Joshua Ferris - Then We Came to the End

Marcia Dwyer found her at a print station. She was standing against the wall, next to the recycling bin and the stacks of boxes holding copy paper. Marcia was there to photocopy something for the rest of us, a list of interesting facts about breast cancer found on the Internet. She greeted Lynn, and the greeting seemed to wrench the older woman out from underwater.

“What was that?” Lynn asked.

“Oh,” said Marcia, “I was just saying hello.”

“Oh. Hi.”

Marcia advanced toward the copier. Lynn was just standing there against the wall. “Oh, do you need to use this?” Marcia asked suddenly.

Lynn shook her head.

“Oh. Okay.”

She made her copies. “Bye,” said Marcia, when she had finished.

Lynn looked up. “All done?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a more awkward exchange my entire life,” Marcia told us. We were discussing these run-ins in Marcia’s office. “What was she doing just standing there against the wall?”

“Maybe all this happened yesterday,” someone suggested.

It wasn’t as absurd a notion as it might sound. Some days, time passed way too slowly here, other days far too quickly, so that what happened in the morning could seem like eons ago while what took place six months earlier was as fresh in our minds as if an hour had yet to pass. It was only natural that on occasion we confused the two.

“No, it was this morning,” Karen assured us. “Trust me. I saw her. Lynn’s in.”

“What probably happened,” Amber suggested, “was that she stopped by the office to finish up some last-minute business, and then she walked over to the hospital. So she’s not in in. She just stopped by on her way.”

“Cleaning her office?” said Larry. “Standing in the Michigan Room for half an hour? That’s last-minute business?”

“Maybe.”

“Or maybe,” said Larry, “there never was an operation.”

“What do you mean, there never was an operation? Of course there was an operation.”

“Because,” Larry continued, “she doesn’t have cancer.”

“How can you say that, Larry? Of course she has cancer.”

“How do you know it’s not just a rumor, Amber?”

“Because I just know. ”

“Anyway,” said Karen, “her operation was scheduled for nine. She couldn’t have recovered in that time, so she must have missed it.”

“It was scheduled for nine?” said Genevieve. “I thought nobody knew when it was scheduled for. Where are you getting nine from, Karen?”

“I always get my information directly from the source,” Karen said.

WE DIDN’T HAVE much else to do, you see. We had the pro bono fund-raiser ads, sure — but what were they when compared to our workload of yore? We had already made headway on them; they would be finished in no time. The more pressing matter that morning seemed to be discovering why Lynn had chosen to come into work instead of dealing with a life-threatening illness. And so when Karen Woo told us who her source was, naturally we went in search of answers.

“I’m not the source of that information,” said Carl in front of his penne alla vodka. He denied knowing anything about Lynn Mason going into surgery at nine. And if he had known, he wouldn’t have said anything — certainly not to Karen Woo.

“But Lynn did receive a diagnosis of cancer, did she not?” asked Amber, inside his office.

“As far as I know she did,” he said. “But I’m not the source of that information, either, and I don’t know why Karen’s saying I am — unless it’s because Marilynn’s an oncologist at Northwestern. But what Karen doesn’t know is that I moved out six weeks ago, and besides, Marilynn wouldn’t tell me anything — not if Lynn were a patient.”

It was the first we had heard of Carl and Marilynn’s separation. We didn’t inquire further because we didn’t care to pry. We asked in the most general way how he was holding up, and he replied clinically that it was the best decision for both parties. We deduced from that that Carl had probably not been the prime mover.

“I don’t mean to change the subject,” said Amber.

“Please do,” said Carl.

“But then so you’re not the source.”

“The source of what?” he repeated, a little edgier this time.

“Of the fact that she has cancer.”

Carl shook his head. “I first heard that from Sandy Green,” he said.

SOME OF US THOUGHT Sandy Green in payroll was the second coming, others the devil incarnate — it all depended on what you were getting paid. Her office was a firetrap of put-off filing. Sandy had gray hair and wore one of those ribbed finger condoms that gives one speed in the sport of accounting. Off a remote corridor at the far end of sixty-one, her windowless office was known as the Bat Cave for its general darkness and inaccessibility. “I talked to Carl a couple days ago for about five minutes about FICA withholdings,” said Sandy. “I doubt very seriously that in five minutes I would have said something to him about Lynn’s cancer.”

“Okay,” said Genevieve, “but what we’re trying to determine is if Lynn even has cancer, and if you happen to be the one who knows that for a fact.”

Sandy looked genuinely perplexed — then suddenly her face ironed out and she raised her plastic finger in the air and gave it a three-time shake. “I remember now,” she said. “I said something to him like, ‘I would take this issue up with Lynn,’ and he said, ‘Okay, I’ll talk to Lynn about it,’ and I said, ‘But you had better do it today, because. .’ But I didn’t say anything more. I waited for him to say something. And he did, he said, ‘Oh, right, I’ll do it today, right.’ So that’s when I said, ‘Poor Lynn,’ and he said, ‘Yes, it’s too bad.’ So he already knew. He got his information from someone else.”

“But how did you get your information?” asked Genevieve.

“How did I get my information?”

“Yes, that’s what we’re trying to find out.”

Sandy put her elbow on her desk, and her cheek in her palm, and there was silence as she tried to remember. “Hold on,” she said. She picked up the phone. “Deirdre, was it you who told me about Lynn’s cancer? Or did Michelle tell the two of us, I can’t remember. Are you sure? All right, honey.” There was a long pause. Sandy startled us with a wicked cackle. “Leave your mirror at home next time, honey! Okay, bye-bye.” She hung up the phone and turned to us. “Deirdre tells me she told me.”

DEIRDRE INFORMED US that she received her information about Lynn’s cancer from Account Executive Robbie Stokes. “Oh, good,” said Deirdre, “my new door’s here.”

With that, the building guys came in with her new door and everyone got out of their way.

ROBBIE STOKES’ office was empty. He was in Account Management, and, strange for any account person, he had hung something non-Monet on the wall: a neon Yuengling sign, intended for a bar window. It hummed and flickered in the deafening silence.

Someone from inside a cubicle cried out, “Bring me the world!”

ON THEIR WAY OUT of the building, Amber and Larry ran into Robbie. “I hear you guys have been looking for me,” he said. “I didn’t start that rumor. I got that rumor from Doug Dion.”

Larry assured Robbie that nobody was saying he started anything. We were just trying to get to the bottom of it.

“Well, just do me a favor,” said Robbie, “and don’t say I started it, okay? Because I don’t want this to get me into trouble with Lynn.”

Amber assured him we were being discreet.

“No, just leave me out of it,” he demanded. “Don’t even say the name Robbie Stokes.”