Joshua Ferris - Then We Came to the End

Larry Novotny hated not knowing if Amber Ludwig could be convinced that it was in both of their best interests for her to have the abortion, because he hated not knowing what his wife might do to him if the affair came to light, while Amber hated not knowing what God would do to her if she were to go through with it. Amber was a Catholic who hated not knowing a lot of the mysterious ways in which God worked. Was it possible, for instance, that God could send Tom Mota back into the office with all of God’s wrath to rectify the sins Amber had committed there on desks we hoped to god were not ours?

We, too, hated not knowing the specifics of Tom’s intentions to change history. Most of us thought Tom Mota was not a psychopath, and that if he had wanted to return he would have done it a day or two after being let go. He had had time to cool off now and collect his wits. But some of us remembered the way he treated Marilynn Garbedian in the hospital the day her husband was admitted for a serious illness, remembered how he smirked in his trench coat and stared at her neck, as if he were about to land a blow in that delicate place, and couldn’t help thinking that that was perfectly psychopathic behavior. But to others that was just good old-fashioned misogyny. Tom was just confusing Marilynn Garbedian for Barb Mota, his ex-wife, and was taking out on Marilynn what he wanted to take out on Barb. But if that were the case, some of us argued, who was he going to take it out on next? Tom subscribed to Guns and Ammo. He had a sizable collection of firearms in his possession. Most of those guns, however, were collectors’ items and probably couldn’t even fire anymore. Well, some of us thought, what’s stopping Tom from going out and buying new guns? How easy it was to visit a gun show and three days later find yourself in possession of the assault weapons ideal for a situation like the one we were envisioning. We had to remind ourselves that because of Barb’s restraining order, he’d probably have to wait more like ninety days. Besides, he was on record saying those items were unsportsmanlike. “Automatic rifles, man — where’s the sport in that?” he used to say. That was little relief to some. It would be unsportsmanlike to kill us with anything more than old-fashioned handguns, therefore Tom won’t kill us? That was not a winning argument. Tom could have easily had a change of heart with respect to those heavier items, owing to the more recent setbacks of his failed life, and after some less-than-truthful data entry, using a shady Internet dealer, he might be taking possession of those unsportsmanlike items from a UPS man even as our debate raged. Some of us said that was absurd. Tom was not coming back. Tom was trying to move on. But others pointed out that we had had the very same conviction that Lynn Mason wouldn’t show up for work on the day she was scheduled for surgery, and look how that turned out.

We hated not knowing what Lynn Mason was doing showing up for work on the day she was scheduled for surgery.

JIM JACKERS SPENT his lunch hour in the waiting room of the oncology ward at Rush-Presbyterian surrounded by some very sick people. Present also were a number of robust family members, either staring off into the distance with their arms folded, or retrieving water for their loved ones. Jim waited and waited for the doctor with whom his father had put him in touch. Jim’s father sold medical equipment, and when Jim told him of his recent project, he contacted an oncologist on his son’s behalf and told Jim the doctor was willing to speak with him. Jim wanted to talk to the doctor in the hopes of gaining the insight necessary to arrive at the winning concept for the fund-raiser, but at that particular hour the doctor proved too busy to spare any time, so Jim thanked the nurse and returned to the office.

He was taking the elevator up to sixty, where his cubicle was located, when at fifty-nine the elevator came to a stop and Lynn Mason got on. They greeted each other and talked briefly about Jim’s shirt, which Lynn said she liked. Jim turned around and showed her his favorite feature, the hula dancer stitched on back. The dress code of any creative department will always be casual; they may reserve the right to take our jobs away, but never our Hawaiian shirts, our jean jackets, our flip-flops. Lynn said she liked the hula dancer’s skirt, which Jim could make shimmy back and forth by moving his shoulders up and down. He turned around once again and demonstrated.

“I used to be a hula girl,” said Lynn. “In college.”

Jim turned back to her. “Serious?” he said.

Lynn smiled at him and shook her head. “Kidding.”

“Oh.” Jim smiled. “I thought you were serious.”

“From time to time I do kid, Jim.”

The elevator bell rang and Jim stepped off. He walked down the hall to his cubicle, thinking how stupid it was to ask Lynn if she had really been a hula girl.

When he got back to his desk, he began to stress out about his lack of insight into the fund-raiser ads. He was disappointed he hadn’t been able to speak to the oncologist, whom he hoped would give him inspiration. He sat down but didn’t know where to start. He checked his e-mail, he got up and ate a stale cookie from a communal plate in the kitchen. He came back and there it was, the same ogle-eyed computer screen. There was a quotation pinned to Jim’s cube wall that read, “The Blank Page Fears Me.” Everyone knew it had been mounted up there out of insecurity and self-doubt, and that there was nothing more true than that statement’s opposite. But whenever Jim found himself in the position he was currently in, staring helplessly at the blank page with a deadline and a complete lack of inspiration, he looked up and read that quotation and took comfort. The blank page fears me, he thought. Then he thought, What was Lynn Mason doing in the elevator with me on the day she was scheduled for surgery?

He went down to Benny Shassburger’s office. Benny was the first guy Jim went to when he had something. We all had someone like that, someone we took our best stuff to, who then typically took that information somewhere else. Benny was on the phone. Jim went in and sat down and started listening to Benny’s end of the conversation. Benny was saying something about renegotiated prices — he was trying to get the person on the other end to come down a little. He said over and over again he couldn’t afford it. Jim wondered momentarily what that was all about, but then he returned to the fact that he had just shared the elevator with Lynn Mason on the day she was scheduled — and it wasn’t just surgery, was it? A mastectomy, that wasn’t like an outpatient sort of thing, thought Jim, where you go in in the morning and they patch you up and you’re back at work by one. An operation like that takes days to recover from. He didn’t know much about breast cancer but he knew that much. He wanted Benny off the phone. We accumulated days and days in other people’s offices, waiting for them to get off the phone.

“That was the U-Stor-It,” said Benny once he was off. “They’re jacking up my fees.”

“Oh, man,” said Jim. “To what?”

Jim’s red eyes bugged out when Benny told him the price. “Steep, huh?” said Benny. “But I don’t know what else to do, man. I gotta keep it somewhere.”

When we found out Benny had received a totem pole from Old Brizz, we told him he had a few easy options. Leave it for the future owners of Brizz’s house to deal with — that would probably be the easiest. Or he could find a collector and they’d probably come and take it away for free. Chris Yop suggested he leave it on the corner of Clark and Addison and watch until one of the homeless carried it away in a shopping cart. Karen Woo said he should hire a stump-grinding company to go over to Brizz’s and turn that totem pole into multicolored wood chips. Tom Mota liked the idea of sawing it into pieces and giving each one of us a head to decorate our offices with in remembrance of Brizz.