The Cubicle Next Door

by Siri L. Mitchell

  “Love that destroys isn’t love. It can’t be.”

  Maybe not for him. But it had been for me.

  Two days later, I was watching the evening news. Mostly to see what the weather was going to be the next day. The lite-news lady came on for her five-minute stint. She started with coverage of a county commission meeting. Then the camera panned away from her and zoomed in on a TV screen behind her shoulder.

  “And now we go to Trevor Montero in San Francisco for an update on the status of the Cyber-Sweetheart Blogger. What’s the latest information, Trevor?”

  “Good evening. The latest information is that, as of yet, we have no information. For viewers who have just tuned in, America’s Cyber-Sweetheart, known to the blogosphere as TCND, the initials of her blog, The Cubicle Next Door, posted an ominous two-word blog three nights ago. Those two words were ‘Help me.’ And there have been no posts from her since.”

  The camera angle slowly widened to take in the building behind him.

  “Blog readers, who feared perhaps TCND was having a heart attack or some other medical emergency, immediately flooded the blogging service with e-mails, urging them to send medical care to TCND’s address of record. The blogging company has continually stated that, although the cyber address of TCND is a matter of public record, the physical street address of the blogger is not. This evening, they are again stating they have no responsibility in this matter and they have no authorization to send someone to TCND’s address nor to release that information.”

  Trevor turned toward the building that had been his backdrop and the camera zoomed past him to focus on a podium that had been set up on the front steps. A woman was speaking.

  “As we have consistently stated since the events of January seventeenth, we have no corporate responsibility in this matter. Access to personal information is on a need-to-know basis and only for the purpose of operating or improving our product. Any employee or contractor who comes into contact with such information is bound by confidentiality agreements and subject to prosecution if they do not choose to abide by them. Are there any questions?”

  “Do you maintain the home address information of your clients?”

  “As a matter of course, we do not.”

  “But is there not some way you could back door the information? From e-mail addresses or credit card billing information? Something?”

  Of course they could, if they wanted to.

  “That is not within the purview of our company’s mission.”

  “But what if TCND is lying on the floor of her home having a heart attack?”

  Then I’d already be dead, wouldn’t I?

  “To post a blog entry takes several steps. If TCND were having a medical emergency, it is highly unlikely she could have performed the steps in the correct sequence necessary to post a blog.”

  The camera zoomed out and panned the crowd. It was filled with a diverse demographic of people. Some of them were carrying signs. One was shaped like a heart and had “TCND + John Smith” scrawled on it. Another said “SAVE TCND!” And right next to it was one which said “SAVE OUR PRIVACY!”

  The screen’s view switched to Trevor and then split to reveal the local newscaster. “Why has there been such keen national interest over an anonymous blog, Trevor?”

  “It’s because this blog has pulled the heartstrings of America, Becky. This blogger, because she is anonymous, could be the girl working in the cubicle right next door to me. Her very anonymity has given credence to the all-American myth of the girl next door. It’s not the fantasy of falling in love with a model or a movie star, because most of us don’t work next to people like that. It’s the fantasy of falling in love with a woman you admire but are too afraid to tell. The fantasy of hoping against hope that this woman actually admires you too.”

  “So you’re saying it could be anyone?”

  “It could be anyone.”

  It could be me.

  I ran up the stairs and logged on to my computer. Logged onto the blogging site. Brought up a new post. Stared at it, not quite knowing what to type. In the end, I settled for this.

  “I’m okay.”

  I was about to post it when I thought about all those people who had called the blogging company. All those people who had tried to save my life. And I decided they deserved something more. Something as close to the truth as I could tell them.

  THE CUBICLE NEXT DOOR BLOG

  I’m okay

  I’m okay. I was just overcome—overwhelmed—with information about John Smith I never expected or anticipated. And it uncovered information about me I hadn’t known before…almost wish I didn’t know now.

  I’m not used to feeling. I didn’t think I had any right to feel. I would almost rather have a root canal than feel this way. But it doesn’t matter what I tell my head. I can’t control the things I dream in my sleep. Is it even possible that you dream of me too?

  Posted on January 20 in The Cubicle Next Door | Permalink

  Comments

  You really scared me. Actually root canals don’t have to be painful. They only fail about five percent of the time.

  Posted by: NozAll | January 20 at 06:23 PM

  You’re missing the point. She’s saying that the things she’s thinking are excruciating. That she’d rather inflict bodily pain on herself than subject herself to emotional pain. TCND, I’m just glad you’re okay.

  Posted by: philosophie | January 20 at 06:25 PM

  I had to redo every project I did over the last few days. I wasn’t concentrating. Anyway, I can never remember my dreams.

  Posted by: justluvmyjob | January 20 at 06:26 PM

  There are a lot of people here who care about you. Hope you have the same support in your real life. Maybe he is dreaming of you. You should ask him. But if he starts telling you he’s having that dream where he walks into a bunch of talking spiders and gets caught in their web and then they bite him and he takes a pair of scissors and cuts all their legs off…run away. Fast!

