Dead End Job

by Ingrid Reinke

  “That was actually pretty nice of your douche friend, Lulu. Maybe he’s not such a bad guy,” Alex said, turning back to me and enjoying some of her fresh cocktail.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That was pretty decent of him.” I sat for a second and thought about what it might mean. Was he just trying to be nice because we worked together? Did he like me? Did he like Alex? Was he just trying to make it less awkward that he’d caught me staring at him? Was I reading into it too much? Yes, I decided. I needed to let it go. I started to lecture myself: Clark was just a hot guy that I hopefully would have sex with some day who saw a co-worker in a bar and decided to do the decent thing and buy her a drink. I was resolved to enjoy the drink, and thank him the next day at the office, possibly sparking a fantastic conversation during which Clark would realize that he was deeply infatuated with me. Then we would end with us dating, having amazing, hot sex, and possibly moving in together – if the sex was good. If he had a small penis, all bets were off. Argh, Louisa! It was no use, I was obsessing. My irrational mind had already left “Free Drink City” and turned left into “Moving in Together Land.” I rolled my eyes at myself and exhaled deeply, looking up again to see if I could glean any more meaning from Clark’s facial expression or body posture. Instead, I saw that he was engaged in a heated and unpleasant-looking conversation with his date, Shelf-Tits.

  “Hey Lex,” I said, poking her in the shoulder.

  “Ow! What? Jesus, I hate it when you do that,” she smacked my finger away.

  “Look, there’s trouble over there with Clark and Porny,” I said, inclining my head in the direction of their table. “Do you think she’s pissed off at him for sending the drinks?”

  Alex turned around right in time to see Clark’s date stand up, slam her cocktail down on the table dramatically and storm out of the bar.

  “Wow,” she said. “Who the fuck knows what she’s mad at?”

  “Holy shit, he’s following her!” Clark got up quickly, glanced in my direction and made brief eye contact with me before hurrying out the door after his date. In the second our eyes met, his face didn’t look angry or frustrated, instead he seemed sad.

  “Yup,” said Alex. “No more free drinks for us.”

  “Good point.”

  I was trying to decide how best to approach Clark in the office the next morning and wanted to discuss my strategy with Alex, but the second round of trivia had begun (topic: dictators), so Alex and I sat and sipped our cocktails as Lisa and Maxine frantically scribbled down names of various famous (Kim Jong-Il) and not-so famous (General Than Shwe of Malaysia, thanks, Lisa) tyrannical world leaders. When the round was finished, Lisa efficiently reviewed all of her answers before turning in our trivia card to the quizmaster. When she got back to the table she sat herself down then turned to me and got down to business. “Well, what’s your plan?”

  “Well, I think I’ll go up to him in the morning and thank him for the drinks, and just see if he mentions anything about his date,” I responded.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Lisa spat out at me. Huh?

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about you not getting either arrested or worse, murdered. Is there something else more important to discuss that I’m not aware of?” Lisa managed to be sarcastic and serious at the same time, which was tough to pull off.

  I blanched. “Uh, yeah—probably not.”

  “You have to try to figure out who did this, and why. You said you are the only person who was taken down to the police station for questioning. That means the Police have no other leads besides you. Think about it. Was this Sarah chick up for some kind of promotion? Did she have something valuable in her office, and if so, who would want to rob her? What kind of project was she working on? Louisa, you’ve got to get your head out of your ass. Whoever killed her might not be done.”

  I shuddered, nodded and took a big sip of wine. Lisa was right, and in my buzzed state, there were more questions than answers.

  Chapter 7: Pile it On

  The next morning it was a little easier to get out of bed. I had slept restlessly, getting up every hour or so to go pee (thanks, wine), then I ended up just tossing and turning, unable to get comfortable on my pillow, so by the time my alarm clock went off at 7:00, I was over it.

