The Eavesdropper

by Edward Trimnell

  I was walking back to my desk when I felt my own cell phone vibrating in my pocket. It was the distinctive vibration pattern that I had set for the number of my ex-wife, Claire.

  Chapter 4

  I didn't answer Claire’s call in the middle of the purchasing office space, where I couldn't talk freely. The call went to voicemail. But as was typical of my ex-wife, Claire didn't leave a message.

  I could have—maybe I should have—waited until later to return the call. But Claire had called me less and less since our divorce, to the point where a call from her was now a minor event.

  As a father, of course, my first thought was: an emergency related to our daughter. But if there had been something wrong with Olivia, I felt sure that Clair would have left a message.

  It was something else.

  Why didn't I wait to call her back? Maybe because there was some part of me that was still holding out hope of an eventual reconciliation. It wasn't impossible, right?

  Wrong, I was kidding myself. It was impossible.

  Nevertheless, I knew that I wouldn't be able to concentrate on work-related matters until I called her back.

  I didn't want to have a potentially sensitive conversation with my ex-wife back at my desk. Bethany, Donnie, and Ellen might overhear me. Anything they overheard, they readily would use against me. I hated the thought of making myself even more vulnerable to my dysfunctional, scheming coworkers.

  I therefore made a U-turn, and headed for the elevators instead.

  I pushed the button for the fifth floor. This was the top level of the headquarters building. It wasn't exactly deserted; but the fifth floor was the least populated of all.

  Once on the fifth floor, I walked to an area near the restrooms, by the window. This was probably the most private location inside the entire building.

  I faced a window that looked out on the adjacent interstate highway, the I-275 loop that encircled the entire Cincinnati metro area. There were low gray clouds and snow on the ground from a recent accumulation of three inches. A typical Ohio landscape in January.

  I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and pushed the button for Claire’s number. Claire answered on the second ring.

  “Hey, Frank,” Claire said.

  “Hey, Claire,” I said. “You called.”

  I had lived with Claire for three years. Now, however, I often myself standoffish and tongue-tied when I communicated with her. Weird.

  She proceeded to run through some routine talk about our four-year-old daughter. Olivia was enrolled in a Montessori program in Dayton. Olivia was doing great, she told me. Her teachers said that she was already reading at a first grade level.

  I was happy to hear that, needless to say. But my suspicions were aroused. Claire hadn't called me to give me an update on our daughter’s education. She had another purpose in mind.

  Finally she came to the crux of the matter. Ryan—the man whom Claire had been dating for the better part of a year—was talking about moving in.

  With my ex-wife. And with my daughter.

  I had been aware of Ryan. Claire had met Ryan through work. When pictures of her and Ryan started to appear with increasing frequency on Claire’s Facebook profile, I should have known that things were getting serious. Instead, I had chosen to believe that Ryan was just a fling, a phase that she would grow out of.

  I had been in denial, obviously.

  "Well," I interjected, "if you're looking for me to give my approval, you don't have it."

  "Frank," Claire said icily, "I don't need your approval. "We're not married anymore."

  Did she have to remind me of that? Remind us both?

  "Maybe so," I allowed. "You're forgetting something, though. I may not be your husband anymore, but I'm still Olivia's father. I don't want her living under the same roof with some fly-by-night character who could be capable of anything."

  I could hear Claire suck in her breath on the other end of the call. My implied accusation, vague though it was, had certainly hit below the belt.

  Well, that had been my intention. I was in no mood to be big about this.

  "Frank, I've been dating Ryan for a year. He has a good job at my company. If you're really that concerned, you could do a background check on him. But I assure you, you won't come up with anything."

  She had called my bluff, hadn't she?

  "I still don't approve. Olivia is my daughter."

  "Frank, divorced people with kids get remarried all the time. Their exes don't have veto power. That's not the way this works."

  "You're not talking about getting married," I said. "You're talking about shacking up."

  I realized that I was being petty and preachy now. Not to mention hypocritical. Claire and I had lived together the year before our wedding. Her parents, traditional Catholics, had objected. I had prevailed on them, citing the relaxed, more liberal mores of the twenty-first century.

  "I'm letting you know in advance as a courtesy," Claire said. "But the bottom line is that you don't have any say in the matter."

  "We'll see about that," I said. I was attempting to be cryptic, but I probably sounded desperate. She was right. Barring some glaring skeleton in Ryan's past, there was really nothing I could do.

  And I wasn't going to hold out hope on that possibility. I knew my ex-wife, and she had probably run a background check on Ryan early in their courtship. She was the one who had just now thought of the background check, after all.

  Following that unpleasant matter, we exchanged a few more details about my next court-scheduled visit with Olivia. The conversation returned to a less confrontational tone, but the chasm between us had been widened a bit more.

  I was relieved to end the call, lest any more damage be done.

  Chapter 5

  When I boarded the elevator to ride back down to the third floor, I happened to run into the only woman at Thomas-Smithfield Electronics who had seriously caught my notice. (Well, I guess you could say that Bethany Cox had caught my notice, too, though not in a particularly positive way.)

  I thought of her as “the Brown-Eyed Girl”.

