by Lee Ellis
“Well, you know, maybe you should tell her that.”
“Nah,” Rock shrugged. “I’ll just ignore her calls for a while. That should send the message I want.”
Jacob got up and went in early. This was, of course, uncharacteristic of him, but he figured that if he got in early the first week, people would notice and think of him as a guy who gets in early, and he hoped that this cultivated self-image would persist once things normalized and he began to come in late. More importantly he wanted to avoid Lucy after what Reginald had said the night before about him and Lucy becoming close, since for some reason he cared what Reginald thought. I don’t know why. Reginald wasn’t his mother.
As Jacob got off the elevator, thankful that he hadn’t had to suffer the inconvenience of the elevator stopping to allow another human being to descend with his royal highness, he saw a beam of pure sunshine shooting out of the mailroom. Not really. But he did see Brenda. His heart beat faster, his mouth went dry, and all that other pussy shit that happens when some idiot thinks they’re in love happened. Ain’t nobody got time to list all that shit here.
“Hey, uh, Brenda, right?” Jacob said, again feigning uncertainty regarding her name, since the quickest way into a girl’s pants is to pretend you can barely remember who she is. Oh, but of course I forget, Jacob wasn’t just trying to get into this girl’s pants. Our little Romeo was ‘in love’ with her. What a gay bitch.
“Yes,” she said with a smile that absolutely did not light up the room in any way except for in Jacob’s love hormone-addled mind. “And you are Jacob, correct?”
“Yep, that’s me. So, ah, what are you up to?” Jacob asked the woman coming from the mailroom, who was obviously checking her mail, since she was in the mailroom and there is literally nothing else that you do in a mailroom.
“Oh, I was just mailing a cheque before heading into work,” Brenda responded, since apparently there is one other thing that you do in a mailroom. Also, apparently Australian spellings show up in speech as well. Who knew?
“Cool, cool. Hey you want to walk in together? You know, since we’re heading to the same place.”
“Um, sure. That’d be delightful.” The two lovebirds made their way through the front door and into the morning sun. Brenda pulled out her pair of stupidly oversized sunglasses and put them on her stupid face.
“Nice sunglasses,” Jacob lied politely. At least he better have been lying, because if he honestly thought those sunglasses looked good, then he was so blindly in love he would have loved anything this girl did. Seriously, she could have had a Hitler mustache and he would have praised it.
“Oh, thanks. They’re my favorite pair,” Brenda said, the narrator deciding ‘fuck this alternate spelling shit’.
“Well, they’re nice,” Jacob said, hoping to score some points at the expense of his dignity. “So, where in Australia are you from?”
“Adelaide,” Brenda responded, though Jacob had no idea what she said because he knew precisely jack shit about Australia. Of course, he acted like that meant something to him, but it didn’t. She did say Adelaide, though. “So, since you’re a manager in training, does that mean your office is down the hall from mine?”
“I don’t know where your office is,” Jacob said as the two entered the building. “Mine is next to Henry’s office.”
“Then it is. I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other then. Later, Jacob.” He watched her walk away, music playing in his head like in those stupid romantic comedies that women like, until he was interrupted by a less pleasant voice.
“Jacob! Get in here,” Steve called from his office with a wave. Damn it, what’s this jackass want? Well, at least he can log it in his thick skull that I beat his incredible fat ass of a secretary in, so that should cultivate the early bird image that will allow me to slack off later.
“Yes, sir. What can I do for you?”
“First of all, you can stop calling me sir. I already told you, buddy, call me Steve. Secondly, I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to stop in yesterday. Got caught up in some stuff, a conversation with a client, bah, you know how it goes. So, anyway, how much do you know about what we do here?”
Shit. I have no idea. I knew I should have been listening to Lucy yesterday. “Uh, well, the company on the whole, I know what we do. This position specifically, though, I’m less clear on.”
