The Big Dream

by Rebecca Rosenblum

  The next morning, I am congested before I am even conscious. The drenching yesterday has caught up with me. The snot is thin and slippery as blood, without the wet-metal smell. It’s tempting to stay in bed, but the customer service reps are not going to lay themselves off, and I can’t bear the look my staff gives me when I delegate tasks like this. I use four tissues while getting dressed. I can’t face food, so there’s nothing left to do but go to work.

  The rain has turned to sleet – it clings to me in big icy drops and the wind buffets through my trenchcoat. While I am crossing a patch of ice, the phone buzzes in my pocket and almost knocks me off balance. Once I’m safely in the driver’s seat I’ve missed the call. I dial Desi back without starting the engine. Ice-water drips from my hair onto my neck.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. I was just thinking you could bring a pizza from that Iranian place tonight. Since it’s on your way.”

  “You were thinking about dinner at eight in the morning?”

  “I wanted to get you before work. I know you don’t like interruptions.”

  I can’t remember ever saying that, specifically, but it’s true. “What do you want on it? Nothing?”

  “Is that cool?”

  “Sure, nothing’s fine. I’ll bring it.”

  “See you tonight.”

  The office is so bright and warm after the slick deluge outside. Wet spots form on the carpet in my office, drips from my coat and hair. The carpet is a grey-brown and you can’t really tell if it needs to be vacuumed or not. The wastebasket, however, is most certainly empty.

  After I look for the missing HR dossiers for customer service on three drives, I go ask my assistant. The budget is so tight this year, assistants are paid like drive-through staff, and there’s not enough of them. Kat’s tiny eyebrows scrunch tight as she listens to my request. An hour later, she comes to report that we don’t have those employees because their files aren’t in our system.

  “I’m sure they work here, and if we hired them, there must be files. Files don’t prove existence; existence necessitates files.”

  Kat sags, a pantomime of exhaustion. “I’m sorry, but if we have no files and you don’t know their names, how can I search?”

  “By category. Just try to think where they would’ve been classified, if not the right place.” I wonder what she wants to be when she grows up. Kat’s thick-framed glasses and hair slanting across her forehead look like she’s trying hard, but not at HR. “They had paperwork once, it’s just gone now. I got the head-count requests when they were hired.”

  “They could’ve quit or been let go.”

  “No, I’m letting them go now – I’d remember if I’d done it already.” I want to clamp my hands over my mouth, but Kat’s job is supposed to be dealing with sensitive information. I’m supposed to be training her.

  “Really?” Kat straightens. “When’s the meeting? Do I need to prepare anything?” Once someone can be laid off, anyone can.

  “No – unless you want to go down to the CSR room and take names?”

  She lowers her gaze to look through the tiny panels of her glasses directly at me. I guess she is trying to tell if I am kidding. “I don’t – I don’t know anyone up there.”

  “Then just see what you can find in the system.”

  She nods hard. “OK, thanks.” Takes a step backwards. “I will.”

  After the last conference call of the day, I rest my forehead on the wrist cushion in front of my keyboard, listening to the hum of the CPU. The computer doesn’t seem to be having any problems today.

  The sound of a throat clearing makes me jerk my head up, a ribbon of snot spooling to the desk. The cleaning woman is in the doorway, today in a black Raiders shirt. She has a vacuum cleaner.

  “You ok?”

  I wipe my nose with the back of my hand and it smears across my cheek. “Just resting. You’re early?”

  “No, on time. We’re always on time.”

  The windows are black and icy; my legs are stiff. I’ve slept. The watch on my snotty wrist says 7:27. “Yes, you are.” On my second try, I stand all the way up. “I’ll get out of your way, just let me log out.”

  I shut applications and log off without even checking email, but as soon as I look up, she says, “I’ll vacuum now, but just this once. We are contracted only for quarterly.”

  The screen goes black. “You don’t have – ”

  “You are exec, I see the doorplate, we can make an exception.”

