Losing Our Edge

by Jeff Gomez

  Josh emerges from the conference room and sees Craig. He nods yet again before walking over.

  “Thought we’d make a little change,” Josh says. “You like?”

  “Looking good. It’s just, at first, I couldn’t find where to sit and, you know, work.”

  “Matt was supposed to leave Post-its with people’s names, but we let him go this morning.” Josh sneers as he looks around the room. “It was the last thing he was supposed to do.”

  Craig doesn’t even question Matt’s departure. He’s seen so many people come and go from Seatr that he’s no longer shocked when it happens. Some days there are new people in the office, sitting at a desk and typing away. Some days Craig finds that the guy who’d been sitting across from him for the past two months has gone missing. Thinking back, he can’t even remember what Matt looked like. Tall? Short? All that comes to mind is a laptop covered in stickers.

  “Anyway, this area here …” Josh points to where a cluster of desks used to sit in the middle of the room, equidistant from the conference room, entrance, and other side of the office. “This is now an open space for stand-up meetings, or just to chill.”

  “Maybe yoga?”

  Craig’s joking, but Josh’s eyes light up.

  “Now you’re thinking outside the box.”

  “And I see you put a Ping-Pong table in the conference room.”

  Josh’s smile widens.

  “Awesome, right? James even made a digital leaderboard with a ranking system. Keeps track of wins and losses.”

  “Sounds hardcore.”

  “Yeah, he’s pretty into it.” Josh leans in. When he does, Craig can smell Axe body spray. “Even brought his own paddle.”

  Craig looks over to James’s desk. His chair’s empty, his screen’s blank. An elaborate wooden case sits open, revealing a lining of light-brown fur but no paddle.

  “He even programmed the leaderboard so you can challenge other players. It’s constantly updated and every player is ranked. You, by the way, are dead last.”

  Craig hears a game getting started. The ensuing volley is so fast that it sounds like a woodpecker.

  “Yeah, sorry. It’s just, I’ve been a little busy incorporating the feedback from the board meeting.”

  “Craig, you need to be a team player. Don’t you see that? We’re only as good as our weakest link and, right now, I’m afraid that’s you.”

  “Because of … Ping-Pong?”

  “Because of attitude.”

  Craig’s body heats up and his face feels flush.

  “Mobile marketing strategies are great and all,” Josh continues, “but culture eats strategy for breakfast. Everybody knows that. And, well, there’s a whole culture aspect to this job that I can’t help but feel you’re just not connecting with.”

  “Like?”

  “Like you didn’t go on the scavenger hunt last week. You never have a beer with us after work, and I can’t help but notice that you declined the invitation for indoor skydiving.”

  “Oh, yeah, that. It’s just, I have to have a root canal that day.”

  “And you’d rather do that than go indoor skydiving?”

  Yes. Absolutely.

  “No, not at all. It’s just—I really need to get that done.”

  Out of the corner of his eye Craig sees James come out of the conference room. He has a smile on his face and sweat on his forehead. A few seconds later one of the coders comes out, his head hanging low. James puts the paddle back into its case with the care and caution you’d show a baby.

  “As one of our senior employees,” Josh is saying, “I really expect you to take the lead.”

  He hopes that when Josh says senior he’s connoting status or stature, but Craig can’t help but think that Josh just means old.

  “Lead?”

  “You know, be an example for some of the younger staffers.”

  Craig takes a deep breath.

  “You’re right, Josh. It’s my fault. I’ll try harder.”

  “Good. Oh, by the way, we’ve got a little trouble with TSA. Apparently they think our plan of having people stand in for other people at airports might hamper national security. They’re afraid terrorists, or people on no-fly lists, are going to buy someone else’s ticket as a way of getting on a plane. They say we’re violating federal law. Patriot Act. Blah-blah-blah.”

  “Well, that’s sort of our business model,” Craig says. “What do we do?”

  “Don’t worry about it. I know a senator.”

  “You do?”

  “From Obama’s first campaign. I worked on the website. He’s a good guy, by the way. Anyway, I can get the senator to make a few calls. I set up his Twitter account, so he owes me.”

