Page 23 - Vol. VII #7

any of our business and quite frankly we preferred to think as little as possible about our neighbor’s lavatorial activities.
“His poor wife,” said Maureen, who had been hover- ing at the edges of the conversation while rummag- ing through the fridge for her daily yogurt cup. She placed her palm on Warren’s once-beloved coffee machine and heaved a labored sigh, as though doing so were a kindness to him.
And so it was that Warren was happened upon by some poor custodian—bless her heart—long after the last of us had clocked out, happily oblivious of our own close brush with the dead.
“I thought he was divorced,” said Ron. “He was definitely divorced,” said Nina.
office at a quarter till nine, he had no notion that he’d shortly be dead...”
“Would you look at that—I’m about to be late to my ten-thirty, better get going.”
“Are we sure this isn’t some elaborate, morbid joke? April Fools?”
of honey sat at the ready, shaped like a bear with a grin wider and more gleeful than it had any busi- ness being.
“It’s September, Ron.”
Halfway there—we were just starting to feel optimis-
~
The next day, we settled into our cubicles to a compa- ny-wide email. The message was a terse and factual description of the who (“Warren Wilkerson, Director of Sales, Northeast Region”), the what (“has, I regret to inform you, passed on”), and the where (“I am obli- gated to note that the unfortunate event occurred on company premises, and is thought to be the result of natural causes”), concluding with a JPEG of the CEO’s indecipherable scrawl of a signature.
None of us were sure how privy Nina actually was to Warren’s marital status or whether her intent was merely to shut down Maureen, who had started as an assistant just a year ago and had already been pro- moted to coordinator. Regardless, we found ourselves entangled in a debate as to how single Warren had been at the time of his death. The pro-marriage camp seemed on the verge of gaining the upper hand when the entrance of the new intern, Emily, silenced our dispute. This was not because we felt more strongly the urge to act professionally around the college student than around each other, though we did. No,
“It was so packed with euphemisms you’d think my mother had written it,” whispered Nina, who had been an assistant for nearly four years and had
it was primarily because the weak smile she directed at us did little to distract from her reddened eyes and puffy cheeks, the makeup puddling like watercolors around her eyes. We diverted our topics of conversa- tion in every direction except the obvious.
“When Warren strolled into the
“Crummy weather we’re having, eh?”
“Molly, how’s your husband been? Andrew, right?” “Actually, my wife’s name is Gabrielle.”
And so on.
been assured of her impending promotion for two and a half. After reading the email, she scanned
the horizon above the wall of her cubicle for our reactions in order to gauge how she herself should be behaving. The rest of us, meanwhile, were doing the same. What did we expect? Wailing, hysterics, the blowing of noses? Instead, we uncomfortably shifted in our swivel chairs all at once. After an un- productive half hour of this, a few of us absconded to the kitchenette so that we might gossip together in hushed tones.
Ignoring or else oblivious to our scrambling, Emily unsheathed a paper cup from an endless, identical stack of its fellows and placed it below the coffee machine. With the press of a button, it began to dispense a steady trickle of hot water. We were all rooting for her—just 30 seconds more and she’d
be disappearing around the corner with her bever- age in hand. It seemed as though she might make it, her breathing regular if labored as she separated the string from the sachet of her teabag. A bottle
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