“You’re not leaving?” said Rick, sounding relieved. “I thought you might sit in.” The Colonel, J.J., and Bob Wier all glanced at each other, Paul noted, while Rick maneuvered to keep Paul between himself and the old man. Stanley Tulendij was taller than he’d looked sitting down; he had long legs and a short torso, like a man walking on stilts. This disproportion, and his preternatural paleness, gave him a rather spiderish look as he glided around the end of Rick’s desk. As he passed, his jacket gave off a strong whiff of thrift store disinfectant — an odor Paul knew well — and beneath it was something both sharp and sour, like the smell of excrement. Stanley Tulendij paused in the doorway to take his leave. One at a time, Bob Wier, J.J., and the Colonel rose from their seats, shook his hand, and sat down again. Stanley Tulendij gave a puppetish wave, his bony hand wobbling as if on a ball socket.
“I’ll be seeing you,” he said, looking at Paul, and Paul felt the chill again. He watched the old man’s strange, arachnid gait as he walked out the door and down the aisle.
Somebody clapped his hands once, and Paul turned to see the Colonel sitting erect in his chair, grinding his palms together. His eyes were aglow. “Well!” he said. “It seems giants still walk among us.”
“Yessir,” said Rick, rather distantly. He had moved behind his desk, and he was staring warily down at his chair. He shoved the backrest with the tips of his fingers, setting the chair spinning slowly in place. “I tell you what,” he said, “let’s put the meeting off till tomorrow. No sense crossing our bridges until they’re burned.” He looked up. “Y’all check your schedules and let me know what’s good for y’all.” He waved his hand, dismissing the team. Paul waited for the others to file out ahead of him. Bob Wier’s smile was drawn painfully tight, his eyes so sad he looked as though he might cry, and he gave Paul a thumbs-up as he passed. J.J. looked him sourly up and down, and the Colonel winked at him. Paul started after them, but Rick called him back.
“Get rid of this, willya?” Rick held out the still steaming cup of coffee.
Paul hesitated — toss it yourself, Rick, I’m a tech writer, not a busboy — until he saw the look on Rick’s face. He held the cup as if it were full of acid about to eat through the Styrofoam.
“Please,” said Rick, and Paul leaned across the desk and took the cup. As he left, Rick was still watching his spinning chair, as if counting the revolutions.
Paul ditched the coffee in the trash by the fax machine, then he went around Nolene’s cube to the side away from Rick’s door and rapped on the metal strip on top of the partition. From Rick’s doorway, he heard the tentative creak of a chair.
“So, Nolene,” he whispered, when he finally got her attention, “did you ever work with Stanley Tulendij?”
Nolene slowly lifted her gaze to Paul and regarded him coldly. Paul was on the verge of retreating when she lowered her eyes, visibly banked her anger, and looked up at him again. “Hit’s no secret. No reason you shouldn’t know.” She lowered her voice. “Most of the folks here are new in the five years since Stanley. .” She snapped her fingers. “But I worked under him for six months.” She closed her eyes and mastered herself again. “Let’s just say that Stanley was old school about women in the workplace? ‘My wife don’t let me tell her how to make biscuits, and I don’t let her tell me how to buy parts for a backhoe.’ ”
“So what does this mean?” Paul snapped his fingers. “Did he retire?”
Nolene put her finger to her lips. “They yanked him,” she whispered. She glanced around her and syllable by syllable mouthed the words, “Sex-u-al har-ass-ment.”
“Really!” Paul lowered his voice further. “Who did he harass?”
She turned abruptly back to her computer screen, and an instant later Rick sailed out of his office and up the aisle. She watched him go, then looked at Paul and slowly shook her head. She wouldn’t talk about it.
“At least tell me, did the Colonel and J.J. and Bob work for him?”
“Oh no! That’s the funny thing.” She glanced up the aisle. “They never did. They all come here since.” She kept her voice low, hissing at Paul across the partition. “And yet he comes around to see them every few months or so. In’t that the darnedest thing?”
“Huh,” said Paul.
“You know what else is funny about those three?” Nolene’s voice dropped so low that Paul had to lean over the partition to hear her. “As far as I can tell, they never do. .”
She broke off and nailed her gaze to the computer screen again. Paul looked up and saw the Colonel loitering by the fax machine, idly fingering the buttons. Nolene slowly shook her head.
“Right,” Paul said, raising his voice. “So, uh, when can I expect my first check at the new rate?”
“I dunno, hon.” Nolene clattered away at her keyboard. “That’s up to your temp agency, not the great state of Texas.”
“Okeydoke,” Paul said. “Thanks.” He started briskly up the aisle. Just ahead of him, the Colonel stepped back into his cube and turned in his doorway. He winked at Paul. “Professor,” he said.
“Colonel,” replied Paul, hurrying past.
Back in his cube, he almost e-mailed Nolene. They never do what? he wanted to know, his hands hovering over his keyboard. But he doubted that Nolene was so indiscreet as to commit gossip to cyberspace. He’d have to catch her alone again tomorrow.
Meanwhile, it was nearly quitting time, and he began to shut down his computer and tidy his desk. He swept a couple of pencils into his top drawer and let the drawer slide shut. After a moment he opened the drawer again and peered in at the litter of pens, pencils, paper clips, and pushpins. Something’s missing, he thought. He bit his lip and stared harder at the clutter in the drawer. Something was here that isn’t now, he thought. But what? To hell with it, he decided, and he let the drawer slide shut, glimpsing the mild yellow of a Post-it pad.
He jerked the drawer open again. The note he’d found on his monitor this morning was gone, the Post-it that read, “Are we not men?” He pulled the drawer all the way out and peered into the shadows in the back; he ran his fingertips through the litter in the sharp corners of the drawer — gingerly, in case of a stray pushpin — and came up only with a steel letter opener he hadn’t known was there and a smudgy three-by-five card. He pushed through the paper clips, the soggy heap of rubber bands, the tangle of clenched binder clips. But the note was gone. With both hands in the drawer, Paul lifted his gaze to the ceiling tiles above him. “They’re up there,” the dying tech writer had said. He listened for his neighbor’s wheeze and heard nothing; he must have left already. He jerked his hands out of the drawer and stood. Go ahead, he thought. Play games with me, asshole, whoever you are.
He heard a sharp hiss and glanced over his shoulder. Maybe the tech writer hadn’t left yet. Then he heard it again, a little louder. He caught his breath and thought, I hope that’s not coming from the ceiling.
“Ssss! Paul!” Olivia Haddock peered wide-eyed at him around the partition of her cube. “Did you see him?” she whispered.
Paul sighed. “See who?”
Olivia shushed him, then beckoned him sharply, and Paul sighed again and crossed the aisle. Olivia backed into the deepest corner of her cube, glancing past him at her doorway. “Did you meet Stanley Tulendij?” she whispered.
“Yeah.” Paul shrugged.
“How was he?” Olivia’s eyes shone as though she were a cheerleader asking him if he’d met the star quarterback.
“Well,” said Paul, “I hear he was a titan in fleet management.”