The Big Dream (2 page)

“Why are you
talking
like that, Clinty?”

“Toothache, still. Is all swollen.”

“Ah, Jesus.” Anna shook the electrical cord at the sky. “What next?”

Luddock strode in, shoelaces flapping. “Anna-cat, we're too busy to go on strike. Plug that in right now.”

“Some wingnut on the third floor broke his. Mai-Nam said – ”

“To render your own computer useless? What's wrong with – ”

“Whuh? Hah do you
break
. . . ?”

“What, Clint, are you drunk?”

“The storeroom door is jammed. He stepped on it. Clint has a toothache. God, this place would fall apart without me.” Anna left, swinging her cord like a lasso.

“
Tooth
ache? Oh, fuck, be a man, get some Ambersol . . . .” Luddock stomped out and then Clint could hear him trying to un-jam the storage-room door by kicking it.

Clint waited in the hallway outside Mai-Nam's office. It wasn't a real office – just a cube with a cardboard panel for a door. Clint could hear Mai-Nam's phone call perfectly: “Uh-huh, no, well, no, ok, Samsonite
,” click
. He tapped the panel gently. It sounded like thunder in a school play.

“Yo?”

“Hey, ah, Mai-Nam?” Clint slid inside and her small form popped up behind the two monitors, mounds of cables, Blackberry
and cell charging on top of stacks of papers on top of hardware cartons, on top of desk. There was a deflated McDonald's sack on her ergonomic keyboard. Mai-Nam had a car and could go to McDonald's. She was staring at her monitor, scrolling rapidly.

“Hey, um, Clint. You know they got mice on the third floor?”

Clint enunciated carefully, “We got mies on this floor.”

“Yeah, but are they eating the phone cords?”

“Er, nah yet.” Clint tried to close the sliding panel but it jammed.

“Well, they are on third. You'd think mice would be a maintenance problem, but anything telecommunications-related is an us problem.”

“Uh. Ye-ah.” The door ripped. Most of it closed, but a corner caught on a motherboard, leaving a lightning-bolt-shaped hole. Clint saw high heels in the hall.

“So, I'm gonna send you and Anna down with the new cords – in the cupboard, Luddock fixed the door – and these thingies.” Mai-Nam was waggling little metallic things on her fingers. They looked like Clint's 9th grade retainer, only smaller. “They clip cords under desks, see. But first you gotta glue'em on. Do you know where any glue is?”

“Ah, no.”

“I'll call Anna . . .” Mai-Nam reached for the phone.

“Lissen, I wanta talk to ya, about my – ”

“Hmm? Listening . . .” Mai-Nam was in fact dialing, but not the last digit.

“ – contrad.”

Mai-Nam put down the phone. “Yes, Clint? Yes?”

“Iss over. Three weks ago.”

“Oh.
Oh.”
It seemed several of the clips were stuck on her fingertips. Mai-Nam was yanking hard as she smiled at Clint. “Don't worry, you'll still get paid for any hours you work, even without a contract.”

“Until?”

“Until . . .” She managed to tug off one of the clips, but the tug flung it across the room and out the hole in the door. “What?”

“I unnrerstood, I was given to unner
stand . . .
after the contrad, I'd be full-time.”

“Well, that's the, uh, goal.” Mai-Nam was squinting at her door. Clint stepped in front of the hole. “But we would have to request budget for another full-timer, get approval from HR, the allocations committee. This would take time.”

Clint thought about the conditional voice, indicative of a thing that not only hadn't happened yet, but also might never. Clearly, not tomorrow. He wondered if he could get the allocations committee to feel the lump in his upper-right gums.

“Do I have to go thruh a review? To see if you want . . .”

Mai-Nam leapt up, feet catching a cord. Her laptop tipped back onto the screen. “Absolutely! It'll be time for your three-month review in a few . . .”

“Three weks ago,” Clint said. He remembered suddenly the Cheez-its he'd left in his coat pocket, and the mouse. Mice. “If ya do der three-month review when der person's been here . . . three months.”

“Therea
bouts
. I mean, that's the ideal but . . .” Mai-Nam started flipping papers off the desk. Her Blackberry skittered to the floor. She still had a retainer clipped to her thumb. The phone rang and she hit the speaker button without stopping her search.

A squawk: “Mai, if you don't get someone on these
fuck
ing cords, I'm gonna go ape-shit down here. Nothing's bleeding working, I'm on my
cell . . . .”

Mai-Nam lifted a stack of what looked to be blank paper. The desk lamp that had been resting on it crashed to the floor. From the speaker: “What the
fuck
?”

Mai-Nam looked at Clint, the left corner of her mouth twitching like a cat's tail. “Could you just – just take those clips
to Anna? She knows where the cords are? I just – this has to be done. I'll start on your . . .” her gaze drifted to the torn door “. . . stuff.”

Virgie was disgusted and adorable, chopping carrots while wearing only a pink T-shirt and orange panties. “What a horrible manager. You should report her to HR.”