  When I got to the 29 floor at 8:34, an hour or so late, I had a minor anxiety attack as I stepped off the elevator into the hallway. I had foregone my morning coffee in anticipation of the stress that returning to the office would cause me, so I staved off a total, shoot-pee-in-your-pants-and-vomit-meltdown. I took a couple of deep calming breaths and steadied myself for the day ahead of me. When I felt ready enough to face the office, I walked quickly through the back entrance, past Ari and Jenny’s empty offices, and kept my eyes focused down on the ugly beige-grey carpet, completely avoiding looking towards the front of the building towards Sarah’s office until I sat down at my cube.

  The last thing I felt physically and emotionally ready to do was to face the sight of Sarah’s office cordoned off with that yellow Crime Scene Do Not Cross plastic tape, although it reminded me slightly of an uncomfortable dress I’d worn to a fraternity party where the theme was “Anything but Clothes.”

  I shook my head, clearing that memory away, and sat down at my desk. I started trying to type my password, but my stupid hands wouldn’t work. I tried to take a deep breath, but the anxiety of being back in the building caused my hands to shake violently and suddenly my lungs, no matter how hard I was breathing, refused to fill up with air. Sensing an imminent breakdown, I quickly unbuttoned the top button of my pants, pulled the neck of my shirt away from my body and scooted my desk chair backwards a couple of feet. I leaned forward and shuddered, relaxing my head downwards towards my lap. I started counting 1-2-3 and breathing slowly. I stayed in that position for a few moments longer, methodically breathing in and out. The whole incident took about 5 minutes, but eventually I felt calm enough to sit back up, button up my pants and log into my computer.

  Martin was not in yet, so I was alone on our side of the office. Despite my drunken assertions the prior night that I needed to find out who had killed Sarah, I was in no state to search around the office for clues. Instead, I optimistically hoped that the clues would come to me, so I opened my emails and scanned through them, not so much looking for actionable items that had come in from members of my group as searching for some kind of explanation for Sarah’s death.

  I browsed my inbox, ignoring the usual requests for reports and last minute print jobs, and found the one other email about the incident that had come in at 6:42 PM on Wednesday evening from our local HR department, detailing how new security measures would be put in place for those employees who worked late or came in early. Because I never did either, I scanned the email quickly then deleted it.

  There was also an email last night from Elaine, which was written rather tersely, inviting me and the rest of our group to Sarah’s funeral service, to be held on Saturday morning pending the completion of Sarah’s autopsy. Typical of Elaine, the email was wholly void of emotion. Elaine had a well-documented fear of any type of emotional or physical weakness in people. To my co-workers’ and my constant chagrin, she expressed exactly zero sympathy for normal life events such as becoming ill, losing a family member or having any type emotional distress. I thought about Sarah’s poor husband Ben, who was probably sitting at the medical examiner’s office with their two elementary school-aged kids, and deleted Elaine’s email in disgust.

  The beep and click of the front entrance caused a sudden rush of goose bumps to cover my arms, and my physical premonition was justified as I heard the speaker phone dial-tone and Clark’s recorded greeting as he checked his voicemail. I waited a moment for him to finish scanning through his messages and decided that it was the right time to act. The office was empty, and therefore I could have a quick conversation with him without the total embarrassment of the rest of the group eavesdropping. I
took a deep breath and stood up, steadying myself as I strode over to his desk.

  “Good morning,” I said, cheerily. “It’s really creepy being here, right? I mean, I can’t believe what happened to poor Sarah. I mean, she was here working, and now she’s just…dead.” He paused from his typing and looked up to see me standing in the cube next to him, my head and shoulders hanging over the ledge into his cube, looking absolutely as casual as I could.

  “Oh, hey Louisa. Yeah, I guess it’s pretty weird,” he said, seeming completely nonplussed.

  Sensing that my line of conversation really wasn’t going to go anywhere, I decided to change the subject. “Right. Well, I wanted to thank you for the drinks last night, that was really nice of you. Oh, and my girlfriend Alex says thanks, too. That was who I was with,” I rambled.

  “That’s cool,” he said, returning to his typing. Although Clark clearly expected that this sentiment was going to be adequate to end the conversation, I wasn’t getting the message. I kept staring at him as if he was going to at least demonstrate a basic social interaction by somehow acknowledging me in a more significant way. Instead he began checking out his Facebook page, and when seconds later he picked up his phone to make a call, it clicked that he was dismissing me.