“Right,” Steve said, nodding understandingly like a bobble head. “Right, that makes sense. Lucy could fill you in on the company as a whole, but she wouldn’t know a whole lot about the day to day of the manager in training positions. So, let me give you the rundown…”
Yap yap yap. Man this guy can talk. I feel like I should be listening to this, but this is boring as shit. Anyway, these introduction things are always general and meaningless anyway. I’ll start paying attention when he gives me an assignment or something. Oh shit, I think he’s done. He’s looking at me like I’m supposed to say something. Fuck. “Alright. I think I got the general idea.”
“Good. Any questions?”
“Um…” Fuck. I need to ask something so it will look like I was paying attention and that I care. Which I don’t. “I guess where do you want me to start?”
“Well, for now, why don’t you just follow me around for a while? Once you get a feel for the place, we’ll see about getting you working on an assignment or two of your own. Alright, big guy?”
Jacob spent the rest of the morning in Steve’s office, watching him work, listening to him explain what he was doing, and smelling his secretary. Nothing of note happened until around noon, when Henry came in. Well, actually, a fair amount happened, and Jacob learned a fair amount, or at least he would have if he’d been paying attention. What I mean is that none of it would be interesting to you. And if it would you’re a nerd. None of it was interesting to me, and since I’m writing the story, I’m skipping over it. Fuck you.
“Hey, I was about to head to lunch,” Henry said, leaning his head into Steve’s office. “I was wondering if Jacob wanted to join me.”
“Oh, um, actually, I’m shadowing Steve today,” Jacob said.
“No, no, you go ahead,” Steve said, shooing Jacob out of the office like a fly or some similarly unwanted insect.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, yeah. Actually, I have some paperwork to catch up on, so this works out well. When you get back, I should have something more substantial for you to work on. Your time is probably better spent getting to know each other anyway.”
Jacob didn’t have to be told twice to not work, so he quickly got up and headed out with Henry, the one co-worker he at this point thought he might like, despite the fact that Bethany was really a very nice, caring person despite the massive amount of perfume she wore on what was, to be fair, a rather gigantic ass. Jacob would have realized that if he hadn’t been such a shallow asshole, but what are you going to do? People suck, and so did Jacob. Anyway, Henry and he left the building and headed out to lunch.
“So, what do you think of your new boss?” Henry asked as the two got their food and sat down.
Jacob shrugged. “He’s a boss, I guess,” he said, deciding to make an inane factual statement in lieu of having an opinion. Since Henry appeared to be the only person he’d be dealing with that he might actually like, he didn’t want to alienate him by having the audacity to disagree with him.
“That he is, my friend, that he is,” Henry chuckled, taking a bite out of his food. “Yeah, he’s a pretty cool guy. Fun to hang out with and what not. I think you’ll like him.”
“You hang out with your boss?”
“Sure,” Henry said, chewing his undefined food. “I mean, we all do. We’re a small team, you know, and most people at the company are fairly young, so we sometimes do stuff together. Go out for drinks after work and what not. You’ll like it. It helps build relationships, and it’s good for morale.”
I have to hang out with these knob polishers after work too? Jacob thought, his morale plummeting.
“Do we have to attend? I mean, if we have something to do or something.”
Henry shook his head. “No, of course not. They’re entirely optional. It is a good way to get to know people in the other departments though, you know, people we don’t see a whole lot of at work. And they’re fun, you know.”
Like Brenda. Also, if he says “you know” one more time, I’m going to punch him in the face. “Cool. I’ll look forward to it.”
“Yeah, Steve’s a cool guy. Pretty much the only objection I have to him is his feedback.”
“What, is he a dick about it or something?” Jacob asked.
“No. Worse,” Henry said, swallowing his food. “He’s really nice about it, you know. Like, to a fault. He won’t just give you feedback, which is kind of crucial to our training. He feels he has to sugarcoat it so he won’t hurt our feelings. I mean, that would be fine except he sugarcoats it so much that what should take him five seconds to say takes a half an hour and by the time you leave, you have no idea what he was trying to communicate.”
