by Alicia Ryan
“Oh. I guess that’s what titivating means?”
“Who knows?” Ernest interjected. “Somebody gave that asshole a Word of the Day calendar at the Christmas party last year, and now he spouts gibberish like that all the time.”
“Yeah,” Oscar confirmed. “As it’s November, we’re hoping he’ll soon run out. With Olive gone, I don’t think there’s anyone here crazy enough to give him another one.”
Herman laughed. “What happened to my predecessor, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Who? Olive? We retired her.”
“Retired her?” Herman wasn’t sure what that meant.
“Yeah,” Oscar explained. “She was a sweet old thing. Everybody loved her, but she was ninety if she was a day and getting a little…” He started whirling his index finger at the side of his head.
“Nutty as a fruit cake,” Ernest finished. “Found her in here one morning eating a roll of stamps.” He started shaking his head. “Guess twenty years of licking ‘em gave her a taste for it.”
“That’s when we decided to retire her,” Oscar said.
“How do you retire someone if they’re not willing?”
Ernest smiled, and Oscar laughed outright. “You throw them a retirement party,” he explained. “We got it all set up for a Friday afternoon – balloons, cake, the works. Everyone came, and I kept talking about all the plans she’d made, how she’d wanted to retire quietly, but we insisted on giving her a going away party.” He chuckled again. “Worked like a charm. She was confused most of the time anyway. She just packed it in and went to live with one of her sons - somewhere back east, I think.”
“All’s well that ends well, I guess.” Herman turned his attention to the trolley full of mail. “How do I figure out who’s who?”
“Ah. Good point,” Oscar said. He stepped over to the counter, where Ernest had already turned back to his work, and picked up a few papers. “These are maps of each floor by office number. Your cart has a folder for each office. Ernest is in charge of putting the right person’s mail into each folder. You just have to find the right office. Each office has a number on the door, too, so you’ll be fine.”
Herman nodded. “Can I start now?”
Oscar pulled the cart away from the wall and pointed it toward the door. “Off you go,” he said on a smile. “Just come back if you have any problem. Or ask anyone upstairs. Most people are pretty nice.”
Herman pushed the cart through the double doors and headed for the elevator.
“Not that way,” Oscar called after him, sticking his head out. He pointed down the hallway ninety degrees in the other direction. “Use the freight elevator,” he instructed.
Herman turned the cart around and found his way to the first floor. The first floor, Herman found out, was only a partial floor, at least for purposes of mail delivery. The reception area and three conference rooms took up part of the space, and lower level employees in human resources, facilities, and IT were slotted, cubicle-style, into the rest. The second floor was procurement and supply chain management. Floor three contained accounting and finance, and the fourth floor was management, marketing and sales.
Charlie Woodson occupied a gray, cloth-walled cubicle in the third floor accounting department. On Herman’s first run of the day there was no mail for Charlie, but Herman stopped near his cube on the pretext of checking his folders and made a note of Charlie’s location and general appearance.
The first thing that struck him was that Charlie was young, probably just early twenties. The next thing that struck him was that Charlie was short. There was no way Charlie would be able to look him in the eye even if he was standing on a telephone book. He had a sturdy, solid build, though, and sandy brown hair.
Herman pushed his cart forward a bit and saw Charlie open up the bottom drawer of his desk. He pulled out three plastic bottles, quickly removed their caps and shook a collection of pills into his hand. When he reached for a Yoo-hoo to wash them down, Herman intervened.
“Hi there,” he said, moving into the cubicle’s opening. He extended his hand. “I’m Herman - the new mailroom guy.”
Charlie turned nervously in his chair and redirected his right hand from its course toward the Yoo-hoo in order to shake Herman’s. “Charlie,” he replied. “Charlie Woodson. Don’t feel bad if you don’t remember.”
“Nice to meet you, Charlie.” Herman glanced pointedly at the pills. “Are you okay?”
“Oh.” Charlie closed his hand over the colorful assortment. “Um, yeah. More or less. Sometimes more, sometimes less.”
