Then We Came to the End (14 page)

We never suspected the cleaning crew. Those quiet souls weren’t likely to risk their legal status for a paperweight and a few plastic wind-up toys. It was a marvel — never a CD Walkman, never a wallet left by accident on a desk overnight. Instead, Karen’s snow globe of Hawaii. Chris Yop’s gold-plated nameplate. Pictures in cheap frames of our fat parents on vacation. Things of sentimental or practical value to no one but us.

Benny’s friend Roland from security worked an occasional night shift. One Friday morning during this time, Benny asked him, “So what’d you find in there?”

“Well, I looked,” said Roland. “The filing cabinets first off. Nothing in them. I even looked through the file folders themselves. I looked through the bookshelves next, but there aren’t a whole many books there on his bookshelf.”

He was talking about Joe Pope’s bookshelf. Some people had convinced Benny to have a talk with Roland, if just to see what would come of it, and Roland had taken Benny seriously.

“And I looked through his desk drawers, too,” Roland continued. “There wasn’t nothing there, either, except this lucky rabbit’s foot.”

“A rabbit’s foot?” said Benny. “Let me see it.”

Roland handed over a keychain attached to a rabbit’s foot. Before the day was through Benny had shown it to everyone and we all said no, none of our useless shit had ever included a rabbit’s foot keychain.

“Must belong to the prior occupant,” Roland concluded when Benny handed it back to him.

After that, somebody who shall remain anonymous went into Benny’s office; he said he had something he wanted to float by Benny. Benny got a chuckle out of it. Then the guy said, “But hold on, Benny — we’re not joking. We’re serious.” And Benny, still chuckling, said, “Yeah, it’s funny, it’s clever.” The guy cut him off. Benny wasn’t
listening,
Benny wasn’t
hearing
him. “We’re dead serious,” the guy said. Now Benny could see the guy wasn’t kidding. “Are you serious?” said Benny. “Are you listening to me or not, Benny?” the guy asked. “We are dead, dead,
dead
serious.” “Oh,” said Benny. “I thought you were just joking.” “No, we’re not joking,” he said. “We are not joking.” “Who’s ‘we’?” asked Benny. “Benny,” said the guy, “don’t be so fucking dense. What do you say, are you in or not?” “You’re talking about deliberately setting him up,” Benny said. “As a joke!” the guy cried. “Just as a stupid practical joke!” “That doesn’t sound right to me,” said Benny. “Why not?” “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s just not something I think I want to do.” The guy could only clap his hands on his knees and stand up. “Okay,” he said. “Suit yourself.”

After the guy left, Benny called down to security. “What can I do you for, Benjamin?” asked Roland. “Look,” said Benny. “I think you should stop making inspections of Joe’s office. How many times have you been in there now?” Roland told him that he stopped by there every time he worked a night shift, so every Thursday night. “And have you ever found anything?” “Nothing,” said Roland, “except that lucky rabbit’s foot.” “Listen,” Benny said, “we were just kidding around one day, saying he could be the one because he’s really the only guy who stays here until nine or ten at night. He makes us feel like we’re not working hard enough because we don’t stay here half as long as he does. But it was just a joke, Roland. He’s not your guy. He doesn’t want our knickknacks.” “So if it’s not him,” said Roland, “who is it?” “Hey, Roland, you’re the security man here. You should be telling me that.” “But I thought you said you knew who it was.” “It was a joke!” cried Benny. “A joke! It’s not him!” “Well, I won’t go in there anymore, then, if you’re telling me I should be looking elsewheres.” “I’m telling you,” said Benny. “You’re not going to find anything if you go in there.”

A day or two after this conversation, Joe Pope went in search of a woman named Paulette Singletary. Paulette was a sweet black woman of forty or so with hair parted in the middle almost exactly like a thatched roof. She had a greeting for everyone. It might not sound like much to have a greeting for everyone, but in an office as big as ours, we saw people every day whose faces we knew better than our own mothers’, yet we’d never been introduced to them. Maybe we’d sat together in a meeting or seen them at an all-agency function, but because we’d never been introduced, we averted our eyes as we passed them down the hall. Paulette Singletary was the only one among us who would stop someone and say, “You and I haven’t met yet, I don’t think. My name’s Paulette.” It might have been a southern thing. Paulette came from Georgia and retained an accent you could hear ever so faintly. With a greeting for everyone, a warm smile, and an easy laugh, Paulette was everyone’s favorite. It was a challenge finding someone so universally approved, unless it was Benny Shassburger, and even Benny had his detractors.

