by Ed Park
The worst cop said she wanted Maxine out. She said her name as Maxie, without the n. The Sprout shook his head while saying, Of course, his right hand clutching the edge of the desk.
Effective immediately, snapped one of the new people. Is Maxie still in the room?
Maxine was looking like she’d just lost a fairly important limb in addition to a consonant. The Sprout told the Californians that she wasn’t in the room anymore. She’s meeting with a client. The spur-of-the-moment, completely pointless lie was touching in its own way. He said that he’d tell Maxine about the change in her employment status right after the call. Lizzie strained to hear if he pronounced the n.
The Californians started insulting Maxie’s work, describing her as subpar, sub-subpar, the pits. Maxine didn’t say a word. Her plans for world domination had come to an end, at least in that office.
Henry from HR, his face an undertaker’s mix of sympathy and purpose, opened a folder and wordlessly handed a piece of paper to Maxine. The Sprout was scrolling through some file on his computer, tilting the screen for the exact right angle, as if that could make any difference to anyone now. Lizzie heard a thwack sound: a tear had rolled off Maxine’s cheek and hit the form she was just given. Without lifting her head, Maxine asked in the smallest voice possible if she could borrow a pen. Lizzie handed over her prized Japanese Gel-Magik 8000, a gift from Jason, knowing she’d never see it again.
More tears hit the paper, hit the paper like rain.
It went on. Nobody was ready for this sort of crying, not from Maxine. She finished filling out the form and Henry led her out the door. She looked devastated but also amazing.
II (H) v: One of the Californians, the middle bad cop, started talking about Phoenix, apparently one of their cities. He asked the Sprout if he knew what Phoenix was. Not where, but what.
It was all prelude to a tagline they’d probably been using for years.
Phoenix is not just a city, said the middle bad cop. He asked if everyone on the New York end was familiar with the story of how the phoenix rose from the ashes. That’s exactly what we’re going to do with this place.
They’re going to burn it down first! Lizzie whispered, but Jack II didn’t respond. She noticed that he’d gone dangerously pale, his head weaving a bit. A cold sore had formed on the corner of his mouth, and he kept licking his lips, lingering on the tiny painful vesicles.
II (H) vi: The other Californians pointed out, in extreme but vague terms, the way the office had mishandled New York, as if the city had been dropped, kicked to the curb, dented beyond repair. New York—all of New York?—had become dysfunctional.
It’s snowing, Lizzie mouthed at Jack II. She could see the edges of him tremble and wondered if she should be trembling, too.
On the phone came K.’s voice, a touch louder than the voices of the Californians. She was upstairs, in her own glass-enclosed office, no doubt looking at a dry-erase board with numbers written in different colors. She spoke without hesitation, in complete sentences, her phrasing seamless. The Sprout inched away from the phone as she talked until he was part of the wall.
At first it sounded like she was defending the Sprout and his team. She’d conceded Maxine, but maybe she was going to draw the line at any further firings. It was a skeleton crew, and at this rate all that would be left were a couple of ribs, a portion of kneecap. But then she directed a question at the already pale Sprout, who went a few shades whiter before sputtering I don’t know. She asked him something else, and something else, and something else, and he said, I really don’t know. I’ll check. I just don’t know right now.
K. didn’t say anything.
The Californians didn’t say anything.
Lizzie was in a pink sweater and looking at the snow.
Then K. said: Well, know already!
The Sprout agreed that he should know, swore that he would know, that everything would be known very shortly. He became a spokesperson for knowledge and its virtues. Ignorance was not part of his makeup. The rest of the call went by like the last writhings of a bad dream, the falling snow inappropriately beautiful, the Sprout blanching, K. aligning firmly with the Californians, or so she thought.
II (H) vii: When it was over, the Sprout told Jack II that he had to suspend him for two weeks. He said that this was his decision, not based on anything the California crew wanted, but this sounded instantly like a lie.
