Joshua Ferris - Then We Came to the End

We couldn’t believe that. Trespassing? Would he be arrested?

“Yeah, can you believe that?” Yop asked Marcia. “That’s what I was told right after the input yesterday when Lynn called me back into her office, remember? My presence in the building will be construed as criminal action. I was like, ‘Lynn, you have to be kidding me, right? After all I’ve done for this place, you’re going to have me arrested for trespassing?’ She stops drawing the blinds — she wasn’t even looking at me when she said it! But anyway, she sits down, and you know that look she can give you, where it’s almost like she’s burning your brain out with her laser eyes? She pulls her chair in and she gives me that look and she says, ‘I’m sorry, but you can’t still be here, Chris. You’ve been terminated.’ So I say to her, ‘Yeah, I know that, Lynn, but when we were having our conversation earlier and I couldn’t keep it together, remember? and I had to leave your office? I didn’t think I would have to leave leave until we had a chance to finish our conversation, like how we’re doing now. Because I still have one important thing to say before I go.’ So she says to me, ‘Chris, tell me whatever it is you have to tell me, but then you need to leave. Understand? I can’t take any chances with you in the building.’ What the fuck, right? She can’t take any chances with me in the building? What am I going to do, steal Ernie’s chair? Maybe I could get down the hall with it into the freight elevator. I’d still have to walk it past security. How am I going to get out of the building with Ernie’s chair? ‘So go ahead,’ Lynn says to me. ‘What do you have to say?’ ‘Okay, I just want to know one thing,’ I tell her. ‘Do you know or have you ever known anything about serial numbers?’ This is what I ask her. ‘Does the phrase serial numbers mean anything to you personally?’ How does she respond? She says, ‘Serial numbers?’ Yeah, she looks at me like I’m crazy. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Chris,’ she says to me, ‘serial numbers.’ You see — I KNEW IT!” Yop howled in a frantic whisper, flinging a furtive glance in the direction of the print-station doorway. And in a softer voice, “ I fucking knew it! That office coordinator made the whole thing up! It’s her own personal system. There’s nothing official whatsoever about the serial numbers! She has a punch gun. You know what I’m talking about, with the wheel? That’s where they come from! The serial numbers! Lynn didn’t even know about them! She was like, ‘Serial numbers?’ So I tell her everything about the serial numbers, about how the office coordinator made them up, keeping tabs on everything like Big Brother or something. But so anyway, she listens, very politely, but then she says, ‘Is that it?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, yeah, but —’ I thought at the very least she would call the office coordinator back in and we’d start over and this time I’d get a fair shake. But it was obvious there was no chance she was going to give me my job back. So that’s when she tells me that if she finds me in the building again, she’s going to have to report me to security, who will call the police, who will arrest me for trespassing. Can you believe that?” Yop’s tumid, rheumy eyes bulged out at Marcia. He really wasn’t in the best of health. “After all my time here,” he continued. “So that’s when I thought, ‘Oh, yeah? Well, watch me come back here tomorrow and print out my resume using your machines. You know what they charge at Kinko’s for printing like this? No way I’m spending my last paycheck at Kinko’s. I’ve given a lot to this place, and I think I should be allowed to save a few bucks on printing. By the way,” he said. “Would you proofread it for me?”

“So I says to him, ‘Proofread what?’” Marcia said to us just before the double meeting began. “He wanted me to proofread his resume! I couldn’t believe it. I was like, ‘Chris, I’m an art director. You’re the copywriter. You do the proofing, remember?’ I mean, honestly, I spell like a person in an institution. But still he says, ‘Yeah, I know, but I really need another pair of eyes on it.’ And then he stands there holding out a pen. A red pen! He wants me to do it right there in the print station!”

So Marcia stood at the copier proofreading Yop’s resume, stealing glances at the door now and again because she didn’t want to be seen with somebody who could be arrested for trespassing. As she worked, he engaged her in conversation. He asked if she wanted to know the twisted thing about being terminated. “The really sick and twisted thing,” he said. “You wanna know what it is?”