  I try to sigh, but the breath won’t go in that deeply. I go toward my coat behind the door, but I guess it sort of looks like I’m coming for her.

  Backing up, she says, “Or later. We here for an hour.” I watch her dragging the vacuum down the hall as I do up my coat. The back of her jersey says Biletnikoff. A Russian name, maybe, or Polish? I think the Raiders play football. But who am I kidding? I will never have a pleasant chat about sports with this woman.

  It seems almost impossible now to go up the north stairs to the call centre and look for names I can search in the database. However, if by Monday’s update meeting I’ve accomplished nothing, the executive team will offer only baffled frowns and a desire for outside consultants. I need to figure this out.

  But all the call stations are generic – no décor or sweaters, and no nameplates. They must rotate cubes among part-timers. When I open the drawers I see pens and garbage and the occasional pack of gum, nothing identifying. All the computers are shut down, part of an energy-saving policy I myself instituted. I wouldn’t know the passwords, anyway.

  I’m defeated, but stand there a moment trying to picture this room a few hours ago, warm with bodies and loud with subscription rates, re-orders, misdirected mail. I am sure they are good at their jobs, whoever they are.

  I stagger through the hospital parking lot with pizza and drinks, no hand free for an umbrella against the sloppy wet snow, and my nose is running. In the fluorescent warmth of the entranceway hangs the sign I’ve passed a million times, above the hand-cleanser dispenser. There’s the usual detailed explanation of how to wash one’s hands, and then below, the ban on sick people that always seemed logical until now:We ask that you do not visit if you have any of the following symptoms:• Vomiting

  • Diarrhea

  • Symptoms of acute respiratory tract infection including cough, sore throat, runny nose and/or fever

  • Fever within the last 24 hours

  • Conjunctivitis (eye infection or pink eye)

  • Chicken pox, shingles, measles or mumps

  • Infectious rashes or concerns of possible transmission of a communicable disease

  If you are suffering from any of these symptoms please see your doctor and/or delay your visit until the symptoms have gone.

  I do not have a respiratory tract infection. I have a crust on the inside corners of my eyes and my nose is red from blowing with stiff white toilet paper at work, but my breathing is fine through my mouth. I think of my mother’s gritty rasp under her plastic mask, the faint crackle of plastic mattress when I sit on the bed, the cheerful blonde bachelorette on TV, the warmth of my sister’s arm and thigh leaning in next to me. A violent sneeze rips through my skull, and I twist my face into my wet sleeve just in time.

  Back in the parking lot, my eyes watering, the pizza box still scorches my hands but the rest of me is freezing. I get into the car and dial; Desi picks up on the third ring.

  “Where are you? I’m hungry. The nurse said Mom can have pizza, if she feels up to it.”

  “I have a cold.”

  “Oh. Sorry. But Mom’s got lung cancer, right?” There’s some noise in the background – I hope she’s laughing. “So go get the pizza and get over here.” More muttering. “Mom says actually, just come and we’ll order in. They’ll deliver to the lobby. I didn’t know that.”

  “I got the pizza. I’m here. Well, I’m in the parking lot. But I’m sick. Germy?” Sleet drums on the car roof. “Mom’s immune system is
compromised, not to mention the rest of the people in the hospital. They’re not going to let a germy person in.”

  “You’re in the parking lot? With the pizza?”

  I tip my head back. There is a lot of lighting out here. Everything gleams bright as day, but spookier. “Yeah, in the purple zone. Can you come down now?”

  A thunk and murmuring. “Yeah, just let me put my shoes on.”

  “I’ll flash my lights when – ” Click. I tip my head back to face the ceiling, the pizza still hot on my thighs. When we were kids, Desi and I never fought; we just didn’t interact at all, slid by each other. In the kitchen reaching for granola bars or in the bathroom reaching for tampons, her arm would be there too, and I would hand her the plastic-wrapped whatever, and she would say thank you, and go back to her room, or outside, or where I didn’t know.

