by Nancy Star
orange-splash-of-color-desk partitions—everyone com-
plained. The open plan’s promise to foster free-flowing
energy and collaboration turned out, in reality, to be a
call-center aesthetic where the only things flowing freely were distractions.
The first solution was noise-canceling headphones,
which Hugo the receptionist was charged with handing
out and keeping clean. The second solution was to install
the messaging platform Eeze. After Eeze was installed,
all communication switched to virtual.
As an independent contractor, it wasn’t mandatory for
Lane to be on Eeze—she was an island unto herself—
and to no one’s surprise, she opted out. Being part of a
group online was as unappealing to her as being part of
a group offline. But she could still observe the effect Eeze had on the office. Guilders now tapped away all day messaging colleagues who might be in the DC office, or in
LA, or in London, or sitting right beside them. No one
ever knew. Silence was the new noise.
Today Lane was grateful for this turn of events—an
office culture of silence—because today was her first day
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back after taking a short bereavement leave and the last
thing she wanted to do was to talk about what happened.
Of course Sam, her managing editor, knew, as did Jem,
the desk mate who’d been such a heroic and unexpected
helper, so kind to Henry at the funeral service, and then
showing up at the apartment twice after work, once to
bring Henry donuts, once to bring Lane a small French
press coffee maker and a pound of small-batch beans.
Lane had been direct with both Jem and Sam: she did
not want people at work to know about Aaron’s death.
She did not want to re-create the awkwardness she felt
in her apartment building at work. At work she wanted
to work. The only way to avoid getting stacks of cards
and consolation cake, the only way to get out of having
people tell her she would get over the loss soon, or she
would never get over the loss, was to not share the news.
“Can we keep this private?” she’d asked them both.
They gave the same answer: they couldn’t guarantee it
would be private, but they wouldn’t be the ones to share.
Now all she had to do was get through the recep-
tion area. She wished she could hustle past Hugo like
everyone else, but she couldn’t. She’d seen it happen
too many times, Guilders rushing past him as if he were
a potted plant, music playing through their earbuds so
they wouldn’t hear him say hello, eyes averted so they
wouldn’t see him smile or nod. She saw the effect this had on Hugo, how each slight made him slump a little more.
How after each slight he’d get even more eager, sound
ever more desperate for connection. So Lane always said
hello to Hugo, always with a smile and when he waved
her over, as he did today, she always came.
“Color me surprised,” Hugo said when she stepped
out of the elevator. “How come you cut your trip short?”
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What had he heard? Lane proceeded with caution.
“Happy to be back.”
“You came back because you missed me, right? Being
away from me is torture.”
“Exactly.” She smiled and headed for the double doors
that led into the main office space. The doors were controlled by an electric eye, which blinked twice and then stopped.
“It’s on the fritz,” Hugo called over. “Been doing
that for days. Only sees some people. No one knows
why. Maybe it’s because you’re all in black. Try waving
your arms.”
Lane waved her arms. The red eye flashed. The doors
opened. A hidden diffuser shot a puff of fragrance at the
back of her head.
Hugo stood up. “Sorry! I should have warned you! I
guess everything went on the fritz while you were gone.
Someone’s coming up to fix that now. Do you need a
paper towel?”
“I’m fine.” The electric eye blinked again. “Thank
you,” she said, and hurried through.
h h
h h
Join Us. That was the name of the scent that now hung on her like a cloak. Developed by a lab specializing in bespoke fragrances, it was a mix of fifteen oils and elixirs, which seemed like a lot considering it smelled like nothing more or less than grapefruit. According to its creators, Join Us provided a homeopathic sensory boost that would increase both energy and joy of community. From what Lane
observed, the only obvious uptick was in office pranks.
Coming to work and finding your desk grapefruited—a
dozen grapefruits on a desk was not unusual but even one
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did the trick—was a weekly occurrence. To her relief,
Lane had never been grapefruited. Turned out you needed
to be an insider to get pranked.
She hurried down the aisles, winding her way toward
her seat. As always, it was silent as a funeral. Actually, Aaron’s funeral hadn’t been this silent. On top of the
steady hum of his friends bartering details to get clear on what happened— Who was in the car with him? Where had
they been going? Why wasn’t Lane going to that? —there was a persistent car alarm that went off when one mourner’s
car bumped into another’s. The rabbi had to resort to
a two-finger whistle to get everyone’s attention. Lane
wouldn’t have cared about any of it, if she hadn’t been
with Henry. She’d had to work hard to resist an impulse
to put her hands over his ears to protect him from the
noise. He was such a little soldier that day, eyes facing
forward, mouth a straight line, and silent.
