by Craig Davis
CHAPTER II
“What’s this?!!” he bellowed; Joe B.’s full body exploded into a wild dance of flailing limbs and invective, brilliant showers of water spraying from his ragged hair. His left hand waved the crumpled memo, while his right shook violently, still clutching the briefcase. The lid popped open with a proud snap, and carefully preserved sheets of paper filled the air like an autumn day.
“I didn’t put it there,” his secretary cringed back at him. “I only saw it.”
He stared at his yawning attaché, and forms and files floated blithely to rest all around his befuddled feet. “I know, I know,” he conceded defeat, and contemplated the cold-blooded justice of cheap briefcase latches.
The secretary knelt to help gather papers. “I’ll get these,” she said, trying to fill the gap of humanity with busyness. “Can I get you some water, or a towel? Or coffee?”
Joe B. checked his hands to see if he was still holding his coffee cup. “I haven’t even had my coffee,” he moaned, mostly to himself, again catching sight of his gaping briefcase.
“I’ll get you some,” and his secretary, desperate for any escape, scampered away clutching a sheaf of documents in both hands.
Again Joe B.’s eye fell on the pink slip of paper. He began reading, for the first time, the pale type against the glowing paper. “… Unfounded expense … questionable paperwork … unsatisfactory productivity … unkempt appearance??!” He subconsciously felt the briefcase handle slip from his hand and a paper cup take its place. “… Declining returns … malfeasance … missing records … poor review … mailroom … OW!”
“That’s hot,” his secretary offered, her eyelashes pointing to the coffee.
Joe B.’s scalded lips blew at the steaming brew.
“I don’t understand this. How am I supposed to respond to this?”
“Keep blowing; it’ll cool off.”
She might as well have told him to remember to breathe, for the look he gave her. “I mean the memo.”
“Oh. It came from Human Resources, didn’t it?” the secretary crept closer, though carefully as though the paper might reach out its grip and take hold of her. “Maybe they have an explanation. Maybe it’s a mistake.”
Joe B. brightened some. “Sure, they must have made a mistake.”
“Should I call up there for you?”
“No, I’d better go myself. Phone calls never settle anything.” He moved toward the door, both hands and head occupied with coffee, papers and doubts.
“Maybe you should freshen up a little first,” the secretary’s voice sounded timid.
“Yeah, sure,” and the latch clicked behind Joe B.
He stared at the memo, vaguely aware of his feet alternating along the floor below as he made his way back to the elevators. He tried to devise in his mind an explanation why he would receive such a dire message; for years he had climbed the corporate ladder without faltering, and he knew his job performance had not changed now. Perhaps the memo was really directed at someone with a name similar to his? Joe B. ran through his memory, trying to think through all the names of his fellow employees, but it was a vain exercise – Universal Whirligig was just too vast. Still, that had to be it: Some other poor sap was supposed to get this poison-pen memorandum; Joe B. would find that he was never meant to see this letter, and someone else would receive his own copy. Boy, did Joe B. feel sorry for that guy. The elevator opened its gaping maw and swallowed him up.
The other passengers stared sideways at the crumpled vice president, still preoccupied with his communiqué. Without thinking he punched his executive permissions PIN number into the keyboard and selected his floor. He studied each word carefully as the buzzing crowd glided upward. The elevator car came to a misleadingly soft stop.
The security guard – his presence one of the perks of an upper-management office floor – shot Joe B. a surprised look as he stepped out of the elevator. “Which way to Human Resources?” he asked, and the guard silently pointed down the hall to the left. As Joe B. headed in that direction, the guard considered him from behind and pulled the two-way radio from his belt.
Joe B. peered without effect through the glazed glass of the Human Resources Office door before venturing inside. He could see only dark, ill-defined forms moving about as though floating on clouds of deep-pile bliss. Inside he found a deep, elongated room with glass doors along every wall. Through those panes he could see a honeycomb of offices branching off in every direction. But first, directly before him, stood a double phalanx of secretaries at their desks.
“Excuse me, I have an in-house memo I need to talk to someone about,” Joe B. approached the desk nearest to him at the front.
The secretary’s eyes bulged as she lunged for a stack of triplicate forms. “You’re dripping!” she wailed.
“Oh, sorry,” Joe B. backed away a step.
The secretary sat back down in an exasperated fashion and huffed at him; she blotted at the second-hand raindrops deliberately so as to make him wait. Her point made, she testily asked, “What inter-office division did it originate from?”
“Umm,” said Joe B. “The … uh … the Office of the Executive Officer in Charge of Outgoing Prescription Drug Claims Oversight.”
