Faster on My Own: Chapter 5
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The tie was too tight. It shouldn’t feel like it’s choking you. Or should it? He walked toward the row of glass doors belonging to the skyscraper that gleamed above him. He was not entering at the side of his father. Perhaps later, but for now it was clear that Mr. Williams did not trust Steven enough to lend him any spatially-implied approval. In the lobby, Steven showed his badge and walked past the same kind of man who just weeks ago would have tried to eject him or beat him with a flashlight.
The thought of fighting even a fake cop sent Steven’s hand up to his nose. A bump still protruded, but the thick, purple scab had finally disappeared. He let his hand run down the rest of his face. Smooth skin where previously scruff and hair had free reign. Every time Steven looked in the mirror since he’d shaved and gotten his hair cut– side-part, a bit short on the sides of the head– he had two thoughts: “I look way too young,” and “who’s this asshole?” He pressed the elevator button and stared at the row of mirrored doors. All would carry him to the same floor, but the question of which would take him was of momentary interest. The one all the way to the left? Maybe the right? There were four more in the center, all of which were more likely than either of those two.
He heard a ding from behind him. He hadn’t noticed those. Entering one, he rode up to the 24th floor. It was a better assignment than the basement, so Steven knew his dad wasn’t saddling him with the worst possible job to start out with: a measure of trust that Steven could work with. He just had to do the job well and seem conservative. If he did those, soon his father would, unknowingly, give him the necessary credibility to move into politics.
When he exited the elevator, he saw another wall of glass doors, behind which sat a young woman at a semi-circular desk. Was it not enough to have a straight barrier between him and another human being? Instead, someone decided that there could not be the possibility of darting around the side to find yourself in a normal conversation with another human being, unmediated by the desk and the hierarchical relationship it dictated. Steven took a deep breath and reminded himself that he needed not to get angry anymore.
The office had no smell at all. Not cleaning products, not air fresheners, not even the smell of the people in the office. He couldn’t understand how they had done it.
“Sir?” The receptionist leaned her head into his field of vision as he gazed at nothing, lost in thought.
“Yeah, sorry. I’m Steven Williams. I’m starting today.”
A false smile immediately appeared on the receptionist’s face. “Of course!” She arose with an inch-thick folder of papers in her hand. “Follow me.”
They walked down a hallway with no decorations and fluorescent lighting and emerged in a sea of cubicles. In nearly every one was a face staring directly at a computer screen with the utmost concentration. Only two or three people were even looking away, and none were doing something else. The concert of keyboards in use seemed to Steven to be no different than the sound of pickaxes and hammers, except instead of material goods, they produced something useless. Past them, the receptionist led Steven into an office door, which she shut behind him.
Across the desk sat a small, balding man who stared at Steven as he sat down. A few seconds passed and Steven felt less and less comfortable underneath the man’s gaze. Soon, he wriggled in his chair and forced himself to say, “Hi, I’m Steven.”
“First mistake. Dominance between two people is largely decided in the first ten seconds of meeting. When you spoke first, you accepted that I dominated you. Reversing that dynamic will be very difficult.” The small man propped his elbows on the desk and leaned forward. “Your father– yes, I know he’s your father– told me you don’t know anything about business. So I asked him what good you are to me. And you know what he told me?”
“I don’t know. I’ll work hard?”
“No. What do I care if you work hard? I can get ten desperate idiots in here today who work hard. No, he told me you wouldn’t be any good to me.”
“Oh.” Was his father’s way of discouraging him, of pushing him away with another’s hand?
“But he said that if you work out, he’ll be good to me. So let’s get this straight: I don’t care about you, I don’t want to do this, but when the boss gives you a chance to get in his good graces, you take it. That’s lesson 2.”
“What was lesson 1? Should I be writing these down?”
“Christ, what was lesson 1? If you can’t remember these, if they don’t immediately sear themselves into your frontal lobe, then you’re going to fail.”
Scrawling down the words “frontal lobe,” Steven said, “And that’s lesson 3, right?”
“No, that’s a promise, not a lesson. Look, we’re going to make something out of you. We’re going to toughen you up. I know you’re the fuck-up son, but you come from the same stock as your dad and your brother. Yeah, I know about your brother. Everyone does. In a month, you’ll be a killing machine. Sounds good?”
Steven finally read the nameplate on the front of the small man’s desk, Mr. Bergewicz. That didn’t help him much, as he was certain mispronouncing his new boss’s name would only get him yelled at. “Yeah, I’m in. That’s what I’m after.”
“Great. Here’s your first chance to show me what you’ve got. I’ve had this chump,” Bergewicz flipped open a file, “Stanley. That’s his last name. Robert Stanley. I’ve had him in the conference room over to the right for forty-five minutes and he doesn’t know what’s going on. You’re going to go in there and fire him.”
“Okay.” Hiring and firing power already. Not like he was hoping to join the IWW any time soon. “Why is he getting fired? Is his work bad?”
“His work is replaceable. This isn’t because he did something wrong, it’s because you need to do something right. Now get in there and fire him. Be nice, be mean, I don’t care about style. Just do it in ten minutes or less, we don’t have time to dick around.” With that, Bergewicz swiveled off to the side and returned to his computer screen, clearly done with Steven for now.
