Then We Came to the End

by Joshua Ferris

  “What would he have to be upset with you for?” asked Benny. “You didn’t do anything to him.” “I didn’t think I had,” Jim said. “But I was standing in the doorway talking to the guy and he wasn’t answering. So I started wondering if I had pissed him off somehow.” Later, when Marcia related the story to us after hearing it from Benny, we thought that that was exactly how insecure Jim Jackers would react. There was Chris Yop, no longer an employee, told to leave the building two days ago under threat of arrest and currently destroying agency property, and still Jim wanted to be his friend.

  He asked Yop if he had done something wrong. Yop didn’t even bother to look up from the chair. “You didn’t e-mail me about the changes to the project,” he finally replied. According to Jim, this was said as if Yop were Jim’s boss, and that serious consequences would follow from Jim’s oversight. At the same time, Yop sounded hurt. Jim had to remind himself that he hadn’t done anything wrong and had no reason to feel guilty. “Was I supposed to e-mail you?” he asked. “I asked somebody to,” said Yop. “Do you not remember me asking?” “You mean yesterday at the coffee bar?” “Nobody e-mailed me,” said Yop, who was now working a set of bolts connected to the base of the chair. “Which is okay,” he added. “I am not unaware, Jim, that I have been shitcanned. Everyone thinks I’m unaware of that — I am not unaware. I am not unaware that I’m an old man and that this is a young man’s game.” Jim told him he didn’t think forty-eight was so old, and that he’d probably have a new job in no time. Then he tried to explain to Yop that the change to the project was so bewildering — he was really struggling to arrive at even a single concept — that he wouldn’t have felt confident e-mailing anyone about it. “Hey, Jim,” said Yop, looking at Jim for the first time since he appeared in the doorway, and what Jim saw was the flushed, perspiring, dejected expression of someone trying to conceal the anger that made his voice quiver. “You don’t have to explain to me, okay? It would have been stupid of you to e-mail me. Any of you. You don’t think I know that? Hey,” he added, his hands shaking as he opened his arms wide, “I’m not stupid. I know I’ve been shitcanned. I know no one wants to be caught exchanging e-mails with me. I just didn’t expect to be treated the way I was treated yesterday at the coffee bar.”

  Upon hearing that, Benny demanded to know, “How did we treat him yesterday at the coffee bar?” Jim said he couldn’t remember. When he related the story to Marcia, Benny asked her, “Do you remember treating him any particular way yesterday at the coffee bar?” Marcia stood in Benny’s doorway next to the skeleton, hands on her hips, wrists turned inward. “I think I called him insane,” she said.

  Jim, standing in the cubicle doorway on fifty-nine, wanted to know from Yop how we had upset him yesterday at the coffee bar. Yop didn’t answer him directly. “I’m not getting paid for being here anymore, Jim,” he said, on his knees in his nice pleated dress slacks and working the wrench. “Do you understand what that means? I’m hanging around of my own free will. I’m here because I want to be here. You think I want to be here? No way I want to be here, Jim. But I hung around for a couple extra hours yesterday, waiting for an e-mail that never came. Not from you, not from Marcia, not from Amber — nobody. At least when I got shitcanned, Lynn Mason gave me severance, you know what I’m saying, Jim? At least the agency said, Chris Yop, we have a parting gift for you. You guys at the coffee bar? You couldn’t even send me an e-mail.”

  Yop finished removing the last of the bolts, which allowed him to slide the wheel base off the hydraulic lift bar. He placed the base in the suitcase — now the chair looked like nothing more than a silver pole attached lollipop-style to a seat and backrest. “I heard you,” said Yop, out of the blue, on his knees and glowering at Jim. It startled Jim because he had been watching him remove the base of the chair, and next he knew Yop was pointing a screwdriver at him and staring angrily, and he hadn’t even seen him pick that screwdriver up. “Every one of you,” he added.

  “You heard us what?” said Jim.

  Yop refused to elaborate. He just replaced the screwdriver for a wrench and went back to the chair.