“To the left, third from the back,” she shot back.
“Huh?” he riposted.
“To the left, third from the back,” she repeated firmly, her thumb thrown over her shoulder to indicate the columns of desks.
Joe B. spotted the appropriate secretary and made his way slowly through the women’s glancing gauntlet of forced disinterest. He tried to apologize for each drip that inadvertently hit one of the stylish composite desktops. His eyes met those of the secretary of his destination, staring in horror at his approach.
“How did you get in this office?” she asked. “I already gave to United Way.”
“I’m not looking for a handout,” Joe B. replied with a frown. “I work here.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure!” Joe B. spewed. “Do you think I’ve been coming here every day for twenty-one years by mistake?”
“Well, okay, then. You just don’t look like you belong here. What office are you from?”
“Core Technological Orientation. I’m vice president of Development of International Integration (Emerging Nations Division) there.”
“Oh! Well, what can I help you with?”
“I mistakenly received a memo this morning – I believe it was meant for someone else.”
“Did you read it?”
“Well, yes. How else would I know it’s not for me?“
“If it’s someone else’s memo, you shouldn’t have read it. I’ll have to write that up.”
“Well, no, it’s addressed to me, but I think – ”
“So it’s your memo?”
“ – It has to be for someone else.”
“So it has someone else’s name on it?”
“No, just mine.”
“So it’s your memo?”
“But it can’t be directed to me. Listen – ”
“Does it have your name on it, sir?” The secretary sounded too sincere to be sincere.
“Yes.”
“Then for the sake of argument let’s just say it’s your memo.”
“Fine.” Joe B. took theoretical ownership of the memo.
“We’ll look it up.” She sat poised at her computer. “Reference number?”
“Uh – ”
“It’s a fourteen-digit number followed by a hyphen and twenty-three figures, possibly an acronym for your office but possibly only meaningless letters.”
“Uh – ”
“It’s probably typed in the upper right hand area.”
“Um – 76900000001187-DIICTOENDQWERTYXZCHDAMP.” Joe B. couldn’t believe the last four letters.
The secretary pounded wildly on her keyboard, so much so that Joe B. doubted she really knew what she was typing.
“I’m sorry, that doesn’t come up. Apparently
there are too many zeroes.”
“Well, take one out.”
“Which one?”
“Gosh, I don’t know! Maybe the middle one?” Joe B.’s flabbergastion flared.
“Sir, I’m trying to help you.”
Joe B. remained silent.
“Our files show that memo was processed through the Office of Inter-Office Communications. This office can’t address your concerns until you have a clearance from them that they legitimately received and passed on that information.”
“But you have a record of it.” Joe B. waved weakly at the computer screen.
“It’s Universal Whirligig policy, sir. Some years back when all records were changed over to data files, hard copy backup files on paper were required as a safety measure. Without paper confirmation, the computer data is deemed unreliable. The whole idea became someone’s pet project, as I remember. The Office of Inter-Office Communications handles inter-office memo confirmations.”
Joe B. quietly cursed the day he was born. “The Office – ?”
“Office of Inter-Office Communications. You’ll find them thirty-three floors down.”
“Thirty-three floors?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay. Thanks. I think.”
Joe B. packed up his wrinkled memo and sullenly walked out of the office. Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t see the security guard waiting for him down the hall.
“I’m sorry, sir, these elevators are reserved for managers of Universal Whirligig,” the guard interrupted his approach. “You must be at least a junior executive.”
“I’m a vice president,” Joe B. sputtered. “Is that junior enough for you?”
“Not according to this morning’s exclusionary directive.” The guard – whose grandfatherly look apparently only meant he’d walked three miles in the snow to school every day – waved a piece of paper. “I’ve already double-checked with HR.”
“Well, I’m about to get that straightened out. I just need to take the elevators down to some office.”
“I’m sorry, sir. You’ll have to take the stairs.”
“Stairs? It’s thirty-three floors down!”
“Sorry sir. Company policy.”
“What genius came up with that idea?!!” Joe B. blurted, pretty sure it wasn’t him this time. “Just let me get on that elevator!”
”I’m sorry, sir.”
“Oh, come on now, man! Be reasonable! What could it possibly hurt to let me use the elevator this once?”
“It could hurt a lot, sir.” The guard placed his hand on a can of pepper spray clipped to his belt.