  She taps on the window, then tries the door and gets in, icewater dripping from her thin blonde hair. She leans over the gearshift and peers at me in the reflected glare. “It’s bright but weird out here; I can’t really see you. Are you all that sick?”

  “Want to risk it? She sounds like a garbage truck idling as it is.”

  She stares forward. “She’s a bit better today.”

  “Really?”

  “Ah, probably not. But she laughed a lot during Ellen.”

  “That’s something. And she’ll like the pizza.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Take it on up to her. You’re missing The Bachelorette. She can never keep them all straight.” I hold up the box, but she doesn’t take it, or glance at me.

  “I’ll go in a second. It’s sorta peaceful out here. The rain on the roof is like a white noise machine.”

  I can feel a sneeze starting in behind my sinuses, and whip my head around before it bursts out. I wipe my nose on the shoulder of my raincoat and I turn back.

  “Ok, ok, you are sick.”

  “I think the pizza’s still ok. I mean, it’s in the box.”

  “Sure.” She pulls it into her lap, still staring at the wet windshield.

  “Are you ok?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re here all day every day. Maybe you should take a break.”

  She shrugs, and the cheap shiny vinyl of her coat makes a crinkling noise against the seat. “What else is a sabbatical for? I’ll have to go back to work in the spring.”

  I think about the spring, when it won’t be so dangerous to drive after dark, and that dark will come later, and I’ll have to start organizing the interviews for the summer interns, and my mother will probably be dead. “And work is a break?”

  “As much as anything, isn’t it?”

  I shrug. My coat doesn’t crinkle. It’s cashmere.

  She doesn’t speak, and when I turn, her face is right in front of mine. “I don’t think I should take the germ pizza. I’ll order another. Anyway, you need dinner too.” She looks at me hard before sliding out of the car. By the time I get home, the pizza is cold.

  I could simply email the customer service supervisor and ask her the names of her staff. Her name is Suyin Li – that file is where it should be, in the Departmental Supervisors folder. But Kat already hates me, as do the cleaners, my bosses, the orderlies who mop at the hospital, and probably others I don’t even know about. In a week or so, when I ask Suyin Li to pass her scripts and quota sheets to the new team in Chennai, she will too, and I’m in no hurry. So I go into the file room. Most people’s hire files are kept on paper, too, though the online ones are what’s updated.

  It is a relief to cough unheard – the filing cabinets don’t jerk away or reach for hand santizer, like the people in my meetings this morning. We were listening to staffing requests we can’t honour – no $90,000 web designer for Dream Car, no consultant fees for the branding team. But I need to take middle management’s concerns seriously, make people feel heard, value all stakeholders. And I do, with Kat grudgingly taking notes in the corner – and then I hold up a copy of their departmental budget.

  I’ve always liked this dark, windowless file room. I’ve worked here too long; I shouldn’t be saying always. And it’s a pretty pathetic thing to love – Kat and her predecessors have left the files jumbled, some shedding pages from being jammed into the cabinet upside-down. But after an hour, I do miraculously find the file of that big black guy because his security badge photo slipped out. He is Wayne LaPorte. He came on a temp contract, but was made full-time. So he’ll be owed termination pay. His resume is in the file; we went to the same high school, fifteen years apart.

  Somewhere outside the file room, five p.m. passes. I just keep searching, because where have I got to go? Eventually I go back to my desk, open the performance evaluation spreadsheets, and enter Wayne LaPorte’s employee number. And there’s Wayne – his history of service and sick days, his not-quite-excellent performance evaluation, his three 50-cents/hour raises in the last two years. All seems correct except the employment category, which is somehow “Customer” instead of “Customer Service Representative.”

  I try entering Customer in the search category field, and it’s the jackpot. All my lost customer service representatives – Danvir, William, Kyla, Susan, half-a-dozen more. All “Customers.” Like lost friends found.