  Marcia moved from the doorway into Benny’s office because the story just got interesting. She sat down across the desk from him. “What did he mean by that,” she asked, “‘I heard you’? That’s a weird thing to say, isn’t it?” “I asked Jim the same thing,” Benny said. “He had no idea what he meant. What could he have meant by it? What did we say that he might have overheard and took offense at?” “‘I heard you,’” said Marcia, sitting back in the chair to better puzzle it out. “‘Every one of you.’ What could that mean?” “Something about him crying, maybe, breaking down in front of Lynn?” “Maybe,” said Marcia.

  It took Yop a total of about a half hour to get the chair down to its component parts. The only time he wasted was locating a tool and then making sure the size was right. After that it was just a matter of loosening and turning. “And nobody disturbed you that whole time?” Benny asked Jim. “It’s fifty-nine,” Jim stated plainly. “No one even walked by.” The payroll people and the bathrooms being on the other side of the floor, Benny didn’t doubt it. Yop went steadily and methodically at his work while Jim continued to look on, impressed by Yop’s command of tools and their function. “What’s that thing called,” Jim asked Benny, “where you have several pieces, all different sizes, and you attach them to the main tool depending on which size you need?” “You’re asking me?” said Benny. “I’m no expert with tools.” “I think it’s called an Allen wrench,” said Jim. When Benny told Marcia that nobody was sure what Yop was using to dismantle the chair, Marcia replied, “You guys don’t know what an Allen wrench is?” When Marcia told us that, we knew right away that Benny must have felt a real pang of masculine insufficiency for not knowing his tools in front of Marcia, who could probably take apart a motorcycle blindfolded for all the years she spent on the South Side with her four brothers. “They’re called sockets,” she said, “and that’s a socket wrench, not an Allen wrench. An Allen wrench removes an Allen screw, which has a hole in it that fits the wrench — oh, it’s hard to explain. Haven’t you ever put a table together? Or a bookshelf?” “Once, I did,” said Benny. “In college.”

  Unlike Jim or Benny, Yop was very proficient. “Where did you learn to work with your hands?” Jim asked him. Yop wouldn’t say. The one thing he did do was start to whistle a little. Being a bad whistler he soon gave it up. “In all honesty,” he said to Jim, taking small steps on his knees to reposition himself with respect to the chair. “I’m glad nobody e-mailed me. I for one wouldn’t want to work on a team where the other team members don’t have any respect for me, Jim. That’s just me personally. But you, you do what you need to do. Hold this for me, will you?” Yop went into the toolbox and picked up what seemed to Jim like a random tool and held it out before him.

  Benny wanted to know if he took it. “Yeah, I took it,” said Jim. “Jim!” cried Benny. “So what if it’s fifty-nine, man! If somebody had walked by and seen you holding a tool while Yop was taking that chair apart, you think they would have understood you were just holding a tool for him?” “I got distracted!” cried Jim. “I didn’t know why he was saying what he was saying. He said he wouldn’t want to work on a team where nobody had any respect for him, but that I needed to do what I needed to do. What did he mean by that, Benny? Do the other people on the team not have any respect for me? Is that what he was trying to tell me? I mean, I know Marcia doesn’t like me —”

  Marcia bolted forward in the chair across from Benny. “He said that?” she asked with squeamish alarm. “He said he knows I don’t like him?”

  “— but what about all the others?” asked Jim.

  At last Yop had finished. He stood up and dusted off his pants. He put his suit coat back on. Then he bent down and placed the rest of the items inside the suitcase — all the nuts and bolts, the armrests, the levers, the lift bar, and the webbed seat. But he had underestimated the size of the backres
t, and no matter how he turned it or how hard he pushed, it was always an inch or two too big, preventing him from zipping the luggage closed. “Fuck,” he said, looking up at Jim. So Jim carried it out for him wrapped in packing paper, which we kept in the mount room.

  “Jim, what in the hell!” cried Benny. “Why would you help that guy out?”

  “I felt bad for how he thought we had mistreated him at the coffee bar,” said Jim.

  “Oh my god,” Marcia said to Benny. “I wish you wouldn’t have just told me that.”

