Glenda punched the close door button and counted in her head the time it took to be cut off from the lobby. It beat yesterday’s time by one confirming using the button affected nothing.
She stopped by Harriet’s desk with its dark monitor. Glenda checked the time on her cell phone. Harriet should have been here by now.
Glenda headed for her desk. A hint of discomfort tugged at her mind before sitting in her desk chair. Using her cell phone, she called her friend.
“I’m on my way,” Harriet said after the third ring.
“What’s going on?”
“Glenda?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, sorry. It thought it was Alex. You know how he is. I’m not at my desk, so the whole world is going to collapse.”
“Where are you?”
“At the light right down from the office. It’s red, so I’m waiting for it to cycle through. This is such a pain.”
“Did you do what I told you?”
Glenda slid open the bottom drawer of the desk dropping her purse into the gap with a solid bang as the drawer closed. She turned toward the back of her desk.
“You mean that ‘picturing the light different’ crap? I have to wait like everyone else.”
“You wouldn’t have to if you did what I told you.”
“Yes, I would. You would too. We’re not special.”
Glenda closed her eyes and pictured the light at the corner cycling through the colors rapidly. She eased back in the chair. The greenness of the light blazed in her mind. She concentrated harder.
“Oh, wait. The light just changed. Let me go. I’ll see you in a minute.”
“Sure thing.” Glenda hung up the receiver. “You’re welcome.”
After a bit, she heard Harriet arrive at her desk. She considered walking over to say something to her, but remained on her own computer powering through the forms in her queue. Though not the fastest, she surpassed everyone in accuracy. Others reentered or corrected errors. Glenda finished requests the first time through.
“Did you hear?”
Harriet’s voice startled Glenda causing her to jump. Two pages remained on this order. She debated sending the friendly distraction back to her desk. Instead, she focused her attention on Harriet.
“I haven’t heard anything. What are you talking about?”
“It’s in your email. Thought you would have seen it an hour ago and been at my desk getting my opinion rather than the other way around.”
She opened her emails, scrolled down and found the most recent. After opening the email, Glenda read the meeting notification including the request for the staff to bring their key cards..
“You know what that means.”
Glenda shook her head and reread the message. It made no sense to her. She wanted to get Harriet to clarify things. Fortunately, Harriet required no additional urging.
“It means their letting people go. We could be on the list. This is terrible and we have to go right now.”
Before getting up from her desk, Glenda shrugged and grabbed her ID card. She walked to the conference room with Harriet in her wake. She sensed her friend’s need for reassurance.
“We’ll be fine.” They crossed into the conference room and took a pair of seats in the back third of the room. “We’re not going to be on the list.”
“How do you know that?”
“I do. Now, relax.”
The manager arrived. His face hung low and crisscrossed with more lines than normal. He approached his normal place at the head of the table. He forced a smile onto his face managing to move his hands in a circular pattern.
“I’m sure you’re all concerned based on the email as to what is going to happen. I apologize that it has to be this way, but the people up at the main office wanted it done this way.”
“This sounds familiar,” Harriet whispered. “We’re out, he’s got a clean conscious and he can say ‘I was merely following orders.’”
“You have nothing to worry about, so let Walter be. It isn’t his fault.”
“So there’s no easy way to do this. If you hear your name, please bring me your ID card, accompany to the guard back to your desk to gather your belongings and be escorted from the building.”
“Jezz, Walter,” the office manager said. “A guard? Are they afraid we’re going to riot and burn the building down? We’re professionals.”
“I know, Karl. I know. It is how they want it handled. I can’t help it. Now, let’s get started.”
He rattled off the first few names of people who talked about retirement on a regular basis. This provided them with the release they never had the courage to seek for themselves.
“Barrett Cloney.”
“What the fuck?” the voice exclaimed from the back of the room. “What are you talking about? I was assured at my last review everything was OK and I wasn’t in trouble.”
“That might have been true at the time of your evaluation, Barrett, but this came down from the main branch. I’m not sure what the criteria they used. These are the names I was given.”
“That’s awful fucking convenient.”
Barrett walked forward with his card in hand. As he reached the front of the table, he lunged at Walter knocking him from the chair spilling him onto the floor like a child’s doll bumped from the tea party. Before the younger man had the opportunity to descend on his superior, two of the beefy guards wrapped his arms up and twisted them behind his back.
“Hey, what’s going on?”
“Settle down for me,” one of the guards barked. “We don’t want any trouble.”
“Too late, buddy.”
Barrett twisted in the guard’s arms and drove his head into the speaker’s forehead. The other guard put an arm across his throat squeezing gently. Barrett’s body tensed as though coiling like a spring. His body relaxed to the point of slumping in the guard’s arms. The pair escorted the motionless body from the room.
A hush fell over the remaining assembly. Walter rose from the floor. Using a weak smile as a mask, he located the list of names on the floor next to the casters on the right side of his chair. Sliding the chair to the side, Walter brought the paper with two deep furrows to the table using the side of his palm to smooth the creases from the page.
“That was exciting, wasn’t it?” He gave a nervous laugh. “The next name is Gemma Johnson.”
Several employees grumbled as they approached the box or left the room. None expressed themselves as Barrett. Glenda wondered if Barrett encapsulated their frustrations or seeing his prone form quelled everyone else’s stronger passions.
Walter allowed the smaller shows of displeasure even when directed at him. The size of the room expanded as the contents shrank to half their original inhabitants. When Walter read what appeared to be the last name, he placed the paper on the table and looked around the room. His face appeared like an abuse victim.
“Well, here we are.”
No one responded. Glenda watched his futile attempt to rally the troops.
