The Cubicle Next Door (2 page)

Back behind the academic area, beyond the point where the 17 spires of the Academy Chapel pricked the sky, the foothills broke like rows of waves against the horizon. Their undulations were slow and lazy, like the motion of a gentle ocean.

The spectrum of the Colorado summer ran from the green-golds of earth and grass to the purpled hues of the mountains and the dazzling blue of the expansive sky.

I walked down toward the Aero Lab, leaned against the wall separating it from the wilds below, and was doused with sunshine. I watched the beginnings of clouds sneak across the sky, heading out toward the freedom of the open plains. They were starting to form into cute cotton ball puffs. Over the course of the next hour, I knew the random dots would congregate and associate to form drifts. By noon I would be witnessing the birth of thunderheads. Like clockwork they would gather strength and advance slowly out over town and then onto the plains. And if the weather reports held true, by the time I got ready to log off my computer, the afternoon clouds would have followed like a blanket, as if someone were spreading cotton candy over the sky.

I yawned. Stretched. Took a deep breath. Then I turned around and went inside.

If I were going to be subdivided, then I was going to draw the new boundaries. Two-thirds of the space for me and one-third of the space for Lt. Col. Gallagher. That seemed reasonable. Of course, that meant the door to the office would be on my side of the cubicle, but then I’d be able to see everyone who came in. On the other hand, they would also be able to see me. And only me. But that way, we could all just pretend the lieutenant colonel didn’t exist.

While the lieutenants installed the new cubicle walls, I stayed busy rearranging my things. If I wasn’t going to be allowed to keep my office, then the department was not going to be allowed to keep its stuff in my space.

“Which of you is the equipment custodian?”

There was a pause in the rhythm of the work. A silence of hesitation. And then an answer. “Me.”

I rolled my eyes as I threw yet another outdated version of Microsoft Office onto a pile off to my right. Disks, books, box, and all. It hit the top and then skidded down to the bottom, an avalanche of computer disks following the trail it had blazed. “Me who?” The lieutenants had already installed half of the panels, and now they were hiding behind them.

A scuffing of combat boots along carpet, a metallic clink, a loud “Ow,” and my inventory guy emerged from the new cubicle. Oh. Too bad. He was the one I liked best. Maybe I’d have to take him out to lunch. If he’d ever speak to me again.

“I have a project for you,” I said, trying to smile, trying to think of how to make it sound enticing, but by then he’d already seen the pile of odds and ends I had accumulated. Cassette tape players, broken VCRs, an abandoned Dictaphone hemorrhaging wires. An industrial strength glue gun that had nearly been consumed by dried droplets of its own glue. A toaster oven. A microwave. “All of those need to be turned in.”

Turned in. Such an innocent phrase, but one which meant many hours of tedious paperwork and coordination between three different offices to delete the items from the department’s inventory.

His eyes opened wide, his mouth clamped shut, and his face turned red. One of the best and the brightest. Those are the kind of cadets they have at the Academy. For being a brand spanking new lieutenant, he was catching on quickly. He retreated behind the panels.

They banged and pushed and shoved for another half hour before they left.

So that’s how I got subdivided. And how I got reorganized. And how, the next week, I came to be tacking up a giant poster of Che Guevara on my side of the cubicle wall in front of my desk. I had a soft spot in my heart for that bearded, beret-topped, Marxist Cuban guerilla leader. I’d probably get a black spot on my personnel folder; no chance at a secret clearance for me.

Too bad.

I didn’t plan on the poster taking up permanent residence. I’d already decided to use the space as a soapbox for my struggle against the Establishment. I had the rotation schedule filed on my Palm. Next month I would feature a poster with a quote about ineptitude. The month after, demotivation. I’d found a great website called despair.com a few months ago while I was kicking around on the Internet at home.

Because I never do that at work.

Anyway, I figured that for a couple of weeks I could count on Che to make a statement about the communal sharing of property and which class of citizenry gets called upon to do all the sharing.

Call me a subversive. Call me an adolescent. One thing I’d learned after working for the government for ten years: If you don’t say it when you feel it, you burn out or blow up.

“Nice poster. How old are you? Nineteen?”