  He begins to walk away, but Craig calls out to him.

  “By the way, Josh?”

  “Yeah?”

  “The Ping-Pong table. Where are we supposed to have meetings?”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “The conference room. That’s where we have board meetings. It’s where we do product reviews and Q&A testing with focus groups. Now it’s the Ping-Pong room.”

  Josh just grins and turns around. As he crosses the office, he says, “Craig, you think too much.”

  Craig digs his laptop out of his bag. He chooses one of the two free desks, pulls up a chair, and sits down.

  He opens his laptop, looking for an email from Ashley. As he scans through all of his various messages—Facebook updates, newsletters, spam—he sees it.

  She wrote back.

  Trembling, his hand clicks on the email. Her message appears on his screen.

  Craig,

  Thanks for reaching out, and thanks for the link about the Bottlecap show. That brought back lots of memories for me, too. Some of them good ones ;-)

  I’ve of course thought about you over the years, wondering where you are and how you’re doing. So it’s nice to hear from you. Thanks for reaching out.

  Feel free to write again sometime.

  Craig feels warm.

  It wasn’t all forgotten.

  He now knows that he’ll always be a part of her, like a fossil trapped miles below the surface of the earth. A creature who lived and who died and who left an imprint of his body inside of hers. You can never get rid of the people you’ve known, even if you no longer know them.

  He hits REPLY and writes back a short note, asking her to lunch this weekend. He figures she’ll probably say no, but it’s worth a shot. He’s about to get back to work, putting on his headphones to drown out the latest Ping-Pong game that’s just started, when he sees that Ashley’s already replied. He clicks on the email.

  Yes. Okay. I’ll meet you. Just let me know where and when.

  He’s about to respond when something on his laptop makes a noise. It’s a notice from some program, but Craig’s not sure which one. Has he been tagged in a photo? Has someone sent him a message? He spots a window in the upper corner that features a skull and crossbones, the words YOU HAVE BEEN CHALLENGED flashing underneath in big red letters. Craig clicks on the window and he’s taken to a website called The Seatr Open. A chiptune version of Chopin’s funeral march begins playing while, at the top of the screen, an animated ball is whacked back and forth by digital paddles at opposite ends of the screen.

  Craig looks and can see all of Seatr’s staffers ranked, with a calendar showing future matches as well as columns for wins and losses. There’s even a chat room where the coders are talking trash. Names he doesn’t recognize are ranked well ahead of him. Matt, the guy fired this morning, was in third place. Next to Craig’s name is a smaller version of the skull and crossbones he saw earlier. Underneath, it says CHALLENGED. When Craig clicks on it another window appears.

  James has challenged you to an epic battle on May 14th at 2:00 PM. What say you? Accept or admit defeat? Decide!

  Craig just sighs.

  For fuck’s sake. What does this have to do with reselling airline tickets?

  Craig turns and s
ees James staring at him. The music coming out of James’s headphones sounds like jackhammers and dental equipment. Craig notices for the first time a number of tattoos—wild colors swirling around bulging biceps—peeking out from under the sleeves of the same HTML 5 T-shirt that Josh is wearing. Craig hears James grunt, and this makes him gulp.

  Craig turns back to his laptop. He hits ACCEPT.

  Ashley wakes up to smells. Good smells, not like when the sewer line to the house next door broke and sent raw sewage rushing into the street. Or when the garbage disposal stopped working and the smell of rotting food filled the house for days.

  Maple?

  She’s barely awake.

  Coffee?

  Ashley pushes the covers down and sees that she’s wearing a pair of Andrew’s sweatpants. She rolls out of bed, lets out a big yawn, grabs a yellow terrycloth robe from the slipper chair. She heads downstairs.

  Placing her hand in the pocket of her robe, Ashley feels plastic. She pulls it out. It’s the prescription bottle. The date’s from only two weeks ago, but the bottle’s almost empty. It was supposed to last for months. She unscrews the top and lifts the amber bottle to her lips, tipping one into her mouth. The pill’s coating is sweet as she swallows.

