Noah Cicero - Go to work and do your job. Care for your children. Pay your bills. Obey the law. Buy products.

Bob Packwood was a tall, Irish-looking monster. He had the same buzzcut they all did, and his body was solid muscle from years of exercising in and out of jail. In his profile it stated that he had never really done drugs his whole life until he was in a car wreck and was laid up for a year. During that year he became dependent on oxies to calm the pain. After he healed he still loved oxies and became a full-time addict, lost his job, his kids, and ended up in jail for possession of drugs. Rex was covered in tattoos and had committed an enormous amount of crime. He was thirty-six and since the age of sixteen he had spent twelve of the last twenty years in correctional facilities. He stole from stores, robbed several gas stations, stabbed a man in the arm once, dealt drugs, ran drugs, sold firearms illegally, ran from the police, punched a cop, and owed $22,000 in child support. But his face didn’t show signs of anger or bitterness. I felt bitter about having to pay student loans but he felt okay about spending the majority of his adult life in prison.

Bob and Rex noticed I was listening and Rex said, “You know where Sherwood is?”

“No, do you?”

Rex responded, “Man I thought you would know. People be disappearing from here all the time. It’s bullshit.”

Bob said, “Yeah, what is this shit? You wake up and somebody is gone. Like how does somebody just disappear?”

“They don’t tell me those things,” I said.

“No shit they don’t, cuz you ain’t nothing big yet,” Rex said.

“I wish I knew what Sherwood did, because I wouldn’t do that thing he did, you know. I want to finish my program. I want to get out and be a normal person,” said Bob.

Rex said, “Yeah, normal, I wanna be normal. You hear that, Mike? Put that in your log book. Make sure they know I want to be normal.”

I looked at them and said nothing. There was no way I could respond. I shouldn’t have said anything. I was trapped.

After the outside break was over I went into the office and everyone was eating pizza. There were four boxes of pizzas and each pizza had different toppings. Heidelberg and Imad were standing there, just smiling. Heidelberg had put a small TV in the room so we could watch football all day. Her smile was so big and nice. I didn’t understand it. Then Heidelberg said, “Hey Mike, get a piece of pizza. Everyone loves pizza.”

I felt confused and went over and picked up a slice of a pizza.

Heidelberg said, “How is your grandpa?”

“He’s good.”

Heidelberg laughed and said, “When I was young I spent a lot of time with my dad’s parents. They lived next door so when my parents weren’t home or when there was nothing going on at my house I would go over there. My grandma and I would make cookies and brownies together and my grandpa would tell me about being in World War 2.”

“That sounds kind of like my grandma. All she wanted to do was feed me, like she constantly asked me, ‘Mike are you hungry, do you need anything to eat Mike, I don’t think you ate enough Mike, do you want me to make you some food?’”

We both laughed about grandmas.

Then I said, “How is your kid, Rachel?”

“Oh, he is doing great. I am teaching him the alphabet and he is learning it really well. He is so smart.”

Then Imad came over and stood there eating a piece of pizza.

Rachel said, “How is your new wife?”

Imad said, “Everything seems to be going smoothly.”

Rachel said, “When are you going to have a kid?”

“The next time you give me a raise,” said Imad.

We all laughed.

Then Heidelberg said, “Well, I have to go to a meeting and I’ve already eaten my max of three pieces, even though I know I could eat five. Gotta watch my weight in my old age.”

I said, “You aren’t old. What are you, like thirty-one?”

“I’m thirty-six, Mike, but thanks for those five years.”

Heidelberg left. It was just Imad and I standing there, and Imad said, “Before I have a kid, I have to get my wife to stop spending all our money on clothes. Man, all she does every Saturday is go to the mall and buy clothes. I don’t even know what she does with all those clothes. Most of the time when I see her she is wearing jogging pants and a sweater. But she has massive amounts of clothes, I think she might be a hoarding addict. Have you seen that show Hoarding ?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah man, my wife, she hoards clothes. I wish she would like hoard pizza and beer, but instead she hoards clothes. I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

“Yeah, women, they are crazy with that shopping. My ex-girlfriend shopped constantly, spent tons of money, and then when we went I had to pay for both of our meals because she spent all her money on clothes.”

“I know, I know.”

Then Imad walked away.

I felt confused by the whole pizza event. Everyone acted really nice and human in their own way. I walked back to my post and watched the residents. The residents received no pizza. They sat staring at the walls or reading magazines.

Around two in the afternoon I was standing in the office looking at the schedules for the next week, and I noticed that Jay Riddick was gone. His name had disappeared from the schedule. I remembered in the morning that his name had been there. It said Jay Riddick and all the days and times he was scheduled to work the next week. I didn’t understand. Jay Riddick had disappeared. An employee could disappear just like the residents.

I looked around the office and didn’t see anyone but Monica Whitten, the IT person. Monica Whitten graduated from college with a computer science degree and had been working for NEOTAP for two years. She was young and pretty. I kind of had a crush on her. I thought she was nice.

I said, “Monica, where did Jay Riddick go?”

“Maybe he went on vacation.”

“No, he just went on vacation.”

“I don’t know.”

“The other day Sherwood Burke disappeared.”

“Who’s that?”

“A resident.”

“Oh.”

“Now Jay has disappeared. That guy was nice, and now he is just gone.”

“Go ask Imad, maybe he’ll tell you.”

“Yeah.”

I left the office. I found Imad standing by himself. He was just standing there with his hands on his hips, gazing out like he was the master of the world and not a small Arab man who could get his ass kicked by every one of the residents. I said to Imad, “Imad, where did Jay go? Is he still on vacation?”

Imad didn’t look at me. “Jay doesn’t work here anymore.”

“How come?”

“He doesn’t work here anymore.”

He never looked at me. I walked back to the office and told Monica, “Imad said he doesn’t work here anymore.”

“Why doesn’t he work anymore?”

“I don’t know. Imad wouldn’t say,” I said.

Monica said, “You know, I have access to all of the documents from my laptop at home. Do you want to look at them tonight?”

“Yeah, that sounds great.”

We made plans to meet up after work.

Half an hour before my shift was over, Imad came over to me and said, “Go to Heidelberg’s office.” I knew it was bad. Heidelberg did not believe in positive reinforcement. I realized that I had worked there for three weeks and not once did someone tell me I was doing a good job. They notified me immediately when I was doing a bad job, but not when I was doing a good job. I didn’t know what a good job was, I only knew what a bad job was. I had never worked for an institution that never gave positive feedback. I had worked for mega-corporations and local places, and both had notified me if I was doing things properly. But NEOTAP did not concern itself with helping the employee know when they were doing a good job. That wasn’t procedure.