The Cubicle Next Door (8 page)

He pulled at it and the seat shot back. He folded his arms behind his head and crossed his feet. “Not so bad at the right angle. You might want to go through Garden of the Gods. The interstate’s backed up.”

“Can’t. It’s not open. Not until eight.” I eyed the interstate that ran above us. No one was moving. At least not in the direction we wanted to go. “We’ll go through town.”

I backtracked. Drove under the interstate on Cimarron. Turned north onto Nevada. Passed tree-populated Acacia Park, rapidly approaching the statue of General Palmer that sat in the middle of the road. No one ever quite knew for certain how to drive around him.

General Palmer is the reason Colorado Springs maintains its small-town mentality. It has more than 500,000 people, but it cannot figure out what to do about General Palmer and his trusty horse. Local wisdom held that the founder of Colorado Springs deserved a lovely, unobstructed view of Pikes Peak. To place him anywhere else would diminish his stature.

Well, he was dead. His stature has been diminishing for nearly a hundred years.

The answer, of course, was obvious. Move him across the road to Acacia Park. Give him his own little square of concrete so he didn’t have to take up ours. As it is, the general causes untold traffic accidents each year. Mostly caused by drivers who are unable to decide, until the last minute, how to navigate around him.

When the city finally does something about the general, when it deals with the unreasonable influence a long-absent person has wielded over the simple interchanges of daily life, then the city will be well and truly ready to deal with growth. As it is, it remains unwilling to address serious problems like water, traffic, and infrastructure. Until it does, it may grow like a weed, but it will never mature. Never offer to its citizens all it could.

I’d blog about it, but then I’d give myself away. If anyone were looking.

“Isn’t Poor Richard’s around here somewhere?”

“The bookstore? It’s one corner over. Tejon and Platte.”

“Does it still have the restaurant? And live music?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I used to go there with a roommate. We had these great wigs. Blond, shoulder-length surfer-style. The girls from Colorado College would at least talk to us when we were wearing wigs.”

“Versus…?”

“If we came as cadets.”

No surprise there. By some twist of fate, one of the most liberal colleges in the country, Colorado College, shared the same location as the Air Force Academy, one of the most conservative. “Great guy, your roommate.”

“Oh, yeah. We used to…we’d go to Garden of the Gods all the time. We’d climb to the top of South Gateway Rock, the first one you see as you drive into the park, early on Saturday mornings when nobody was around. We’d rappel halfway down, then when tourists started driving through, we’d dangle there and scream for help. When they’d started panicking, we’d climb back up and drop down the other side.”

“I didn’t think you could climb in the park.”

“You can if you register.”

“You probably gave someone a heart attack.”

“It was all in fun.”

“Maybe for you.”

We drove through the Colorado College campus. Passed the east side of Shove Chapel. It would have looked more at home in a Crusader’s village with its small narrow windows and austere facade.

Joe sat up. Partially. “I always loved this campus. It’s pretty.”

It was pretty. It had grace and elegance. Century-old trees. Almost everything the Academy lacked. Except, perhaps, moral fortitude.

We made it to the Academy by 7:30. Not that anyone cared. New instructor training would start on 10 July. And until then, everyone who wanted to take leave had been encouraged to do so.

I worked on a program for online test taking and homework. I was hoping to have it up and running so it could be beta tested before classes started. It was a simple multiple-choice format. The challenge lay in security issues. How to ensure Cadet A didn’t sign in as Cadet B. How to ensure answers couldn’t be changed.

This experiment would be the precursor to online essay test taking and term paper submission. Most of the department’s tests, even at the lower levels, were taken in essay format. By having cadets submit their tests online, we were hoping to lessen the temptation for cheating. And the impact of hundreds of paper copies on the environment.

I worked on it through lunch, waving Joe off when he tried to convince me to go eat with him.

I fiddled with fonts and formats. Debated the error messages. Was it better to remind cadets to select from answers (a)–(e) or was it better just to ignore the smart alecks if they tried to enter answers like (?) or (#%$)? Should the program report the scores to the cadets immediately, or should it reveal the result to the instructors’ eyes only?