“Sounds lame,” Jacob said, breaking his promise to himself by not punching Henry in the face.
“I know, right?” Henry asked rhetorically, continuing to rant to the new kid who couldn’t do anything about it, since that’s much more effective than actually talking to the boss himself. “I mean, we’re grown-ups here. We can take some criticism, you know? Just spit it out.”
“I don’t know. Some people here, it seems like they might have a nervous breakdown if criticized,” Jacob said, referring to Olivia.
Henry laughed. “Yeah, you’re talking about David, right?”
“Yep.”
“Yeah, that kid can be a little much. I guess he’s kind of an alright guy, but he’s just so full of himself. And he has no sense of humor. He takes things so seriously. He’s just kind of a…”
“Flaccid cock?” Jacob interrupted helpfully.
“Well, I was going to say wet blanket, but I guess that works too,” Henry said, deferring to the clear, objective superiority of Jacob’s answer. “But still, he’s not too bad to hang around, and with Steve and Olivia, it’s a pretty cool crew.”
“I don’t know. Olivia seems like kind of, well, a bitch to be frank,” Jacob said less than tactfully, recalling their interaction from the other day. You know, the one where Olivia was kind of a bitch.
“Really? Huh,” Henry said, looking at Jacob as if he’d just slapped his mother with a live fish, then peed in her face, possibly while still slapping her with said live fish, though the fish would likely be dead by this point.
Oh shit. He wants to fuck her, Jacob thought, which to be fair was the best way to explain why Henry had gotten personally offended by Jacob’s comment, despite the fact that no live fish, mothers or urine were involved. To be fair, she is kind of hot. If you can look past the whole bitch thing.
“I mean, to be fair, I only talked to her for like a second. She was just kind of curt, you know.”
“Ah, was she busy?” Henry asked, his expression softening as he saw an explanation of Olivia’s behavior that would not reflect negatively on the woman he wanted to fuck, or that he loved, or whatever the fuck was going on between them. Seriously, is everyone in this book fucking insane?
Henry chuckled fondly to himself. “Yeah, she can be a little Type A at times, but it’s good. You know, she’s a fun girl. You’ll like her, once you see her out of the office and relaxed. Anyway, we should be getting back to work, but Fridays we tend to head out for drinks after work. You should join us.”
“Sounds good,” Jacob said, chapter endingly.
Chapter 7-The Office Crew goes to a Bar.
Friday rolled around, and Jacob was anxious to get to the bar and celebrate the end of his first week of work. Well, his first week of getting up and heading to LDC every morning at any rate. He still had no idea what it was his employer actually did, despite the fact that Steve had given him several assignments, all of which he had completed to at least nominal satisfaction. He entered the bar, grabbed a beer, and looked around for his coworkers. Seeing them at a table on the far end, he walked up and stood awkwardly near Henry, the one person at the company he felt comfortable talking to.
“Hey, Henry, what’s up?” Jacob asked, resting his hand on his Henry’s shoulder.
“Jacob, how’s it going? Glad you could make it,” Henry said, extending his hand and introducing him to the busty blonde behind him. “Jacob, this is Nancy Neal. She works in accounting.”
“Hi, I’m Nancy,” Nancy said in an obnoxious, high-pitched voice as she reached out to hold her hand limply as Jacob shook it.
“Hi. I’m Jacob. Actually we met before,” Jacob said, immediately regretting it, remembering that the reason he knew Nancy better than she knew him was her relationship with Rock. That was a minefield he hoped to steer clear of, as are all minefields, with them being full of mines and all.
“Oh my god, have we? When?”
“Uh, it was through Lucy. We were out together one night a few weekends ago,” Jacob said, desperately trying to describe the night without mentioning that he was Rock’s friend and opening up that can of worms.
“Oh my god, I remember. You’re Rock’s friend, right?”
“Yeah. Well, I mean, I am friends with Rock,” Jacob said, trying to avoid talking about Rock since he had no idea where their relationship stood, and didn’t really care to boot.
