He didn’t glance up at me. Didn’t say hi.
I returned to my cubicle, shrugged off my bag, and then sat down. Logged onto the network and prepared to sync my Palm to my desktop.
“Wish me luck.”
“Good luck.” I gave my wheeled chair a push with my feet and tried to make it to the end of the cubicle divider so I could see what Joe was doing. I got stuck two inches off my plastic floor protector. Tried to push it back up onto the plastic, to no avail. It was mired in the carpet. I gave up, hopped onto my desk, and peered over the cubicle wall. “What’s going on?”
“First day of class.” He was standing now in the middle of his cubicle, briefcase slung over his shoulder. His eyes were darting toward every corner of the room, and he was patting the pockets on his bag. “I’ve forgotten something.”
“What?”
He stopped and looked up at me with an impatient glance. “If I knew what it was, then I wouldn’t have forgotten it, would I?”
I shrugged. “Do you have your PowerPoint slides?” The bureaucracy of the Air Force would screech to a grinding halt if it weren’t for PowerPoint. None of the officers know how to make a presentation unless they can do it on computer-generated slides plastered with the department, organization, and Department of the Air Force logos. In fact, it’s the only software program about which I voluntarily relinquish my expert status. Any airman has more knowledge on the topic than I could ever hope to accumulate.
“Slides! Thanks.” He pulled the cords out of his laptop, slammed the screen shut, and took off down the hall.
“LCD! Shut Down! Barbarian!” Was all I could think to say before he was out of hearing range. I had just finished equipping the remaining people in the department with laptops. I was not about to start buying gratuitous machines just because some people didn’t choose to treat their computers properly.
In fact, what I needed to do was start confiscating computers. And then give remedial training before reissuing them. I knew exactly who I’d start with.
When I was new at my job, Estelle used to farm out her correspondence to me. Not the important stuff that would eventually make its way to the one-star general, the dean of faculty, or the three-star general, the superintendent. Those documents were much too valuable to entrust to my shifty work habits. I got stuck with the inter or intradepartmental memos. But only until Estelle realized I didn’t double-space at the ends of my sentences.
After my second memo, she called me out to her office. “Jackie, thank you for typing this up, but I see you failed to double-space after your periods. Again. We need to remember The Tongue and Quill.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, and she must have seen the confusion on my face.
She pulled a slim softbound volume from the bookshelf beside her desk and clutched it to her chest. “This is my only copy, but I don’t mind lending it to you if you want to read through it.”
“No, thanks.”
She held it out to me. “It’s okay. Really. Just make sure you return it.”
“I don’t want it. Really.”
“But it explains how to do everything. Like the two spaces at the end of each sentence.”
“But I don’t want to know how to do everything. I’m a systems administrator. If I need to communicate with someone, I’ll send them an e-mail. I won’t write a memo.”
“Take it. Read it.”
I had to take it. Her arm would have fallen off if I’d just left the book dangling from her outstretched hand. But I soon discovered that The Tongue and Quill was entirely outdated. The computer is not a typewriter, especially in word processing programs. There were a few formatting issues I didn’t mind changing to revert to The Tongue and Quill’s standards, but I was not about to put in redundant spaces. Proportional fonts adjust proportionally to the characters you type. They automatically add the correct width of space after a period is typed.
But I reformatted some parts of the memo and e-mailed it to Estelle.
She called me.
“Did you read The Tongue and Quill?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Then did you send me an earlier revision of the memo? Because this one still doesn’t have the two spaces.”
“No. That’s the final.”
“Where are the spaces?”
“They aren’t there. The Tongue and Quill is outdated. I’m not going to teach myself bad habits just because whoever wrote it doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”
“I wasn’t asking for your opinion. I was asking you to format it to fit standard Air Force conventions.”
“Sorry. I won’t do that.”
She hung up on me. But it was the last time she ever tried to farm her job out to me.
Maybe I wouldn’t have to confiscate Estelle’s computer after all. Maybe I could just consider her duly reformed. Under protest.
Joe returned to his cubicle two and a half hours later. He dropped into his chair. I heard him put his boots up on the desk.
“You survived?”
“I did. But I don’t know if they did.”
“What’s your schedule tomorrow?”
“Nothing. I teach practically all day on M days, but I don’t have anything on T days.”
M days and T days. A unique Academy innovation. The cadets actually had two different schedules to keep track of, one for M day and one for T day. At first encounter, a person would logically assume one schedule held good for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The other for Tuesday and Thursday. However, despite the glamour of being a military academy, it was, after all, still military. M and T days alternated throughout the semester. One week, M days would be on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; the next, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That way, each course on a cadet schedule would have an equal number of sessions. It allowed every cadet to carry an average of 17.5 semester hours instead of a meager 15. It also allowed a full portion of science classes. Enough that every cadet graduated with a bachelor of science degree, even if his actual field of study had been English. Or fine arts.
The next day it began: The parade of female cadets to Joe’s office hours. From my chair, on that day, I could have assumed the entire cadet wing was made up of females. You couldn’t blame them. It was just like high school—all the girls developed a crush on the cutest teacher.
