Anyway, Karen Woo. Did we dislike her because we were racists, because we were misogynists, because her “initiative” rankled and her ambition was so bald, because she wore her senior title like a flamboyant ring, or because she was who she was and we were forced by fate to be around her all the time? Our diversity pretty much guaranteed it was a combination of all of the above.
“I think the problem I’m having with this project, Joe,” said Benny, astraddle a sofa arm, “is knowing the fundamental approach we should be taking here. Is this just a benign reminder that breast cancer research needs money, or do we want to kick some ass à la Karen’s dead relatives there and get people to send checks overnight?”
“Maybe somewhere in between,” Joe answered, after a moment’s thought. “That’s not to rule these out, Karen. I like them. Let’s just have some of us go in one direction and the rest of us go in the other.”
We discussed print dates, who the project services people would be, and then we broke into teams. Joe was the first to stand. Just before leaving he announced that we would not be showing finished concepts to Lynn; we would be showing them to him.
We all wanted to know how come. Joe replied that it was because Lynn would be out of the office for the rest of the week.
“The rest of the week?” said Benny. “Is she on vacation?”
“I don’t know,” said Joe.
But he did know. He knew just as we knew that she was in surgery that day and would be in recovery when the concepts were due — the difference being that he probably got his information straight from Lynn, whereas we had to get ours from other sources. We never disliked Joe more than when he had information that we had, too, which he then refused to tell us.
“CAN WE PLEASE STOP talking about Joe Pope for two minutes?” asked Amber Ludwig when Joe had left the couches after the double meeting. We had stuck around to discuss the fact that we knew what he didn’t think we knew and how annoying that was.
“What should we be talking about, Amber?” asked Larry. “Karen’s dead people?”
“They’re called Loved Ones, Larry.”
Amber was, we all knew, preoccupied by something that had come to light just last week, when Lynn Mason received a call from Tom Mota’s ex-wife informing her that Tom had apparently dropped out of sight.
Barbara, the ex-wife, had received some curious communications — voice mails, e-mails, handwritten letters — full of quotations from various sources: the Bible, Emerson, Karl Marx, The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm, but also, disconcertingly, The Anarchist’s Philosophy, a McLenox publication. Amber looked on the McLenox website and discovered they brought out such titles as Hiding Places Both Underwater and Underground and How to Make a Fake Birth Certificate on Your Home Computer.
Tom’s messages to his wife were oddly lucid arguments for correcting the awful predicament of an individual who found himself stuck in a rut, with many allusions to love, compassion, tenderness, humility, and honesty, along with some not-so-lucid references to doing something that would “shock the world,” as he put it, that would make his name go down in history. “‘All history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons,’” quoted Tom in an e-mail that had, by three o’clock the previous Friday afternoon, been forwarded to everyone in the office. “Barbara,” it concluded, “you laugh, but I intend to be one of those persons.”
Barbara called Lynn to find out if anyone else had heard from Tom. “And I guess to sort of warn you,” Barbara added. “I hate to put it that way, because I never used to think of him like that. But then he shows up at the house with a baseball bat and destroys everything in sight, which causes you to think, maybe I never really knew this person. I didn’t know him then and I don’t know what he’s capable of now, and I don’t really want to stick around to find out.”
“I can’t say I blame you,” Lynn replied.
“So I’m calling just to say that I’ve been trying to get in touch with him, just to make sure. . you know. But. . and I don’t want you to think he’s going to do anything. . unexpected. I just thought I should let you know I can’t find him.”
“I appreciate the call,” said Lynn.
She got off the phone and called Mike Boroshansky, the South Side Pole in charge of building security. Mike let everyone on security detail know about the possible situation. They taped a picture of Tom to the security desk in the lobby, and during the day, Benny’s friend Roland compared it with visitors coming in through the revolving doors, and at night, the other security guard did the same.
We alone had perspective. Tom Mota was not going to do anything crazy. He was crazy, but he wasn’t crazy. We couldn’t believe how worried they were. Posting a picture of Tom? Everyone knew that was nuts.
Everyone except Amber Ludwig, who could remember with characteristic anxiety Tom Mota after he’d had two martinis at lunch. How rare it was for anyone to have a martini at lunch anymore. To watch Tom have two, it was a pure delight. “What has happened to America,” he would ask, and then stop himself. “Hey, I’m talking here.” We had to halt our conversations and pay attention to him. “What has happened to America,” he continued, “that the two-martini lunch has been replaced by this, this. .” He gazed at us with disdainful shakes of his bulldog’s head. “. . this boothful of pansies, all dressed up in your khakis and sipping the same iced tea? Huh?” he said. “What has happened?” He genuinely wanted to know. “Didn’t General Motors,” he continued, lifting the new martini in the air delicately, so as not to spill, “IBM, and Madison Avenue establish postwar American might upon the two-martini lunch?”
It was only the beginning of the vodka talking in him. “Cheers,” he said. “Here’s to your Dockers and your Windbreakers.” He reached out for the glass with his full, flushed lips while trying to hold the stem steady in his hand.
After returning to the office on those days, in the dull hours from two to five, we never knew what to expect from him. Sometimes he would nap in a stall in the men’s room. Sometimes he would stand on his desk in his socks and remove the panels of fluorescent lighting from his ceiling. Passing by, we’d inquire just what he was doing up there. “Why don’t you go fuck your own asshole?” he’d suggest. That was always lovely. But it wasn’t the behavior of a madman, in our opinion. He was someone inconsolably trapped and going stir-crazy, aggressive and in need of release, which was, after all, the reason for the two-martini lunch. We spent a lot of time talking about how the job and the divorce were turning Tom Mota into an alcoholic.