Joe went in search of Paulette, but not finding her at her workstation he took the liberty of replacing the small piece of stained glass in his hand — an angel of blue and russet — which he knew belonged on Paulette’s cube wall, because he had seen it there over a succession of weeks and months. From the minute he saw the glass glinting unexpectedly from the corner of his office, Joe knew where it belonged.

The following day, one of the new high-powered laptops went missing.

“You all are up to something,” Genevieve Latko-Devine said, sweeping her finger across a good number of us, “and I think you should knock it off.”

This was maybe a day or two after the stolen computer. Tough to recall if her remark — an accusation, really, a broad and mostly unfair one — came before an input, at lunch, or at the coffee bar, or maybe in an off-moment when several of us were gathered around some workstation before returning to our desks. Joe had told her how puzzled he’d been to find Paulette Singletary’s stained glass in his office. He wouldn’t have noticed if the door had remained open at that hour of the afternoon, but he had closed it to get some work done and there it was, catching sunlight in the corner.

Most of us honestly had no idea what Genevieve was talking about. “Oh? Was that also the case,” she asked us, “when someone Sharpied
FAG
on his wall?”

“That was Joe who did that,” said Karen Woo.

“Oh, give me a break, Karen. That’s ridiculous and you know it.”

“I don’t think it’s so ridiculous,” said Tom.

“You guys are sick in the head,” said Genevieve.

“Prove it,” replied Tom.

“Okay,” said Genevieve. “What about the time you decorated his office in biohazard tape?”

A few people earlier that year had gotten their hands on a roll of yellow plastic biohazard tape and given Joe’s office a good dressing. Whether he ever figured out the insinuations being made by that particular tape — that as a “fag,” he was a carrier of unpleasant disease — was unknown. In fact he never discussed the event. He just removed the tape from his doorway and his chair and, after parking and locking his bicycle, carried on as though nothing had happened. He didn’t seek names or run to Lynn Mason. He just placed the tape in his wastebasket.

“Or,” continued Genevieve, “what about the time — and this is one of my personal favorites — you locked him out of the server?”

Because all of our jobs were located on one central server, if one person had a job open on his or her computer, nobody else could open that job. It was a matter of protocol — only one person working on any one job at any given time. That way we eliminated redundancies and things of that nature. Word spread that Joe was on deadline on a project and needed access to a specific document. All it took to lock him out of that document was one person pulling it up on-screen. When Joe discovered he was locked out, he sent one e-mail, and then another, and then a third asking whoever had the document open to please close it, he was on deadline. Nobody replied. He was forced to walk around looking at everyone’s computer. When he found it at last the computer’s owner apologized to him, closed out of the job, then called someone else on a different floor on a faraway computer who would then open the job before Joe even got back to his desk, locking him out again. He’d return to the first guy, who would plead innocent, a half hour later he’d find the second guy, who would apologize, close out, and call someone new, starting the cycle over again. According to them, the idea was, if Joe Pope likes a late night, let’s give him a late night.

“Sick in the head,” said Genevieve.

First of all, we told her, we had nothing to do with Paulette Singletary’s stained glass ending up in Joe Pope’s office. And the whole
FAG
incident? Mike Boroshansky investigated and personally cleared every one of us of responsibility, and that included Tom Mota. Was it really so crazy, we asked Genevieve, to suggest that Joe had done it himself? Maybe he was seeking attention, or had a persecution complex. Besides, we continued in our defense, we weren’t trying to excuse anyone’s behavior, but Joe Pope wasn’t the most social guy in the world. After-work drinks for Joe Pope? No chance. Joe, you want to grab some lunch? Forget about it.

“When was the last time,” Genevieve asked us, before shaking her head and walking away, “that any of you asked Joe to lunch?”

GENEVIEVE MADE HER ACCUSATION
around the same time that Karen Woo stopped by Jim Jackers’ cubicle one afternoon and made her infamous announcement.

“I’ve just come back,” she said, “from McDonald’s.”

It was like some kind of revelation, the way she said it. Jim looked up from whatever preoccupied Jim when he was at his desk. “Oh my god,” said Karen, moving closer, taking a seat in the plastic chair beside his desk, “I have just come back —” she paused for effect “— from McDonald’s.”

“What’s at McDonald’s?” asked Jim.

In Jim’s defense, it was impossible not to engage Karen when she stopped by your workstation. Her voice was a force of nature, her conversation a fast-moving rapid full of deadly churning eddies. She was like Hitler without the anti-Semitism, MLK without the compassion or noble cause. At the same time, Jim was an easy mark. He’d stop whatever he was doing and listen to just about anyone.