Lizzie gasped. Jack II looked at his hands so long they took on the appearance of moist vinyl. By this point the cold sore had colonized much of his upper lip. He couldn’t say a word, as if the wound had welded his mouth shut.
The Sprout told Lizzie to leave and to ask Jenny to come in. Instantly it occurred to Lizzie that the Sprout had meant for Jenny to be at the meeting from the beginning, rather than herself, but had mixed up their names somehow. He always got them confused, despite the fact that Jenny did roughly half his work for him.
Jenny came in and Lizzie lingered by the door, just out of sight, listening. The Sprout told Jenny to have a seat. There was silence for ten seconds. Then he told her to go see Henry in HR. Why had he told her to sit down first? Maybe protocol required the expendable party to be seated, to prevent lawsuits based on fainting-related injuries.
Does this mean I’m fired? Jenny asked, hands on armrests, ready to rise.
It means you should go see Henry in HR.
I’m not going to cry if you fire me, she said, rising and banging her knee on the edge of the desk and sitting back down.
II (H) viii: When Jenny finally left, she was breathing in a scary, untrackable rhythm, like she’d just rolled down a flight of stairs. The speakerphone blipped and K.’s voice returned. Lizzie could hear it all. At first she thought K. was saying something to Jenny, condolences of some sort, but in fact she had moved on to a completely different subject. Jenny apparently realized this, too, and stumbled out to see Henry in HR.
K. was scolding the Sprout for mishandling the conference call. She said it was a crucial test and he’d failed it.
How was that a test? the Sprout asked.
I don’t know what I expected from you, but I didn’t expect that, said K.
I said, How was that even a test?
K. laughed. Do you know that you’re an embarrassment? This has been the most embarrassing day. She stayed on the phone with him for another ten minutes, using embarrassment twenty-seven times. Crease kept count.
II (I): American Worker’s Habitat, Early Twenty-first Century
II (I) i: Weaving her way out of HR, Jenny knocked over a wastebasket, stopped to set it aright, then didn’t. It was like the biggest transgression of her adult life, and she took a moment to acknowledge the enormity. It suggested a sudden rupture in her moral universe, a heady escape into a life of crime. Next thing you knew she’d tossed her stringy, tear-soaked Kleenex to the floor and let it stay there. It could stay there forever, for all she cared, fossilize for centuries, perplex future archaeologists with its high salt content.
Her small hands were in tight red fists and her face had gone a vivid pink, cheeks nearly the shade of Lizzie’s sweater.
I should smile, said Jenny, choking back tears. Right?
Futile lines from The Jilliad came to mind. She stared at her stuff.
If your boss is in the way, get a new boss.
Think of the office as an ocean liner.
Lizzie put a hand on Jenny’s shoulder and steered her like that for a while. It became a procession, as more people joined them en route to the elevator.
Jack II was long gone. His cubicle already looked like a museum display, American Worker’s Habitat, Early Twenty-first Century. His screen saver had kicked in, a platoon of Smurf-like creatures digging luminous tunnels that crisscrossed the black of the screen.
II (I) ii: They all rode down in silence. It was barely 3 but a drink was in order. Outside Pru was smoking and Jenny told her in a tiny voice what everyone else already knew, the full list of casualties. Pru wrapped an el
bow around her in a complicated way, a hug that didn’t require abandoning her cigarette.
Where’s Maxine? someone said.
Jenny wasn’t crying yet but it sounded like someone was. It was the crane at the construction site down the street, squeaking as it lowered a voluptuous payload. The infinity building was shaping up, with much of the curved blue glass already in place for the lower floors.
They found their faces in it as they walked by. When they looked up they saw that the snow was really coming down, so swiftly it unmoored them. It felt like the world was rushing up to meet the sky.
Over drinks Jenny was fine for five minutes and then started to break down. Chunks of her seemed to fall off and die and for the rest of the night she was crying or just about to start. You guys are, never going to, see me again, she said, gasping. They knew this was true but told her it wasn’t.
We see Jules all the time, they said. We go to his toaster-oven restaurant.
