by Craig Davis
CHAPTER III
“Can I use a curse word?” Joe B. stared blankly at the seven tiles with seven letters lined up before him.
The game board spread out between him and his wife, miming diversion but largely ignored in the silence. “We’ve always kept our Scrabble family-friendly,” his wife admonished him. “We’ve never allowed profanity before.”
“I don’t mean the game. I just feel like doing a little cussin’.”
He suddenly realized he could spell the word “overjoy.” He decided not to.
The day’s events had weighed heavily upon Joe B.’s household that evening. The oldest daughter, Faith, had not really understood what had happened, but she did know it wasn’t good. Dutifully she had helped get the little ones into bed.
“Come on, Hope. Time to brush your teeth,” she had said.
“I want an Oreo, sisty,” replied Hope, the youngest at only three.
“You can’t have an Oreo. It’s time for bed.”
“Daddy’s eating an Oreo.” Hope pointed to Joe B., hunched dejectedly over a pile of cookies and cookie crumbs. “Daddy’s eating all the Oreos.”
“These aren’t really Oreos,” he explained. “When you’re eating cookies just because you don’t know what else to do, you’re not really enjoying them. Then they’re more like chore-eos.”
“Oh,” said Hope, confused.
“You’re weird, Dad,” said Faith, as she herded her little sister away.
“Thanks.”
But now the girls all snuggled in bed, and only Joe B. and his wife shared the disconsolate night.
“Not one thing went my way today. It seemed like the entire world came crashing down on me,” he groaned.
“You’re sounding paranoid.”
“Everyone says that.”
“Universal Whirligig certainly seems to be against you all of a sudden. Maybe you should just wash your hands of the whole place,” she said. “After all you’ve given to that company? This is some way to treat a loyal employee! Your boss has forgotten what it’s like to be a normal man with a normal family. You could always get a job somewhere else, you know.”
“Who would hire me? I’m not exactly an entry-level employee anymore,” Joe B. held his head in one hand, elbow propped upon the table. “And what do I say when they ask why I left my last job? ‘I was demoted to the mailroom’ sounds really promising. I can’t even believe I just said that! ‘I was demoted to the mailroom!’ Nobody will give me a position like what I had.”
“But look at what Universal Whirligig has done to us. How could you stay there? And just who does your boss think he is? How can you still be loyal to him?”
“I don’t think I have any choice. Where else could I still earn retirement? I have twenty-one years invested in our plan, just four years from full vestment. And what about our health coverage? We have to keep that – we have to.”
His wife agreed by silently doing nothing.
Joe B. continued. “Things are going to be tough until I get this straightened out. All I know is, what I did at work yesterday was no different from what I’d done for twenty-one years. If I could talk to the Big Boss, I know he would reinstate me. But for now we’ve got to try to keep our lives on an even keel as much as we can.” He leaned his forehead heavily into both open palms. “I hate to think of what to cut back.”
“Let’s start a list – ” his wife began, happy to have something to do.
The next few hours the couple labored over the luxuries and necessities they had come to know during two decades of building their lives. One list after another fell discarded as Joe B. and his wife set priorities. Entertainment expenses got the ax first – TiVo became dish television, which became cable that became broadcast. Gourmet coffee took its place on the chopping block. Vacation came under serious threat. The pool man was fired. At the bottom of the list sat the most frightening word, “house.” Marie’s needs weren’t even considered.
“Well, you can go on working for your big boss if you insist,” Joe B.’s wife said at last with low anger. “But that doesn’t mean I have to be happy with him. If I were you, I’d give him a piece of my mind.”
Later as they lay in bed, Joe B. watched the distant ceiling. “Thank you for this day, Lord,” he thought. “And thank you that it’s over.”
For long hours he stared into the dark. Memories and worries drifted through his mind, each merging into the one before and pushing it from his attention, swirling together like smoke into an undecipherable haze. He thought of the births of his daughters, each in turn, days of wonder and joy but still also fear and trembling. He though of his files, meticulously ordered and pampered, true friends always ready to serve when he called. In his mind he stood before the Big Boss, pleading his case without really knowing what to say. Suddenly he no longer recognized the Universal Whirligig offices, but instead saw his mother’s home, the house Joe B. grew up in. Behind the Big Boss his mom wielded a paddle and a stern look. A vulture wheeled about overhead. Joe B. became aware that an important assignment had somehow slipped his notice, and now he had no report to present. The Big Boss loomed before him, speaking in deep echoes that he couldn’t understand. He lifted a huge hammer over Joe B.’s head. Joe B. looked around him, confused and feeling itchy. Suddenly he felt a chill, and he doubted his pants. A huge fly buzzed into his ear.
Joe B. rolled over and slapped his hand on the alarm button. With no idea what to do, he lay on his back for a few minutes. What was he supposed to wear for mailroom work? Would they allow him to bring in coffee and breakfast? What would his work station look like? Would he get hit by a truck?
He decided to go in early, to try to arrange a meeting with the Big Boss before reporting for duty.
The line of electronic gadgets awaited him forlornly upon his dresser. He touched each wistfully before turning away, taking up only – the pager.
“You’d better work, baby,” he thought.
This morning he had no trouble catching his train, running quickly and cheaply through the underworld. The sun smiled brightly as he emerged from the station and walked the final two blocks to the Universal Whirligig complex.
First he braved the stairs again, trudging up to his former office. His legs still ached from the previous day’s workout, and soon they were crying out again against the same old ascent. “Corporate ladder, shmorporate shmladder,” he thought. “This is the hardest climb of all.”
Joe B. didn’t recognize his office at first; his name had already been removed from the glass door. He peeked in timidly, glancing around, afraid he might spy his replacement, like walking in on a new suitor with an old girlfriend. Instead he saw only his secretary, dutifully puttering about her desk.