Some of them were smart. They pled ignorance about the whole concept of premodern history. Made Joe repeat his lecture in entirety. Others asked a single question and were gone in five minutes.
There was a break of an hour around lunchtime, when Joe was all by himself, but then they were back.
Finally, at 4:30, after the last cadet had gone, I heard him lean back in his chair and sigh. “I thought the lecture was fairly basic. Maybe I just didn’t explain it clearly enough.”
“I think it’s more a function of who you are. Until you have a sex-change operation, it looks like T days are going to be tough going.”
There was silence for a moment. I heard his chair squeak. Heard him gulp a mouthful of coffee. Set his mug down on his desk. Far, far away from the keyboard, I hoped.
“Hadn’t thought of that.”
Well, everyone else had.
Even I had fallen under the spell of Joe.
That night, I made the rounds of message boards. Posted a message on one of them about people like Estelle. Got a flurry of responses.
I pulled up the traffic statistics on my blog. Viewership was up. Return visits were up. People were hanging out on the blog longer. Probably reading back through the archives.
I posted a blog and then checked my e-mails. Received notification that my blog had received Reviewers Top Five status from the Weblog Review. Cool. I was now on both the Readers and the Reviewers Top Five lists.
I deleted it.
Moved on to the next e-mail.
THE CUBICLE NEXT DOOR BLOG
I’ve got your back
John Smith doesn’t know this, but I’ve got his back. He thinks I work just as long a
s he does, but I don’t. Not really. I just stay until he goes home. In spite of considering himself the expert at everything, he doesn’t know anything about the women here. Has no idea how many of them have paused at the cubicle and then kept on walking when they’ve seen me sitting at my desk.
He’s too nice. Too patient.
And he doesn’t need any drummed up sexual harassment charges just because it would be their word against his word.
He won’t have to worry about that because I’ll always be around just as long as they are.
Posted on August 8 in The Cubicle Next Door | Permalink
Comments
An interesting phrase, “I’ve got your back.” Its origins may be lost in history, but it definitely has military roots. Similar to “I’ve got you covered,” but more desperate. A pledge between two comrades to remain loyal. Even until death.
Posted by: NozAll | August 8 at 11:18 PM
Very kind of you. Especially considering how much you dislike him.
Posted by: philosophie | August 9 at 06:57 AM
Sounds like you’ve won the cubicle mate lottery…or maybe he has.
Posted by: justluvmyjob | August 9 at 01:40 PM
Thirteen
The next week, it was back to work on the test-taking program. The accompanying sound effects had been officially deemed inappropriate. The colonel had wanted some standard reports added: average score and minimum and maximum scores. I’d thought of a few others, such as average score per period. I thought it might be an interesting statistic, even if I were the only one who ever knew—or cared—whether cadets scored better before or after lunch. In general, I preferred to build extraneous options into my programs rather than to try to add features after the fact. I also added a report for average score per instructor. Rumors were always floating around that some instructors liked to “teach the test.”
I’d taken the test about 30 times to build a database of five fictional sections with six students each. Ran the reports.
Huh. Look at that. Maj NozAll appeared to be a very poor instructor. A programmer’s revenge for having strayed too close to the truth on my last blog entry. I had tried hard not to leave any clues about my identity, including my place of work. Guess I hadn’t tried hard enough.
Ms. Philosophie’s sections had achieved the best scores. Well done!
Justluvmyjob’s? Average.
Joe’s voice recalled me from my fantasy world. “I was wondering if you could do me a favor…what are you doing?”
I minimized the window and then swiveled my chair to find him standing at the edge of the cubicle wall. “Nothing. What?”
“I’m doing the Pikes Peak Ascent on Saturday. Would you be able to meet me at the top?”
“Of the mountain?”
“Yeah. I could give you a change of clothes to carry for me.”
“I work on Saturdays.”
“Your grandmother told me. She said she’d work this one for you.”
“You already have it arranged?”
“Can you?”
I looked up into his eyes. Then sighed. If they already had it figured out, there was no point in saying no. “Yes.”
“Great!” He smiled before disappearing into his cubicle.
He brought a backpack over on Friday evening.
Grandmother made him sit in the kitchen with us and encouraged him to help himself to our dinner.
I passed him a plate of chicken breasts. His second serving. “What time will you be done?”
“I don’t know. Ten? Ten thirty?”
“At the very latest or earliest?”
“Yes. And yes. I don’t know.”
I’d have to leave at 8:00 then, just in case he finished early. It wouldn’t be any earlier than I was normally up on Saturdays.
The next morning I had to backtrack a half-dozen times before I was able to drive out of Manitou Springs. They had roads blocked off for the Ascent. I drove up Highway 24 and then turned off onto the Pikes Peak Highway. Paid my toll. Began the climb.
The first part of the drive was pretty. A typical mountain road, it wound through stands of thick trees, opening out now and then into a meadow or crossing a lake. Then the pavement stopped. Became dirt. The trees were sparser here. Thinner. The road swerved out occasionally into a hairpin, providing views back out over the valley and the broad plain east of Colorado Springs.