The verb tense was dubious. They went only once as a group and would never go again if they could help it.
But Jules is different, said Jenny. Jules is fun. I’m so boring. You’ll forget about me. It’s OK. It’s OK.
Jules is a nutcase, said Laars.
We’ll keep in touch, said Pru. We’ll e-mail. Pru was always realistic about those sorts of things.
Grime wandered in late. He made a loud offer to buy drinks for the evening and said he’d set up a tab at the bar but never got around to it.
Despite all the crying, Jenny looked pretty good, indeed noticeably better than she usually did.
Her eyes shimmered and her mouth had an appealing pout. Several of them remarked on this the next day at work.
II (I) iii: Jenny said it sounded crazy but she thought she got fired for accidentally sending that e-mail to Kristen.
Who’s Kristen? said Laars.
Do you mean Karen? said Crease.
What e-mail? said Pru.
She means K., said Laars. I thought her name was Kierstin.
Grime didn’t know what was going on. Jenny explained how she had meant to forward something to Jill, but hit K instead of J. K.’s name had then appeared in the To field.
This was going to be a key component of Jenny’s layoff narrative.
She knew it was the wrong name, that Jill didn’t even work here anymore, but she clicked Send before her conscious mind kicked in.
Didn’t that happen months ago? Lizzie asked. Jenny said yes but that it happened again a week ago.
Crease brought over another drink for Jenny. He was trying to call Jack II’s cell but no one was answering.
Please call us back if you get this, Crease said.
II (I) iv: Lizzie asked Jenny what it was that she’d forwarded to K.
That’s the other thing that sucks, Jenny said. She was sending Jill the Polish joke website, to show her how crazy Maxine was. Maybe sending it had gotten Maxine fired.
Oh, and one other thing, said Jenny.
She’d also attached a link for Jack II’s blog, with the note: Check it out he’s losing his mind!
II (I) v: Jack II’s two-week suspension ended with his termination. He never came back to the office. It was unsettling to see someone so frequently and then to lose touch altogether. Oddly, his cell phone stopped accepting messages a few days into his suspension, as if the phone company disapproved of him as well, and when one of them tried to get in touch a week later, the number no longer worked at all. It’s like he never existed, said Jonah.
The empty cubicles echoed. Toward evening, with the outside light failing, the office looked like the carcass of a beached whale, split open, immense and exposed and way too intimate.
Crease used to whistle as he walked from the subway to the office, but he didn’t anymore. It used to be that several times a week he’d run into Jack II approaching the building from the opposite direction. Jack II was like Crease’s uptown shadow, his mirror self.
All of Jack II’s stuff was still in his cubicle, including his bicycle. No one knew what to do. They assumed he’d return for it, but later the Kohut Brothers were back, putting everything into boxes. Even the bike went into a big box that the brothers, or whatever they were, stuffed with bubble wrap and shrouded with packing tape. Laars looked around for a CD he’d lent him but couldn’t find it.
Later they had the idea to go to Maxine’s desk, with the secret hope that they’d find smashed discs in the trash, more abandoned files for world domination, fragments that had something to do with Operation JASON or else held Maxine’s secret fantasies about them. But her space was even emptier than Jack II’s.
Laars finally received his mouth guard from Michigan. He started to wear it at his desk.
I think I’m grinding my teeth when I’m awake, too, he said.
II (I) vi: Now that there was no Jenny, they couldn’t get anything to work. Everything existed at a level of raging confusion. Things they all assumed they knew by heart were now forgotten. Does anyone remember how to add up a column in Excel?
There were clusters of boxes everywhere, and file cabinets nudged out of true, giving the office the look of an apiary, hives waiting to explode. Lizzie pierced her hair with no fewer than three pens. It’s a way to gauge her anxiety, Pru pointed out helpfully.
II (I) vii: After days of buildup Laars finally demanded to talk to the Sprout about the dismissal of Jenny and Jack II. Not enough people—that is, nobody—had stood up when Jill was let go. Laars didn’t want that to happen again.