Herman’s brow furrowed. “Is today more or less?”
Charlie reopened his palm and smiled a little. “About average, I guess.”
This must be what I’m here to help the poor guy with, Herman thought. “So what’s all that stuff for, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Charlie shook his head. “Nerves,” he replied. “I…um…have bad nervous reactions sometimes. You know, like panic attacks.”
“And those things help?”
Charlie almost smiled again. “More or less.”
“Sometimes more, sometimes less?” Herman asked gently.
“Yeah. They’re no silver bullet, that’s for sure.”
“Maybe you don’t need a silver bullet,” Herman suggested. “You know how doctors are. You go in with something perfectly normal, like stress, and they send you out with four bottles, a referral to a therapist and a surgery appointment.”
“I’m not quite…perfectly normal,” Charlie stammered.
Herman looked him over. “Nobody thinks they’re normal, Charlie, but it’s one of the cold, hard truths of life that almost everybody is. Look at me,” he said, doing just that. “I think I have the worst luck of anyone I’ve ever known, but probably if I were in anybody else’s shoes, I’d think exactly the same thing. And if the bad stuff averages out, the good probably does too, right?”
Charlie scrunched his forehead and stared up at Herman. “What do you mean?”
“Well, if the problems are evenly distributed, more or less, the strength to deal with them must be too, right?”
Charlie’s forehead relaxed. “You think so?”
“I think most people can do a lot more than they give themselves credit for.” Herman looked at Charlie’s handful of pills. “Why, I bet you don’t need even half of those. If you started weaning yourself off them, I bet you’d be fine.”
Charlie looked from Herman to the pills and back. “Maybe…maybe you’re right,” he said. “I have been thinking about trying to find some other ways to…um…cope with my…um…condition.”
“Just don’t start drinking or anything like that,” Herman cautioned, a sudden vision of good advice gone horribly wrong popping into his head.
Charlie smiled in earnest this time. “I was thinking more along the lines of meditation or yoga or…something.”
“Now those are all great ideas,” Herman said, patting Charlie on the shoulder. “Find something you like that will take your mind off your problems.”
Charlie nodded. “Thanks, Herman. You know, this little talk may be just what I needed to push myself in a new direction.”
Herman smiled and wondered if all his guardian assignments would be this easy. “Well, I have to finish my rounds. It was nice to meet you Charlie. Maybe I’ll have something for you this afternoon.”
The fourth floor was livelier than the other three. As soon as Herman stepped out of the elevator, a foam football whizzed over his cart.
“Whoa, sorry man,” yelled a voice from between the cubicles on his left. Herman turned, but didn’t see anyone. From his right, the man who’d caught the throw approached and extended his hand.
“Didn’t mean to cut you off,” he said. “Dave there just landed a big new account.”
Dave, rounding a corner, was now visible. “Congratulations,” Herman said, nodding in Dave’s direction.
“Thanks, man. Sorry about that.”
Herma
n smiled, thinking Dave must be a great salesman. He was unassuming in appearance – sandy hair, middling height, a little paunch – but had innocent eyes and a wide smile. “No harm done,” he assured the man.
“I’m Mike Orzio,” the receiver said. “You must be Olive’s replacement?”
Mike was as unlike Dave as any man could be – tall, lean, angular – and probably not in sales, Herman surmised.
“That’s right,” he said. “I’m Herman Morrie.”
“Mike!” a deep voice yelled.
Herman saw Lucian Phipps approaching over Mike’s shoulder. He was still carrying the delivery envelope he’d picked up from downstairs.
“Yes, sir,” Mike said, turning. “What’s the problem, Lucian?”
“No problem,” Lucian responded, handing him the envelope. “I just wanted you to know these had come in. Check them against your list, will you? Then get them down to accounting.”
“These the verification letters?”
Lucian nodded. “Got the last one this morning. All of them should be in there.” He nodded at the envelope.
“Will do.”
