I nodded hello, unsure of how to respond.
“David’s the name.” He stood, extended a hand, and we shook. “I’ve been transferred here from Bookkeeping. You must be Bob.”
Again I nodded. “You’re taking over Derek’s job?” I asked dumbly.
He laughed. “What job? That position’s gone. It was nothing but a title, anyway. They just let that guy hang on until retirement out of pity.”
“I always wondered what he did.”
“So did everyone else. How did you get along with him?”
I shrugged noncommittally. “I didn’t know him too well. I just started working here a few months ago — ”
“Come on. The guy’s a dick with feet.”
I found myself smiling. “All right,” I admitted. “We weren’t bosom buddies.”
“Good,” David said. “I like you already.”
I walked over to my desk and sat down, feeling good. It had been so long since I’d had an actual conversation with anyone that I was emotionally charged by even this small contact, my spirits absurdly buoyed by the fact that I had a new office mate who had actually noticed me.
Maybe my condition was reversible.
“So what is your job?” I asked.
“Still bookkeeping,” he said. “Only for your department now. I think they invented this job so they could kick me upstairs a floor. None of the old farts in my department like working with me.”
I laughed.
“I’m stone serious.”
I smiled. The people in his department might not like working with him, but I could tell that I would.
I was right. David and I hit it off immediately. We were close in age so there was that generational connection, but he was also friendly and easygoing, one of those people who were naturally open and accessible, and from the beginning he talked to me as though we’d been close for years. There was nothing about himself he could not discuss with me, no opinion that he would refrain from expressing. The wall of formality that seemed to exist between me and everyone else did not exist between David and myself.
He not only noticed and accepted me, he seemed to like me.
It was Wednesday before he asked The Question. I knew it would come up eventually, I’d been prepared for it, but it was still something of a surprise. It was afternoon, I was proofreading the GeoComm instructions I’d printed out earlier in the day, and David was taking an early break, leaning back in his chair and munching on Fritos.
He popped a chip in his mouth and looked over at me. “So do you have a wife or girlfriend or anything?”
“Girlfriend,” I said. “Ex-girlfriend,” I corrected myself. I felt a funny sort of fluttering in my stomach.
My feelings must have shown on my face, because David quickly backed off. “Sorry, man, I didn’t mean to pry. If you don’t want to talk about it…”
But I did want to talk about it. I hadn’t talked about our breakup to anybody, and I found that I had a sudden need to tell someone what had happened.
I told David everything. Well, not everything. I left out the part about my being Ignored, but I told him how we’d begun drifting apart ever since I got this damn job, and about how I’d been too stubborn to meet her halfway and how one day I’d come home and she’d been packed and gone. I’d expected to feel better after talking about it, but in truth I felt worse. The memories were recent, the events still fresh, and dredging them up only made me relive the pain, not exorcise it.
David shook his head. “That’s cold. She just hit the road and left a note?”
I nodded.
“Well, what happened when you went after her? What did she say when you confronted her?”
I blinked. “What?”
“What happened when you tracked her down?” He looked at me, frowned. “You did go after her, didn’t you?”
Should I have? Was that what she’d wanted? Proof that I cared, that I loved her, that I needed her? Should I have gone after her like some sort of hero and tried to win her back? I had this sinking feeling that I should have, that that was what she’d wanted, that that was what she’d expected. I looked at David, slowly shaking my head. “No, I didn’t.”
“Oh, man. You blew it. Now you’ll never get her back. How long’s it been?”
“Two months.”
He shook his head. “She’s found someone else by now. Your window of opportunity’s closed, dude. Didn’t you even try to call her?”
“I didn’t know where she’d gone.”
“You should’ve called her parents. They’d know.”
“She said she just wanted to cut off all contact cold, not see each other anymore. She said it’d be easier that way.”
“They always say things like that. But what they say and what they mean are two different things.”
There was movement in the doorway. Stewart. “Hey, girls,” he said, peeking his head into the office, “stop your talking. Get back to work.”
I quickly picked up my pen, began going over the instructions.
“I’m on break,” David said, eating a Frito. “I still have five minutes to go.”
“Then you take your break in the break room where you won’t disturb — ” There was a pause as he blanked on my name. “ — Jones.”
“Fine.” David got up slowly, grinned at me as he followed Stewart out the door.
I smiled back, but I felt sick inside.
What they say and what they mean are two different things.
I had the horrible feeling that he was right.
There was traffic on the freeway, a three-car accident in the fast lane, and it was nearly six-thirty by the time I got home. I parked in the garage and trudged up the stairway to my apartment. I opened my mailbox and rifled through the envelopes as I unlocked the door. There was a bill from the gas company, this week’s Pennysaver… and something that felt like a card.
A card? Who would be sending me a card?
Jane?
My hopes soared. Maybe she’d gotten tired of waiting for me to make contact. Maybe she’d decided to contact me. Maybe she missed me as much as I missed her.
I quickly ripped open the envelope and saw the words “Happy Birthday!” above a picture of hot-air balloons sailing into a blue sky. I opened the card.
Preprinted on the white background in laser-jet perfection was the message “Happy Birthday From Your Friends at Automated Interface, Inc.”
My heart sank.
A form birthday card from work.
I crumpled up the card, threw it over the stairway railing, and watched it hit the ground.
In two days it would be my birthday.
I’d almost forgotten.
Thirteen
I spent my birthday typing and filing, filing and typing. David was sick, and I was alone in the office all day.
I spent that night watching television.
No one at work did anything for my birthday. I hadn’t expected them to, but I had half expected a call from Jane — or at least a card. She knew how important birthdays were to me. But of course there was nothing. What was even more depressing was that my parents didn’t acknowledge my birthday either. No present, no card, not even a phone call.
I tried to call them, several times, but the line was always busy and I eventually gave it up.
In five years, I thought, I would be thirty. I remembered when my mom had turned thirty. Her friends had thrown her a surprise birthday party and everyone had gotten drunk and I’d been allowed to stay up way past my bedtime. I’d been eight then, and my mom had seemed so old.