I could hear my motor strain. My little car didn’t like the altitude, but it kept chugging up the mountain. I thought of turning off at the Timberline Café, but decided a stop would just make it harder on the car.
The trees petered out and revealed the mountain to be a jumble of rocks and barren earth. A landscape doused in shades of brown. I rounded a corner and was directed onto a flat plateau. I parked the car, grabbed Joe’s backpack, and waited for the race shuttle to take me to the top of the mountain.
I didn’t have to wait long, which was good. The wind below had been filled with warmth, but the wind here had ice in its gusts. I fastened the top toggle of my coat, pulled the hood over my head, and sunk my hands into its deep pockets. I wished I’d thought to bring gloves.
I boarded the shuttle, sat next to a window, and enjoyed a series of thrills as my stomach tried to fall out of my body. The road clung to the mountain only through sheer force of will. And there were no guardrails.
Up at the top, I walked across the parking lot and into Summit House. I tried to walk past the donut vendor, but I couldn’t resist buying one.
It was the altitude.
I wandered through racks of T-shirts, coffee mugs, and other souvenirs. Watched the Cog Railway train steam up the track and disgorge passengers.
I glanced at my watch. It was time to go outside. I bought a donut for Joe before I left. I wrapped it into a napkin and put it in my pocket.
The wind wasn’t any warmer and the number of people at the top of the mountain had doubled since I’d been inside.
I walked back through the parking lot, around the Katherine Bates memorial, and over into the rocks. The finish line was at the end of a nearly invisible switchback trail that wound over and around large boulders.
Music was blaring from a monster-sized sound system. An announcer called out the runners’ names as their numbers became visible. I couldn’t see where they were coming from, so I picked my way over the finish line, in between runners, and clambered out toward the edge of the peak.
Far below me, a line of runners curved around the bottom of the mountain’s face. Then they began to crawl up the contours of the mountain like ants.
Retreating from the edge, I picked a sturdy boulder and sat on top of it. Gazed in wonder at the view around me. An almost 360-degree view of the mountain range. Below me, the peaks of the surrounding mountains popped up from the horizon. Nestled in their valleys were sparkling alpine lakes. A thin strand of clouds was beginning to wrap around the farthest peaks and send exploratory fingers further east.
This was how life was meant to be lived. In appreciation of the earth.
After a dearth of runners, a new group pushed around the corner and into my view. They were halfway into their climb when I heard Joe’s name over the loudspeaker.
I slid off the rock and scrambled over toward the finish line.
The heads of the group bobbed into view, disappeared behind a rock, surged forward into view again. Joe was in the lead, his number stuck on the front of his shirt. His yellow shorts were glaring against the rocks.
“Go, Joe!”
He didn’t look up toward me, didn’t look anywhere but straight ahead.
I pushed my hood away from my head and cupped hands to my mouth. “Joe! Go, Joe!”
He followed the trail, climbing vertically away from me until it switched back, sending him in my direction.
I took my hands from my mouth. Waved them over my head. “Joe!”
He looked up and started to grin. Stumbled. His face was flushed. His mouth hung open, gulping air. He pushed on, crossed
the finish line, and grabbed my hand, pulling me past the crowd. Then he collapsed on the ground, knees up, and hung his head between them.
“I have a donut for you.”
“If I eat a donut now, I’ll throw up.”
“Really?” If he were nauseous, it could mean he was suffering from altitude sickness. It was not uncommon, especially when you were above 14,000 feet. There was only one cure: Lose altitude. Fast.
“Could you get my water out of the backpack?”
I let the backpack slide from my shoulders, retrieved a water bottle, and passed it down to him.
He set it on the ground beside him and left it there for a minute before he lifted his head and had a drink.
“Are you okay?”
“I will be. Just give me a few minutes.”
“Are you cold?”
“Yeah. But I don’t want to change here.” He held out a hand toward me. “Help me up?”
I grabbed his hand and tugged. Nothing happened. How was I supposed to get him down off the mountain when I couldn’t even help him up? His face was still red and I could see rivulets of sweat beading up on his eyebrows, but he had to be getting cold. I could see my breath and he was still wearing a short-sleeve shirt and shorts. He could pass out and freeze to death before I’d be able to rally help for him.
“Joe! Come on!” I wrapped both my hands around his and began to pull hard. His fingers folded around mine as he pushed off the ground with his other hand.
He stood up straight while I put the water bottle in the backpack. He hobbled a few steps. Stopped. “I have to stretch.” He placed one leg in front of the other. Bent down toward the ground.
“Can’t you do that after you change?”
He turned his head away from the ground and looked up at me. “Why? You aren’t worried about me, are you?”
“No.”
“Just a minute. Let me stretch the other leg.” He stood up. Shook out his legs. Crossed them the other way. And bent down again.
I counted to ten in my head and then grabbed him by the elbow. “Let’s go.”
“All right, all right.”
“Do you still feel nauseous? Do you have a headache? Are you tired?”
The Cubicle Next Door Page 10