  “Oh. OK, well, anyways—thanks!” I said, louder than I’d intended to. Feeling like a complete moron, I backed away from his desk, turned tail and marched away from him, into the kitchen, as quickly as I could. I wanted to pretend like I was getting a coffee or picking something up from the printer, anything so I could avoid running into Clark again by his cube until the weight of rejection had lifted a bit off of my heart. Jesus Christ, so much for moving in together. I poured myself half a cup of the overwhelmingly potent, black, tar-like substance masquerading as coffee that the IT department brewed up each morning, diluted it with some hot water and dumped four mini creamers and two sugar packets in, stirring it slowly. I was plotting how I could talk myself out of the current feeling of abject humiliation that had overtaken me as I quietly scooted back over to my desk and sat down as quickly as I could, barely avoiding dumping the hot cup of liquid I was carrying all over my crotch. Unfortunately I still splashed a bit on my hand. “Fuck! Shit FUCK!” I cursed to myself in a scream-whisper.

  I was frantically grabbing tissues out of the box on my desk and dabbing my fingers when I was interrupted by Martin arriving for the day. Luckily I’d already put the coffee down, because instead of going straight to his desk, he rushed over to me, sighing loudly, and gave me a big bear hug.

  “Oh. My. God. Lulu!” he gasped as he smothered me in the embrace of his big fat hairy arms. “I seriously was going to call you yesterday. I am dying to know what happened. Are you OK? Wait, why are you even at work? Like, what the hell? I need to know all of the details! What happened at the police station? Did you stay overnight?” He let me go and pushed me away back into my chair, where I flopped down abruptly, almost tumbling out onto the ground. “Bitch, sit down and tell me everything,” he said, squatting down on the carpet in front of me.

  He listened intently as I recounted the events of the day. He too, had been told to take the day off yesterday by HR. He told me that the police had only questioned him briefly at the office on Wednesday morning, asked him what group he worked in, his relationship to Sarah, and where he was on Tuesday night. Because he did not work in legal, and he had a solid alibi (Mitch, the German Viking), he wasn’t asked to go into the station.

  “OH, MY GOD. I would have been so freaking scared if I was you, girl! This whole thing is so majorly scary and fucked up!” he decided, after I told him about Detectives Wang and Schreck and the “voluntary” blood/black light test they’d had me do. I also told him about the email from Elaine, not-so-gently suggesting that I get myself back to work today. He shook his head and clucked. “That woman is one crazy-ass bitch. You should seriously look for another job. I would not put up with that shit if I were you, Lulu.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” I replied.

  Inwardly, I just brushed it off. Even though I was now absolutely sure that I work in the most murder-y office of Seattle, the stress of looking for another job was not what I wanted to experience at the moment. Plus, until this thing had been solved, who would want to hire a possible murder suspect? I looked over at Martin, who himself looked quite a bit worse for the wear. His big, round face was unshaven and covered with splotchy, red stubble and looking abnormally sweaty and rashy, and he had large, dark circles under his eyes. He was wearing his normal ensemble of khaki slacks and a plaid, button-up T-shirt, but the number of wrinkles in his clothing exceeded even what I would deem ‘work-appropriate.’ He looked a total fucking mess.

  “Um, Martin, how are you doing?” I asked, cautiously.

  “Oh, I’m fine,” he replied, waving his hand in the air as if to swat away a fly. “A little freaked out, you know. But I’m a big guy and even though I am gayer than Elton John, I can beat some ass if I have to. I’m not worried about myself. ”

  “I guess so,” I replied, even though I had my doubts. I’d seen Martin cry over seeing a smallish brown spider one day in the kitchen. Toughness didn’t seem to be his forte. I decided to change the subject. “Um, yeah, I know my boss is a psychopath, but why are you back in the office so fast?” I asked him.

