New Hope For Small Men: Chapter 14

by Grant Bailie

On Friday, Robert went to work. He was the first to arrive for the first shift and took seven calls before any of his coworkers came in. Third shift was already putting on their coats or grabbing their purses, and they were all gone for five or ten minutes before the rest of the first shift began filtering in. They stood by the coffee maker, waiting for the pot to fill, discussing traffic.

“Didn’t you get caught in the pile up on 73,” one of them asked Robert.

“I take the train,” he said.

But there was always a pile up on 73, or a stalled car on I-71, or inexplicable delays on 91. There was snow or rain or sleet or sun glare. They were always five or ten minutes late.

“You’re lucky you take the train,” they said and Robert said: “I feel lucky.”

Then they hung up their coats and filled up their mugs and asked where the cream and sugar were and found the cream and sugar and added them to their coffee and stirred thoroughly and took their mugs to their desks.

“Anything going on?” they asked him.

“Some interruption of services in sector seven,” he said.

The new girl arrived around noon. He could tell she was the new girl not only because he had not seen her before, but by the bewildered look on her face. She looked a little, he thought, like a woodland creature that had mistakenly wandered into an office building — that, and a schoolgirl.

She was wearing a plaid skirt that was probably a little too short for office work and black boots and a white blouse and her hair was the color of the sky. Robert waved her over to the empty desk next to his.

“I’m Robert,” he said and she told him her name was Bree and she sat down at the desk and stared blankly at the computer. He reached over and turned it on for her.

“The manager’s not here today,” he said. “But he might have a little problem with the way you’re dressed.”

She looked at him, looked down at her skirt, then back to Robert.

“It’s what I wore to the interview,” she said.

“Oh,” he said.

And then he told her how to answer the phone, and how to pull up the customer’s information on the computer screen and how to fill out the various tracking screens and the log box when she was done, and how to check the queue and the line status and the call times and installer itineraries.

“It’s a lot to remember,” she said, but she picked most of it up before too long and was answering calls on her own by the end of the day.

She was young. Too young for him, he thought, and too young for the manager. It was probably her first job. She had a tattoo of a squirrel on her forearm and while he preferred the white flesh of his dreams to be unbroken he appreciated the fact that it was a squirrel and not a flaming skull or a bleeding cross or something like that.

“You like squirrels?” he asked her between calls.

She shrugged. “It’s the closest they had to what I wanted,” she said. “I was looking for a bunny rabbit.”

“Ah,” he said.

“I like squirrels all right though.”

“I like squirrels.”

“I just would have preferred a rabbit.”

“Yes.”

“I have one of a cloud in the small of my back.”

“I like clouds too,” he said.

The workday ended and he showed her how to fill out the end-shift boxes on her screen and then they turned off the computers and stood up from their desks. She was taller than him, of course, and he watched as the usual thought process worked its way across her face. Was he a dwarf or only a short man?

“Man,” she said. “Do I need a cigarette.”

He gave her one of his in front of the building and then lit one for himself. They smoked by the doorway while the other workers left for the day and the third shift came in, some of them coughing pointedly.

“I hate that,” she said. They put out their cigarettes in a flowerpot and said their goodbyes but then began walking in the same direction.

“I take the train,” he said and she said: “So do I.”

They took the same train. There was one seat left and she sat in it while he stood holding on to the pole next to her. He looked down at the top of her head, with its blue hair and once or twice accidentally caught a glimpse through the opening of her blouse.

“Oh!” she said suddenly, and flopped herself forward, untucking her blouse and showing him the small of her back. There was indeed a small cloud there; it was symmetrical and made of a series of curves, like the cloud in a cartoon, and a small, cartoon thunderbolt came out from the bottom center of the cloud and pointed downward.

“It’s very nice,” he said.

“It’s my favorite.”

And then it was Robert’s stop and he got off.

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