo once a year, had seen new exhibits open, old ones get remodeled, and, most importantly, the birth of Zumi, an endangered black rhinoceros.
She wasn’t so little anymore, but Ben had indulged Arya showing him all the pictures saved on his phone from when she was a baby.
Shit, Arya did not have time to get all wistful right now. They had an economic development forum to load in. And besides, it wasn’t like Ben was really his boyfriend.
“Are we even allowed to be in here with it?” Carley asked. “I thought humans aren’t allowed to mess with them.”
“I think technically it’s messing with us,” Arya pointed out. “How did it even get in here?”
“Loading dock?”
Arya rubbed his head. He’d dealt with the occasional pigeon during a load-in, but those were, generally speaking, easy to chase away. Probably because they could barely fly, and certainly not up into a truss.
But a bald eagle? Shit, were they committing a felony right now? It wasn’t their fault!
Arya groaned. “What did Dan say?”
Dan was the facilities manager for the convention center.
He fell into the genre of man Arya referred to as “Angry Santas,” though never in earshot of one.
He was on the fatter side, with a barrel chest, big arms, and a beard halfway down his chest. He had the long-suffering attitude of someone whose puzzles always ended up a piece short.
He was also the first person to jump in to help you if you needed it.
He’d complain the whole time, and probably drop a couple choice insults about your intelligence and how you managed to get into the predicament in the first place, but he’d help.
And then he’d wave off your thanks, as if they offended him.
Arya loved working with Dan. You always knew where you stood with him. (Namely, squarely in the shit, but at least you were in good company with the rest of the human race.)
“He’s in meetings at city hall all day.” Carley sighed. “He said his team would ‘try to take care of it.’ And then suggested we try air traffic control, PetSmart, the Kansas City Zoo—anyone else but him, because he was busy.”
Arya snorted. That sounded like Dan. He wondered what the meetings were about.
MME’s contract with the city as the preferred audiovisual vendor for the convention center was up for renewal this year, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time.
Their company was hanging on by a thread; if their contract with the city got canceled, or even shrank, they’d be royally fucked.
Arya knew Dan liked him, but Dan hated Mitchell, so who knew which way things would go.
His stomach churned as he thought about the latest expense reports.
So far the only new business Mitchell had brought in were a few one-off charity balls, which Mitchell had undersold because he cared about the causes, and because any revenue was good right now.
Arya had signed a three-year contract with a small local law firm to handle a series of quarterly seminars they were holding, but that was small beans. Nothing like what he needed to bring in.
He thought about the Holbrooks. He’d hoped they’d be at the preview event Ben had taken him to, but they’d been out of the country. He needed more face time with them: another meeting, a chance encounter, something to try to move forward.
Arya blinked up at the eagle. It turned its head regally left to right, studying the floor. The Grand Ballroom was covered in panels of blue carpet in a swirling pattern that evoked the ocean (and, conveniently, hid vomit stains fairly well).
It wouldn’t reveal any fish, though.
Arya glanced at his watch. They were already an hour behind schedule, because they’d had to “negotiate” with catering (that is, fight them) to get access to the dock they needed. And now the eagle. He’d sent the crew for an early break while he and Carley sorted out what to do.
They had to get the show loaded in tonight.
The mayor was giving a keynote address at eight tomorrow morning, which meant they had rehearsals starting at six, and he did not want his crew here all night. They needed their sleep, and besides, the overtime would fuck MME even more.
He puffed up his lips and blew out a breath.
“Fine. Let’s try calling the zoo ourselves.”
“That’s never going to work,” Dan said at Arya’s shoulder.
His meetings done, he’d hurried to the convention center, camera in hand. Not because he was particularly bothered by the eagle—he just liked wildlife photography.
“Even vultures wouldn’t go for that,” he huffed, then raised his camera to snap more photos of Sam, which is what Arya had named the eagle, after the patriotic bald eagle from the Muppets.
Indeed, Sam was supremely uninterested in the frozen squirrel carcass on a wooden plank that the facilities team had put near the loading doors. Where had they even acquired such a thing?
Arya checked his watch again. They were two hours behind now, but the zoo had given them the contact for a raptor rescue nearby, and their conservationist was supposed to be here soon.
His phone buzzed.
Ben
Is he still there?
Arya
Still there
Apparently he doesn’t want any cedar plank roadkill
Ben
Arya started when Carley grabbed his elbow, reflexively locking his phone and stuffing it in his pocket.
“Look!”
Sam the Eagle seemed like he was finally getting ready for takeoff, but his eyes weren’t fixed on the squirrel. As he shifted and fluffed his feathers, his gaze settled on the windows, toward the Kauffman Center.
Arya had a sinking feeling right as Sam took off, wings outstretched, soaring majestically—only to bonk beak-first into the glass. His feathered body fell to the carpet without a sound.
“Shit!” Carley said aloud.
Arya crept closer, Carley right behind him.
Was Sam okay? Fuck, had they killed the symbol of America? A member of an endangered species?