Lucian stalked off, and Mike turned back to Herman. “Welcome aboard, Herman. Stop by my office before you leave the floor, okay? I’ll just give you these and you can drop them off in accounting on your way back down.”
“Sure. No problem.”
Herman noted some of the employees on the fourth floor did indeed have offices. Lucian had a corner office on the front side of the building. He was yelling into the phone when Herman stepped in to pick up the items in his “Outgoing” mail box.
“Yes, we got them all! I told you we would, you goddamn bean counter!”
Silence for a moment as the unfortunate person on the other end responded.
“I know, I know,” Lucian conceded. “But you can bet your ass that won’t happen again. I’m going to give that useless nephew of mine a…”
“No, no, of course not,” Lucian said after a moment. “Yes, I remember the whistleblower policy. I’m not planning to fire him – just…correct him.”
“Hmph. Well, the board is expecting to have the financials delivered on time before the end of the month. So I don’t care what you have to do. I’ve given you what you asked for, now just get them done!” He slammed the phone down as Herman withdrew across the threshold without looking back.
Mike Orzio was VP of Procurement and occupied an office three doors down from Lucian’s. Herman poked his head in as he’d been instructed.
“Mike, got that envelope for me?”
“Oh, yeah, right,” he said, swiveling around in his padded desk chair. He picked up a few sheets of paper from beside his computer, jammed them back into the folder and handed it to Herman. “Give these to Charlie Woodson on your way back, would you?”
“Sure, I’ll do it right now,” Herman replied, glad of any excuse to check in with his ward. He needed a way to interact with him naturally, to gain his trust. After that…Herman wasn’t quite sure. He was positive he’d steered Charlie in the right direction this morning, but it wasn’t obvious to him where to go from there – or how to go about it.
He could hear Lucian’s voice before the elevator doors even opened. When they did, Herman saw all the inhabitants of the third floor standing and peeking over the edge of their cubes at the commotion he could hear, but not see.
Lucian’s voice only got louder as Herman wound his way toward Charlie’s cube.
“Don’t you dare tell me it wasn’t a mistake,” Lucian yelled. “It cost time and money to get those stupid letters, and all they do is tell you exactly what I told you and what Mike told you. From now on, you just do the job as you’re told to do it, do you understand me?”
“I…I’m sorry,” Charlie blurted. “I just thought…”
“I don’t pay you to think!”
Herman stopped his cart on Charlie’s aisle, but didn’t approach. He was sure the letters in question were the ones he was holding, but he expected their appearance might only inflame Lucian more.
“Sorry, Uncle, I…”
“Don’t you forget it,” Lucian spat. “You work here as a favor to my idiot half-brother. He’s got no head for business, but when you got an accounting degree, I thought you might be better. My mistake. Just know that the only reason I’m not firing you now is because you are my brother’s son.”
Lucian looked around at all the watchful eyes, then raised his voice and repeated his diatribe. “That’s right, Charlie. If any one of these other people had fucked up like this, they’d be out on their ass. You think about that the next time you pass one of them in the hall or at the snack machine. The only reason you’re still here is that you’re related to the boss, and you aren’t good enough to lick their boots.”
Lucian’s eyes suddenly lit on Herman. “Not even that guy!” he said, pointing. “I’d rather have a fucking mail clerk doing my books. At least he’s got sense enough to do what he’s told!”
Lucian stalked toward him, hand outstretched, and grabbed the envelope in question.
Charlie’s face had turned red, and Herman could see he was beginning to shake. Was he supposed to rescue Charlie from this somehow?
Lucian returned to Charlie’s cube and threw the envelope down on his desk. “There, see for yourself!”
Charlie reached for the envelope, but Lucian slammed his hand down on it. “What? You still don’t believe me?” His eyes were wide, and the top of his head gleamed with a sheen of sweat from under the sparse strands of his comb-over.
“No, I…I didn’t…I mean…”
“God, you’re a useless prick, Charlie. If you’ve got something to say, spit it out.” He looked hard at Charlie and waited.
Charlie seemed to be shaking uncontrollably now. He didn’t answer his uncle, just shook his head.