“I was trying to concentrate on his resume,” she said to us, “and I was also watching the door because I didn’t want anyone to walk in and see me with the guy. I already knew the sick and twisted thing: that sorry drip was back in the building. But I didn’t say that, because I was trying to be nice.”

“The sick and twisted thing,” Yop confessed, “is that I want to work. Can you believe that? I want to work. Isn’t that sick? You understand what I’m saying here, Karen? I’ve just been terminated, and inside my head I’m still working!”

“Oh my god,” said Marcia, looking up from his resume. “My name is Marcia.”

“At that point,” Marcia said to us, “I was through. He doesn’t even know my name? ”

“What did I say?” said Yop.

“You just called me Karen,” replied Marcia.

“Karen?” Yop looked away and shook his head. “Did I? I said Karen? I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you’re not Karen, you’re Marcia, I know that. You and me worked together a long time, I know who you are. You’re Marcia, you’re from Berwyn.”

“Bridgeport.”

“I know who you are,” said Yop. “Karen’s someone else. Karen’s the Chinese girl.”

“Korean.”

“My mind is just totally fried this morning, that’s all,” he said. “I hope you forgive me. Anyway, the point I was trying to make. .”

“WHAT?” Marcia cried at us from her perch on the recliner. “WHAT is the point you’re trying to make, you stuttering jackass? Berwyn? I could not believe that the guy got my name wrong.”

“The point I was trying to make,” Yop continued, “is that I find myself thinking about the fund-raiser. Can you believe that?”

“What fund-raiser?” asked Marcia.

“The fund-raiser,” Yop replied. “The fund-raiser we have to come up with ads for.”

“Oh, for breast cancer,” said Marcia, nodding. “The pro bono project.” She was reminded that in a few minutes she had a double meeting to attend.

“But then I thought, he doesn’t!” cried Marcia. “I just wanted to say to him, ‘Oh my god, Chris — you don’t work here anymore. Give the fund-raiser ads up. Leave the building. Proofread your own frickin’ resume! But my god,” she said, “he wouldn’t stop talking. He says to me, ‘Can you believe I can’t stop working in my head? I keep working and working and working — isn’t that sick and twisted?’ Well, yeah. Yeah it’s sick and twisted. You don’t work here anymore! But I didn’t say that. I was trying to be nice. I do try to be nice sometimes. So even though he didn’t know my name I went on proofreading his stupid resume, which had so many mistakes. How did we ever hire that guy to be a copywriter? I’m pointing them out to him, all these misspellings and typos and things, when he says, totally out of the blue — I mean, I have no idea where this comes from. I know something’s wrong, though, because he’s not talking talking talking, he’s just looking at me, so I look up from his resume and I says, ‘What?’ and he says, ‘It’ll happen to you, too, you know. Don’t think it won’t.’ And I says, ‘What will happen to me?’ ‘Getting fired,’ he says. ‘It’ll happen to you just like it’s happened to everyone else, and then you won’t be above everybody like how you act now.’ I could not believe what I was hearing,” she said to us. “I was proofreading the fucking guy’s resume — me! — making improvements on the thing, and he tells me that I’m going to get laid off? And not just that, but also that I hold myself above everybody else? Just because I hold myself above that sorry drip doesn’t mean I hold myself above everybody. I was trying to help him get a new job, for god’s sake! Wasn’t that nice of me? I mean, what an ass crack! Isn’t he a total ass crack,” she asked us, “to say to me, ‘Oh, and by the way, this bad thing that just happened to me? It’s going to happen to you, too.’ What if Brizz had done that? What if Brizz had said, ‘Thanks for visiting me in the hospital, guys, but just so you know, one day you’ll all be dying, too, and when that day comes, you won’t be able to breathe, either, you’ll be in such pain and misery, and then you’ll die. So good luck, you jerks.’ So I ripped his resume up into little pieces and threw them in his face, and one little piece stuck on his forehead, he was sweating so much. And I said something really mean to him. I couldn’t help it, I says, ‘You sweat so gross it makes me sick.’ I shouldn’t have said that. But I loved saying it, because it is gross when he sweats. What a fucking jerk! Telling me I’m going to get laid off. You guys have to remember,” she said. “You have to understand. I’ve been on eggshells since the input yesterday.”