“Oh my god, what happened to Rock?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I haven’t seen him all week. He isn’t answering his phone or returning my messages. Is he alright?”
“Yeah, he’s fine. I just talked to him yesterday.”
“Then why isn’t he returning my calls?” Nancy asked angrily, as if it were Jacob who were ignoring her.
“Why would I know that?”
“I don’t know. Is he mad about something?”
Jacob shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him.”
“I can’t get ahold of him.”
“Good point. I could see how that would make it difficult.”
“I can’t think of what he would be mad about. He seemed fine when he left my apartment on Sunday.”
“I’m going to go over here now,” Jacob said, heading over to the table where Henry had taken a seat with Olivia, David, and some random Asian woman.
“Hey Jacob. I’d like you to meet my life partner,” David said gesturing to the Asian woman next to him, who apparently wasn’t random, but Jacob had no way of knowing that last sentence.
“Hi. Jacob Stanton.”
“Hey, Sin-Suen Choo,” Jacob managed to hear, somehow, despite the fact that the woman’s name was Patricia, and she had clearly said Patricia. Seriously, Jacob, what the fuck?
“So, I finally get to meet the Mr. and Mrs. Craig, huh? It’s a pleasure,” Jacob said, obviously lying, pulling up his seat to the table.
“The pleasure’s all ours,” Mrs. Craig said with a sweet smile.
“Actually, it’s the Mrs. and Mr. Chen,” David Craig (Chen? Apparently?) corrected Jacob.
“What?” Jacob said, since I guess he didn’t know what was going on either. “I thought your last name was Craig, like the first name? Did she keep her maiden name?”
“No. Well, yes, kind of. Actually, I took her name,” David said proudly, placing his glass of wine, because of course it was wine that he was drinking, on the table. Wine. At a bar. A man, with his wife’s name, drinking wine, at a bar.
“What?”
“David insisted,” Patricia said.
“Well, you know, with all the sexism that persists in our society, and all the regressive couples out there who insist on continuing the oppressive institution of taking the husband’s name, we felt it was important to make a statement,” David said, meaning that it was his way to make himself feel superior to everybody else.
“So, after all that shit you gave me on Monday for joking about your last name being a first name,
your name isn’t even Craig?”
“Well, technically it is. See, we’re not married. We’re just life partners.”
“What the fuck does that even mean?” Jacob asked of David’s meaningless sentence.
“Well, we’re not going to get married because it’s an archaic and quite frankly outdated institution. I love my life partner and I didn’t want to subject her to something so sexist and demeaning.”
“He feels that way, anyway,” Patricia said shrugging, almost sadly. “Actually, I’d always looked forward to having a wedding. I think the idea of being married is kind of romantic, really.”
“But we think it would be hypocritical to enjoy a right that others are denied,” David said, putting his arm around Patricia and pulling her closer. “I mean, if so many are denied such a fundamental right, how can we in good conscience get married?”
“So which is it?”
“Huh?”
“Is it a fundamental right, or is it an archaic institution that should be done away with?”
David looked at Jacob like he was an idiot, in the most annoying way possible. Like if Fran Drescher’s voice was a look that was the look David gave Jacob. “I don’t see your point.”
“Of course you don’t.”
Jacob then got up, walked around the table, and hit David on the head with his wine glass. That didn’t do much damage, because it was a wine glass and therefore a pussy weapon, so he instead picked up his more manly beer glass and broke that on David’s head. Then he body slammed him through the bar table, and head-butted David in his ovaries. Patricia, seeing a real man for the first time in years, was now insanely attracted to Jacob, and a fellow patron who happened to be a judge performed an impromptu wedding ceremony. As the rest of the bar patrons chanted his name and cheered, Jacob made sweet, sweaty love to Patricia right there on the floor as David watched.
At least, that’s what should have happened, or at least it would have been awesome if it had. In reality, he just sat back and turned his attention to the conversation that was unfolding between Olivia and Henry, because Jacob didn’t normally commit felonies in reaction to minor slights.