“What’s that?” Lucian asked. “Speak up, goddamn you.”
Charlie started trying to edge around Lucian, but the big man put an arm across the cubicle opening, blocking Charlie’s path.
“I don’t know where you think you’re going,” he said. “You can’t just walk away when I’m talking to you.”
“I…” Charlie looked frantically around, his eyes telegraphing a plea for help. “I have to go to the bathroom,” he finally panted out.
“Christ!” Lucian fumed. “You have to hold it until the boss is done yelling at you, you moron! Didn’t they teach you anything at that school? Don’t you have a lick of common sense?”
Charlie again moved toward the opening. “Really, Uncle, you have to let me by.” His voice was more urgent than before.
“Or what?”
Charlie’s bottom lip started to quiver.
“Or what? You’ll cry? For fuck’s sake, Charlie.” Lucian backed up and headed down the aisle in the other direction. “Get out of my sight. You disgust me. I can’t believe we’re related.”
Charlie didn’t seem to hear Lucian’s parting shot, just zigged around Herman’s cart and headed for the door at the end of the hall with the cartoon silhouette of the man on it. Herman counted to ten while he watched the other observers lower their heads back to their work before following Charlie into the men’s room.
Inside, only one of the stall doors was shut and a noise was coming from behind it that sounded a cross between sobs and someone trying to lift a really heavy weight.
Herman knocked softly on the stall door. “Charlie, are you okay? It’s Herman.”
More grunting.
“You’re right,” Herman agreed. “That was a stupid question, but your Uncle – I’m sure he didn’t mean all that stuff.”
“What do you know about it?” Charlie gasped.
Herman paused. “Well, I do know you being related to him isn’t the only reason he didn’t fire you. And that other stuff was a bunch of crap, too. He wouldn’t have fired anybody else who…did whatever you did.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Charlie wailed.
“Sure it does,” He
rman answered. “You can’t go around thinking you’re lower than everyone else. You’re not. Not at all.”
The grunting increased in frequency.
“Uh…Charlie?”
Suddenly the stall door swung open, and Herman jumped back from the furry, shivering mass behind it.
“What the…?”
“Yes, I am,” said the beast in Charlie’s voice, still a wail of abjectest misery. “I am lower than all of them. So save your speeches. You have no idea what’s going on with me.”
The image in front of Herman’s horrified eyes seemed to shake and shimmer, even as Herman nodded in agreement with what it said. The arms and legs shriveled, as did the head, and fur sprouted out of its skin in random patches.
“Holy Moses,” Herman exclaimed, moving back until the sink stopped his retreat. “You’re a Gremlin!”
The beast shook its head and wheezed out a final word before the fur covered its face and body entirely. Herman couldn’t believe his eyes or his ears. “Beaver,” it said.
Charlie Woodson had just turned into a beaver. Not a giant beaver or anything like that, just a regular, brown furry rodent about the size of a terrier, with big teeth, webbed feet and a large, flat tail.
The door to the restroom swung open to admit a man Herman didn’t know, and the beaver scurried past him out into the office.
“What the hell was that?” the man asked.
“Beaver,” Herman said, shaking his head.
“I didn’t know California had beavers,” he heard the man muse.
Following Charlie in his beaver form wasn’t hard. He just followed the shouts and the pattern of previously staid office workers now standing in their chairs.
“Geez, what is that thing?” a man shouted.
“Somebody call Animal Control!” another suggested.
“Oh, god, it could have rabies!” screamed a woman.
Herman started to run, suddenly realizing how badly out of hand this situation could get. Make that even more out of hand.
He caught up with Charlie the were-beaver in the third floor lounge. Two women ran out screaming, one spilling coffee, the other holding her handbag in front of her like a shield. When he turned the corner, Charlie was inside running circles around the wooden legs of the table. He saw Herman and stopped, climbed up onto a chair, and then onto the tabletop, flapping his tail down hard on the surface of the table several times. He let out a wail that still sounded vaguely human.