Читать книгу Cubicle Envy - Geoff Jarok - Страница 8

-Let’s begin to slice up this pie-

Monday, April 13, 2009

“What’s today’s date?” Kelly made a general query to the lunchroom

“April 13^th,” Dennis chimed in.

Kelly was fiddling around with her Blackberry. “I can’t believe it’s already April.”

Lisa pressed, “I can. You know why? Because people keep saying to me ‘you must be busy’ and then they touch me on the shoulder as if I just lost a baby to the ‘Gitis’ or something. And then I let them go on ‘…It’s almost April 15^th! Just hang in there.’ Then I say ‘Yup, I can’t wait for the tax season to be over so I can go to Sugar-Candy Mountain and dance around with all the other accountants.’ I had jury duty a couple weeks back and I mentioned to some guy that I was an accountant.”

“You need to stop talking to strange men,” Tim cut in.

“I know. Anyway, he says he was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about how they’re looking at eliminating the income tax in favor of a value added tax like they have in Europe. He says, ‘I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that because it will pr’olly mean your job is eliminated.’ Holy Christ, if he actually knew what he was reading about. I told him that once Obama changed the tax structure we wouldn’t really need the IRS anymore so they’d just do audits…on everybody. Guy’s probably at home polishing his weapons stash. Her voice lowered to a fake grumble – I don’t do taxes. Did you know, Philip, that not all accountants actually do taxes?”

“Yes, but most of them actually do some sort of work during the day.”

“You kill me Philip…Flip…Fa..lip. Hey Chris, how was your doctor’s appointment?”

Chris put down his Reuben sandwich for the attack while wiping his mouth with a napkin.

“Goo-ood,” he spouted in two syllables.

“Did he call you with a prognosis?”

“No, no calls.”

“Is something wrong?” Kelly could see Chris was a little off.

“Chris has a sad penis because his girlfriend is bored. Maybe she has a guy on the side,” Lisa smirked.

“She doesn’t have a guy on the side and there’s nothing wrong,” he said matter-of-factly so that Lisa wouldn’t prick any harder.

Chris wasn’t usually the one to end conversations so Lisa politely jumped back to her rant.

“Did they ever jail those people in New Hampshire that refused to pay their taxes? I thought they got the FBI in there, but I’m not sure if they surrendered or what. If you don’t want to pay your taxes because you’re cheap that’s fine. It’s stupid, but whatever. But don’t try to sell me on this shit that it’s unconstitutional. Slackers.”

Chris was still trying to figure out if he was the only one who didn’t know what Donna was up to. With Jack?

When they were back to the cubes, Chris sent an IM to Lisa. “What did you mean about Donna?”

“Eh, that’s nothing. I was just making shit up. You know, I get a little crazy sometimes.”

He was mostly convinced, but how did Jack know Donna? That didn’t make any sense.

“It’s eight o’clock in the Netherlands, what the hell are they doing?”

“They’re only six hours ahead,” Chris corrected

“OK, well then they’ve got an extra hour to screw around. I don’t know who they’ve got making these payments – the janitor, I guess. Franck keeps sending me emails about how department 7200 is taking an expense for brochures for this big Euro Conference. That’s not even your department, you doofus. That guy’s apartment must look like an episode of “Hoarders” because he never sleeps and he’s always on the freakin’ network. He must not be doing too much housecleaning. Plus in his picture he just looks like that kind of guy.” Lisa spoke while typing “I DO NOT UNDERSTAND YOUR QUESTION. PLEASE CONSIDER AN ALTERNATIVE SOLUTION. I don’t even know what the hell that means, but he’ll be up somebody else’s butt anyway so it doesn’t matter.”

Monday was the first day where everyone was back in the office after quarter end and Easter. There was a productive noisiness.

“Sweet! Cake!” Exclaimed Bill Turpin, a financial planner, as he read his email obviously not busy enough.

“Who’s this one for?” Lisa asked the air.

“Pam Sinausky,” the air responded out of Chris’ cube.

“Who’s that?”

“She’s, um, one of the software trainers, I think.”

“Hold on.” Lisa logged into the internal org chart system.

“How do you spell it? Oh, never mind I got it. Oh yeah, that lady. I talked to her once in the gym. There were these old ladies walking around all naked in the locker room and she said it makes you think about where you’re sitting and I said all of their fluids are trapped by the wrinkles so there’s no worries. I don’t think she got it. I quit the gym and the freakies that show up there. What’d she do?”

“Oh, she’s leaving,” Chris replied

“What the hell’s she doing leaving on a Monday? That’s weird.”

Chris agreed with her logic. “Yeah, I don’t know.”