  Posted by: theshrink | January 20 at 06:30 PM

  You’re a survivor too. It takes one to know one. (Hey, shrink—I have that dream all the time!)

  Posted by: survivor | January 20 at 06:37 PM

  Thirty-One

  Hmm.”

  For Joe to talk to himself while he worked was not unusual, but there was something in the way he said “Hmm” that sounded dire. I waited for nearly five minutes before I asked. “Care to share?”

  “Kumbaya and that sort of thing?” He began humming “It only takes a spark…”

  I rolled my eyes and returned my attention to the keyboard.

  “New e-mail. The department’s looking for someone to deploy.”

  My hands froze. “When?”

  “Next month.”

  “Where?”

  “Iraq. Think they’ll send me?”

  “Why?”

  “Jimmy’s getting married next month. Pete’s wife is having a baby.”

  “What’s getting married and having babies got to do with deployment?”

  “I’m single.”

  “You know, you ought to talk to them about marital status discrimination. It’s not fair to make you go just because you’re unattached! There’s got to be something in the…” In the what? Employment contract? Labor laws? Joe was military. They could make him do whatever they wanted. “There’s got to be something. You just got here.”

  “In June. Technically, they can deploy me anywhere they want, whenever they want.”

  “But everyone else has been here longer. One of them should have to go.”

  “Yep. That’s what I’ll say to Colonel Webster. It’s not fair, sir. I haven’t been here long enough yet.”

  “You want to go?” What was the tone I was hearing in my voice? Desperation?

  “Join the military, see the world. What’s not to like in Iraq? I could be the hero in my own movie. People shooting at me. Taking a bullet. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?”

  I co
uld imagine it all. Vividly. I’d been doing it for years. Every time I thought of my father.

  “Oh—wait.”

  “What?’

  “Hmm.”

  “What!”

  “They only want pilots.”

  “And?”

  “I’m not.”

  “What do you mean you’re not?”

  “I used to be, but I’m not anymore. Remember those headaches?”

  I didn’t know whether to throttle him or whether to hug him.

  “Let’s grab lunch.”

  “I already have mine. It’s in the refrigerator.”

  “Is there enough for me?”

  “No.”

  “Then we have to go out. Because I didn’t bring any lunch and it would be rude for you to eat in front of me when I don’t have any food.”

  “You could just stay on your side of the cubicle and you’d never know.”

  “Except that when you heat up the stuff you bring in, it always smells really good and it makes me really hungry.”

  “If you’d bring something in to work besides a bag of Doritos, then maybe you wouldn’t be starving all the time.”

  “Come on.” He had appeared at the end of the cubicle. Grabbed my hand from the keyboard and started tugging. “Come on, come on. You know you want to.”

  And that was just the problem. I did.

  I wound Joe’s scarf around my neck. Pulled my coat on and fastened it up.

  We decided to go to Arnold Hall. Joe was in the mood for Taco Bell. And Subway had salads.

  It was a T day, so we were able to leave ahead of the crowd, before the cadets broke for lunch and left the instructors free for an hour. But Joe still saluted his way across the terrazzo.

  “Did you see that punk’s boots? They weren’t even shined. They don’t do any of the good stuff anymore. No more Smoker’s Nights, no more SERE.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape training. SERE.”

  “How would they teach you that?”

  “Take you out to Jack’s Valley and up into Mueller State Park, make you run around in the woods until you’re caught and then simulate a POW Camp.”

  “By torturing you?”

  “No. Just basic stuff. Sleep deprivation. Interrogation. Sensory deprivation.”

  “And how did you resist?”

  “All sorts of ways.”

  “Was there a point to all of that?”

  “Yeah. It made you understand how you react to pressure. You find out if you’re one of those guys who’ll blab at the first opportunity or whether you start to hallucinate when you’re deprived of sleep or placed in solitary confinement. There were guys who started seeing bugs all over the place.”

  “And you were one of the guys who…?”

  “I was an instigator. I kept the guards busy with stupid stuff so the escape could be planned.”

  “So basically, you were just annoying.”

  “Extremely so.”

  “And you probably consider that a positive trait.”

  “It’s a life skill.”

  “You don’t take anything seriously, do you?”

  “And you take everything seriously, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do, Miss Let-me-just-take-that-straw-and-plunge-it-into-your-heart.”

  I shoved my hands into my pockets and just kept walking.

  “Okay. Sorry. But don’t you think you take things…some things…just a little too much to heart?”

  I stopped walking and turned toward him. “Well, if people like me don’t, then people like you won’t have any gas left to drive your monster SUVs around town!”

  Joe held out his arms in a “see what I mean?” gesture.

  I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came out.

  “Okay. Cease-fire. Different topic.” He began walking again. “Let’s be nice to each other for a few minutes.”

  I felt ashamed of myself. Decided to try. “Are you doing better? With instructing?”

  “Yeah. I actually like it.” He laughed. “Who would have thought it, right? I wonder what my pilot buddies would think about that.”