  There is a rustle, then a bang, then a male voice shouting. He sounds sort of Italian today. I start to stand. I don’t want to cause another vacuum-cleaning emergency. Then the phone rings. The real one.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. I just want you to pick up Booster Juice on the way.”

  “I’m sick. I have a cold. Remember yesterday?” I look at the bin of crumpled Post-its, then look at the doorway. Still clear.

  “Are you home?”

  “No, still at work.”

  “I thought you were sick?”

  I flop back in my chair. “I have a cold that makes me too germy for the hospital. I’m not dying or anything.”

  We’re both silent for a moment, probably both thinking about how inappropriate that was. The cleaning woman comes in just as Desi says, “She liked having us both here, watching TV, eating supper. It was like we’re little kids after school.”

  “I don’t – ” I think about whether it’s all right to complain about your childhood when your mother is dying. I see the wastebasket rising silently beside me. The cleaning-woman’s full-time job used to be my Saturday morning chore. “I don’t remember all that many warm after-school chats. Didn’t we mainly watch Golden Girls reruns and eat marshmallows while we waited for her to come home from work?”

  “Sometimes WKRP in Cinncinnati. And sometimes she’d make proper snacks.”

  “And those were good shows, anyway.”

  “Right. It’s not like we had miserable childhoods.”

  “I never thought that. I never thought much about it at all. Are you in the hall?”

  “Of course. What kind of daughter do you think I am?”

  “What kind of daughter do you think I am, Desi? I’d be there if I could.”

  There is a pause. “What are you working on?”

  A longer pause. At least the cleaner has gone into the hall now. “Layoffs.”

  “Seriously? A lot?”

  “I said I was a good daughter, not a good VP.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I’m not a good prof.”

  “You probably are. You were a good babysitter. It’s the same skill set, right?”

  “Yeah, basically. But I was never that good. You were just young.”

  “So were you.”

  “Sorry, Belinda. I should go back.”

  “Well. Tell her I said hi.”

  “Ok. Good night. Feel better.”

  I am staggering down the hallway in my coat when the cleaning lady comes out of an office carrying another wastebin. She screams something down the hall the other way, at no one I can see, then dumps the garbage in her cart.

  My breath is a snotty wheeze, loud enough that she looks up from the Coke can
s and apple cores. “Yes? Another problem?”

  I didn’t even realize our relationship was like this now: the frown lines, the wastebin frozen in mid-air, the gaze darting in search for her invisible colleague: resignation, but also rage.

  “No, no problem.”

  She stares at me – I have to walk away for this to be over. So I do. I call over my shoulder, “No problem at all. You’re doing a fine job.” She is still staring.

  After the bend in the hallway, I lean against the wall, feeling short of breath. I tip my head back, inhale, and when I level my gaze, Kat is staring at me. Her cube being in the hall is a building services decision that I don’t even try to parse, but she’s there amidst her posters of bands I don’t recognize and pictures of kittens. She takes out one earbud, then the other – a show of respect.

  “You should go, Kat – it’s pretty late. Whatever it is will wait.”

  She pokes her skinny fingers under her glasses and rubs her eyes, hard. “I can’t find them. I don’t know how they could possibly be filed, I can’t work it out.”

  “The customer service reps?”

  Kat yanks her hands down, maybe scared that there’s something else to look for. “You asked me to find them.”

  She’s wearing a sharp-collared, bright orange blouse, a heavy silver necklace, smokey eyeshadow. All this to look pretty – she’s so pretty – and the only person she sees all day is me, for 90 seconds. And then she has to go back to her cube in the hallway.

  “I found them, just now. They were misfiled under Customer, for some reason.”

  I smile but Kat doesn’t, and her thin orange shoulders do not relax. “Misfiled?”

  How can I be intimidating when my mascara is smeared by sneeze-tears? “Weird, eh?”