“I wonder if it’s a Market Basket cake. That’d be nice.” She always had her eyes on the prize.

Lisa faded back into her work. Listening to that area of the office was like turning the dial every five seconds on an AM radio; sometimes even when a conversation was open and lively it still didn’t make any sense.

“Oh man, coffee and now soda and cake. I’ll be bouncing off the walls!” Tim observed. The crew walked across the lobby into the Public Gardens conference room. Each of the rooms was named after a famous Massachusetts landmark.

“Hi Warren,” spouted Tim. Warren Davies was a sales manager. He was originally from Chattanooga and had a laconic delivery. His eyes rested deeply in a tired face. Warren had been with SoundTech since practically the beginning. No one could remember him without his country white beard, though there was a time not too long before when he had more energy. Warren had his people and if he didn’t know you he mostly ignored you.

“Well hello, they told me there was cake here and I wouldn’t have to battle with my grandkids for it.”

“Yeah, just hungry accountants.” Chris delivered what he thought was a good line. Warren recognized him, but didn’t recall Chris’ name so he just let the joke drop without a retort.

All of the different departments were there: Sales, Marketing, Accounting, Legal…even the guys from IT had come up from the basement for the free food. One of the lawyers, Sandra Thomas, had sidled up to Kelly.

“Hi Kelly, how’s it going?”

“Great.”

Sandra was exotic-looking for someone from Philadelphia, but that’s what happens when one parent is Swedish and the other is from the black section of Baltimore. She still wore a dress every day, which some found refreshing and others who didn’t know her saw as conceited. Kelly could appreciate her charm.

“How’s your dad doing?” Sandra asked with her head slightly tilted.

Kelly scooped a piece of cake into her mouth to give her some strength.

“Uh, not so good. Yeah, he’s really struggling with the Alzheimer’s to take care of himself and my mom’s having a hard time. The other day he refused to go inside after they took a walk because he really believed they were at the wrong house.

Kelly’s blue eyes briefly met Sandra as if she was embarrassed for some sort of disfigurement.

“But don’t you have sisters in Worcester that can help?”

Kelly tried to think of the politically correct thing to say as she sipped her Diet Coke.

“Yeah, but you know they have kids, well, Jackie doesn’t, but me and Bert have the room…”

“Well, I know it’s tough. Sorry to be a downer.”

“Oh no, thanks for asking.” Kelly flashed a courteous smile with blue frosting garnishments.

“Hey Louis, what’s up?” Chris had made contact with an IT associate which was ironic considering all of the ignored phone calls.

“Good, I mean nothing. How are you? Send me an email and we’ll set up a time to set up wireless on your computer.” Louis was a bit nervous. At least that was the general perception. He spoke in choppy machine gun bursts.

“Louis, you’re from Leominster, right?”

“Yeah.” Louis accented this as if Chris was going to tell him that the police were at his house.

“Oh, I uh, met a girl you went to high school with, Karen Myers?”

“How’d you meet her?”

“She was my dental hygienist last time.”

“It’s good that you met her because sometimes people are too competitive to tell the truth about who they’ve become. They’re afraid of failing at a game somebody else wants them to play.”

That statement couldn’t have been more cryptic unless a mysterious old Chinese dude said it. Louis was neither old nor Chinese, just evidently hungry as he forked another piece of cake into his mouth. Eventually everyone sauntered back into the workspace fading into a sugar coma. By the way, all of the people who actually knew Pam did in fact wish her luck. She was touched and left to clean up her own party.

Chris was having trouble concentrating on work. The auditors had sent a list of items he and the team needed to collect by Thursday. Jesus, two plus days - every quarter the auditors got more and more persistent. HQ was asking for reports too, and he was going to be late on Wednesday with the interview. It was 5:45 when Chris thought it would be friendly to wish Pam luck.

She was packing up file folders into a beat up WB Mason box that would be fortunate to make the journey to her car.

“I heard you’re on your way to EcoMath.”

“Well, yeah.” Pam didn’t know what to say.

“I think our old CEO, Marc, is still there.”

“I’m not sure. I’m just going to be doing training consulting as they bring aboard their group in Montreal.”

“Oh, that’s cool.”

It didn’t sound like a step forward to Chris, but everybody’s got their reasons. One fellow had left just two months before and his company had already gone through massive layoffs. Nobody was sure if he was washed away in that group.