  Ashley enters the kitchen and sees Andrew at the stove. It’s covered with pans emitting wonderful smells. Underneath the pans she can see blue flames dancing from the constant draft that runs through the house.

  “Morning,” Andrew says. He’s wearing khakis and a patterned shirt. His hair is combed. In addition to the breakfast smells filling the room, she can smell him. Aftershave and cologne.

  “You teaching today?”

  “Of course, sweetheart. But I thought I’d get up early and make us some breakfast. Hope I didn’t wake you.”

  Ashley lies and says no. Most days begin with a lie. Andrew will ask, “Did you sleep well? Did you have any bad dreams?” And her answers of yes and no are always lies.

  “Good, then sit down. I made pancakes and turkey sausage and heated up the maple syrup we bought in New Hampshire. The expensive stuff that comes in those little paint cans. And, of course, there’s coffee.”

  As she moves across the kitchen to fill up her cup, Ashley says “coffee” the way zombies in movies say “brains.” It overflows and burns her hand. The spot where it splashed is red and raised. Ashley sucks on it, tasting first coffee and then her flesh.

  Andrew pulls out a chair for her and points.

  “You just sit down. I’ll bring you everything you need.”

  When she sits, he pushes in her chair and goes back to the stove, flipping a pancake and rotating the sausages. Andrew lifts a lid on a small saucepan to make sure the syrup’s not boiling over. As he does this he hums the theme to This American Life. She hates it when he’s like this, hates it when he’s tender.

  He goes to the refrigerator and pulls out a huge container of orange juice. It’s double the size she usually buys. The package is covered with drawings of oranges and a smiling cartoon sun wearing sunglasses. At the top, underneath NO PULP, it says FAMILY SIZE. She’s told him not to buy these. No big boxes of Frosted Flakes, no huge jars of mayonnaise. No double-packs of potato chips. Whenever she looks into the refrigerator or pantry and sees these things, it breaks her heart. When he asked her why, after the first time, she yelled at him for bringing home a family-sized box of cookies, all she said—under her breath—was, “We’re not a family.”

  Andrew puts a plate of food in front of Ashley and goes back to the stove to prepare one for himself. She picks up her knife and fork and pushes the food around the plate, chopping it up and moving it from side to side to make it look like it’s disappearing. It’s the same trick she used when she was a kid. Andrew joins her at the table.

  “Ashley, your food. Eat. Eat.”

  She picks at her pieces of pancake and sausage, taking little sips of juice and big gulps of coffee. She finds the digital clock on the microwave and sees it’s almost eight. In an hour she’ll be at the office. Right now is as peaceful as her day gets, but she doesn’t feel very peaceful.

  While taking a sip of coffee, she thinks about the weekend and lunch with Craig. She knows she has to come up with some story, some excuse to tell Andrew. Some way to justify being out of the house.

  “What’s on your mind, babe?”

  “What?”

  “You seem a million miles away.”

  “Oh,” Ashley says. “It’s just—this weekend.”

  “What about it?”

  He takes a big bite of his pancakes. Syrup dribbles down his chin until he wipes it off with a paper towel that leaves white cotton specks in his stubble.

  “I have to go shopping on Saturday.”

  Ashley knows that Andrew hates going shopping. He’ll consider it a privilege to not be involved.

  “Oh, really? What for?”

  Ashley hadn’t expected him to go down another layer.

  “Oh, well, you remember Jenna? From work?”

  “The one that’s pregnant?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about her?”

  “Well, I just figured I should get her something.”

  Andrew takes a long sip of his coffee.

  “But I thought you hated her.”

  “No, she’s—nice.”

  “That’s not why you hated her.”

  “Andrew, please.” Her voice rises. “Give me a little bit of credit. I can be happy for someone, can’t I?”

  “But—didn’t you already get her something?”

  “What?”

  “You had a shower at work. Didn’t you contribute some money toward a gift card? Target, I think. You told me about it a few weeks ago.”

  That’s the kind of thing he remembers? I hate him.

  “Yeah, but that’s kind of impersonal, don’t you think? I thought I ought to, you know, pick something out myself. Make it more heartfelt.”

  “So, where will you go?”