“Tha's not really . . .”

“They take advantage. You work hard.” Carrots into the steamer. Then peppers.

“Yes. And yes. But they won't – ”

“They have to, they promised. Listen, can you eat
any
thing that isn't steamed? It's my folks' barbeque on Saturday, remember? My mom won't want to purée stuff.”

“Virgie – ” He had forgotten, or not forgotten, just not wanted to discuss. On Saturday, Tech was installing CallPilot on every phone in the office, not barbequing with Virgie's parents. “I cen't. Gotta work.”

“What? No.”

“Iss a big project, everbody's gotta.”

“Overtime is optional.” She waved the knife absently. “Real life is not optional.”

It was sweet of her to think this. Sweet and delusional. “Virgie, werk
is
real life. I'm nah in a good spot rie now. Sometimes, they jus say,
come
and you gotta come.”

“What about me? Can I just say,
come
?” She smiled, jutted her left hip towards him. He looked at the pale curve, the bright cotton. He was wasting a perfectly good girlfriend.

“I cen't do it, Virgie. Um sorry.”

The smile dropped like a comet. “Yeah. Yeah, you are.”

The mouse-proofing took Tech two days. First, they made every employee leave his or her desk for several minutes so that the clips could be glued on. Again the next day, when the glue was dry, so their phone wires could be locked into the clips. People were furious at the inconvenience, the violation of strangers crawling under their desks. Curses were thrown, and Damien actually got kicked.

On the third day, it was found that though cords were no longer resting on the floor, the jacks were low enough to be vulnerable to vermin. Tech was sent to cover the breach with wide rolls of packing tape. Anna muttered, “This spells disaster as soon as they reconfigure the furniture. That's gonna be a hell of a lot of sticky jacks.”

Clint could have made several good dirty jokes out of that, but by then he wasn't really speaking unnecessarily.

Tech spent the morning wandering with their tape, wincing when they met, whispering, “We are universally loathed.” This time, many people chose to remain at their desks while Clint huddled beneath, taping.

No mice were seen.

When the team reconvened in the Tech hallway, Mai-Nam was being fired. The woman firing her was tall, blonde, and never before seen in Tech. As Mai-Nam wept and threw things into boxes, the woman introduced herself as the VP of Human Resources. She offered them all time-and-a-half to finish taping cords that evening, when it would be “less of a disruption.”

Damien was on server duty, icing his shin, and Lionel turned out to be a father and needed to get home, so it was only Anna, Clint, and Luddock who, in dread and faint slumber-party excitement, took scavenged food down to the basement for what Anna declared, “Lunch, the sequel!”

Clint carefully worked his work can opener around the tin of Spaghetti-Os, then stood. The turgid lump at the back of his
mouth seemed to pulse. He went several steps towards the microwave before Luddock caught him in a flying tackle.

“Metal in the microwave equals death, Clint! You might be willing to sacrifice yourself, but the whole building radioactive for ten thousand years for warm noodles? No! No, I say.”

Clint sat slowly, clutching the tin. “Cen't believe I forgot that.”

Luddock flapped his hands. “It
is
tiresome, feeding oneself.”

“That food-court fantasy gets fonder every day.” Anna was eating a jam sandwich. It wasn't a real sandwich, just bread with red. “Oh, for a Cultures right now.”

Clint took a forkful of Os. Warm, they could be mushed with the tongue, but otherwise they congealed almost solid. He sucked hard.

“The
best
is KFC on Toonie Tuesdays,” said Luddock. “Sometimes, if you're charming, they'll give you two thighs instead of the thigh and drumstick classic.”

Clint liked the Italian place, Mrs. Something, where you could get pizza with a side of lasagna. But noodles weren't dissolving, so he just nodded. KFC wasn't bad.

“The food court is democracy in action.” Luddock flapped his arms. “Everything is an option.”

Anna mentioned Mmmuffins, Kernels, the soup place. Luddock parried Manchu Wok, Teriyaki Experience, Mr. Greek Junior. It was a dreamy hour.

If there had been windows, they would have gone dark by the time the VP came down to declare the building empty enough that they could work. “I appreciate this, team. I really do.” She clasped the nearest shoulder, Luddock's, who flinched.

In the fluorescent-lit night, the building was dead silent except the shriek of adhesive pulling free, the rustle of file-drawers searched for candy, control-top pantyhose, condoms. (“They're going to say we did
anyway –
why not learn something?”)

Clint had dense regrets about the few Spaghetti-Os he'd managed to swallow. Crawling was not a fast or jerky enough activity
to be nauseating,
one would think,
yet he could feel the sweet red sauce creeping up his throat as he hunched low, taped, shuffled backwards. He kept tonguing his gum-lump, though he knew he did not want to release the energy pent up there. Violent energy, the thrum of his heart in his gum line.

“The
thing
about Freshii,” Luddock yelled from behind a rolling chair, “is that the
basic
salad costs six bucks, and then more for every little freaking walnut.”