Joe B.’s hand unconsciously went to the pepper-spray pen on his own belt, of course in its designated place. The two stood there, suspended in time, like cowboys facing off in a bad TV western. Joe B. had visions of a wild spraying shootout, ending with him falling through a window to the street miles below. He saw the guard’s can was substantially bigger than his. Slowly he stood from his slight crouch and considered the guard shrewdly through squinted eyes.
“These elevators are reserved for managers only, and you will have to take the stairs,” the guard hissed. “It discourages unwanted visitors.”
“All right, pilgrim,” Joe B. parried. “The stairs it’ll have to be.”
Joe B. backed away carefully, not taking his eye off the guard until he was safely behind the industrial steel door opening to the vast stairwell. He stopped to sigh as he surveyed his descent.
The minutes plodded along with him as he worked his way from floor to floor. He found himself counting his footsteps, but eventually the echoes within the deep cavern confused him too much to continue. His mind returned to the memo and what might be the cause of it.
“One thing’s for sure,” he thought. “But I don’t know what it is.”
Several times he stopped to rest, and several times he suddenly thought he had gone too far and had to double-check the floor he’d just passed. At last he reached his destination and emerged from his safety-stepped purgatory.
Dazed and breathless, Joe B. looked about for a likely office. “Excuse me,” he asked a passerby with a disgusted look on her face. “Where is the Office of Official Office Memos?”
“Do you mean the Office of Inter-Office Communications? That’s my office, young man,” she said sternly. “Follow me.”
“Great,” Joe B. thought, and lurched behind.
“Now, what is your problem?” she asked once perched at her desk.
“I just climbed down thirty-three flights of stairs.”
“What? You walked down thirty-three floors?”
Joe B. nodded forlornly, thinking the woman might extend him some sympathy at the news.
“And soaking wet like that? Why, that’s a safety risk! What if you had slipped? You’ll have to fill out the OSHA forms for this incident!”
Joe B. sat silently, sullen as he contemplated the Foreign Legion.
“But I really meant, what do you need from this office?” she continued.
He wondered the same thing himself for just a moment. “I got this memo,” he finally raised his hand weakly.
The woman held her hand out like she wanted a tip; Joe B. was gratified to rid himself of the paper. “It’s a memo,” he explained, starting slowly in hopes of heading off conflict.
“Yes, I can quite tell,” the woman explained in return.
“Yes,” he agreed. “I’m certain it was meant for someone else, but the office that issued it —“
“Office of Outgoing Prescription Drug Claims Oversight in HR?”
“Yes, they told me —“
“Oh, you don’t want to mess with that office.”
“No, ma’am, I don’t. They told me —“
“That office will bend you over backwards for the least little infraction. One line left blank or one detail recorded wrongly, and they’ll send your paperwork directly to your supervisor. Send you a memo, too.”
“Yes, ma’am, and they told me —“
“We get their memos all the time.”
“That’s just it. I went there to straighten out this mistake, and they sent me here to get confirmation that the memo came from them.”
“Yes, seems silly doesn’t it? Offices can’t even confirm that memo information comes from them. But, some manager years ago came up with the idea, and the Big Boss passed off on it, so we keep the memo confirmations independently. It’s complicated, but it keeps sensitive information secure from the idly curious, I guess. ‘Ours is not to question why —’ ” She let her voice trail off.
Joe B. sat silently. The woman tapped industriously at her keyboard. “Incident number?” she asked at last.
“Uh – 76900000001187-DIICTOENDQWERTYXZCHDAMP.”
“That’s the reference number. I need the incident number.”
“Uh – ”
“It’s a series of seventeen numbers followed by letters specific to your division of Universal Whirligig, followed by a five-letter status code.”
“Uh – ”
“It’s probably in the lower left area, under the carbon copy notice.”
“Carbon copies? Of this memo?” Joe B.’s distress multiplied, knowing that copies of this mistake might accidentally spread around.
“So to speak. Of course, nobody uses carbon paper anymore. In fact, Universal Whirligig is the only company in the world that still makes it. It’s mostly for emerging markets.”
“I know,” Joe B. said flatly.
“Number?” the woman mechanically prepared for information.
“Uh – 78354023588391018-EIRAMENNA-SNAFU.” Joe B. couldn’t believe the last five letters.
“Hmmm – ” she hammered away mercilessly upon her keyboard. Joe B. worried about the work he wasn’t getting done.
“Yep. Checks out,” she announced.
“I thought you were supposed to look at the hard copy backups?”
“Oh, we have them. But they’re computerized.”
Joe B. blinked h
is glassy eyes. He decided to skip it. “The memo did come through here then?” Joe B. instead pursued his task at hand.
“Yes, I can confirm the memo came through this office.”