The trouble was that while Laars could be articulate among equals or over a pint, he tended to either rant Tourettishly or clam up altogether when talking to the Sprout. Today he was doing the former, or else simply speaking in tongues. The crazy factor was upped by the fact that for the first half of the meeting Laars was holding his mouth guard, occasionally waving it in a threatening manner.
The Sprout laughed: Hoo-hoo. He held his palms up to the ceiling, at nearly shoulder level, elbows at his sides, a gesture of innocence under duress.
Think of the office as a work in progress, said the Sprout at last.
I’m not one to point fingers, said the Sprout.
I’m as upset as you are, said the Sprout.
He then made the astonishing claim that, based on his best information, Jenny and Jack II were far and away the least productive people on the team.
I need everyone to bring their A game, said the Sprout, shuffling two pieces of paper with a practiced frown. The whole thing is really out of my hands at this point.
He didn’t quite show the papers to Laars, but he made it clear that they were efficiency reports of some sort, full of damning information. But it didn’t make sense. Who was writing up the reports? Jenny and Jack II were the most efficient workers—it was obvious to everyone. Both of them always had their work schedules mapped out weeks, even months, in advance. In truth they made the others look bad.
The Sprout kept talking, not just about A games but about a plan B. He wasn’t making much sense. Bogus reports aside, he was probably still stunned by the loss of Jenny, though maybe less so about Jack II, whose name he periodically forgot.
Laars was unsure how to proceed. He had grown to suspect that Maxine had been devising ways to get rid of them. But now that she was gone, the mystery deepened. Could it be that Maxine had written the efficiency reports—but so inefficiently that she herself was shown the door?
II (I) viii: Lost in questions he couldn’t quite phrase, Laars spotted a curious memo on a Post-it, stuck on a tape dispenser:
He grew more baffled than ever. First there was Maxine’s broken world-domination disc, which had Jason’s name on it—now this.
What did Jason have to do with anything? Did he have a higher-level job than any of them suspected? Was he a double agent?
The evidence suggested, nonsensically, that he’d become a disc jockey, on both the AM and FM dials.
Even so, why should the Sprout care?
Of course, maybe the
name referred to someone else entirely: a different Jason, a powerful, hidden Jason, who lived in a shed on the roof, eating instant noodles and Lorna Doones, tapping out directives in Morse code.
Allowances need to be made, the Sprout was saying.
The message was a stumper. Not to mention the signature, the J: Had the memo come from Jonah? From Jenny or Jack II, RIP? Laars felt his sanity seeping away, but he managed to surreptitiously copy each mysterious letter onto his pad, pretending to take notes, nodding while the Sprout said, The idea is to make the operation as lean as possible.
Mmm-hmming while the Sprout said, We have to take it apart.
Smiling while the Sprout said, Then we want to rebuild gradually.
II (I) ix: The meeting left Laars so depressed that later, after some time at his desk, checking the hour-by-hour performance of the one stock he owned, he felt the undeniable urge to get a doughnut.
The Sprout was at the elevator. The silence doubled as they waited. What more was there to say? In the Sprout’s eyes, Laars saw his own exhaustion reflected. At last they stepped in, but the carriage was going up. Laars thought of The Jilliad, that passage about always having an Elevator Speech ready. He was about to say something, but then the Sprout started talking, as if picking up from their earlier conversation.
In this new environment, in this claustrophobic pen, the Sprout explained that costs needed to be cut by a certain fixed amount every month. The Californians wanted results. The quickest remedy, in the short term, was to let go of extraneous workers. Everyone was going to be scrutinized.
We’ve all got to step up to the plate, the Sprout said. We’ve all got to work outside our comfort zone.
Laars kept thinking about Jason, but couldn’t recall what he looked like. They had barely overlapped. Small head, pleasant features. How horrible, he thought, if someone were to remember him that way. He thought harder. He could visualize the one deep furrow on Jason’s otherwise blank brow. During moments of concentration or intense malaise it resembled a second mouth.