“From today on, our office is under review.”
“Why did all those people have to leave if we’re under review?” Harriet whispered in Glenda’s ear.
Walter vision focused on the two women. A sensation pierced Glenda’s calm. She felt alone on an island with Harriet.
“So, what do you think?”
Glenda looked at her friend whose eyes studied her ignoring the fact their boss, the man who just let go about half the office, bore holes into the pair. She hoped keeping her eyes forward provided enough emphasis for Harriet to join her in the uncomfortable silence.
“Glenda, did you hear me?”
“Ms. Filimon, was there something you needed to discuss?”
Harriet’s head snapped toward Walter. Glenda wondered if she truly forgot the man’s presence or the fear she expressed an hour prior. Her friend’s mouth opened.
Don’t say anything. Don’t say anything.
“It doesn’t make sense. We are under review now? Shouldn’t the review have taken place before we let all those people go? Give them a chance to save their jobs and stuff like that.”
“I appreciate your confusion.” Glenda heard a strange strength entering Walter’s voice bordering on a swagger. “But don’t you think you might want to have this conversation when you return to your desk rather than in the middle of the room where so many of your co workers just lost their job?”
“I’m just saying-“
“Enough. This is what was decided by the main office. Our job now, now that we’re down to just a few, is to do the best we can and show everyone how much we’re needed.”
Walter looked around the room for added emphasis. Glenda held his eye contact when his gaze rolled to her. She saw the trembling muscles around his eyes and wondered how much the gripping fear held him before being knocked to the floor.
Glenda looked around the room. Everyone trembled as though waiting for everything to end without warning. She tilted her head to the side and painted the scene on the canvas of her mind. She understood the vastness of the array before her.
“It’ll all be OK,” Glenda said. “This place will be here for longer than any of those of us who are still here. We just need to go back to doing what we were doing.”
Walter frowned at her vote of confidence. He deflated at the unexpected positivity. Everyone remaining, except Walter, sat a little straighter.
“Well said, Glenda. Let’s get back at it and make the main office happy they kept us around.”
The rest of the day stayed relatively calm. No one collapsed under they weight of the emotional dirge caused by the reduction in staff. Rather all the employees, even those who worked at suspect pace prior to the culling, launched themselves into the breach with passion.
As Glenda left, she ran into Walter in the hallway. His shirt wore the wrinkles of a man who spent most of the day trying to rub his dress shirt smooth.
“Glenda, thanks for the assist in there this morning. It was hard enough, but you’re words were perfect. It’s like you knew just what to say.”
“You’re welcome. I was happy to do it.”
Glenda suspected Walter’s appreciation held no bearing on any future interactions with Walter. She felt fine with that arrangement because it was what she saw.
On the drive home, Glenda lost herself in the simple act of driving. A light changed from green to amber as she approached. Keeping the light amber, she moved under it.
Her boyfriend waited outside the front door as though he lost his keys. Matt sat in a white wicker chair rocked slowly back and forth. Glenda heard the click of the heels of his loafers and they contacted the painted boards of the porch.
“What are you doing out here?”
“Just waiting.”
“But you have a key.”
“I know. It’s just…”
He let the words trail off glancing away from Glenda. When he turned back, Matt’s eyes seemed strange to Glenda. He got out of the chair and extended his hand. Rather than offering romantic support for her terrifying day which she navigated wonderfully, Matt held her key between his thumb and the second knuckle of his index finger.
“What’s this?”
“It’s your key. I’m giving it back to you.”
“What?” The questions would not stop coming for Glenda. “Why are you giving me my key?”
“We’ve talked about it a couple of times, Glenda. Come on. Are you saying you haven’t seen this coming? You’re saying that all the time we’ve talked about the things we like or the things we want out of life and they’ve come up exactly opposite hasn’t bothered you.”
“No, they haven’t. I just thought we’d compromise. They were little things.”
Matt gestured for her to take the key. She stared at him neither acknowledging his words nor the object he offered.
When she did not take the key, Matt moved to set it on the wicker table beside the chair. Glenda’s skin felt tight and warm like an inflated kiddy pool on a hot summer afternoon. The picture in her mind cracked as the key landed on the wicker.
“Pick it up.”
“I can’t, Glenda. It isn’t right. You’re a good person and you’ll find the right person. It just isn’t me.”
“Pick it up.”
He moved past her as though he never heard her. The crack widened creating a gulf between Glenda and Matt. A tear combined with a bead of sweat and rolled down her cheek.
“Pick it up.”
Glenda’s teeth ground in her mouth. The gap in her mind closed. The pieces on either side of the tear stitched themselves together. Matt’s feet climbed the stairs as he brushed past her. She maintained her intense concentration on the correct the picture in her mind.
Matt lifted the key off the table and unlocked the door. He kissed her cheek.
“Welcome home, Baby.”
“Thanks, Sweetie.”
Glenda ignored the confusion swirling in his eyes. She knew in a few hours Matt’s mind would reset, so even the faintest hints of the deviation would vanish. She let him hold her and kiss her.
“Are you spending the night?”
“I would, but I don’t have anything here.”
“You don’t need anything tonight, do you? I have that extra toothbrush.”
“I guess you’re right.”
He followed her into the house with his hand holding her own. She nudged his halting steps forward. Matt needed the extra nudges until he surrendered once more. Glenda enjoyed concentrating on him. The sensation of his need made her feel better. He needed her strength and vision. He needed her control.
“How was your day?”
She looked back at him. He wore a wooden smile and his eyes bulged with eagerness.
“You would not believe all the things I had to do to keep things moving. You just wouldn’t believe it.”