Okay, that scared me, a voice coming out of nowhere, interrupting my thoughts. I took the remaining thumbtack from between my teeth and pushed it through a corner of the poster and into the cubicle wall. Leaned back and made sure it was straight. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s not nice to sneak up on people?” I slid off my desk and turned around. “I’m thirty-one.”

The voice belonged to a Caucasian male, 6′1,″ pilot. After working with the military for a decade, there are things you can tell just by looking. Who is and who is not a pilot is one of them. And it has nothing to do with the uniform because this guy wasn’t even wearing one. He had on Levi’s that looked as old as mine and a faded blue polo shirt. It was something about the way pilots stand. And the way they take in information. As if they’re the ones who make all the decisions. It’s not a fact until they decide it’s a fact. Confident at best; cocky at worst. Pilots have to work extra hard to overcome my initial prejudices.

Usually, they don’t succeed.

“Thirty-one? Are you sure?” He smiled. Teeth together. Gleaming. A smile so big his grin was lopsided. He was one of those 110 percent guys, smiling so hard it looked as though his nice solid jaw was clenched. Either that, or he was trying really hard not to laugh.

I couldn’t blame him for asking the question. There was no uniform for civilians at the Air Force Academy, and keeping with Colorado culture, most of us were casual. Some of us, to a fault. I was wearing my standard summer uniform: jeans, T-shirt, and Converse low-tops. My standard winter uniform was a variation on that theme: jeans, T-shirt, wool sweater, and Converse low-tops. I buy Levi’s 501s and shrink them to fit. And I buy men’s extra large sweaters. I pick them up at thrift stores. Shetland wool are my favorites. No patterns, just solid colors. When I get them home, I throw them in the washing machine and shrink them too. Maybe some of them have shorter sleeves than wrist-length, but if you shove your sleeves up anyway, what does it matter?

Levi’s, shrunken sweaters, and colorful Converse shoes. Did you know you can throw Converse low-tops in the washing machine too? That’s why I buy them. I have them in every solid color ever made, plus the flame print. I couldn’t resist. Converse shoes are my thing.

And they were my thing long before they became everybody else’s thing.

Along with snide remarks and a dry sense of humor.

I bent down, picked up my backpack from under the desk, and grabbed my wallet. I fished out my driver’s license and handed it to him.

He looked at it. Looked at me. Looked at the license again. “Jackie Pert Harrison. After Kennedy?”

“After Gleason.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Was that nice?”

“No.” But then leaving the decision of naming me up to Grandmother’s best friend was not nice either. Adele’s all-time favorite TV show was
The Honeymooners
. But my name had turned out to be a misnomer. Jackie Gleason was round and jolly. I am not, thank you, God. I’m small, dark, and intense. Which is appealing to trolls. And maybe muskrats.

“Pert, huh?” He handed it back to me with a shadow of that dazzling grin. Then he pulled his wallet out of his jeans and handed his license to me. It was of interest mostly because I’d never seen a driver’s license from Idaho before. Potato boy. Figured. I almost forgot to look at his name before I handed it back. Glad I didn’t. “Joseph Gallagher. You’re Lt. Col. Gallagher.”

Life as I had known it had ended. This was him. In the flesh.

His plane hadn’t gone down on the way to Colorado Springs; his car hadn’t been driven off the road. He hadn’t gotten hit by a bus. How come God never answers my prayers? Isn’t he supposed to know the thoughts we think in private?

He grinned again. Were those dimples? “I’m Joe. Thirty-seven.” Joe, age 37, had clear blue eyes and curly auburn hair, cut Air Force short on the sides but left long enough on top to curl. See, that was another pilot thing. Pilots follow most of the rules most of the time, but in letter only. Never in spirit.

“Well, Joe, good for you. Your office is over there. On the other side of the wall.”

“Hey. If you like Che, do you salsa?”

“Dance? No.” Not unless someone’s holding a gun to my head.

“Cuban food?”

“French.”

“Cigars?”

“Only if you want it stuffed into your nostril.”

“So you’re one of those trendy Che fans?”

