"What's new?" Marsh asked blandly.

"I could rattle off the things I actively hate right now, but that'd waste an entire afternoon. Who'd've guessed that Diane Morey becoming paralyzed would be such a headache for me?"

Marsh thought for a moment. "You knew her in school, is that right?"

"Yup." Zephyr nodded. "High school. She was the loudmouth blonde; I was the creep who stayed just out of sight. Our turns of fortune might sound like any outcast's dream come true, but she never gives me the chance. First she screams for ten minutes straight about what a lousy job I'm doing, and then she's sobbing on my shoulder, and then out of nowhere she starts telling me what happened to all these people I haven't even thought about since I was 19. She resents me, pities me, and flirts with me in rapid succession. And then, after all that, she asks me to psychoanalyze her. 'What's wrong with me?' she asks. 'Why doesn't anyone like me?' I was this close to suggesting that maybe it's her roller-coaster behavior... but I know what she's going through. Maybe I don't know firsthand how much it bites, but at least I know that it bites."

"Yes, that bites," Marsh agreed in such a perfectly typical mild tone that Zephyr just had to laugh.

"But now that I've said all that," Zephyr added with a sigh, "the whole thing seems very, I don't know..."

"Silly?" Marsh offered.

"Yeah. No. You can't call a beautiful woman in a rage over being disabled silly."

"Surreal," Marsh tried.

Zephyr smirked at him. "All right, that works. Surreal, and wrong. I never thought I'd say I can't hate Diane, but I can't. She could run me over with her wheelchair and belittle me incessantly - not to say she doesn't try occasionally - but she's so... so human in her fury that I gotta sympathize with her."

Marsh nodded thoughtfully. "I've never been in that situation," he said. "I've never had a client I've known before, I mean. Oscar and I have had plenty of angry clients, but, well, Oscar deals with the worst of that, of course. But to face someone I used to know... I can hardly imagine it. I can't imagine what I'd do."

Zephyr shrugged. "There's only one thing you can do. Your job."

"Yeah," Marsh agreed. "Oh, speaking of which, there's something I want to run by you. I've been considering attachments for that joystick in the Tinley account. Reg suggested a removable clamp that can attach either to a stand or directly to his chair."

"Reg said that?" Zephyr took a moment to process this information. It was certainly a thought Reg could express, but the idea that he'd expressed it to Marsh... this was an improvement, right? Of course it was an improvement.

"He, uh, well, in his own way, but yeah, he effectively said that," Marsh said.

"Huh, okay. If you can find a place to install the--"

Zephyr stopped mid-sentence as Shauna appeared beside him in the doorway. She grinned at them in a way that made Zephyr suspect something was up. That, in his opinion, was never a good thing. He got ready to remind her that he was not the least bit interested in tai chi or tea made out of weeds or whatever her new obsession was.

"Hey, fellas," Shauna said, "I want to invite you to an event I'm involved in next Wednesday. Some friends of mine are getting their band together for a benefit concert, and I'll be performing with them. It's casual dress, $10 admission, free buffet and coffee and a bar. It's for a good cause - breast cancer research."

"You perform?" Marsh asked. "What do you do?"

"Well, I don't do this sort of thing very often... I'll just be doing vocals on a few songs. The guys in the band wanted a female singer just for this. I'm a little bit nervous, but it'll only be a small audience. So far it's just a few of my personal friends and whoever the organizers invite. Will you come? It'll be fun... bring Reg, bring whoever, and we'll all hang out and eat and have a relaxing evening."

"I wouldn't mind doing something like that," Marsh replied.

"Uh. I don't know. Reg isn't really into stuff like that. Music, people, breaks in routine. It's not something where people... I don't think they'll really... I don't know."

"Oh, come on!" Shauna insisted. "It's intimate, it's casual, you won't have anything to worry about. A couple of my friends who will be there are gay, and that place just has an all-around accepting atmosphere. Nobody's going to have a problem with you and Reg. And it's only $10 per person for a worthy cause. Come on, we'll have a good time. Here's the flyer with the address and time on it."

She unfolded two yellow sheets of paper, handed one to Zephyr, and put the other on the corner of Marsh's desk. Then she left.

Marsh looked at Zephyr. Zephyr looked at Marsh.

"What?" Zephyr blurted.

"Nothing," Marsh replied, but Zephyr knew it wasn't nothing. He knew that look. Marsh meant well, but Zephyr knew how prone he was to getting ideas. "I was just thinking--" Marsh started.

"You know," Zephyr interrupted, "I strongly object to that kind of thing. It's not fair to me. Or to Reg! I'm tired of being... of being... stigmatized. And patronized."

Marsh gawked at him. "What? What sort of thing?"

"You know exactly what sort of thing!" Zephyr found himself halfway between a roar and a sputter. He reached out and pushed the door shut so nobody else in the office would be tempted to join the conversation. He felt his self-control rapidly slipping away, and if he were about to dig himself into a hole, he wanted as small an audience as possible.

"No, I don't," Marsh insisted. "Tell me. How was Shauna patronizing you?"

"Not just Shauna. You're all starting to do it. A few weeks ago, Connor made some remarks about Reg and me that were totally out of line."

"Like what? Do you want me to reprimand him? Tell me what he did and I'll take care of it."