  Benny wanted to know why it bothered Marcia to hear of Jim’s misplaced goodwill toward Chris Yop. “Because I am so mean to that guy.” “To Yop?” “No,” she replied. “Well, yeah, to Yop, but to Jim especially. I am mean to everybody, Benny — but especially to Jim. And the guy — he just wants to be liked!” “You’re not so mean to him,” Benny tried to reassure her. “Not any meaner than anybody else.” “Yes, I am,” said Marcia. “I’m terrible.” She looked visibly upset. One hand was up by her furrowed brow, as if she were trying to cover her eyes and disappear from her shame. But, boy, thought Benny, did the new haircut make her look good.

  “So tell me honestly, Benny, do they have any respect for me or not?” Jim had asked him.

  “And how did you answer him?” Marcia wanted to know.

  “I danced around it,” said Benny. “I didn’t exactly lie to him, but I didn’t exactly tell him the truth, either.” Marcia told Benny she just wanted him to move on and finish the rest of the story.

  Yop walked out of the building rolling his black suitcase along the marble floor. In his suit and tie, he looked like any other businessman headed out to the airport. Nobody at the lobby desk confused him for Hawaiian-shirt-wearing Chris Yop from the creative department. His premeditated sprucing-up revealed a criminal canniness that frankly should have been a little alarming, but this was a more innocent time, and so we weren’t too bothered by it after it came to light. A little later, Jim walked out with the backrest wrapped in brown paper — just a man taking an oversized package to the post office. In fact, he had slapped an address label on it for the sake of appearance.

  “Jim,” said Benny, shaking his head sadly.

  They met in front of a corner convenience store and Jim followed Yop down to the lake. When the urge overtook Yop, which was often, he turned abruptly on the sidewalk and told Jim what was on his mind. “No more offending them,” he said, the first time he swung around, stopping Jim in his tracks. “Be sure to go back there and tell them that, Jim, that Chris Yop is no longer in the building to offend them with his presence. And I will never return. How pleased they’ll be, I’m sure. Karen Woo. And that fucking Marcia.”

  “Why single me out?” asked Marcia. “What I ever do?”

  “He’s obviously unhinged,” said Benny. “I wouldn’t take it personally.”

  Given the chance, Jim would have responded by saying he didn’t think anybody was offended that Chris was still in the building, just a little unsure why, given that Lynn Mason had let him go two days earlier. But it was clear that Yop wasn’t soliciting replies. He turned quickly and walked on, leaving Jim to catch up. Holding the chair’s backrest before him prevented Jim from seeing the ground and he almost tripped over an irregularity in the sidewalk. The next time Yop turned, it was just as abruptly, and Jim recoiled a little. “Thank god, Jim, thank god for the love of a devoted woman.” Jim thought Yop might try to stab him in the eye with his pointing finger. “It’s the only thing that’s worth a damn. Without Terry,” he concluded, “this whole world would be for shit.”

  He turned and marched on. The wheels of his suitcase drummed the sidewalk partitions at regular intervals. He turned a third time, but only to say, “Your so-called friends. What a joke.” Jim anticipated more, but Yop, smiling humorlessly and shaking his head slowly, said nothing. He paused long enough for Jim to reply — it almost seemed he wanted him to — but Jim was at a loss for words. When Yop turned back again he let out a smirking, hostile laugh. Two blocks from the lake, they were caught at a red light and had to stand next to each other as the traffic moved past. “Not even to catch up,” said Yop, turning to him. “You hear that? Be sure you tell them that. Not even to catch up.” “Catch up?” said Jim. “What do you mean, not even to catch up?” “Not that they would care if I keeled over tomorrow,” he added.

  “Oh my god, so I tore up his resume and threw it in his face,” said Marcia. “It doesn’t mean I want the man to die.”

  “I don’t know,” said Benny, “maybe we should have just e-mailed him.”