“No, I’m one of those political Che fans. I’m protesting the elitist distribution of resources. At least the kind that takes all its resources from the most impoverished of society.”

His face went blank. He blinked. Thank goodness. It was a little unnerving to be stared at. “What elite distribution of resources?”

“The cubicles. This used to be an office and it used to all be mine.”

“Oh.” At least he didn’t seem too put out. “So how did a nice communist girl like you end up working in a place like this?”

I blushed. Sat down in my chair. “Consider me a communist mercenary.”

“Which is also an ideological impossibility. Either you’re lying about being a communist or lying about being a mercenary.”

“How would you know?”

“I did my graduate studies in Russian history.”

“Oh. Well…I never said I was a communist.”

“Ah.” He turned around and walked over to his side of our space. I heard him opening and closing the drawers of his desk. “What do you have to do to get a decent pen around here?”

“Bring it from home.”

I heard a snicker and looked over to find his face peering at me from around the side of the wall. “Spoken like a true government worker. As good a reason to foment revolution as I’ve ever heard.”

Foment? He was a pilot, wasn’t he? Pilots weren’t smart enough to go around talking about “fomenting” revolutions.

He emerged from his cubicle and stood close to my chair. Too close. The hair on the back of my neck started to prickle. He glanced at his watch. “Hey, time for lunch. Let’s go.”

“I don’t normally do lunch.”

“And you don’t normally have to share your cubicle—office—either, right? So it’s my treat.”

And before I could say yes or no, I found myself outside in the middle of the terrazzo.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in uniform to be out here?”

He gave me a curious look. “I’m with you.”

True.

The only people allowed on the terrazzo, the quadrangle bordered by the chapel to the west, Vandenberg Hall to the north, Sijan and Mitchell Halls to the south, and the academic areas to the east, were cadets and other military and civilians employed in that area of the base. I carried my civilian ID and Proximity card around my neck at all times.

They used to allow almost anyone on the terrazzo as long as they were escorted by a cadet, but 9/11 changed everything. So while Joe in uniform might have been welcomed to walk where he pleased, Joe in jeans was getting a few glances.

Joe paused once we stepped out of the shadow of Fairchild, his eyes sweeping across the static aircraft crouching at the four corners of the terrazzo. “The F-16, the F-105, F-15, and the—”

“F-4 Phantom.”

“You know your planes.”

Only that one. The one my father flew.

We walked north, past the airplane displays. We began the turn toward the edge of Harmon Hall’s courtyard, but then Joe stopped and turned toward the chapel. “Just a second.”

I followed behind him as he walked toward the chapel wall.

“Last time I was here, my class crest was front and center.” The lower chapel wall displays the crest of each graduating class. The current senior class, the firsties, have their crest displayed in the middle.

“You haven’t been back since you graduated?”

“It took a couple years after graduation for my guts to stop twisting when I thought of this place.”

“So which one is yours?”

Joe pointed. “Class of ’91. Bold Gold.
Munus Primo, Semper Integritas
. Duty first, integrity always.” He stood there for a minute, staring at the crest, and then he turned and gestured toward Harmon Hall with his chin. “That was a place I never wanted to visit if I could help it. It was never a good thing to be called up to the superintendent’s office.”

It was a place I never wanted to visit if I could help it, either. Harmon Hall meant travel orders and travel vouchers. And since Estelle was so extraordinarily busy, I usually got to deliver them, by hand, to the travel office. Not, of course, that it couldn’t be routed through the Academy mail system, but somehow officers had a habit of requesting travel orders at the very last minute.

We approached the back of Arnold Hall. I held my Prox card up to the automatic card reader. It clicked and I pushed the fence open. Repeated the procedure to open the door into the building.

We walked past the box office for the Academy theater, through a dining area, and into the food court.

“What sounds good? Taco Bell?” Joe had me standing in line before I’d even considered Subway or Anthony’s Pizza.

He ordered some combination of tacos too numerous to count. I cast a longing glance at the other restaurants before ordering the latest greatest item being advertised.

I added a couple of packets of the hottest of the hot sauces to my tray.

He picked up a couple of straws and lids.

“Could you put those back?”

Joe turned toward me. “Did you pick up some already?”