“Okay, I
never
go to McDonald’s,” said Karen. “I haven’t been to a McDonald’s probably since college. I wake up this morning, I have the biggest jones for a Filet-O-Fish.” “That’s weird,” said Jim. “Isn’t it?” said Karen. “
So
random. It’s seven in the morning, and I have the biggest jones. So, okay, I have to wait till lunch. I make it to eleven-thirty. But it’s still only eleven-thirty! I can’t go over to McDonald’s at eleven-thirty and order a Filet-O-Fish. That’s gross.” “Is it really called Filet-O-Fish?” asked Jim. “What, you think it’s Fish-O-Filet?” “No, I thought it was McFilet,” said Jim. “No it’s not
Mc
Filet, Jim,” said Karen. “That’s dumb. That’s seriously dumb. It’s not
Mc
Filet. Will you just listen to my story? So I wait an extra half hour, it
kills
me, but I wait. I go over there. They’re fucking
out
of Filet-O-Fishes. I’m standing at the counter, I’m like,
uh
. . .
uh
. . . and then I basically just fall over and die.” “So what’d you order?” “No, Jim, that’s not my point. I ordered nothing. I
hate
McDonald’s. I’m not ordering any cow product from McDonald’s, that’s disgusting. I
wanted
a Filet-O-Fish.” “So where’d you end up going?” Karen rolled her eyes and threw her head back in a display of monumental exasperation. “Jim,” she said, “you’re just not getting it. That’s not my point. Will you please just listen to my story? I had to pee real bad,” she continued, “so I went through the dining area to the back, and you’ve been to that McDonald’s, right? You know that to the left is the bathrooms, and to the right is the play area. You know what I mean by the play area, right? With the McFry guys, and the cheeseburger merry-go-round and all that?” “The PlayStation,” said Jim. “PlayStation, whatever,” said Karen. “No, PlayStation is the videogame,” said Jim. “PlayPlace!” “PlayStation, PlayPlace — whatever, Jim. You know what I’m talking about, right?” Jim nodded. “Okay, in the PlayPlace, they have one of those netted-off areas with all the plastic balls inside. You know what I’m talking about?” “Sure,” said Jim. “The pool of plastic balls.” “You know it?” asked Karen. “I know it,” said Jim. “So I go to the bathroom, I come out, I happen to look through the door to the PlayPlace — something catches my eye. I stop, I look. It’s Janine Gorjanc.” “What do you mean, it’s Janine?” said Jim. “In the pool of plastic balls,” said Karen. “What do you mean,
in
it?” “She’s
inside
with the balls,” said Karen. “Just sitting inside it. The balls up to here.” “What are you saying,” said Jim, “she’s sitting inside the pool of plastic balls?” “
Inside
it,” said Karen, “yes, with the balls up to here.” “What was she doing in there?” “Sitting.” “Right, but why?” “You’re asking me?” said Karen. “How should I know?” “Are you sure it was her?” “It was Janine Gorjanc,” said Karen. “She was sitting inside the pool of plastic balls.”

The following day Karen convinced Jim to follow her to McDonald’s. They ordered lunch — Karen finally got her fish sandwich — and then had a seat at a booth toward the front. Before even taking a bite, Karen said, “Be right back.” When she returned, she said, “Go look.”

“Is she in there?”

“Go look,” said Karen.

When Jim got to the bathroom, he stared through the door to the PlayPlace but saw nothing. Nervous, he rushed inside the men’s room. When he came out, however, he realized that he had all the time in the world. He stared through the door and then through the loose black netting into the darkened space where ordinarily one found children flopping around, tossing balls at one another, and grabbing hold of the netting for balance as they stalked along the ever-shifting surface of hundreds of balls. But all that wild activity had been replaced by the still, mournful presence of Janine, the same heavy and muted presence she carried with her everywhere around in the office. Jim felt it palpably even through the glass door. Not one ball stirred. Not one happy child banged about. She was not submerged, as Karen had described it for him the day before. Her legs, to the knee, were merely lost beneath the balls. It looked as if she were resting poolside, which she was, in a manner of speaking, though her motionless slump revealed none of the delight or relaxation that phrase conjured. Her elbows rested on her knees as her downcast head and rounded shoulders bent forlornly into the collection of balls gathered around her, and her grim expression made it seem that she was spilling jewel-colored tears. Jim guessed she had taken off her shoes before going in because a small black pair of women’s pumps sat in front of the child-sized stairs leading up to the pool.