Arya didn’t have time to go to jail!
“Where’s the fucking zookeeper?” Dan huffed as they rounded a stack of chairs and got a look at Sam. He lay on the ground on his stomach, wings outstretched, but his eyes and mouth were still open. He seemed to be breathing at least.
“I think he’s stunned,” Arya said. “Should we… put a blanket over him or something?”
“Let me call the raptor guy,” Carley said, backing away with her phone already out.
As it turned out, a blanket over Sam was the best plan. The raptor specialist—a trans man covered in tattoos, with a mullet and handlebar mustache—finally showed up a few minutes later. He gloved up, checked Sam over, and bundled him, packing blanket and all, into a large cage.
“I think he’ll be all right,” he said. “Just stunned. But we’ll check him over before releasing him.”
“Thanks,” Arya said, offering a handshake before realizing the guy’s hands were full. He rubbed his head instead. “Uh, anything else we need to do?”
The guy’s lips quirked. “You can probably get rid of the dead squirrel. Bald eagles don’t eat carrion.”
“I told them that!” Dan said.
They followed Sam out to the zoo’s van. Arya wasn’t sure whether to wave goodbye, hold his hand over his heart, or salute.
In the end, he just pulled out his phone.
Arya
All clear!
Ben
Good job, handsome
He wasn’t sure when they’d started using pet names in text, given there were no witnesses, but he supposed it was good in case Justin somehow got his hands on Ben’s phone at a meeting or something. Better safe than sorry.
Carley put her fingers to her lips and whistled at their crew, huddled in the parking lot on their phones. “All right, bitches, are we going to load this fucking show in or what?”
It was past one in the morning when Arya rolled up to the office, with his stomach growling and a headache building behind his eyes.
He knew he should’ve eaten something. He’d more or less bullied Carley into taking a thirty-minute break to grab a bite, but he’d been too stressed to get away himself. Even if he had, he knew he wouldn’t have eaten anything.
Normally, he’d have stopped by Aspire after a day like today. Grabbed some crispy shrimp off the late-night menu and a glass of whatever white they needed to finish off that night. David didn’t work late very often, but Arya knew most of the folks there by now, and they always hooked him up.
But Aspire’s kitchen had closed at midnight, while Arya and his crew were still getting the drape line to trim, and even the bar had closed at one.
So Arya had nibbled on a stale granola bar from the bottom of his bag before driving back to the office to grab a few extra bits and bobs they’d need tomorrow morning.
No… shit. It was already tomorrow now. He had to be back in less than five hours.
At least he lived two minutes away from the convention center. He felt sorry for folks with commutes.
He let himself into the office, peeved that someone had left the lights on and forgotten to set the alarm.
After the last theft-related fiasco (namely, someone stealing one of their trucks—fully loaded with chain motors and moving lights—and stripped it for parts before dumping it, gear and all, in the middle of Texas), their insurance had nearly doubled, and they’d gotten an upgraded alarm system to try to appease their adjuster.
But now it was the middle of the night, and the alarm wasn’t set, and Arya was hangry.
“Hello?” he called, because granted, sometimes people did work late, but they didn’t have anything on the schedule that would’ve required it.
And Mitchell had stopped entertaining his booty calls at the office after the time one of their interns saw things that could not be unseen when they’d come to pick up some extra DMX cables late one night.
Arya had made them contract with an HR firm after that. He’d threatened to walk away if Mitchell didn’t agree.
Thankfully Arya had won that fight.
“Hello?” Arya called again. It was well past April now, and well shy of Halloween, the two most frequent times for office pranks, but that didn’t stop him moving cautiously through the office.
A few years back, they’d had a cardboard standup of Nick Jonas that people kept moving around the office to try to startle people.
The worst had been when Arya had opened the bathroom door to wash his hands, come face-to-face with the standee blocking the sinks, and screamed, because he was not expecting another person there.
Carley had ribbed him for weeks after that.
Still, there didn’t seem to be anyone around, and no standees lurking around any corners.
He grabbed the extra gaff tape he needed, a roll of duvetyne, and a few adapters in case their client came in with some ancient corporate computer with weird ports. He swung by his office to snag a bag of emergency trail mix from his desk drawer.
He poured the mix into his mouth and turned off the lights, but then he noticed Mitchell’s office was still lit. Was he here working late? Arya rapped on the door.
No answer.
He cracked it open, peeked inside—
“Fuck. Mitchell?”
Mitchell was slumped over his desk, face mashed against the old-school blotter he kept, even though Arya hadn’t seen him use a pen in ten years.
Arya dropped his shit and wove his way around the furniture. He gave Mitchell’s shoulder a shake.
“Mitchell?”
Mitchell didn’t respond. Fuck. His back still rose and fell with breath—barely—and for a fucked-up moment, Arya wondered if Mitchell had stunned himself on a glass window like Sam the Eagle.
A horrible croak of laughter escaped his throat, but he clamped his mouth shut to stop any more. This was fucked up.
He pulled out his phone and called 911.