Joshua Ferris - Then We Came to the End

Carl had to be joking.

“No, he’s not,” said Janine.

We all looked at Janine. Did she get e-mails from Tom, too?

“He wrote me letters,” she replied.

“He said it was the best decision he ever made,” said Carl.

“And he never regretted it,” said Janine. “He was happy to be there. He was happy to be doing what he was doing.”

“He believed, you know,” said Carl, “in fighting for his country.”

“He called it — and I will always remember Tom for many things,” said Janine. “But one thing he wrote I will never forget. I still have the letter. He called this country the best republic that ever began to fade. Those were his exact words. I still have it. He was very proud that they put him in a special marksman’s division.”

“It comes as no surprise to anybody that Tom had good aim, I guess,” said Carl.

The tears that hung in Janine’s eyes were familiar, despite all the new leather. “And he was probably a good soldier, too — wouldn’t you think, Carl?”

“It was discipline he had needed for thirty-seven years. At least that’s how he put it to me,” said Carl.

“Which is still very young,” said Janine. “Thirty-seven.”

“Yes,” Carl agreed. “Very young.”

“What happened?” asked Benny. “What happened to him?”

Everyone ordered martinis in Tom’s honor, and toasted him as a patriot and a scholar, a good soldier, and a lousy corporate citizen. We thanked him for sending outlandish e-mails, for the antics inspired by his consumption of two martinis at lunch, and for all the crazy shit he did that in hindsight had provided us with a lot of entertainment, without which our afternoons would have been longer and our lives more dull. He had been killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan.

“To Tom,” we said.

We raised our martini glasses. “To Tom.”

“Goodness,” said Janine, with a sour face. “How could he have enjoyed such things?”

WITHOUT DON BLATTNER, we might have lost ourselves to the oblivion of drink and dark thoughts, but Hank asked him how his writing was going, and Don let it be known that by some miraculous, persevering nerve of his, he had not given up working on his wretched and unproduceable screenplays. He was in the thick of one even as we spoke, which he believed had real potential. “But I always say that,” said Don. Which was true — he always said that. We asked what his new one was about, and he told us that it was the story of a highly revered Tibetan lama who, on a speaking tour of the United States, gets seduced into the lucrative world of endorsement contracts. He finds himself improving the ads in which he appears, much to the awe and excitement of the hapless creative team in charge of the account, whose cynicism and ennui are at an all-time high. The lama ultimately finds his own true happiness in forsaking his fawning followers for the newly rejuvenated advertising agency, becoming the team’s executive creative director in charge of the Nike, Microsoft, and BMW accounts. He sleeps with models and dies happily reading Time magazine in a whirlpool in Crested Butte, Colorado.

Everyone thought it was going to be a big hit.

“We’ll see,” said Don.

Carl and Marilynn left us, and we lost Janine and Harry to the exigencies of middle-aged sleep. Some other guy left, and Jim turned to Benny. “Benny, who was that guy who just left? We work with that guy?”

“That was Sanderson,” said Benny. “Bill Sanderson.”

“Bill Sanderson?”

“You remember Bill,” said Benny.

“I have no recollection of that guy.”

“Sure you do, Jim. You just don’t recognize him without his mustache.”

Soon Jim himself was preparing to leave. “It’s a school night,” he explained.

A school night? When had Jim Jackers become so. . so. . adult?

“Jimmy, don’t you leave!” cried Benny.

“Benny, you’ll see me tomorrow.”

“Oh, I guess that’s true, isn’t it,” said Benny. “Come here, old buddy.” Benny was on his last drink, according to Marcia. Jim was forced to bend down and hug him.

“I had better get going myself,” said Reiser.

“You can’t leave, Reiser!” said Benny. “You haven’t said a word about the people you’re with now. What are they like? Are you happy?”

Reiser rose as Benny fired off his round of questions, shrugging nonchalantly at each one.

“But do you miss it?” Benny persisted.

“Miss what?” asked Reiser.

“I’ll tell you who I miss,” Benny said. Suddenly he was pulling out his cell phone. “Let’s call Joe Pope!”

We watched Reiser hobble out of the bar, and for some reason it was comforting to see that he still walked with a limp. As soon as he was gone Benny put his phone up to his ear and tried to get an answer.

“I must have dialed the wrong extension,” he concluded, hitting end. “That was the desk of someone named Brian Bayer. Anybody recognize that name?”

Nobody did. He must have come after our time. Odd to think they were hiring again. We had a hard time picturing those familiar surroundings peopled by strangers, unfamiliar voices calling out from behind the plasterboard partitions of our old cubicles, unrecognizable men and women sitting in our chairs.

We asked Benny what extension he was dialing. He had it right — that was Joe’s extension. Nobody could forget it, we had dialed it so often. He hit end a second time. “Brian Bayer again,” he said. He had the ingenious solution of calling the main switchboard. When prompted, he pressed “P” for Pope. “His name isn’t coming up,” he said.

Don Blattner came back from the men’s room and asked Dan Wisdom if he was ready to go. They had driven together.

“His name didn’t come up,” said Benny.

“We had better get going, too, Benny,” said Marcia. “It’s getting late.”

Don and Dan threw money down on the table and we said good-bye to them. “Hey, wait!” Benny cried out. But he was too distracted to get off the phone, and eventually they left.

“Where is he?” he said, setting his cell phone down and looking around at the rest of us. “Where’s Joe Pope?”

“Come on, Benny,” said Marcia, “I’m taking you home.”

“He’s not in the directory, Marcia. Where is he?”

“Benny, honey, you’re drunk.”

“It’s Joe,” he said. “He never leaves his desk.”

“Benny,” she said.

“Where’s Genevieve? Where is she? She’ll know where he is.”

“Genevieve? Benny, honey, she left hours ago.”

She pried him from his chair.

“Hank, you must know what happened. What happened to Joe, Hank?”

But if Hank knew anything, he wasn’t saying. We watched Benny stumble drunkenly to his feet. “But it’s Joe, Marcia,” he said. “Joe doesn’t leave.”

“Benny,” she said. “Sometimes you just lose track.”

Soon they were out the door, followed by the last strains of one of Marcia’s hair-band ballads.

Most of us followed them out soon after, and, in the end, last call was announced. The lights came up, the jukebox went quiet. We could hear the clink of glasses and the exhausted silence of the waitstaff as they began to clean up, wiping down the shiny surfaces, placing the padded barstools on top of the bar. Their work would soon be done, they could see something waiting for them at home — a bed, a meal, a lover. But we didn’t want the night to end. We kept hanging on, waiting for them to send over the big guy who’d force us out with a final command. And we would leave, eventually. Out to the parking lot, a few parting words. “Sure was good to see you again,” we’d say. And with that, we’d get in our cars and open the windows and drive off, tapping the horn a final time. But for the moment, it was nice just to sit there together. We were the only two left. Just the two of us, you and me.