I ran through the test at least 20 times that afternoon. Made note of the things I needed to rework or rethink, including whether or not to have music from Beethoven’s Fifth play whenever someone chose the wrong answer. I could picture it: The text from the question slowly dissolving into granular nothingness while the chords of the symphony pounded with despair, the word “WRONG” accompanying each beat. For a right answer? The Hallelujah Chorus?

Maybe not.

“You almost done?” His voice came from above me.

Startled, I looked up.

I found him staring down at me from over the cubicle wall. He grinned. “I wish I had your concentration.”

“Are you…standing on your desk?”

“Yeah. I would’ve rolled around and come to the front door, but the wheels of my chair always get stuck in the carpet. Anyway, I’d like to pick the SUV up before they close if you don’t mind.”

I glanced at the computer clock. It was already quarter to five. “What time do they close?”

“Five thirty.”

“Let’s go.” I saved everything and then logged off the network. “Did you log off?”

“Nope. It’ll do it for me in…what? Twenty minutes?”

“You can never be too careful.”

“Or too anal. How about this? I’ll do the lazy man’s log off.”

I walked around the cubicle wall just in time to see him turn off the power to his monitor.

“Positive points for energy conservation. Negative points for poor security.”

“That’s me. An all-around well-balanced kind of guy.”

I could think of a couple of other descriptions for him.

Joe folded himself into my car and then turned on the radio. “What is this? NPR?” He sent the dial off in the other direction before I could respond. Tuned into a song wailing about some paradise city. Started singing along.

I glanced over at him.

He was concentrating on playing an air guitar; concentrating so hard his eyes were shut tight from the extraordinary effort it must have required. He popped an eye open. “Why aren’t you singing? This is a classic.”

“I don’t know this one.” Or any other “classic” song for that matter. How do you fit in with your peers when you don’t have a mother? There’s a whole generation of influence missing in your life. At home, there’s not a generation gap, there’s a chasm. A gaping canyon that can never be spanned. Classic rock to my friends had been ’50s music. Classic rock to Grandmother was something that has yet to be invented. Swing is as down as she gets. Glenn Miller is her favorite.

We sped down the interstate, just ahead of rush hour traffic, and made it to the dealership in about 20 minutes.

Joe hopped out of the car and went inside to the office.

I turned the radio back to NPR.

A minute later he stepped out of the door and gave me a wave. My signal to leave.

I rolled up to the garage about 15 minutes later.

Got out to push up the door.

As I got in the car and shut the car door, I was assaulted by the scent of Joe. A familiar scent that immediately brought to mind our cubicle.

I recognized the slightest hint of lavender. A suggestion of fir. Something powerful and…masculine. And something else. Some underlying note. Of cleanliness.

Something clean.

And pure.

THE CUBICLE NEXT DOOR BLOG

What’s wrong with me?

I’m worse than a shark.

I can smell your cologne from 100 yards away.

And it lingers in my senses, long after you are gone. Lingers in your cubicle like a forlorn ghost.

Posted on June 22 in
The Cubicle Next Door | Permalink

Comments

Maybe you’re allergic to colognes and perfumes.

Posted by:
justluvmyjob | June 23 at 01:52 AM

Sounds like maybe those cubicle walls are blocking the circulation of air through the office. Is there a window you could open or something?

Posted by:
megluvsphysics | June 23 at 05:31 PM

Are you sure it’s not lingering in your heart?

Posted by:
philosophie | June 23 at 11:27 PM

Eight

T
he next day Joe came into work with a request. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Maybe.”

“Do you go to church?”

“Hypothetically.”

There was silence, a rolling of wheels across his floor mat, and then a grunt as they hit the resistance of the carpet. Next, the sound of papers being shoved across a desk. A moment later his head appeared above the wall. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I haven’t found one yet.”

“And you’ve been here…?”

“Ten years.”

“I thought you’d lived here all your life.”

