The Cube People (7 page)

“Can you hurry up, please?”

“Relax, I'm trying.”

“If you didn't drink so much, it wouldn't be a problem.”

Marvin sags a little. I think about the glossy pages of
Swank
. I'm trying to focus on the girl-on-girl action when I become aware of Sarah's finger penetrating my asshole, stimulating the prostrate. Marvin can't take more than a few seconds of this before he erupts.

“Thank you,” says Sarah, “try not to drink when we're supposed to be fucking.” She spins around and puts her feet on the wall.

We go back to see Dr. King. It turns out that Sarah hadn't even ovulated. He ups her dose of Clomid and says that we will have to try again. “Remember, Days 11 to 22, lots and lots of sex.”

From: Bruce Michaels

Date: 2006/07/08 PM 7:47:55 EDT

To: Colin MacDonald

Subject: Re: Photocopier Madness

Colin:

I understand your frustration with the photocopier; however change is never easy. Our world is changing at a rapid and sometimes frightening pace. The threat of global warming is
upon us. That is why by 2012, we hope to reach the goal of “Paperless Office.” Imagine Colin, a paperless office. No more filing cabinets, no more losing things, no more clutter. The trees would no longer be afraid. By 2012, the Ministry of Revenue Collection will be leading the world with our sustainable development. Our vision, our solution to the global-warming problem: Paperless Office. This is why Barry and the rest of the management team have taken the first and crucial step in trying to reduce the amount of photocopying on the floor. In the near future there are plans to eliminate all but one printer, and eventually eliminate it completely.

Your suggestion for online forms to replace 811s, 822s, etc. is a good one. I will be bringing up this suggestion with Barry and the management team at our next weekly meeting. Your suggestion shows thinking “outside the box” and I have made note of this for your next performance review. Good job Colin!

There will be more information coming out about “Paperless Office 2012.” Remember, change is difficult, but it's easier if you think about it as
not staying the same
.

Thanks, Bruce

PS I left you a “Paperless Office 2012” pamphlet in your in-basket.

Part of me is laughing, and part of me is seething. Sure enough, I look over and there's the piece of paper Bruce left me about a paperless office. I grab it, without even so much as a glance, and throw it into my recycling bin. It appears that Carla is actually moving away from the paperless office. Usually she has nothing on her desk except for her hand sanitizer and occasionally an 810 or 811 and a pen. However, I've noticed in the past few weeks she no longer puts her pen directly on her desk; she puts it on a piece of clean white paper. I guess she just can't keep the desk clean enough.

Dan has probably killed more trees than Dutch elm disease. His desk is covered in paper, sedimentary layers of government forms and tabloid magazines. Dan looks up from
Entertainment Weekly
and catches me staring at his desk. I'm doomed. “Hi Colin, working hard or hardly working?” he asks, laughing.

I'm not sure how to respond to something so inane and unfunny, so I ask him, just to be polite, “How's the tooth?” And as soon as the words leave my lips I know, but it's too late. I've dropped something fragile, my sanity. I watch it fall in slow motion, about to shatter into little pieces. Dan opens his mouth.

“Oh God Colin, it was horrible. The dentist had to fill two teeth. He said that he'd never seen an infection that bad in twenty years of practice. He told me I was very lucky I didn't have to lose the teeth. He worked on me for over an hour. And do you know what the kicker was, Colin?”

“No,” I say, not wanting to answer.

“I was allergic to the antibiotics. I ended up in emergency covered in hives, having trouble breathing. They gave me different stuff, but the Tylenol-3 I was taking gave me terrible constipation and it ripped my hemorrhoids to shreds.”

I wave my hands in front of my body and say, “No, no, no, too much information.”

Although Dan laughs at my reaction, it seems to spur him on. “I tell you Colin, I had to see the doctor about my hemorrhoids after because the pain was so great. I had to get a cream with a steroid in it to settle things down. Oh God, the burning and itching was intense I tell you.”

