He went on and on, using his chubby fingers to count off.
“Then there’s keyboard functions, right? Control-x, control-c, control-v, control-f —”
We told him to get on with it. We liked wasting time, but almost nothing was more annoying than having our wasted time wasted on something not worth wasting it on.
“So listen to how I did it,” said Benny, his dough face smiling wryly.
“You did no work all day long,” said Marcia.
“Not true,” Benny objected, suddenly uncharacteristically solemn. “I had things to give Joe, I had deadlines. I had to use my mouse and my keyboard yesterday. So listen to how I did it.”
So Benny told us the story of how he went the entire day without clicking by teaching Roland how to use Photoshop. Roland said he didn’t think he could learn Photoshop, he had never even been to college. But Benny told him that was crazy talk. What with the right instructor, it wouldn’t take more than a couple hours. Roland worked for security. He stood watch at the front desk in the downstairs lobby, or else he trolled the perimeter of the building in his security guard’s generic navy suit coat. All day long he sat at his lonely lobby post or he went back and forth around the building on his aching feet. To sit in an office with Benny would be a pleasure. The only stipulation he gave Benny was that if he got chirped on the Motorola by Mike Boroshansky, chief of security, he’d probably have to go. We expected so little from security in those days.
“So what I want to know,” Benny had said to him, “is which one of these photos do you think works best for this ad?” Roland looked at Benny’s screen and said, “I don’t know. That one?” and Benny said, “Come on, Roland, man — you have over a thousand photos to choose from up there, and you’ve looked at a total of six. Scroll down, man! Click through.” So Roland ended up clicking through about an hour’s worth of stock photos while Benny sat off to the side mouse-free. It was a pleasure for Roland — good company and a cushioned seat. “No, not that one,” Benny kept saying. “You don’t have much of an artistic intuition, Roland, no offense.” “Hey, Benny,” Roland said defensively, “I didn’t go to school for this or anything, if you don’t mind.” But still he clicked to the next page, and scrolled down, and clicked to the next page and scrolled down. Whenever Roland came across a photo Benny liked, Benny wrote down its reference number on a Post-it. When he had enough reference numbers, he kicked Roland out of his office and called the rep from the stock house and they messengered over the thumbnails for him to choose from. That’s when he went to lunch. Then, when he got back from the Potbelly and it was time to start putting the ad together, he picked up the phone and called down to security and asked for Roland.
When Roland returned to Benny’s office, he was only more than happy to be back there giving his feet a rest. “You know how many miles a day I walk around in this building?” he asked Benny. “How many?” said Benny. “I don’t know,” he said. “I never counted.” “You should get one of those pedometers,” said Benny. Two hours later they had finished the rough layout of an ad Joe Pope needed first thing in the morning. Benny’s moratorium on clicking would be over by the morning, and he could put the finishing touches on the ad then. So that’s how he did it. The whole day and not one click for Benny. Except he ruined it at a quarter to five when he allowed himself to check numbers on fantasy baseball.
“You know,” said Amber Ludwig, “I don’t find this story very amusing. What if Tom Mota comes back here and one of our security guys is inside your office putting an ad together?” she asked. “I’m so sure that makes me feel real safe, Benny.”
“Oh, Amber,” said Benny. “Tom Mota’s not coming back here.”
Suddenly Joe Pope appeared in Benny’s doorway. “Morning,” he said.
“Oh!” Amber shrieked instinctively, gripping her pregnant belly. She wasn’t showing, we shouldn’t have known the first thing about it, but we did because we knew everything. “Oh, Joe,” she cried. “You scared me!”
“Sorry,” said Joe. He stood in the doorway with his right pant leg still cuffed against the threat of grease. Joe Pope rode his bicycle into work on all but the most inclement days. Most mornings he came up the elevator like a courier with his sleek fluorescent helmet and his cuffed leg and his daypack. He walked the bike down to his office and parked it against the wall. Then he locked the front tire to the frame. Inside the office he did that, locked his bicycle, like he was beset on all sides by thieves and barbarians. That bicycle was the only personal item in Joe Pope’s office. He had no posters, postcards, doodads, snow globes, souvenirs, framed pictures, art reproductions, mementos, no humor books on the shelves and nothing to clutter his desk. He had been in that office three years, and it still looked temporary. Every day we had to wonder — who the hell was this Joe Pope, anyway? It wasn’t that we had anything against him. It was just that he was maybe an inch shorter than he should have been. He listened to weird music. We didn’t know what he did on the weekends. What sort of person showed up on Monday and had no interest in sharing what transpired during the two days of the week when one’s real life took place? His weekends were long dark shadows of mystery. In all likelihood, he spent his days off in the office, cultivating his master plan. Mondays we’d come in refreshed and unsuspecting and he would already be there, ready to spring something on us. Maybe he never left. Certainly he never came around with a coffee mug to palaver with us on a Monday morning. We didn’t judge him for that, so long as he didn’t judge us for our custom of easing into a new workweek.
When he did come around, it was only to say things like “Sorry to interrupt, Benny, but did you happen to put that ad together for me yesterday?”
“Got it right here, Joe,” trumpeted Benny, with a sly wink in our direction as he handed over Roland’s handiwork.
Joe’s sudden presence was the dissolving agent, and we picked our individual bodies up and returned to our desks, heavy and yawning. Morning was officially upon us.
Why was it so terrifying, almost like death, one morning of a hundred, to walk back to your own office and pass alone through its doorway? Why was the dread so suffocating? Most days, no problem. Work to be done. A pastry. Storm clouds out the window that looked, in their menace, sublime. But one out of a hundred mornings it was impossible to breathe. Our coffee tasted poisonous. The sight of our familiar chairs oppressed us. The invariable light was deadening.
We fought with depression. One thing or another in our lives hadn’t worked out, and for a long period of time we struggled to overcome it. We took showers sitting down and couldn’t get out of bed on weekends. Finally we consulted HR about the details of seeing a specialist, and the specialist prescribed medication. Marcia Dwyer was on Prozac. Jim Jackers was on Zoloft and something else. Dozens of others took pills all day long, which we struggled to identify, there were so many of them, in so many different colors and sizes. Janine Gorjanc was on a cocktail of several meds, including lithium. After Jessica’s death, Janine and her husband, Frank, divorced. We understood divorce to be a common repercussion of the death of a child. There was no bitterness between them, just a parting of ways. Now they each lived alone with their memories. Pictures of Frank with Jessica also hung in Janine’s office, and, to be honest, it was almost as moving to see pictures of him as it was to see all the ones of the lost girl. Frank with Jessica on his knee, Frank caught in an apron with hot mitts on his hands during some holiday — that man was as gone from the world as Jessica was. The woolly sideburns were gone and the thick black glasses were gone and he no longer had a wife or child. Spend two minutes in Janine’s office looking over those pictures and contemplating the destinies of the happy people involved, and you too would reach for one of the prescription containers scattered about the place.