Rats and Texts

Last Sunday, Elijah had the choice between spending an hour in the beautiful sunshine attending Luca’s soccer game and coming to the office with me to sit quietly in a darkened, airless room while I rehearsed a new business pitch.

He chose the airless room with zero hesitation.

I was secretly pleased. I can feel my special little boy sliding away from me, with school and friends and other junior high obsessions. I relished the chance to spend a little forced quality time with him. Plus, I wanted to show off his insane hair to my co-workers.

The trip to the office was uneventful, except for our ongoing battle of whose music is worse. Kids today. You can’t tell the boys from the girls, I tells ya (shakes rolled up newspaper in the air).

Eli loves to visit my office. He loves the huge glass buildings, the fancy cars, the exotic animals. Like the giant dead rat oozing blood from every orifice we almost stepped on. This thing was gnarly. Even I, a seasoned dead rat observer, was grossed out.

I plopped Eli down at my desk with directions to the bathroom, snack area and the conference room downstairs where me and seven of my co-workers were interpreting “Sunday office wear.” I preferred a sweatshirt and jeans. My CEO wore a beautiful sport coat and loafers to spite me.

While I didn’t threaten Eli, I told him to think hard about how urgently he would need to barge into our rehearsal. Interrupting with an anecdote about something funny a Youtuber did on Fortnite was not good for my career.

Midway through our meeting, I got a mystery text from Diana that read, “Dadcomeupstairsrightnow.”

My first thought was Luca was texting me from our home, wanting to tell me an anecdote about something funny a Youtuber did on Fortnite. But then it quickly dawned on me it was Eli, who had hacked Diana’s text app with his iPad to send me a message. Was he being attacked? Was he lost? Did he find my secret whisky?

I excused myself from the meeting with a smooth excuse like, “I have to poop!” and raced upstairs. I immediately saw Eli had locked himself out of the floor and was pacing around the elevators. I thought about leaving him out there as a practical joke, but he was doing that little hand shaking thing that signifies a rapidly coming panic attack.

I let him in and he told me a harrowing tale of cutting through glass doors on his way to the snack area. I returned him to my desk and finished my meeting. Afterwards, we ate al fresco at a restaurant under the Trump building.

On our way back to my car, where the dead bloody rat was mysteriously gone, I tricked Eli into standing under the Trump sign and snapped his picture. I now have liberal Evanston blackmail in case he ever wants to refuse hanging out with me.