“Jesus Dan,” I say, but he keeps going, telling me next about his bad back, his slipped disc. For the next half hour he talks about how he's going to acupuncture for his crooked foot, and the physiotherapy he had to go through last fall for his rotator cuff.

“I'm a mess, Colin.”

“Sounds like it. Look I gotta hop,” I tell him, leaving our quad, not sure of my destination, only of my escape.

I walk out and see a plumber putting a sign on the men's washroom door,
Out of Order
. “Busted pipe, you'll have to use the handicapped washroom or go to a different floor,” he tells me.

“Actually, I'm just walking by.” I do a loop around the floor, walking aimlessly. I think about Sarah. The fertility treatment has been extremely difficult for her. I hope she ovulated after this second round of treatment. I can't go through a third round of 11 to 22. I walk over to the Sunshine Valley Mall to grab a coffee and give her a call to see how she's doing. I realize I've left my cellphone on my desk, but there is no way I'm going back for it. Of course when I get to the mall, both pay phones are being used. I go get my coffee first. When I get back, the same people are still on the pay phones. The young girl in the Hannah Montana T-shirt seems to be chatting with a girlfriend. Shouldn't she have a cellphone? I'm one to talk. The business man seems to be dictating instructions to his secretary. They're both babbling strong.

Finally after another five minutes, the business guy gets off. Both the phone handle and earpiece are warm. I think of Carla and the prime breeding ground for bacterial growth that I'm holding. I fish for quarters and dial.

“Sarah MacDonald.”

“Hi, it's me.”

“Why aren't you calling from your desk or the cell?” she asks.

“Walked to the mall, forgot the cell on my desk. I needed a break. The place is driving me nutso. How ya doing, baby?”

“Remember how I was having that weird feeling on Day 25?”

“Yeah.”

“Well I think it could be implantation in the uterus.”

“Really?”

“Do me a favour, go to the pharmacy and pick me up a pregnancy test.”

“Really?” I say excited.

“I'm not sure; don't get your hopes up.”

As I walk to the pharmacy, my mind is popping and flashing, like I'm flipping channels on the TV. The noise of the shoppers and the shopping-mall lighting contribute to my disorganized thoughts. I could be a dad. I might have fathered a child. As I pass through the turnstile I read a headline from the newspaper stand: “Man Dies in Head-on Collision.” We'll need to get an infant car seat. How much do they cost?

I find the aisle with the pregnancy tests and decide to go with the generic pharmacy brand, a two-for-one pack. If it's negative, I figure we can use the second test next month if we need to. If she is pregnant, I know that she'll want another test to double check.

As I pay for the kit, I make sure to smile that extra little bit, so the clerk knows that I'm hoping for a positive result, rather than the poor bastard who's hoping for a negative one so he doesn't have to head off to the Morgentaler clinic. The clerk puts the kit into the bag after scanning it. She doesn't even look at it. I stop smiling so hard.

I walk back to my building. As I approach the main door, I see Line arguing with a man transporting twenty large boxes on a flatbed dolly.

“Listen lady, I just drop the stuff off. This is what the order says. I'm just doing my job.”

“What's up?” I ask Line.

“I ordered one box of each colour of file folder, but it says I ordered one flat of each colour. He showed me the form, and it's true. I checked the wrong box. But why would anyone want a flat of file folders. You figure common sense, no?”

“This is the government, Line.”

“True,” she says taking a long haul off her menthol smoke.

“How many colours are there?”

“Ten,” she laughs.

I catch the guy with the flatbed and ride up with him in the elevator. “That's a lot of file folders.”

“You're telling me, Mack,” says the guy.

I follow the guy out of curiosity, just to see it with my own eyes. We pass by Crazy Larry who is standing up as per usual, but instead of looking out the window he's looking at us coming down the hallway.

“Hi buddy,” says the delivery guy to Crazy Larry.

