Joshua Ferris - Then We Came to the End

What was the likelihood, if we were being honest, that this one fund-raiser, one of a thousand, no matter how many donations it might receive, would really get us any closer to a cure for breast cancer? Who knows, maybe it would. None of us understood how advances in medical science worked. Maybe they needed only one more dollar and our solicitations would put them over the top.

We also saw our work that day as doing a personal favor for Lynn, even if we couldn’t help feeling that, by choosing not to tell us that she had cancer, she had cheated us of one of our most dearly held illusions — namely, that we were not present strictly for the money, but could also be concerned about the well-being of those around us.

MAYBE THIS WAS why she didn’t tell us:

Not long after layoffs began, things started going missing from our workstations. Marcia Dwyer’s handcuffs, Jim Jackers’ Mardi Gras beads. At first we thought we must have misplaced these things. We had loaned them out, or maybe they’d fallen behind a bookshelf. Don Blattner ran framed movie stills around his walls, with a particular emphasis on scenes from The Lost Boys and From Here to Eternity. Larry Novotny had a collection of World Series pennants dating back to 1984. Who could say why we felt the need to display such things in our offices? For some it helped to say, Hello, this is me. Others just liked having their useless shit around in the place where they spent most of their time. When that useless shit began to disappear, we got angry.

We never suspected the cleaning crew. Those quiet souls weren’t likely to risk their legal status for a paperweight and a few plastic wind-up toys. It was a marvel — never a CD Walkman, never a wallet left by accident on a desk overnight. Instead, Karen’s snow globe of Hawaii. Chris Yop’s gold-plated nameplate. Pictures in cheap frames of our fat parents on vacation. Things of sentimental or practical value to no one but us.

Benny’s friend Roland from security worked an occasional night shift. One Friday morning during this time, Benny asked him, “So what’d you find in there?”

“Well, I looked,” said Roland. “The filing cabinets first off. Nothing in them. I even looked through the file folders themselves. I looked through the bookshelves next, but there aren’t a whole many books there on his bookshelf.”

He was talking about Joe Pope’s bookshelf. Some people had convinced Benny to have a talk with Roland, if just to see what would come of it, and Roland had taken Benny seriously.

“And I looked through his desk drawers, too,” Roland continued. “There wasn’t nothing there, either, except this lucky rabbit’s foot.”

“A rabbit’s foot?” said Benny. “Let me see it.”

Roland handed over a keychain attached to a rabbit’s foot. Before the day was through Benny had shown it to everyone and we all said no, none of our useless shit had ever included a rabbit’s foot keychain.

“Must belong to the prior occupant,” Roland concluded when Benny handed it back to him.

After that, somebody who shall remain anonymous went into Benny’s office; he said he had something he wanted to float by Benny. Benny got a chuckle out of it. Then the guy said, “But hold on, Benny — we’re not joking. We’re serious.” And Benny, still chuckling, said, “Yeah, it’s funny, it’s clever.” The guy cut him off. Benny wasn’t listening, Benny wasn’t hearing him. “We’re dead serious,” the guy said. Now Benny could see the guy wasn’t kidding. “Are you serious?” said Benny. “Are you listening to me or not, Benny?” the guy asked. “We are dead, dead, dead serious.” “Oh,” said Benny. “I thought you were just joking.” “No, we’re not joking,” he said. “We are not joking.” “Who’s ‘we’?” asked Benny. “Benny,” said the guy, “don’t be so fucking dense. What do you say, are you in or not?” “You’re talking about deliberately setting him up,” Benny said. “As a joke!” the guy cried. “Just as a stupid practical joke!” “That doesn’t sound right to me,” said Benny. “Why not?” “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s just not something I think I want to do.” The guy could only clap his hands on his knees and stand up. “Okay,” he said. “Suit yourself.”

After the guy left, Benny called down to security. “What can I do you for, Benjamin?” asked Roland. “Look,” said Benny. “I think you should stop making inspections of Joe’s office. How many times have you been in there now?” Roland told him that he stopped by there every time he worked a night shift, so every Thursday night. “And have you ever found anything?” “Nothing,” said Roland, “except that lucky rabbit’s foot.” “Listen,” Benny said, “we were just kidding around one day, saying he could be the one because he’s really the only guy who stays here until nine or ten at night. He makes us feel like we’re not working hard enough because we don’t stay here half as long as he does. But it was just a joke, Roland. He’s not your guy. He doesn’t want our knickknacks.” “So if it’s not him,” said Roland, “who is it?” “Hey, Roland, you’re the security man here. You should be telling me that.” “But I thought you said you knew who it was.” “It was a joke!” cried Benny. “A joke! It’s not him!” “Well, I won’t go in there anymore, then, if you’re telling me I should be looking elsewheres.” “I’m telling you,” said Benny. “You’re not going to find anything if you go in there.”

A day or two after this conversation, Joe Pope went in search of a woman named Paulette Singletary. Paulette was a sweet black woman of forty or so with hair parted in the middle almost exactly like a thatched roof. She had a greeting for everyone. It might not sound like much to have a greeting for everyone, but in an office as big as ours, we saw people every day whose faces we knew better than our own mothers’, yet we’d never been introduced to them. Maybe we’d sat together in a meeting or seen them at an all-agency function, but because we’d never been introduced, we averted our eyes as we passed them down the hall. Paulette Singletary was the only one among us who would stop someone and say, “You and I haven’t met yet, I don’t think. My name’s Paulette.” It might have been a southern thing. Paulette came from Georgia and retained an accent you could hear ever so faintly. With a greeting for everyone, a warm smile, and an easy laugh, Paulette was everyone’s favorite. It was a challenge finding someone so universally approved, unless it was Benny Shassburger, and even Benny had his detractors.

Joe went in search of Paulette, but not finding her at her workstation he took the liberty of replacing the small piece of stained glass in his hand — an angel of blue and russet — which he knew belonged on Paulette’s cube wall, because he had seen it there over a succession of weeks and months. From the minute he saw the glass glinting unexpectedly from the corner of his office, Joe knew where it belonged.

The following day, one of the new high-powered laptops went missing.

“You all are up to something,” Genevieve Latko-Devine said, sweeping her finger across a good number of us, “and I think you should knock it off.”

This was maybe a day or two after the stolen computer. Tough to recall if her remark — an accusation, really, a broad and mostly unfair one — came before an input, at lunch, or at the coffee bar, or maybe in an off-moment when several of us were gathered around some workstation before returning to our desks. Joe had told her how puzzled he’d been to find Paulette Singletary’s stained glass in his office. He wouldn’t have noticed if the door had remained open at that hour of the afternoon, but he had closed it to get some work done and there it was, catching sunlight in the corner.