She turned down the aisle that led to Sam’s office.
The hush here was so complete she found herself stepping
lightly to avoid detection.
It didn’t work. She heard her name and turned to see
a woman hurrying toward her. It was the new hire she’d
found crying the night Aaron … She stopped herself.
She did not want to think about that night. She tried
to remember the young woman’s name. Louisa? Selina?
Joanna? She had no idea.
“Hi Lane. Remember me? Alyssa?”
“Of course. How are you, Alyssa? How was the party?”
“So great. Thanks for making me go. I met so many
people.” She whispered the next. “I made friends.”
“I’m so glad,” Lane whispered back. “I knew you
would.” She pointed toward Sam’s office. “I have to go.
Meeting with Sam.”
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“Sorry,” Alyssa said. She hesitated for a moment and
then quickly moved in and gave Lane a hug. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” Lane said, and hurried on.
h h
h h
Lane knocked on the glass wall and walked in. The bite
of Mentho-Lyptus in the air stopped her. She knew before
she saw him that Sam already had a visitor. The Guild
CFO, Bert, was sitting in the guest chair that was just
out of sight from the doorway. Bert,
the bad cop to Sam’s
good, was addicted to sucking on cough drops because,
he claimed, Mentho-Lyptus improved his clarity.
He popped up from the guest chair. “Hello,
Lane-Roxie-Lane.”
Sam gave her a sympathetic smile. He knew she did
not enjoy the nickname. She did not enjoy anything
about Bert.
Bert extended his arm, which Lane thought meant he
wanted to shake her hand. He did not. What he wanted
was to give her a cough drop; Bert thought everyone
could use a little extra clarity.
She slipped the cough drop in her pocket. “For later,”
she told him. “When I’m writing.”
He nodded and pointed his finger at her like a
gun. “Clickety click.” He turned his hands into fists
and popped his two thumbs up. “You’re doing great,
Lane-Roxie-Lane.”
Okay. This meant clicks and eyeballs were up on her
column. But Bert being a fan meant nothing. He had no
favorites. He had numbers. If her clicks were up, he liked her. If they were down, she was deadweight. She would
not have stopped by if she knew he was there.
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“Sam,” Lane said, “do you have time for a quick chat
after the Monday meeting?”
Sam nodded. Bert looked dubious.
“Clickety clickety,” Lane said.
“Clickety clickety,” Bert echoed, impressed.
h h
h h
While most of the office was composed of extremely well-
groomed young women and very skinny, scruffly young
men, the universe at Lane’s worktable was populated by
a less uniform crowd. The doughy, the mottle-skinned,
the old, the odd.
Lane’s friend Jem sat on her right. Jem was a perfect
seatmate: razor-sharp focus on tasks at hand, no interest
in breaking for chitchat, all food snacks and hair prod-
ucts were odor-free. To Lane’s left was an older man.
Older folks were rare at the Guild. Lane and Hugo, in
their forties, were outliers. This man looked to be on
the upper edge of his fifties. Maybe that was why he
kept his head down. Literally down and hunched over.
He rarely raised his basset-hound eyes, not even to say
hello to Lane or Jem. He worked in a monk-like trance,
completely still except for the movement of his stubby
fingers on his keyboard. Lane didn’t know his name, he
didn’t know hers, and they both found this to be a satis-
fying relationship.
Except today when she pulled out her chair to sit
down, he stopped typing and sat up straight. She had
never seen him sit up straight.
“Hi Roxie,” he said. “I mean Lane. I don’t really
know what I’m supposed to call you. Either way, I’m
sorry for your loss.”
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Lane was temporarily speechless but Jem asked the
question she was thinking.
“Who told you? And her name is Lane. You’re sup-
posed to call her Lane.”
“You can call me whatever you want,” Lane told the
man. “I answer to anything. And thank you.”
He nodded and returned to his keyboard hunch.
“I didn’t tell him,” Jem said quietly. “Maybe it was
on Eeze. I hate Eeze.”
“Why would it be on Eeze?”
“There’s all kinds of crazy groups on Eeze now,” Jem
told her. “This morning I saw one about Hugo called,
“What Does Hugo Do All Day?” But don’t worry. Eeze
is going away soon. The powers that be finally realized
there’s hardly any project collaboration going on there
anymore. It’s all gossip and complaints. Apparently the
over-forties group is claiming the under-thirties group
ruined it for everyone.” Jem studied Lane’s expression.