“Hi,” Crazy Larry says, really slowly like he is stoned.

“What's his problem?” the delivery guy whispers to me after we pass.

“He's crazy.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

When we arrive at the business centre, I can barely believe my eyes. The length of one wall, about sixteen feet, is already covered in boxes, four boxes high, two rows deep. The delivery guy unloads, making a third row. “Wow,” I say.

“Yeah,” the guy says. “Got three more flats still in the truck.” I look at all the boxes of file folders in disbelief.

I go back to my desk and I hear Dan telling the exact same story he told me about his tooth and the rest of his medical adventures to somebody three cubicles down. I glance over and notice the memo on Paperless Office 2012 in my recycle bin. I pick it out, march back to the coffee room and tape it to the wall above the hundreds of boxes of file folders.

For a week now, Ryan had been going from pet store to pet store buying rabbits. One at a time at first, then later two at a time as he grew tired of making multiple trips. The hole seemed to enjoy the rabbits. It would retreat a bit, fill up. Two rabbits would make it shrink a lot. But after a few days, it didn't seem to make any difference. It was hungry; it wanted more.

Ryan had just tossed another rabbit in the hole when he heard the doorbell ring. He went upstairs
and opened the door. It was Bill from next door. “I know you have Spike,” he said.

“What?” replied Ryan, thinking to himself that there was no way Bill could know.

“I can hear him barking. I listened at your basement window and I heard him barking.”

“No you didn't,” said Ryan, but just as he said that he heard the unmistakable growl of Spike coming from the open basement door.

“I'm getting my dog,” said Bill, pushing Ryan out of the way.

The barking grew louder as Ryan followed Bill toward the basement door and down the stairs. “You son of a bitch, I'm going to call the cops on you,” yelled Bill as he ran.

Ryan didn't say anything. He just followed, curious to see if there was an actual dog there, or whether the hole was playing a game, luring Bill in. When Ryan got to the bottom, Bill was standing by the edge yelling, “Spike, I'm here boy.” He spun around to Ryan. “You son of a bitch, you get my dog out of that hole!” screamed Bill, pointing down. Ryan was about to explain that there was no dog, at least he didn't think there was, when the earth under Bill's feet gave away.

“Aaahhhh!” Bill yelled as he dropped into the hole, but he managed to catch the edge with one hand. Flailing away, he grabbed the ledge with the other hand. Bill was now dangling by his fingertips. For a second, Ryan stood frozen. He thought about stepping on Bill's fingers, thought about feeding him to the hole. But quickly his mind cleared. He grabbed Bill's arm and said, “Don't worry, I have you.”

“You son of a bitch, when I get out of here you're a dead man!”

“Relax, give me your arm. Grab on so I can pull you out.”

When Bill let go of the edge and grabbed Ryan's hand, that's when they both heard it. It made the sound that water makes coming down a garden hose when you turn on the tap, except louder. It shot up out of the darkness, a purplish red tongue-like tentacle, wrapping itself around Bill's left leg.

“Aaahhhh!” Bill screamed again. “What the fuck is it? Get it off!“

I don't know, just hold on,” Ryan said. Ryan saw the tentacle twist and contract. Ryan didn't have a chance to save him. Bill was ripped away in a flash.

Ryan heard one last scream before a small fountain of blood shot up out of the darkness dowsing him in a fine spray. He sat there frozen. There were no longer any dog sounds coming from the hole, but instead a noise that sounded vaguely like chewing. He slowly backed away on his hands and knees until he reached the foot of the stairs. Shaking, he stood up and walked upstairs to clean off the blood.

I wake up to the
now familiar sound of Sarah retching in the toilet. I stop in the doorway of the washroom on my way to the kitchen. She's on her knees, holding her hair up so it doesn't dangle into the toilet. Her back ripples and her neck extends forward. Her mouth opens, but nothing comes out but a sick groan. She reminds me of a cat trying to cough up a hairball. “You okay?”