  Why that? Perhaps you’ve heard that Van Morrison song from the late 1960s, in which the singer rhapsodizes about the eponymous girl with brown eyes.

  This brown-eyed girl was a woman, of course, my age, more or less. She had shoulder-length chestnut hair. Even though she wore glasses, I could see that she had the most lovely brown eyes.

  I had seen her throughout the building, usually carrying a stack of manila folders or a handful of papers. I didn't know how long she had been with the company, but I had first noticed her about a month ago.

  Speaking of Bethany: the brown-eyed girl was the opposite of Bethany. Not only did she dress more conservatively than Bethany, but she was also far more demure. Almost timid, in fact.

  I had nothing against the shy types, of course. The only problem was that I was rather on the shy side myself. And as I’ve said, I was out of practice at meeting women, let alone asking them out.

  But I was determined to meet her.

  When I stepped aboard the elevator on the fifth floor, the Brown-Eyed Girl had already beaten me there. She was clutching a small stack of folders to her chest, and she was staring down at the floor of the elevator. I knew a little about body language; and I could ascertain that this stance didn't exactly project openness.

  “Good morning,” I said. That was the only thing I could think of to say that wasn't totally lame or cheesy.

  She looked up.

  “Good morning.”

  “Which floor?” I asked her.

  “The fourth.” I could see that the button for the fourth floor was already lit up, indicating that she’d already pressed it.

  I pressed the button for the third floor.

  Just my luck. She was only riding the elevator one level down. I had less than a minute to think of a conservational gambit.

  Before I could think of anything to talk about, the elevator reached the fourth floor.<
br />
  “Have a nice day,” I said as she exited. I could think of nothing else to say.

  She turned on her way out of the elevator. I saw a hint of smile, a break in the ice.

  “You, too.”

  The elevator closed behind her.

  Or maybe it hadn't been a break in the ice. The Brown-Eyed Girl had been acting out of common courtesy, nothing more.

  Our conversation (if you could call it that) hadn't amounted to much. But I supposed that it had been better than not talking to her at all. The Brown-Eyed Girl was going to take time—assuming, that is, that there was any hope at all.

  The elevator landed on the third floor. Time to get back to work. I wondered if Donnie had returned from his smoke break yet, and if he would still be spoiling for a fight.

  Chapter 6

  When I made it back to my desk, the first thing I noticed was that neither Donnie nor Bethany was present. Nothing unusual there. Probably Donnie had come back while I was away, and Bethany had gone away with him again.

  Ellen Watson was at her desk, typing away on her keyboard. She gave me a sullen look as I walked by her. I merely nodded this time. I had tried to play friendly with her earlier in the morning and I had gotten nothing for my efforts.

  On the rebound from my unpleasant conversation with Claire, I had grasped at straws with the Brown-Eyed Girl, over-interpreting simple workplace politeness as real interest on her side. This highlighted how barren my personal life had become. The day was still young and I was already in a bleak mood.

  At least I still had my job, though, and that was going well, much to the chagrin of Donnie and Bethany.

  I sat down and started to work. I first checked my email: My Lotus Notes inbox was full of new messages from my supplier contacts.

  About fifteen minutes later I was absorbed in my tasks when I heard Donnie and Bethany return. I had no idea where they had been, and at that moment I could have cared less. The only reason I looked up at all was because they were talking louder than they should have. Not bothering to be discreet, they snuggled against each other as they walked. They were making no effort to be quiet as they exchanged their usual banter.

  The office space of the Thomas-Smithfield Electronics headquarters building was almost never library-quiet. The open floor configuration meant that there was a constant background buzz of phones going off and people talking.

  Nevertheless, it was consider impolite to carry on at a volume that would disturb others, especially if you weren't talking about a business-related matter, as Donnie and Bethany clearly weren’t.

  They saw me looking at them and they both stopped short of their desks, looking at me now.

  “What are you looking at?” Donnie challenged me. Clearly, he was still spoiling for a fight.

  “Not much,” I said. I wondered if he would catch the double entendre there.

  The subtle barb went over his head. “You were listening to our conversation,” he shot back. Bethany nodded in agreement with Donnie, and nudged herself even closer to him. Where had the company found these two? Why had they even been hired in the first place?

  “No, I wasn’t,” I said. “And if I’d wanted to listen to the two of you, it wouldn't have taken much effort, would it? The two of you have been yammering like you’re on a stage.”

  “You son-of-a—” Donnie said. He stepped around his desk and stood before me. Lunging distance. I was still seated, but I wondered if I should stand up, too. This sort of thing wasn't supposed to happen in a corporate workplace, of course. But what should you do when it actually did occur?

  Plus, there was the not-insignificant fact that if it came to a physical confrontation, Donnie Brady would have easily pounded the crap out of me. But given my current mood, half of me was ready to go down fighting.

  I resisted the urge to stand. I was not only concerned about Donnie pounding the tar out of me. I was also cognizant of the fact that if the two of us came to blows, there would be repercussions from the company. Both of us would be sitting in HR within the hour. I was therefore determined that there would be no ambiguity about which one of us had been the aggressor.

