Sunset Park by Santino Hassell

anything less than self-loathing about where they’d landed in life. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe those glazed looks of indifference masked people who were super gung ho about their wack jobs.
    “Uh-huh.”
    “This is the Individuals Department.” Sandra paused at the back of the office. I always imagined departments to have their own offices, but at LLS, they were denoted by a separate row of depressing cubicles. “This is where the cool kids are at. Everyone wants to get in this department.”
    I stared dubiously at the seven people manning Individuals. They didn’t look more upbeat than anyone else in the office, but they had at least decorated their crappy row. There were some random scenic posters on the wall, and a tired-looking cowboy hat hanging from the ceiling light. I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to signify.
    “Why?”
    “Because we keep it interesting,” one of the seven piped up—a woman with long black hair and a red dress. It looked like she was going to a party instead of communicating with freelance translators for small-time translation jobs. “Maybe you’ll find out how.”
    I didn’t care, but I smiled. Hopefully it passed muster. I was working hard on not looking like an asshole. David had nagged me all morning about my too-serious face as he fussed over my outfit. It would have been endearing if it wasn’t so annoying, and I’d interrupted his mother hen routine by demanding a kiss good-bye. It hadn’t happened, but the startled look on his face had made it worth it. And for just a fraction of a second, I’d considered doing it anyway. It would have given me something to think about on my new, boring commute. Not that our short make-out session the other day had ever left my mind.
    The taste of him was imprinted on my tongue, and I relived that kiss every time I jerked off. The memory was seared into my frontal lobe. Even now, my body tingled as I stood in front of this band of miserable office drudges and thought about the sensation of David’s crotch aligned with my own. As an experiment, our trial kiss had gone pretty damn well.
    Blinking, I stared down at the lady in the red dress. Getting hard while doing the introductory rounds would get me fired—though I wasn’t sure if that was a bad thing.
    “Rosalie, this is Raymond,” Sandra said. “He’s our new Phillip.”
    “Ohh….” Rosalie nodded, looking pensive. “That was fast.”
    “Is that the guy I replaced?” I asked.
    “Yeah. He was our other jack-of-all-trades,” Sandra said, leaning against the sandpaper-like wall of the cubicle. “Very sweet guy.”
    I groped around in my bag of canned responses to find one that might be applicable. “Did he work here long?”
    “Yes, for about a year.”
    I didn’t have a ton of experience in professional environments, but I was almost positive that about a year didn’t constitute a long time to have been employed at a company. Even a drudge factory like LLS.
    “Come by after work,” Rosalie said as Sandra started away. “We’ll give you the lowdown on our happy hour schedule and events.”
    “Uh. Okay. I’ll come get the… lowdown.”
    We bypassed more cubicles and approached an empty office separated by a glass wall. Inside were outdated computers with box monitors and various pieces of clunky audio equipment. The wires were tangled together in a knot beside the desk, and binders were haphazardly stowed away on a beat-up tan shelf. An ideal work environment.
    “This is the fishbowl. When we have a transcription job for you, you’ll be working in here.”
    “Will I be doing a lot of transcribing?”
    “Maybe a couple of times a week. Most of your energy will be spent with the facilities team and in the mailroom. That’s why I keep calling you the jack-of-all-trades. Your primary role is to keep this office running smoothly in different capacities, but you will also pick up the slack for various departments when it’s needed. We may even have you look