She nods.

“Do you want me to make you a coffee?”

She shakes her head no.

“Tea and melba toast?”

She nods again.

“I'm on it,” I tell her as I move to the kitchen. I make myself a coffee and read the paper. I hear the bath start up. Sarah has actually lost weight during the first two months of pregnancy. The vomiting began two weeks after she peed on the stick. When Sarah gets out of the tub, I hop in and shower. Once I'm dressed for work, I go out to the living room. Sarah is sitting on the couch looking extremely pale, her untouched green tea and melba toast sitting on the coffee table in front of her. “You okay?”

“I think I might be sick again,” she says, standing up and heading for the washroom.

I hear more retching sounds.

“I'm going to go, okay honey, unless you need me?” I yell down the hallway.

“Just go, I'll be fine in a few minutes,” she mutters weakly.

On the bus I snag a window seat. A man with a huge beer gut sits down beside me. I'm pretty sure he hasn't seen his dick in years. He has some wicked coffee breath and reeks of cigarettes. Not surprisingly, Sarah hates taking the bus these days. One whiff of this guy and he would have a new appreciation for morning sickness. As the bus sways along its route, its lumbering metal structure rocks me into a state of sleepy complacency. The engine purrs, “Shhh Colin, go to sleep.” I close my eyes. Blobs of light dance on the dark of my inner eyelids. I think about
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
and bolt upright in my seat, eyes wide. My mind floats to the laundry and dishes in the sink that need washing. I drift to other things I need to get done, the book I'm writing. Is it scary enough? Should it have a dark ending or should it have a little redemption?

I glance around me. There's a man seated across the aisle with hunched posture, a wilted flower. He gives the impression that the attrition of a bureaucratic routine has left him empty. A Tupperware container is perched atop his briefcase. I imagine him on this bus for the next twenty years, microwaved lunches, the same job. I imagine him slipping a noose around his neck and jumping off his Arborite kitchen counter, his flailing arms knocking over his Tupperware leftovers, little macaronis spilling out onto the floor. I see myself as him. I see myself trapped in my day job, trapped in the relentless predictability of it all. Maybe the ending of my new book should be dark?

But then the bus saunters to a stop and picks up a pregnant woman. Another woman moves to give her a seat. I stare at her swollen belly. I think about how much I love Sarah, ride this bus for her, eat the mircowaved banality for her – for her and my unborn child. But is love enough to keep riding this bus for the next twenty years? Maybe. Maybe not. I need to write my way out of it. Not that I want to, but I don't see another way. Maybe my book could use a little redemption? Maybe I could use some myself?

When I finally get into work and into my quad, Brita's there wearing black military boots, green army pants and a black T-shirt with a picture of Kurt Cobain on the front. She has shaven her head completely bald, reminding me of Sigourney Weaver in
Alien 3
. She's placing her personal possessions, including a Karl Marx action figure, computer manuals, CDs and various leftist magazines into a cardboard box.

“Where are you going? Are you switching groups?” I ask.

“Fuck that MacDonald, I quit this shithole. Let the capitalists find another lackey henchwoman to replace me. I'm off to the rainforest to stop deforestation. I'm going to blow up a few bulldozers. I'm going to straighten shit out.”

“Wow, sounds like you're doing your part for Paperless Office 2012.”

“Don't get smart with me, MacDonald,” she threatens, swinging around with her box of junk.

“Well, good luck,” I say extending my hand.

She looks at my hand and debates it. She decides to balance the box on one knee and quickly shakes. “You are one of the few people in here who isn't a complete asshole.”

“Thanks,” I reply, because I'm not sure what else to say.