“Is there a mistake in it?” Joe B. leaned over her desk to gain a view of the computer screen.
“Oh, no, I can’t divulge that information,” the woman said in a panic, turning her screen away from his prying eyes.
“What?!”
“The memo’s contents are confidential, sir. I can’t let you see it.”
“But it’s my memo!”
“So you say,” the woman looked suspiciously at him.
“No, you’re right, it must be someone else’s memo,” Joe B. went back on defense. “But how can I prove that if I can’t see the records?”
“You’ll have to go back to the issuing office. Here, now fill out this paper.” She handed him a triplicate form.
“What’s this?”
“You want to confirm your visit to this office, don’t you? Fill out this paper, and I’ll stamp your copy of the memo.”
Joe B. growled as he took the form and slunk off to a chair. Curled over his work like a squirrel with his nut, he grumbled as he answered each question. Half-an-hour later he stole out of the office, newly stamped memo in hand.
Before him loomed the stairwell, and next to it stood the elevator. He looked about; the coast was clear. He pushed the elevator button.
Once inside he quickly punched in his executive PIN number, before anyone could stop him, had anyone been there. Then nothing happened. He paused; nothing happened again. He entered the number once more, and then a third time, and leaned his forehead against the elevator wall. Finally, he could no longer deny the obvious – he had been cancelled. Pushing the “open door” button, he exited the elevator and faced up to his new encounter with the stairs.
He soon proved what he had always believed: Going up thirty-three flights of stairs is harder than coming down thirty-three flights of stairs. Along the way he thought about the security guard and what he could do with his two-way radio. Unfortunately, his message had to wait, because the guard and his radio both were absent when Joe B. emerged back on the floor of the Human Resource offices.
“Must be taking a late donut break,” he thought.
Joe B. walked manfully into the Human Resources office, only slightly damp by this time but no less bedraggled. Without seeking counsel he made his way through the phalanxes of desks directly to Ms. Left, Third From The Back.
“I’m back,” he announced.
“Can I help you?” she returned.
“I’m back,” he insisted, and rustled his forms at her. “I have the paperwork you wanted about the memo I got by mistake.”
“Oh, I see,” she said, glancing at the papers. “I can’t help you with that.”
“Huh!?” Joe B. belched, and panicked visions of another long experience with the stairs taking him to offices unknown raced through his head.
“No, you have to go to that desk over there,” she said, indicating right, five from the back.
Joe B. nearly fainted at the good news. “Thank you, thank you,” he genuflected.
“I have a problem,” he said to the tightly packaged young woman at the right desk. What eyebrow hairs she had left were all neatly in place.
“So I see,” she said.
“This memo accidentally came to me this morning from this office.”
“Are you sure – ”
“Yes,” he interrupted. “Here’s the confirmation that it originated in this office.” He shook the same handful of papers.
“All right, then, let’s look at it,” she somehow talked through her lipstick. “Yes, mm-hmmm. Okay. Yes, I see it. Yes. Yes. Well, then. Yes.” She addressed the last word at Joe B.
“Yes what?” he replied.
“Everything is in order.”
“Nothing is in order. This can’t be my memo.”
“But it is.”
“But it can’t be.”
“I assure you, that memo was directed to you from the office of Outgoing Prescription Drug Claims Oversight.”
Joe B. dropped all pretense of denial. “Which office is that?” He looked about at the surrounding doors, suddenly overcome with desperation. Even as he asked, his eyes lit upon the glassy entrance lettered with the offending phrase, “Outgoing Prescription Drug Claims Oversight,” beyond the left row of desks. He took a step in that direction.
“You can’t go in there!” the woman cried. “Nobody goes in there!”
Joe B. didn’t answer, instead striding more boldly to the door. The secretaries of the phalanx jumped to their collective feet – “No! You can’t go in there!” Many of them reached Joe B. before he made it past the desks, and he dragged them along behind. Others gathered in front of the door to block his way. Within the secretive enclosure, blurred behind the frosted glass, figures stopped and seemed to study the hubbub going on, as if observing a distant world. Joe B. moved forward undaunted, leaving a trail of secretaries and practical footwear behind him.
Then he stopped. The wall of women blocking the door parted, revealing two burly security guards who had appeared apparently from nowhere. They towered over Joe B., barely able to cross their beefy arms over their beefy chests as they defied his entrance, like geniis before Ali Baba’s cave. Joe B. quickly reconsidered his strategy.
“Well, then” he said with forced calm, straightening his coat. “Where do I go?”