Somewhere down the road, when the box of unused PW business cards would be put to work lining a rabbit cage, Chris will likely see an old coworker disguised as an actual human being with kids and a spouse. While both former work friends can share a hello, the heart is made up of chambers that blow out whatever is no longer needed. Sometimes the drive to work spurs a memory of an ex-coworker with the uncommon grace that would be helpful in your current struggles, but before you can plaster their face on the back of a milk carton, the thoughts recede. Like the missing children digitally aged into a weird collision of youthful expression and mature fecklessness, people leave the office and predictions of their success or failure are just guesses. Did they tell you why they were leaving in the first place? When you spliced together their reasons with the few things you actually knew about them did it make sense? How many coworkers do you watch walk away before you realize we’re all just nomads? Like everything, you will pick up a true friend here or there, but most of it lands in a bin to be shredded by time and energy. Sometimes you try to put it back together again, usually in those fleeting moments where a former colleague is standing right in front of you waiting for you to play your old role. You threw the person you were out years ago because it never got you where you wanted to be and now you can’t remember how to recreate it. Is it their fault your old coworkers see your cubicle as the tomb you were laid in years before when they last said goodbye? The first ones out go missing. The last ones out are marked in graves. It’s an office life.

# # #

The evening was cloudy as Chris pulled into his garage and started walking up the squeaky stairs. As he opened the door to the living room he noticed how dim the light was and it hit him that Donna wasn’t home. Chris’ mind was heavy on the drive home thinking about jobs and workload and he forgot to look for her car in the side parking lot. He couldn’t remember where she said she was going and really until that moment had completely forgotten he was going to be on his own. There were times Chris would beg for alone time, but lately he just felt lost. Donna couldn’t always understand, but at least he could borrow her mind to store a few thoughts in.

The day before, Easter, hadn’t been the best day for Chris and Donna. They had stopped at their house coming back from Chris’ parents to grab the potato salad only to find a small leak in the roof. While it was a nice enough dinner at the Catchers, an accident on the way home brought them back much later than they had hoped. Plus Chris could feel his throat getting scratchy. When he got home from work on Monday he was already tired so he lay down. After twenty minutes Donna eased into the bedroom trying to keep quiet, but heard Chris’ muffled question.

“Where were you?”

“I told you I was going to the store. Are you going to be resting for a bit?”

“Yeah.”

“Well come down when you’re ready.” Her voice was unusually stern, but he

didn’t hear it that way as he lay his heavy head down on the pillow.

“Don’t wait for me to eat,” he warned fading quickly.

Donna had made meatloaf, one of his favorites, but it didn’t really brighten his mood. She was finishing up her plate when he arrived in the kitchen, but got up to serve him.

“Did you hear anything from Vivitech?” Donna asked as she shifted her attention from the oven to the table.

“Nah, probably won’t be ‘til midweek. I’m kinda surprised they took me on Good Friday, but whatever.”

She knew he was in a mood, but hoped to trudge through it. “Anything happen today?”

“Um, we had a cake.”

“A cake, really? What was the occasion?” It was like trying to get a story out of a worn-out five-year-old.

“This lady was leaving.”

“Does she know of any jobs?”

“Um, nah.” Chris was trying to decide whether he should bring up Jack Dawes or leave it for another day. Donna seemed angry. That was his perception. In reality she was just frustrated because lately all the talk was about Chris and he never asked how her day was.

“How do you know Jack Dawes?” Chris hammered.

“I know Jack. Dawes.” Donna pensively approached the question, by not actually answering it.

“Yeah, but how? Was he like an old boyfriend or something?”

“No, why?” Now Donna knew she could get away with being prickly herself.

“He said he knew you.” For the first time Chris raised his eyes from his plate.

Donna stabbed back, “He wasn’t a boyfriend…I mean he is a good looking guy.” Now she could hold out the truth and let Chris twist himself up.

“He’s not a boyfriend, then how do you know him?

“How do you know him?” she snapped back.

“We went to high school together and he’s a jerk. I mean, he was. He probably still is. I saw him at the liquor store the other day and he…” Chris tried to play the moment back in his own mind to make sure he hadn’t told Jack that he and Donna were a couple.

“…he said ‘say hi to Donna,’ but I didn’t tell him your name. How does he know you?”

“Jack’s a wonderful man.” She could feel the pressure suffocating Chris’ pride. “He had a beautiful dog, a boxer, that he could no longer afford to keep. Instead of dropping it off at a shelter he brought it to us and asked if one of us could help find it a home. He was so appreciative he actually spent six hours at our pet food drive a couple months back. I would have taken that dog in a heartbeat, but your condo’s not big enough. I probably told him about us. I like to do that kind of stuff, while we were, you know, helping to save the world.”

Chris was crafting a resignation speech, but it was too late as Donna set her back to him standing at the sink washing the cookware.

“Thank you for the meatloaf; it was great.”

Donna wasn’t the kind to completely shut down the conversation when she was angry. It actually made it harder at times for Chris to tell when she had gotten over her anger.

“You’re welcome.”