Joshua Ferris - Then We Came to the End

Michael barely paused to stick his head inside Jim’s office. “Can’t,” he said. “I’m on deadline with this newsletter.”

He quickly departed, and Benny held up his hands to demonstrate his disbelief. “Do you see that?” he asked. “Do you see now, Jim, what I’m talking about? There’s something wrong with these people.”

“Benny, he’s on deadline.”

“Who doesn’t have ten minutes to hear a good story?”

“Benny. Tell me the story.”

So Benny told Jim the story of why Marcia was mad at him. Since becoming employed full-time again, he had grown aware of a phenomenon that seemed to happen only at work, or at least happened with more frequency at work than other places in life, and the phenomenon was this: one person would say something and the person listening would have positively no idea what he or she meant, but not wanting to appear rude, or worse, stupid, or alternatively, not caring to waste any more time, it was easier just to nod or laugh along than it was to pause and inquire what that person really meant. This was especially true with hallway banter and kitchen talk and other types of inconsequential daily exchanges. People were indifferent to what was said, or were preoccupied by other things, or had long ago concluded that what passed for speech during the course of a workday was mostly the babble of idiots. “So I thought, Would it make a difference, really? Would it honestly make a difference if instead of replying the way I would normally, I answered everybody with quotes from The Godfather ?”

Jim was curious. “How would you manage that?” he said.

Benny explained that he gave himself a simple rule: nothing could come from his mouth that had not come first from the mouths of Michael, Sonny, Fredo, Tom Hagen, or the Don himself — or anybody at all in the first two films.

“Why only the first two?” asked Jim.

“Come on, Jim,” said Benny. “You know why. Do we have to call Don Blattner?”

“Because the third one sucks?”

“Boy, I miss that old Don Blattner,” said Benny.

At the conclusion of a morning meeting, during which he had remained perfectly silent, as everyone was packing up their things, Benny had turned to Heidi Savoca and said, “‘I spent my whole life trying not to be careless. Women and children can be careless, but not men.’” Heidi’s expression indicated she didn’t know where Benny’s comment was coming from, but more pressing than her confusion was her distaste for the remark itself. “That’s a very sexist thing to say, Benny,” she replied. Later that morning, Seth Keegan stopped by Benny’s cube to ask him a question about some revisions for a project the two had been working on over the course of the previous few weeks. “Do you have a minute?” Seth asked Benny. Benny swiveled in his chair. “‘This one time,’” he said. “‘This one time I’ll let you ask me about my affairs.’” “Cool,” said Seth, who entered the cubicle more fully. “I’m wondering what you think we should do about these drop shadows. What I was thinking we could do is. .” Benny let him talk, nodding from time to time, and before long, Seth had arrived at a conclusion without needing any input from Benny at all. Just as he was leaving, Benny thought what the hell, and called out to him. “‘Hey, it’s my sister’s wedding,’” he said, angrily. “Oh, yeah?” said Seth. “Your sister’s getting married?” “‘And when the boss tells me to push a button on a guy,’” Benny continued, “‘I push a button.’” Seth stared at him. “Cool,” he said. He nodded. Then he walked away.

In the afternoon Carter Shilling came to his cube, and Benny didn’t think he could continue if he had to talk with Carter, his scruffy, cross-eyed boss. A rasp or a boom, those were the two ways Carter communicated, and he was currently booming, raving about how stupid the client was to request such stupid changes to their ad. For a long time Benny didn’t have to say a word. Finally Carter looked at him and asked him if he agreed that the client was stupid. “‘I think if we had a wartime consigliere,’” Benny found himself answering in a small voice, “‘we wouldn’t be in this mess.’” Carter gazed down at him and asked if that was code for something. “Are you saying we’re at fault here?” asked Carter.

“So I swear to god, Jim,” said Benny, “I put on my most serious face, man. I mean, I was nothing but business, and I looked him straight in the eye and I said, ‘Carter, this sort of thing has to happen every five years or so. Helps to get rid of the bad blood.’ And both of us, at the same time, looked back down at the ad, which the client had just ripped to shreds, and he says to me, ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘I suppose.’ As if what I just said made any sense whatsoever. ‘Go ahead and make the changes, then,’ he says. ‘I don’t give a damn anymore.’ And then he stormed out of my office. It was —”

Just then the two men were interrupted by Carter Shilling himself as he happened by Jim’s office on his way to the meeting. “You’re not Jim,” he rasped, pointing at Benny. “You’re Jim,” he said, pointing at Jim. “What’s with the switcheroo?”

“Damn, Jim!” cried Benny, snapping his fingers aw-shucks style. “He caught on.”

With no visible change in expression, Carter nodded his laughter. He expressed many of his emotions with a simple nod. He turned away from Benny. “You coming to the meeting?” he asked Jim.

“On my way,” said Jim.

“Jim, it was priceless,” said Benny, once Carter had departed.

“Benny, don’t talk to Carter like that.”

“I miss Joe Pope,” said Benny.

“You still haven’t explained why Marcia’s mad at you,” said Jim.

Benny was only too happy to pick up the story where he was forced to leave off when Carter appeared. He told Jim that as the afternoon wore on, his task got more complicated. His memory of Godfather quotes was being heavily taxed, and around three in the afternoon, Marcia started calling him with unusual frequency, almost once every ten minutes. Benny couldn’t use the phone because it would be impossible to keep to the rules of the game over the phone, so he let it ring and then checked his voice mail for messages. But Marcia wasn’t leaving messages. “I’ve told you about her brothers, right?” he said to Jim.

“That they eat Jews for dinner.”

“Right,” said Benny. “Even the youngest is basically just a walking crowbar. The wedding’s going to be. . what are those family names, in Romeo and Juliet ?”

“The Montagues and the Capulets,” said Jim.

“The Montagues and the Capulets,” cried Benny. “That’s exactly right. How’d you know that?”

“I took a course in Shakespeare last summer,” said Jim. “A continuing education thing.”

“No shit?” said Benny. “So yeah, the wedding’s going to be like the Montagues and the Capulets. Except the Montagues won’t have swords, they’ll have Saturday-night specials, you know, and us, we’ll just have the Torah and whatever shards we can collect from the breaking of the glass. Anyway,” he said.

He let his office phone ring the rest of the afternoon, puzzled why Marcia was calling and not leaving messages, and answered his cell phone only after the workday had come to an end and he had departed the building. When he finally picked up, Marcia was in hysterics. Her youngest brother had gotten into a fight — he was still only a sophomore in high school — and had to be taken to a South Side hospital. Marcia’s mother was crying, her older brothers were vowing revenge, and her father was sleeping off a night shift. Marcia was trying to get ahold of Benny so he could help her keep things together. Benny rushed over to the hospital and inquired at the nurses’ station what room the boy was in.