“The church I went to before college was great. But when I came back, after Grandmother broke her hip, it had gone weirdo.”

“Where’d you go to school?”

“East Coast. MIT.”

“I had a roommate named Tim once who loved MIT T-shirts. Whenever he looked in a mirror, it said ‘TIM.’”

“I suppose it’s better than wearing a University of Portland T-shirt.”

He snickered. “Computers?”

I nodded. “It wasn’t fuzzy studies.”

“Fuzzy?”

“In computers, things either work or they don’t. And if they don’t, there’s a reason. It’s because you, the person, have done something wrong. In fuzzy studies, from what I remember, almost anything can be right or wrong, depending on what sort of proof you can find.”

“Or how well you can support your opinion. I guess you’re right. But at least I could always bluff my way through papers. Bet you couldn’t.”

“I didn’t have papers. At least not as many as you probably did. I had projects.”

“Lucky you. So you haven’t looked for another one?”

Another one what? I was starting to get confused. “Church? Oh, I’ve looked…”

“Well, I’m looking too, so let’s look together.”

“It’s not—”

“I’ll pick you up at 7:45 on Sunday.”

I debated telling him to count me out. But he was so confident, so certain he would actually find one, I decided I wanted to be around when the disillusionment set in. “The early services usually start at eight thirty or nine.”

“Not for church. For breakfast. We’ll do church after.”

“What if I had other plans?”

“At seven forty-five on Sunday?”

“Then I’ll pick you up. We’ll save at least a gallon of gas if I drive.”

Grandmother came home that evening humming a Glenn Miller song. She paused when she saw me. “How was your day?”

“Fine. I’m going to church with Joe on Sunday, just in case I forget to tell you.”

“Oh. Such a nice boy, that poor lieutenant colonel of yours.”

“On his salary? Plus flight pay? He’s not poor. And he’s not my lieutenant colonel.” He’s not even that nice. Not really. “Why are you in such a good mood?”

She turned toward me, smiling. Her eyes were actually sparkling. “Guess.”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

“Someone looked at my Rossis.”

A miracle. “Looked at them or asked about them and touched them?”

“Touched them and took them off the rack.”

“Wow.”

“He said he’d think about them. Come back tomorrow.”

I lifted an eyebrow. We’d both worked in the shop long enough to realize if you let a customer leave without buying anything, they’d rarely come back. The chances of that happening bordered on never.

Grandmother looked at me with defiance glinting in her eyes. “I’m only telling you what he said.”

I hoped he would. I really hoped so.

She was still humming as she washed the dishes.

Later that night, the ladies came over for poker. So did Joe.

I went upstairs and surfed the Internet. Hung out on the message boards for a while. Visited some chat rooms. Posted a blog.

On Sunday, I picked Joe up at 7:45. He tucked himself into the car. His head hit the roof whenever we went over a bump.

We ate breakfast at the Waffle House. And then we went to a church someone had told him about.

Here’s the deal with me and God. My mother was so screwed up that in most cases I tried to do the exact opposite of what she did. I figured that strategy just might give me a fighting chance at Normal Life. Whatever that is. Assuming she’d converted to Hinduism, I took the opposite approach. She had many gods and goddesses; I chose just one. The one who said he was The One. Based on worldviews alone, there was no chance I would ever replicate her life.

At least not in my lifetime.

Joe gave me the thumbs-up that Sunday morning as the pastor began to preach.

I smiled back. No point in dimming his enthusiasm so early in the day.

He wasn’t quite so chipper after it was all over. And I mean
all
of it.

The parade of singers and musicians. The loud music. The loud preaching.

“Think it would be…any different if we came again next week?”

“Do you?”

He grinned. Dimples flashed. “No. One down, tons left to go. We’ll find one.”

I just took a deep breath. Kept on driving.

Ignorance is the confidence of fools.

As we exited onto Highway 24, I saw Joe slouch farther down into his seat and lean forward to peer out the windshield. “Have you ever hiked the Incline?”