  “I didn’t really have a choice,” he replied. “Mr. Curtis was just so nice about it and told me to take all the time I needed, but I wanted to get back to work as soon as possible so I could help him with this merger stuff. You know that we can’t afford to screw this up right now.”

  “Sure.” This didn’t make much sense to me. Martin has not always been the corporate cheerleader type—like me, usually he could give two flying fucks about doing extra help around the office. This Sarah thing must have really shaken him up.

  Right then, Jenny walked over. She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped short long enough to take in Martin’s body splayed out all over the floor of my cube. I could only guess that Jenny was completely panicking at the thought of having to talk to me after the Sarah incident, since she refused to acknowledge that I am actually a human being and she didn’t interact with me unless it directly benefitted her.

  “Um, Louisa?” she said, whining.

  “Ugh, hi Jenny,” I replied unenthusiastically. Martin looked up at me and rolled his eyes.

  “Can we talk about Sarah’s workload? Elaine wanted you to take care of dispersing it within the team.”

  “Oh…yeah. Sure, Jenny.” Not even an acknowledgement of what had happened. Typical. Plus, doing task assignments had always been Sarah’s job. How the hell was I expected to handle that?

  “Great, let’s talk after the all-office meeting this morning,” she said, then walked away without waiting for my response.

  When she was out of earshot I turned back to Martin in a panic. “What’s with the all-office meeting? I didn’t hear about that.”

  “Oh, you must have not been on the invite list because no one thought you’d be here. It’s in the boardroom at ten o’clock. Mr. Curtis and Emily from HR are going to talk about the Sarah thing.”

  “Oh. No. No, I didn’t know about it. You know how much I hate these things. I’d better load up on the meds.”

  “It’s going to be a long one. Take a handful.”

  Martin tried to look sympathetic as he laboriously rolled himself onto his stomach, then slowly scooted on his knees up to a kneeling position, and finally reached up and made an attempt to look graceful while pulling his enormous body up slowly on the corner of my desk. It didn’t work –he looked like he was in the middle of having a heart attack while crapping his pants. I did the charitable thing and ignored his struggle, instead rummaging in my purse for my Ativan. I popped a pill in my mouth. Watching Martin shuffle back to his desk, I thought about it for a second and then swallowed another pill.

  Office meetings were my real-life version of hell. The confined quarters and social pressure to be quiet and act norm
al pushed me into a frenzied state of anxiety, where I could not pay attention to what was being said, but instead imagined myself either freaking out or passing out. Thank you, Christ, for my anxiety pills. I was convinced that it was only because of the miracle of chemistry that I avoided this fate.

  Thanks to science, by the time ten o’clock rolled around, I was feeling way more relaxed and actually pretty tired and quite a bit loopy. When Martin and I walked into the boardroom, he went straight to the front to sit near where Mr. Curtis and Emily were standing, and I sat down in the back (closest to the exit) while the rest of the office employees filed in. In the haze of my Ativan, I watched listlessly as the swell of grey and black-suited men and women from all of the different departments of Merit entered the room and sat down. The normal chit chat of the semi-annual office meetings was absent, and the overall tone was hushed and reverent, as if we were entering a church or other sacred space. I looked around and saw a couple of the legal department’s associates, Priti and Maya, sitting on the right side of the room near the windows beside Clark, who was looking just as hot as ever, fiddling with his phone.

  Elaine and Mark entered the room conspicuously late. Elaine was talking loudly on her Blackberry and waving her arms wildly, either oblivious to or simply ignoring the respectful calm in the room. Right behind her was Mark, looking frustrated and embarrassed, trying to direct Elaine to a seat while balancing the ungainly load of Elaine’s laptop and purse, her folder, a couple of pens and her usual drink, a Dixie cup of hot tea. Directly behind them, Michael walked in trailed by Jenny, then the three analysts, Laura, Michelle, and Nathan. They sat directly behind Elaine and Mark in the middle of the room, who had found a seat next to Jenny. The last person to enter from our group was Ari, who usually sat with Sarah. Now that she was gone, I guess he was keeping to himself—I felt terrible for him. When he spotted Elaine, he wisely settled on the opposite side of the room.