“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