"He said... he said it was okay for Reg and me to k--" Zephyr stopped, suddenly realizing how utterly inane that thought sounded, spoken aloud. "But we weren't even kissing! We were just... I can't even remember now. He was doing his Reg things. I think he grabbed me or something. It didn't mean anything. Reg doesn't understand the meanings you guys affix to what he considers ordinary actions."

Marsh looked at him with that same look, but even more so. "Zephyr, I'm afraid I don't understand," he said. "I'm not going to worry about whether I want to or not. Just tell me, what is the problem?"

Zephyr hesitated. He wasn't entirely sure what Marsh wanted out of him, what Marsh already knew, or even how to go about expressing the thing that had him so annoyed. It was Shauna. It was Shauna, Connor, Oscar, even Mariluz, and the way they treated him like... like...

"I'm displeased with the attitudes around here," he started slowly, careful to keep calm. "The casual way you guys treat me hurts our professionalism. The way everyone treats everyone else. We're not supposed to be..." He struggled for the right word.

"Friends?" Marsh suggested.

"No!" Zephyr paused and realized that Marsh had it right. "Okay, maybe. No, what I mean is we're not supposed to be open. I mean... you..."

"I think I know what you mean," Marsh said. "You're uncomfortable with how Shauna came in here and casually mentioned that you're gay."

It occurred to Zephyr that he didn't like where this discussion was going, and that maybe he'd be better off finding some task to complete in the privacy of his own office. But he didn't move. He couldn't.

Marsh leaned forward on his desk. "I see your point. And I agree; it's a problem."

"You do?"

"Yes. And I only see one solution. Zephyr, lighten up!"

Zephyr tried to protest, but he wasn't sure how.

"Ever since I met you, and probably before that, you've been playing some weird charade. And I'll admit that I bought into it for a couple of years; I guess that just proves my own naivete. But after I found out about you and Reg, what was it, a year ago, you've been rubbing it in my face without dropping the charade. You get uptight if we respect your relationship, and you go berserk if we treat Reg like a person in his own right. This mixed-signal behavior is not working. You have it rigged so we can't win. If you want to talk about fairness, don't you think it's unfair to force your friends into this position? You won't let anyone be nice to you. Isn't that unfair?"

Zephyr took a few moments to find some words. "I... uh... I just can't. We can't allow MARZ to have that kind of anything-goes environment. It's inappropriate and detrimental. What Shauna just did was far too careless, and I'm only trying to protect us from hurting ourselves." Now he was getting somewhere. He pushed on. "I protect Reg, too. I don't object when you treat him, as you say, like a person. I can't ask for anything more! But there are times when he's difficult for anyone besides me to understand, and I don't want him to get hurt just because he's going through something that looks weird to people who don't understand him. You don't know him like I do; none of you do. When he can't explain what he's doing, he needs me to do it for him.

"Okay, maybe I get a little overprotective, but that's better than underprotective. Even a well-intentioned act could really hurt him.

"And I'm only being protective when I object to stuff like, like what Shauna just pulled. I'm sorry if you think it contradicts my protection of Reg. I don't think it does. We just can't start talking about personal matters all the time in here. It'd be one thing if MARZ were a closed environment, but it's not! People come in and out all the time! We can't just walk around making gay jokes and then instantly switch to super-business mode. I can't! Can you? The more openly you guys talk about it, the less I'm able to keep my sense of discretion. Are we going to be college roomies or are we going to be professionals? Let's make up our minds!"

Marsh blinked at him. "Okay, let me get this straight. You want everyone to act like your and Reg's relationship is a big secret because you're afraid to get too comfortable with it?"

"No, that's not--" Or was it? Was that what he'd said?

"And," Marsh continued, "we, in our ignorance, shamelessly accept you as you are because it seems like the appropriate way to treat a friend, and this interferes with the professional workplace environment?"

"Well, it does have the potential to do more harm than good. We work with a lot of children. Even Shauna knows the conflict of interest there; she mentioned it to me last week. And... there's the fact that basically what we're talking about is my sex life. Nobody else's sex life gets discussed, and that's automatically unfair. 'Gay' doesn't refer to my identity or my role in the company; all it refers to is what I do with Reg in private. So, yes, I'm uncomfortable. Wouldn't you be? Come on, Marsh, wouldn't you?"

Marsh smiled and shook his head. "I'm already uncomfortable. But I'm--"

Zephyr decided he'd had enough and informed Marsh of this as he stood up and left Marsh's office. He wasn't sure Marsh had understood his badly mumbled words, but hopefully the act of leaving made it clear. He turned the corner and entered his own office, and closed the door behind him. Hearing footsteps in the hallway outside, he quickly searched the piles of papers on his desk for something to do. Reg's notes for the Brandes account sufficed.

His door opened; he refused to turn around to face the person standing there, but he knew it was Marsh.

"Zephyr?" Marsh said. "Listen. I... hell, I don't know what to say. I'm probably worse at all this interpersonal stuff than you are. I'll try harder to respect your wishes if you'll be patient with me when I get it wrong. But I also want to suggest that you and Reg come to Shauna's benefit thing. We can relax and be ourselves, just friends. Maybe it'll work and maybe it won't; but it's worth a try. What do you say?"

By the time Zephyr got himself to spin his chair around, Marsh had closed the door and gone. He looked at the door for a long time.

"Sure," he finally told it.