  Perhaps sensing some of this, Bethany walked around my desk and joined Donnie, so I was now facing the two of them. But instead of piling it on, she attempted to talk him down.

  “Come on, Donnie,” she whispered urgently. She had grasped him by one arm with both of her hands. “We’re at work, in the middle of the office. You’ll get fired. It isn't worth it. Think about it.”

  Smart girl, I thought. But would Donnie be smart enough to listen to her?

  Donnie paused. For a moment he seemed to waver between backing down and ripping me out of my chair—which he probably would have been capable of doing. I braced myself for whatever might come next.

  Then finally Donnie shrugged off Bethany’s grip, and looked at me as if to say, This isn't over yet.

  I wondered if any of my colleagues had seen the confrontation. I looked around to see if anyone was staring.

  I saw a few faces turned in my direction. When I made eye contact with them, they became urgently summoned by their computers, their phones, the piles of papers atop their desks. The message was clear: Don’t ask any of us to get involved.

  Donnie and I hadn't raised our voices that much, and we hadn't actually come to blows. The only real witnesses to the exchange had been Bethany and Ellen. Bethany was solidly in Donnie’s corner, and Ellen leaned that way. There was no way I could have made trouble for Donnie over this, even if I’d wanted to.

  Chapter 7

  Everything that I’ve told you so far is just another jeremiad of life inside the cubicle farm, I know.

  That’s what I had thought, too. I knew that Donnie and Bethany were oddballs—the archetypical coworkers from hell. I’d heard about the risks of working long-term in toxic, snake pit environments. I wouldn't have disputed that working alongside Donnie and Bethany, within the dog-eat-dog, everyone-for-themselves setting of Thomas-Smithfield was bad for my health. My job might be a contributing factor to a heart attack I’d have at the age of forty-five or fifty.

  But acutely dangerous? No, I wouldn't have believed that.

  The revelation that changed everything took place after lunch that day.

  I was doing my best to concentrate on work, to ignore Donnie and Bethany. I was wondering if Donnie was going come over to my desk for a rematch. Perhaps this time, he wouldn't be content to conclude the matter with mere words.

  But Donnie ignored me that afternoon. He and Bethany were whispering among themselves. Several times they stepped away to talk privately. They didn't look or gesture in my direction. I might have been invisible.

  That was just fine with me.

  They must have been making their third trip of the afternoon away from their desks when a strange thing happened. Sid Harper met them in the middle of the floor, as if by prearrangement. The three of them turned in the direction from which Sid had come, and walked away together, toward the third floor meeting rooms.

  That was unusual. Most unusual.

  For Sid to have a private conversation with Donnie or Bethany wasn't entirely out of the ordinary, of course. In fact, it was somewhat commonplace. Just as Sid had discussed the McDonnell quote with me earlier in the day, he discussed supplier issues with both Donnie and Bethany, too, as business circumstances required.

  What was unusual was for him to talk to the two of them at once. Although the three of us were grouped together for administrative purposes, there was no collaboration between us. Each of us worked in a silo. That might change, with my grade promotion; but at present, each of us was an island.

  So why would Sid be talking to Donnie and Bethany together?

  Did it have something to do with me? Donnie and Bethany had made no secret of their disdain for me, their resentment at my being promoted ahead of them. Had they found something to use against me with Sid? Or—more likely—had they fabricated something?

  The textbook
answer to this conundrum was: Mind your own business, Frank. I knew that I hadn't done anything remotely unethical. I was easily the most conscientious of our little trio. So I shouldn't worry about it, right?

  But the textbook answer failed me. I couldn't remain impassive. As discreetly as I could, I stood up from my desk and walked after them, following at a discreet pace and distance, of course.

  I watched them go into the nearest private meeting room, the one nearest the pop machine alcove.

  Just let it go, a little voice told me. They might be meeting about anything. Perhaps the constant workday trysts of Donnie and Bethany had become an HR matter, and Sid had summoned them for a reprimand. If that was the case, then I couldn't have cared less.

  But then I recalled how bitterly the two of them disliked me—and how openly they had expressed that dislike of late. If Donnie was willing to risk a fisticuffs in the middle of the office, would it be so much of a stretch for him to pour poison in Sid’s ears in an attempt to discredit me? And if Bethany was backing him up, it would be two against one.

  Results are by no means irrelevant in the corporate workplace. But so is perception. If they were talking about me, I had to know it. I had to know what they were telling Sid. But the three of them were now inside a closed meeting room.

  Then it occurred to me that I was in luck—sort of.

  I was aware of a little space behind that nearest meeting room, between the concrete wall and the drywall. The space could be accessed by stepping behind the vending machines, and then into the gap between the two walls. I had discovered it one day by accident, when I had dropped a quarter at the Coke machine and the coin had gone rolling.

  I had never actually entered the space, mind you: It would be a tight fit. I would ordinarily have had little interest in eavesdropping on random meetings, anyway. Nor would I want to risk being caught snooping for a mere lark.

  But right now Donnie, Bethany, and Sid were sitting down inside that meeting room, and my intuition told me that my two coworkers might be speaking against me. I couldn't intervene, of course; but I would at least know what they were saying.