“If I were you, MacDonald, I'd get out before this place takes your soul,” she whispers leaning in toward me, so close I worry she might kiss me. Suddenly she spins around and yells at Carla, “Here is something for you, cunt!” spitting a glob of saliva onto Carla's flat-screen monitor, and then storming off. Carla sits frozen, looking completely horrified, staring at the sliding spittle as if it were a scorpion crawling down her screen. I almost laugh, but it seems like an unnecessarily cruel action, especially since Carla had done nothing to provoke her. I know the smell of cleaning products had always been a sore point with Brita, but considering Carla's condition, so to speak, I was surprised. Still, I think every person who has come into this quad has wanted to spit on Carla's desk, just to see what she would do. I'm looking at the answer and it's not pretty.

“Why did she do that?” she squeaked.

“I don't know, Carla. She's just mad at everyone and everything I guess.” For the next hour, Carla goes into a hyper-animated cleaning frenzy, spraying and wiping everything down, over and over. The monitor gets at least a half an hour dedicated to itself alone.

Bruce waltzes in and grabs the guest chair that the four of us, now three of us, share in the quad. “Hey, smells clean in here. I guess you heard about Brita, eh?”

“She told me she quit.”

“Wow, did she ever,” says Bruce, but he fails to elaborate on what he means. After the spitting action, I imagine that Bruce got something equally as good. Bruce suddenly rubs his hands feverishly together as if he was trying to spark a fire, and then, in what I think he thinks is dramatic, slaps his knees. “Well, Colin, I'm afraid you'll have to be the one to pull up the slack around here until we find a replacement for Brita.”

“Sure thing,” I say, completely unfazed by what he's just said.

“Really?”

“Yeah, no problem.”

Bruce seems flustered by my response, and I imagine he was waiting for me to take exception to what he's said so he'd have the opportunity to practise his manager skill set. I suspect he's got a performance review looming and he is looking for some examples of leadership to write down.

“Well you're going to have to refill out your estimates form, now that you're taking over for Brita… temporarily that is.”

Although I pretty much despise everything about my job, the one thing I hate above all others is doing estimates. I'm supposed to guess how much time it will take me to complete each piece of code that I'll be working on over the next six months. Now I'm going to have to figure out how much time doing two jobs will take. Dutiful, I do it just the same, for I am a good civil servant.

I work on my new estimates, form 220, for over two hours, trying to piece together everything Brita had been working on and would have been working on in the future. When I'm done, I bring the form over to Bruce. He's on the phone, so I drop it into his in-basket. Forty minutes later Bruce returns with the estimates form.

“You're a little high in a couple of places, Colin, and a little low in others. Look at it again, see if you can identify the problem areas, and fix them up.”

“Sure thing,” I say, seething on the inside. I go over the whole thing again and make what I think are the appropriate adjustments. When Phil and I get back from lunch I notice that the form is back in my in-basket with several yellow stickies on it identifying the areas where the numbers are too high or too low. My jaw tightens and I grind my teeth. I randomly beef up or down the numbers identified as being incorrect guesses and march it back to Bruce's desk. He's on the phone again, so I toss it into his in-basket.

Not ten minutes later, he's back in my quad. “Still not right Colin, a couple of these are still a little low.”

“Well, why don't you just put the number that you want in the box?”

“Well Colin, then I would be doing your job, wouldn't I?”

I want to pop him in the mouth. “Bruce, I don't know what number should go in the box. It's an estimate. So just put in whatever number you want. I don't mind being wrong. I'm just tired of guessing.”

“Colin, it's great practice for you. It'll help you. Just do your best, that's all I'm asking,” he urges, putting the sheet back in my in-basket.

Insanity. But I smell something fishy here, aside from Bruce's power games. Bruce isn't that smart. I erase the numbers in question and put in new random numbers. I walk the 220 form over to Bruce's cubicle again. “That was quick Colin. Do you think you got it right this time?”

“You tell me.”

“Well let me look it over and I'll bring it back if it needs fixing.”

“Well just look at it now.”

“Listen Colin, I have to finish this email, but I'll do it right after that.”