“Do you want me to check and see if there’s a group
about you? I’m sure there’s not. Forget I said that. Don’t even think about it. Can you do that?”
“Yes. I’m very good at not thinking about things.”
Jem smiled and went back to work. Lane opened her
laptop and silently acknowledged to herself that today
was going to be tough. Then again, every day had been
tough at work, now that her face, blown up extra large
with a huge and fake-looking smile, was all over the
Guild website and on the reception area wall. There was
probably no one left at the Guild who didn’t recognize
her. She wished she could tell them, all the identical-
looking scruffly young men and well-groomed young
women whose names she didn’t know, that she hadn’t
volunteered to be on those posters. To the contrary, she’d 81
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argued hard against both the Live-Chat—she wasn’t going
to be any good live, even if in this case live meant being alone in a room, typing answers to readers’ questions in
real time—and the publicity blitz that went along with it.
Head down, eyes on the screen, that was the answer. She
got to work dropping virtual letters into the four virtual folders on her desktop: Next, Sooner, Later, Never.
Sorting took a lot of time but Lane found it relaxing,
once she got going. When she first started at the Guild
the column came with an intern who did the sorting for
her, but that didn’t work out. Judgment was so personal.
The intern had a good eye for what made a compelling
letter but she wasn’t inside Lane’s head. She couldn’t figure out all of Lane’s quirks. Neither could Lane. Sometimes
she got worked up about a letter that she never would
have expected to hit a nerve. She was fairly disconnected
from her nerves.
The sounds of people chatting broke through her
concentration. She looked up and saw a parade of Guilders
heading toward the Super Zone for the Monday meeting.
Closing her laptop, she joined the march.
h h
h h
The Ask Roxie column was never on the agenda at the What do we have? What do we want? What do we need?
Monday meetings. In the rare event that there was a change planned for the column—Bert’s idea for the Live-Chat,
for example—they discussed it in the quasi privacy of
Sam’s glass-walled office. When she complained about the
meetings to Aaron, he’d always ask her why she bothered
to go. The same question could be asked of everyone who
went. From what she observed, no one was really there.
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Yes, people walked in and sat down in chairs around a
long table, but they weren’t really present. She could
see it on the screens they didn’t bother to hide. They
scrolled from Twitter to Instagram to Everlane and read
Eeze messages that popped up at the top of their screens
and then disappeared like tiny explosions. Everyone had
developed a talent for listening with scant attention for
the sound of their own name. If they heard it, they’d sit
up on full alert. Otherwise, words passed over tipped
heads like vapor.
The reason she went to the Monday meetings was the
same reason everyone did: to put in real-life face time. At the Guild that wasn’t optional. The employee handbook
did have a section on working remotely but it was short.
One sentence was all it took to say, Zero-Tolerance Policy.
Questions about real-life face time were among the
most common ones asked by the new hires who stopped
by her desk. She was used to this by now, that for some
reason certain nervous new hires gravitated toward her
instead of to the robustly informative HR woman whose
actual job it was to orient them. They’d approach on light feet and wait for her to notice them before whisper-asking, Where’s the bathroom? or, Is it okay to go outside for lunch? or, Are we allowed to work remotely? She’d gently point them to the appropriate resource and assure them that they were
going to figure this all out fast and they always did. Within a week they’d find their peers and Lane’s help would no
longer be needed. She was basically a stopgap measure,
which she didn’t mind. Being a stopgap was the perfect
amount of interaction.
It was a remote working situation that was what Lane
wanted to discuss today with Sam. The zero-tolerance
policy would be a hurdle, but as an outside contractor who 83
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reported directly to him, it would not be a wall. Sam had
been her champion from the start. Discovering new talent
was the part of his job he loved best. Lane was one of many on a long list of people Sam was proud of having found.
When they first met, Lane was a freelancer in high
demand. Her reputation was as a fast, sharp, meticulous
writer who juggled assignments for digital and print,
wrote long-form and short, and could move with agility
between the worlds of reported pieces and service features.
She was usually overbooked and sometimes overwhelmed,
but she never missed a deadline.
Lane had long been a fan of the Ask Roxie column.
It was a rare diversion that she and her mother shared, a
perfect topic of conversation for when there was nothing
safe to talk about, which was almost always the case. This was back when the column was written by the original
Roxie, Roxie One, a woman named Gabby Curtis, who
lost the gig after her very public breakdown.
Gabby’s decline had played out in real time and in plain
sight, her columns getting more and more off base as the
months went by. The answer that got under Lane’s skin
was to a reader worried that her son was using drugs. In