“The memo says the mailroom,” the first secretary panted, stretched out on the floor, hanging on to his knee like life itself and now a total mess. “You’ve been demoted to the mailroom, so you have to check in with the foreman there.”
The mailroom, quite oblivious to Joe B.’s anguish, resided serenely in the basement. Sixty-six floors down.
Joe B. took one more look at the cumbersome sentinels, and slowly turned for the exit. “Sure,” he murmured. “Sure, why not?”
The secretaries left off their defense of the office door and stood, or sat, in silence as Joe B.’s defeated figure shuffled quietly out of the room. His limp demeanor dragged behind him, as might his arms had they been long enough. The long hallway stretched before him like a very stiff snake, prepared to swallow him whole. Joe B. didn’t even glance at the elevator guard, now returned to his elevated post. He submitted to the stairwell, the heavy door closing behind him, a slow-motion coffin lid, latching with a metallic clunk.
Joe B. sat upon the top step, studying the stairs in a daze as they diminished before him, took a sharp turn and descended like Dante into the Inferno. He wondered how he got there. His mind flashed back to a summer years ago – selling ice cream from a truck, ringing a bell twelve hours a day. Small children gathered around the vehicle as if it were an idol, eyes round and deep, ready to do any kind of homage for the sticky goodness it promised. Behind them, parents glowered, especially around supper time, digging deep for a begrudging quarter. Then in the late night hours he would deliver newspapers to those very same parents. Joe B. remembered feeling that he’d barely survived that difficult schedule, but he’d persevered and earned his college tuition. Now he thought the world or fates or whatever it was had finally caught up with him, finally found its target.
Eventually he realized how uncomfortable the grate of the safety step had become, and stood to face the music. He had never even met anyone from the mailroom and had no idea what to expect. But first he must address the stairs, which he had become well-acquainted with, more than he had ever wanted. This day they had put their stamp on him. Oh, that somehow either snow or rain or heat or maybe even gloom of night might stay him from his appointed ground floor.
For sixty-six floors he drifted downward. For sixty-six floors his feet complained, trapped during all the day’s travels inside shoes made stiff by their morning soaking. For sixty-six floors his brain pounded, stupefied by the drab gray walls dimly lit, turning over and over the events that drove him deep into the bowels o
f Universal Whirligig’s building, operations and culture.
At last the stairwell came to a dead end, the bottom step standing indifferently in front of industrial-strength double doors. A ragged paper sign read, “No cell phone service.” Two small windows revealed only darkness, offering no hint to what lay beyond. Joe B. pushed gingerly on the bar to one door, then leaned into it more heavily before realizing it was locked. He peered through the window, unable to see anything, a condition made worse by the fog of his breath. He switched to the other door and gave it a mighty shove; not only was this door not locked, but it opened so easily that Joe B. spilled out upon the mailroom floor.
All about him stood quiet machinery enveloped in an indoor dusk. Not a single hourly wage-earner stirred. Joe B. pulled himself to his feet and happened to glance at the time clock, on the wall just inside the doors. The hour grew late, far past the end of the day’s shift. Joe B. sighed and knew he had missed the foreman, and the chance to finally confirm or deny his status. Then his eye fell upon a time card next to the clock, tucked in a rack along with hundreds more, his name printed neatly at the top.
The name on that card seemed a stranger to him – some random person who by odd coincidence shared his same name. At once he felt like an unwelcome guest in this place that before seemed almost home, almost like family. His mind turned to the weekends and long evenings he had toiled over the years, sure that his faithful service would gain the favor of his superiors. Now the very thing he had strived to avoid had come about, and in his distress he supposed he never should have tried to cater to his bosses at all.
“Working hard to excel only makes you a bull’s-eye. Doing a good job only puts you under more scrutiny,” he groused inside his head. “I should have kept out of sight, or let mediocrity be my security. I should have messed up in little ways to divert attention from my overall work. I should have been a reverse psychologist.”
Joe B. returned to the stairwell and worked his way laboriously back to the lobby – only a merciful three flights up. He thought, and quickly forgot about, his coat and crippled umbrella, still tucked away in his lofty former office high above him. Or were they? He would have to climb way too many stairs to find out, to possibly discover they had disappeared. After the day’s run-around, he decided to simply revolve the door that would direct him home. As he trudged across the lobby’s gleaming marble floor he caught sight again of the brawny statue towering overhead, dark in its countenance, each arm out, offering mercy on the one hand or might in the other, either sustenance or judgment.
Joe B. stopped for just a moment, a brief contemplation before turning away into the night. “So today it was the hammer.”