I'm contents-under-pressure, a steaming kettle, Fahrenheit four-fifty-fuck-you. There's a worm in the apple and it's time to go fishing. “Fine,” I say and leave, but I don't go far. I slip into Peter Cann's cubicle, right next door to Bruce's. I place my index finger to my lips and make a silent
shhh
to Peter. He's a good sport and doesn't say anything, just curiously watches. I stand on his guest chair and peer over the wall at Bruce. He's not writing his email. He's looking at my 220 form. He opens one of his desk drawers and pulls out two other 220 forms. I recognize one as my original from March 2006, and the other one I surmise to be Brita's. He's added them together to make sure they match my new estimates.

“Bruce!” I yelp over the wall. He jumps as if his spine were about to pop out of his back. I step down off the chair, thank Peter and spin around the light grey cubicle dividing wall and back into Bruce's cube. “Give me that,” I demand snatching my 220 form from his hand. I quickly do the addition of all four boxes in question right there. It takes me about forty-five seconds and Bruce doesn't say a peep. When I'm done, I hand Bruce the form and say, “Estimates are now complete.”

I walk back to my cube with joy in my heart.

When I get to the office the next day there is a calendar invite from Barry, the manager, Mr. Paperless Office. He has requested a meeting with me at 10 a.m. in his office, the subject line: The Committee. I click the button to accept and don't think any more about it.

At 9:55 I get a pop-up reminder about the meeting. I hit the washroom, and then walk to Barry's office. When I get there, he waves me in and asks me to shut the door. Barry's a fat little man, habitually adorned in a light grey suit (almost the same colour as our cubicle walls – sort of office camouflage, so he can sneak up on people) and some sort of novelty tie. I think he's about fifty-five, but he seems to have no imminent retirement plans. It's not because he
has
to work; no, I think Barry has lots of money. He won't retire because he loves his job. He loves his job because he thinks he's making a difference. He thinks his job is important. Today his tie has a profile picture of Homer Simpson drinking a Duff beer. I suspect that this tie, at least in Barry's mind, is a kind of jovial catalyst, a springboard to you-can-talk-to-me-for-I'm-a-man-of-the-people, just a small piece of his open-door managerial style that he professes as part of his office philosophy. “I hear that there was a bit of an incident yesterday with the work estimates.”

“Yeah, Bruce is driving me crazy with those. I don't know what to tell you. The whole thing boggles the mind.”

“Listen,” says Barry, rolling his chair closer to mine, putting one hand gently on my knee. “Bruce was quite scared by what happened yesterday. He said, and this is a quote, he said he ‘felt physically threatened' yesterday when you grabbed the piece of paper from his hand.”

I'm stunned. “You have to be kidding me?” I ask.

“This is a serious matter Colin. Now I know that Bruce can be difficult sometimes, but he means well. I told him I'd have a talk with you. Now I think it would be best if you two were to communicate by email for a while, just to cool things down. I don't want you to have a black mark on your so-far spotless record, Colin. You're a good employee, Colin; just don't let your temper get to you.”

I can't believe what I am hearing.

“Listen, Colin, let's forget the whole thing shall we? How about we get you involved in a special project?”

It occurs to me that if Barry were to gain fifty more pounds, put on a black suit, and stuff cotton balls into his mouth he might pass for a silly version of the Godfather.

“What favour?”

“I want you to join the Refrigerator Committee.”

I think I should take this shit up with the union, but I really don't want the hassle. I don't want to be labelled as difficult. With no prospect of a million-dollar book deal on the horizon, I need to keep my job, despite the fact that I loathe it with all of my being. With a child on the way, I don't want any “blemishes” on my record. “The Refrigerator Committee?”

“We need a new fridge in the coffee room. The Coffee Club Committee is swamped right now, so they set up another committee to purchase a new fridge. You'd help to raise money, you know, bake sales, raffle tickets, things of this sort. They're short one member, and so I volunteered one more person from my section – that would be you. Are you up for it?”

“Fine.”