  “Who cares what they think. The important thing is what you think.”

  He sent me a look I couldn’t interpret.

  “What?”

  “You have no idea how…fearless you are, do you?”

  “I’m not fearless.”

  “Yes, you are. You don’t care what anyone else thinks. You just go right ahead, doing what you want to do, being yourself.”

  I shrugged. Who else could I be?

  “Hey. I was thinking about that blog. You know, John Smith seems to have a lot in common with me.”

  I had to run a few steps to catch up with him. “He does, doesn’t he?”

  He looked straight into my eyes. “Don’t you think that’s kind of strange?”

  I looked straight back into his. “Not really. I’ve always suspected Estelle has a crush on you. I just didn’t want to say anything.”

  He laughed. Quieted. “Seriously, though, don’t you think it’s strange he drives an SUV and makes her do things she doesn’t want to do and…everything else?”

  “He who?”

  “John Smith.”

  “Not really. Half the population of the country drives an SUV.”

  “Around here they do.”

  “What are the chances it’s about you? What do you do? Read that blog trying to find all the ways it could be about you? Because it’s not.” Half the time, it was about me. We were two halves of a confused morass of a blog.

  We got to Arnold Hall, ordered our food, and took it out into the dining area.

  “So how do you think she’d feel if John Smith happened to have an ex?”

  “You’re still thinking it’s about you?”

  “What if it were? Humor me.”

  I shrugged.

  “Do you think it would bother her?”

  I shrugged again. I was trying to buy time.

  “Well, what would you think?”

  What would I think? In some ways, that was safer than talking about what TCND would think. “I would think that you can’t always have what you want in life. If it were me, it wouldn’t make any difference. I’d feel the way I’d always felt: that some things in life just weren’t meant for me.”

  “What do you mean? You wouldn’t marry someone who’s been divorced?”

  “I wouldn’t—won’t—marry anyone at all. Ever.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Because…?”

  “Because I just can’t.”

  “So you don’t have a problem with divorce, but you do have a problem with marriage? That’s unusual. But then, why should I be surprised!”

  “Look, my parents never got married.”

  “It’s not uncommon.”

  “They met each other and it was cataclysmic. And afterward, my mother went crazy.”

  “I’m sorry…but I still don’t understand what this has to do with you.”

  “Don’t you get it? I’m her daughter. I will never do what she did to me. I will not do it.”

  “Who’s to say you would?”

  “Who’s to say I wouldn’t? I’d rather stay on the safe side of things.”

  “Safe side. You seem to want that to be the theme of your life. But I don’t think it can be. I think you have a wild thing hiding inside.”

  “Exactly. That’s exactly it. I think so too. And I’m not going to let it out.”

  THE CUBICLE NEXT DOOR BLOG

  The lie

  I told you a lie today.

  It’s not the first lie I’ve ever told you, but it’s the first one I’ve done with the intention of deceiving you. (Instead of myself.) I wish, I wish, I wish I could tell you the truth. But saying a thing three times doesn’t always make it true. And if I told you the truth, then you would know me. And I might not be t
he me you thought I was.

  Dream girls are always perfect.

  Dream girls are always pretty.

  Dream girls don’t pick their noses or wear holey underwear or drool in their sleep.

  So dream of me tonight the way I wish I was.

  Posted on January 26 in The Cubicle Next Door | Permalink

  Comments

  During the day we swallow our saliva, but during the night, the swallowing reflex becomes muted and drool collects in your mouth. Try sleeping on your back. Or try breathing through your nose instead of your mouth, unless you have a deviated septum. Drooling only creates problems if it becomes excessive. In that case, it’s called sialorrhea and you may need treatment.

  Posted by: NozAll | January 26 at 09:15 PM

  Only in dreaming can you alter your reality.

  Posted by: philosophie | January 26 at 09:22 PM

  You can pick your nose and you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your friend’s nose.

  Posted by: theshrink | January 26 at 10:08 PM

  Don’t worry about it. I lie all the time.

  Posted by: justluvmyjob | January 26 at 10:41 PM

  Not me. I can’t stand the guilt.

  Posted by: survivor | January 26 at 10:59 PM

  Thirty-Two

  February began with a bang. And an ominous thump.

  Grandmother had gotten up in the night and fallen down the stairs.

  By the time I reached her, she was lying in the entry hall beneath the bottom step. Her eyes were closed and I couldn’t get her to open them. Couldn’t get her to say anything. Couldn’t get her to respond at all.

  I called 9-1-1.

  And then I called Joe.

  He arrived first and insisted we didn’t move her. He got a blanket from the hall closet and spread it across her.

  I knelt down beside her and reached a hand out to grasp hers.

  “Don’t.”

  I looked up at him.

  “Her arm or…something else…could be broken. Don’t touch her. Just in case.”

  I sat on the floor beside her.

  We heard a siren in the distance. Heard it get loud and louder and then cut off mid-wail as footsteps came thudding up the walk.

  Joe opened the door.