“Oh!” she said.
“Sorry!” he replied in a whisper, as though he were trying to get away with something.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered back loudly.
“I want my coat and briefcase.” Joe B. pulled back from the door slightly, to signal he really didn’t want to intrude.
“Here, I tucked them away,” the secretary returned hoarsely. “They threw away your umbrella.”
“Good enough for it,” said Joe B. with a parched croak, remembering the grief it had given him the day before. “Look, I don’t want to run into your new boss.”
“Yeah, I have a new boss.” Her eyes looked moist, and her whisper trembled. “But he won’t be here today. The movers are working on his office.”
“The who?!!” Joe B. bellowed. Without warning he burst into the room and flew toward the large, frosted window separating his former office. Fully pressed to it like a criminal up against a wall, he could see two blurred images clumsily at work. The tapping of a hammer arrested his attention like the beat of a bad rap. He pulled nervously at his cuffs as he witnessed the unwarranted assault of the subjects, both clearly packing, not leaving a solitary item with which he’d done time for so long.
“Movers. And construction guys,” said his secreta
ry, still trying to keep her voice low. “They’re remodeling your office,” and at the last word she broke down, holding it out like an operatic soprano.
Joe B. stared in disbelief at the bumbling workers, aghast at their invasion.
Worker 1: “Here, take the end of this tape measure down there.”
Worker 2: “ ’Kay. All the way down?”
Worker 1: “Yeah. Okay, that’s twenty-two-eight. That means coming in to seventeen-two for the new wall – ”
The man walked down toward the new measurement, on his way tripping on one of Joe B.’s prized file cabinets. Joe B. audibly gasped as the man grabbed the cabinet and roughly shoved it to one side. His eyes rolled backwards as drawers slid out of place, and the whole shebang threatened to tip over. The worker kicked the lower drawers closed, and Joe B.’s face reddened. He felt woozy.
Worker 1: “Uh. What was that measurement again?”
Worker 2: “I don’t know. What did you say?”
Worker 1: “I don’t remember. Weren’t you paying attention?”
Worker 2: “I don’t know. Weren’t you?”
Worker 1: “You’re no help at all.”
Worker 2: “Look, all I remember is that on my end it said ‘zero’.”
“Oh, man,” Joe B. groaned and went white.
Worker 1: “Hand me that crowbar.”
Joe B. wheeled around to face his secretary, who flinched at the sudden movement. He braced himself against the window. “I’ve got to get a meeting with the Big Boss!”
“Are you crazy?” she blurted in reply. “Nobody gets a meeting with the Big Boss!”
Joe B.’s eyes flashed desperation. “I have to. I can’t keep working here like this. They’re tearing my office apart! All my years of effort here are going to waste, they’re being destroyed just like me. That’s worse to see than being demoted.”
“I know, it’s terrible, it’s terrible – ” his secretary’s voice trailed off for a moment. “But you can’t just walk into the Big Boss’ office. Nobody gets to see him.”
“I have to try. Look, I know he must think he knows what he’s doing, but didn’t he know what he thought he was doing when he hired me?”
“Huh?”
“You know what I mean. And didn’t he decide to promote me all these years? Has he just turned his back on that judgment? Why would he set me up in success just to destroy me?”
“Don’t ask me. This isn’t easy for me either, you know.”
“Why hire me in the first place?” Joe B. continued. “Twenty-one years ago, he saw me as a good employee. In all those years, I have done nothing to hurt him or Universal Whirligig. Nothing I did last week or last year was any different. Still, he must find some fault in me, to do this. Was it that stapler I snuck out of the building that time? That was three years ago – and I brought it back. Or maybe some stupid thing I did as a kid is back to haunt me. Curse the Internet! But how am I to know, if he doesn’t tell me? His silence is driving me crazy – he should tell me what I’ve done, or just fire me.”
“You need to calm down.”
“Look, the Big Boss is not like you and me. His life is not like mine. He doesn’t have to worry about paying off his house, or how to afford medical care for his daughter. He doesn’t have to worry about losing his livelihood. Why can’t he take pity on those who do? Why would he terrorize those in a weaker position than him? Especially employees he’s chosen! He made me what I am – or was – and am – at Universal Whirligig. Why does he send me back to the lowest rung of the ladder here? It’s his work he’s wasting, not just my whole blinking life. I have to talk to him, face to face.”
“You’re starting to worry me.” His secretary straightened out her desk in a fidgety kind of way.
“He’s done this to me! My career is over – better for him to fire me than to let me waste away at minimum wage! Why can’t a job be a place of joy? Why must work lead only to worry, then to despair? My future plans are gone! Everywhere I look now faces seem to mock me, on people who used to greet me pleasantly and offer me respect. Now I have to sneak into my own office! And look – even you stare at me like I’m covered with boils or something,”
Joe B’s secretary stared at him like he was covered with boils. “Yes, for good reason. You’re scaring me.” She was becoming less sympathetic. “Why don’t you get your meeting with the Big Boss, spit in his eye and quit?”
“Oh, I get it – sarcasm. Just what I need.” Joe B. calmed down some. “Of course it’s not likely, but I have to see him somehow. I can’t sort this out in my own head. I can’t imagine what explanation he could give me. Thinking about it is like trying to play yourself in chess – someone’s bound to cheat eventually. In the end it’s only me playing games in my mind, if I can’t talk to him. Certainly he would listen to my questions.”
“Well, good luck with that.”
“Is there any way you can help me?”
“I’m not your secretary any more.” Her eyes turned back to watery sympathy.
Joe B. tried to stand tall. “Right. Well. Thanks for my coat, anyway.”
Worker 2: “Think we can hit the Dumpster from the window?”