  “I guess I’ll go out to that Babies R Us near the mall.”

  Ashley figures she can run out there tomorrow on her lunch hour, get a little something and stash it in her trunk. On Saturday, when she returns from her lunch with Craig, she’ll bring Jenna’s present into the house and show it to Andrew as proof of her lie.

  “Well, do you want some company? I was going to drive out to the library to do some research on Saturday afternoon, but I could push that to next week if you need some moral support.”

  “Moral support? God, Andrew, will you listen to yourself?”

  “I’m sorry, Ashley—I’m just trying to help. I know that you—”

  “Look, it’s fine. I can go by myself. I’m a big girl, okay?”

  Andrew pushes away his plate. Neither of them has eaten much. Ashley suddenly thinks of something.

  The receipt. What if he looks at the receipt? It’ll say Friday and not Saturday. Well, I’ll just go on Saturday, on my way to see Craig. That way everything will match up.

  “You do whatever you need to do, okay?” Andrew’s voice shakes when he speaks.

  Ashley sees the bags under his eyes. She tries to remember what he looked like when they first met. Was he dashing? Was he handsome? All she knows is that he didn’t look like this.

  “I’ve got to go.”

  Andrew gets up. He takes his plate and drops it into the sink. It falls with a clatter. Ashley continues to stare into her pancakes.

  “Leave the dishes,” he says. “I’ll do them when I get home tonight. See you then, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  After he disappears from the kitchen, Ashley tracks his movements through the house. She can hear him grab a jacket from the coatrack in the hallway, scoop his car keys out of the bowl on the end table near the stairs, fetch the backpack full of books from where it’s hanging on the series of hooks lining the wall opposite the staircase. The door opens and then closes. Seconds go by. Andrew’s car starts up and then is gone.

  After he leaves, As
hley hears other cars in the street go by. The morning commute has begun. She figures she’d better take a shower and join in. She starts to get up, but stops. She feels tingly, slightly numb, the Protraxanon kicking in. She sits back down and, for a few seconds, forgets the shower and getting dressed. She forgets about work, Andrew, Craig, everything. She looks down at her hand and sees the burn from before, from the coffee. She rubs it, puzzled. It no longer hurts.

  Craig’s alone on the shuttle. It’s something Seatr started a few weeks ago, chartering a small bus to ferry employees back and forth from the office to a few points in downtown Kitty as well as a carpool lot near I-95 where the Waffle House used to be. The shuttle can fit twenty people, and has reclining leather seats with footrests and cup-holders. There’s Wi-Fi and even a bathroom.

  The idea is employees will take the shuttle instead of driving, be able to relax or do work while they’re transported to the office in style. Josh hoped it’d be a perk to make Seatr more attractive to prospective employees, as well as keeping the ones they already have happy. Besides, it’s the kind of thing the big companies do out in Silicon Valley. But since Craig only lives ten minutes from the office, he usually just drives. This is his first time on the shuttle. After his talk with Josh yesterday, he figured he’d better start showing more team spirit.

  By the time the shuttle drops him off, it’s ten o’clock and the office is almost full. There’s also a Ping-Pong game going in the conference room.

  Josh and the head of product are huddled around a whiteboard in the far corner. Josh has a marker in his left hand. On the whiteboard are a bunch of letters, numbers, and mathematical symbols. The head of product is saying, “Josh, this is brilliant. I wish I’d thought of that. How do you do it? Totally amazing.” Craig wishes he were on the same wavelength as everyone else in the office. He wishes he were in on the secret.

  Upon finding his new desk, Craig discovers his chair’s been replaced by a blue yoga ball. He sighs and sits down, almost falling over at first. On either side coders sit wearing headphones, thumping bass seeping out as their fingers move rhythmically over their keyboards. In the kitchen more coders, along with a few board members, are talking about which credit cards give the best rewards. A board member is saying something about blackout days, while a coder—Craig’s not sure of his name—keeps insisting that Discover’s the best. “They had all that stuff years ago,” he insists. “They just didn’t brand it well.” The board member just rolls his eyes and says, “Don’t you get it? Branding is everything.”