Firing someone for no reason wasn’t the first task Steven expected. He imagined Stanley leaving that day. Maybe Stanley would go home to his family and tell them the news, and they would all sit around the table wondering how they were going to keep food on the table without his income. Or maybe, Steven thought, he didn’t have a family, and this job was the one connection to the world that he had. Without it, he might jump in front of a subway train.
The conference room was beige with two windows and an oval table in the middle. Every detail was so perfectly bland that Steven couldn’t generate interest in it. Most likely it was designed this way to promote better focus at meetings. Robert Stanley snapped to attention as Steven entered. He was a pudgy man in his fifties, with a beard stretched thin over his large face.
“Hello, Mr. Stanley. Do you mind if I call you Robert?”
“Not at all, it’s an absolute pleasure to meet you Mr….” Robert’s smile radiated warmth, and Steven summoned up a weak smile to match it.
“Williams, but that’s my father. Call me Steven. I, um, there’s something I need to discuss with you.” Steven sat down at the side of the table, rather than directly opposite to Robert. He stared first at the blind-covered windows through which a few intrepid cracks of natural light fought through.
“Oh, is it time for my performance review already? I thought I had another couple months. Let me get right out ahead of you. I know I haven’t done great this year. I’ve been getting in at 9, leaving at 5, not going the extra mile.” Robert held a fist to his mouth and coughed into it. “My wife’s cancer has taken a toll on all of us. Her more than me, of course, but I’ve put everything into fighting this thing with her. That’s no excuse, I know. I’m still figuring out how to do both.”
Steven’s jaw clamped shut so tightly that he wondered which set of teeth would pulverize the other. Maybe a draw, then the gums and skull and spinal cord would go too until Steven’s body scattered to the wind, far away from this round man whose suffering Steven could only worsen. Soon he’d leave the building, misery weighing him down so he can barely walk. On his commute home, he’d contemplate steering into the barrier or oncoming traffic, but he’d never will himself to do it, to leave his wife waiting for his return, enduring her illness alone, or he’d think about the other people who could be hurt in the accident. The kindness in his heart– so evident just from one second around him– would make it home. He’d tell his wife they no longer had insurance. Surely they’d be able to get something new, but worse. Unable to find a new job, the kindness would leave him. Robert would grow bitter once his wife is only a memory and the world goes on around him, leaving him in place like a stone in the creek, eroding until there’s nothing left.
Unless he gets angry. He realizes the world has treated him unfairly. Then he’ll go out, ready to fight against the world order which used him up and tossed him aside for no reason. Even now, he could be creating the troops of the revolution. Maybe not, in Robert’s case, someone for the front line, but certainly support. Or Robert might drift towards the far-right, as disaffected white men often do, but that would just contribute to the quickening ruin of society, which was the goal.
Relieved, Steven stood up and approached the window. Firing Robert was still going to hurt him, even if it served the greater good. So it was of the utmost importance that Steven do so with tact and sensitivity. He pulled the cord on the blinds, hoping to let some light into the room, but found a thick layer of plastic which obscured the view out of the window. “Do they do this all over the building?”
Robert laughed. “Not unless every floor has a Brenda. They couldn’t figure out why she was staring out of the window during meetings. Maybe she’s bored, maybe she’s thinking about jumping out of it, no one knows. So they sealed it right up and here we are.”
“I see.” Steven returned to the table. He knocked against it a couple times.
After a minute of silence, Robert said, “So, are we going to discuss my performance? I like a good sit down as much as anybody, but I have work to do.”
“You’re fired.” That was not how Steven wanted to say it. All his instincts told him to build up to it gently and explain why, but Steven didn’t know how to say it gently and knew there was no reason why Robert was being fired. So all that left was the fact of it.
“I’m fired. I’m fired? Why?”
Surely he would want to know that it wasn’t his fault. Knowing that might even push him to condemn the entire system that allowed his livelihood to be pried away from him for no reason. “It’s just bad luck. See, today’s my first day and they wanted me to fire someone to prove that I can do the job. So your work was, you know, fine. I mean, not great, or they wouldn’t have picked you. But, fine. I’m sorry, I know this is a tough break.”
Robert slammed his fists against the table. “You’re firing me as some kind of fucking test? What kind of piece of shit are you that would do that?”
Scooting his chair back with desperate little kicks, Steven tried to escape the deep-set eyes that glared at him across the table. “It’s hard to explain, and I know this isn’t fair. But believe me, it’s for the greater good.”
Robert tipped over his chair and shoved his middle finger in Steven’s face. “You’re lucky I don’t punch you in that soft little face of yours. This whole god damn company can eat shit.” He walked out the door and screamed something at Bergewicz’s office, though Steven could not decipher the exact words. They were likely unflattering. Steven emerged from the conference room to see that Robert had made it halfway to the elevator, with plants and coffee cups littering the floor in his wake. Being hated like that felt different from the way cops hated him in his old life. Steven had lived for inciting that rage, but now he just felt like he had failed Robert. A hand clasped Steven’s shoulder. Bergewicz’s acne scar-ridden face appeared in Steven’s peripheral vision.
“Good work. Next time, try not to send the guy on a rampage. But, you fired him and your dad didn’t think you’d have the mettle to do that. So now, I can work with you.”
Bergewicz guided Steven back into his office, and shut the door, leaving behind two dozen confused office workers, who just saw the nicest man they’d ever met storm out.