  At that time of day, the promenade alongside Lake Michigan was fairly empty. Most people didn’t make it all the way down to the southern terminus anyway, where the land doglegged out into the water and the promenade ended at a little beach. Despite the lingering chill, there was plenty of sunlight, and in the distance to their right a few robust bathers were lending the lake its first signs of summer life. Otherwise, it was just Jim and Yop and the occasional elderly speed-walker. Yop brought the suitcase to rest just behind the breaker, unzipped it and took two of the chair wheels from inside, climbed over the breaker, and approached the water. Just as he wound back, a great May wind rose up. Yop flung the first of the wheels into Lake Michigan while his tie fluttered in the opposite direction. On his return to the suitcase the tie was still flung over one shoulder. “You guys think I wanted to cry?” he asked Jim. “I wasn’t crying for me,” he said. “I was crying for Terry. I was crying for Terry and me.” By that point, Jim knew not to respond. He watched as Yop tossed the remainder of the wheels and the armrests out into the water. The armrests floated, as did the webbed seat and backrest — which Yop tossed out Frisbee-style, brown paper and all — but the silver pole sank quickly. He stood over the water shaking the suitcase upside down. Every nut and bolt plopped down into the lake. Then he zipped up the suitcase and returned to where Jim had stood watching him, just on the other side of the breaker. He lifted the suitcase and climbed over the breaker one leg at a time and set the wheels of the suitcase back on the ground and began to walk away, but then stopped and turned back to address Jim. “I would thank you for your help, Jim,” he said, “but I’ve always considered you an idiot.”

  Yop’s final remark to Jim Jackers sent Marcia over the edge. She burrowed into her seat, squirming herself into a ball of shame and regret, and cried, “Please tell me he did not!” She vowed never to be mean to Jim again. She vowed never to be mean to anyone again. “How could he say that to him?” she asked. “You said it to him just the other day,” said Benny. “But how could he say it and mean it?” she asked. Marcia was the rare one among us who used the occasion of other people’s cruelty to be reminded of her own, and to feel bad about both. She made a vow like the one she now made to Benny — never to be mean again — every two or three weeks, until something Jim said or did had her sniping again, telling him to shut up and leave her office. What was refreshing about Marcia was that she said these things to his face, but unlike Yop, they weren’t eternal damnations. They were just momentary expressions of her exasperation — things we wanted to say, but we lacked the courage — and they always resulted in mad fits of compunction.

  “Jim didn’t seem all that upset about it, believe it or not,” Benny assured her. “He just wanted to know if I thought he was an idiot.”

  “And you said no, right?” said Marcia. “Benny, tell me you didn’t dance around that one.”

  “I told him of course he was an idiot,” Benny said. “I had to, Marcia. If I had told him he wasn’t an idiot, he would have known I thought he was one.”

  “This place is so fucked up,” she said.

  We were outraged for Jim, too. The poor guy had gone to great lengths to help Yop seek his revenge against the office coordinator and her system of serial numbers, and then he was left with an insult. We rallied to Jim’s side. We told him not to sweat that remark. Then we tried to understand what Yop could possibly have against us. Why was he di
recting all his outrage toward us, we asked Jim, when, having dismantled Tom Mota’s chair and having tossed it into the lake, the object of his bitterness was so obviously one specific person, i.e., the office coordinator? Jim didn’t know, except to say that Yop was hurt that we hadn’t e-mailed him with instructions about the changes to the project. But just what was he planning to do once he got those instructions? Salvage his job? We felt maligned.

  “At least I understand Tom Mota,” Marcia told Benny. “Tom’s just full of frustration for how his life turned out. But Chris Yop? Chris Yop I just don’t get.”

  In the end we had to understand that of course Yop would hate us. We were still employed, and he wasn’t. He was working on out-of-date fund-raiser ads while we knew the project had changed. We had been together at the coffee bar, and he was on the outs.

  “But Chris Yop wasn’t what I came in here for, was it?” said Marcia.

  “I don’t think so,” said Benny.

  “What was it?” she asked herself. “Why’d I stop by?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied, intrigued, hopeful.

  “Oh my god,” she said out of the blue. “Can you believe it’s only three-fifteen?”

  SOME DAYS FELT LONGER than other days. Some days felt like two whole days. Unfortunately those days were never weekend days. Our Saturdays and Sundays passed in half the time of a normal workday. In other words, some weeks it felt like we worked ten straight days and had only one day off. We could hardly complain. Time was being added to our lives. But then it wasn’t easy to rejoice, exactly, realizing that time just wasn’t moving fast enough. We had any number of clocks surrounding us, and every one of them at one time or another exhibited a lively sense of humor. We found ourselves wanting to hurry time along, which was not in the long run good for our health. Everybody was trapped in this contradiction but nobody ever dared to articulate it. They just said, “Can you believe it’s only three-fifteen?”