Lighter

It’s easy to get into offices when you are me, even offices with swipe-card security. I just wait for the next employee to swipe, then grab the door and step in behind him. The receptionist with heavy bangs and too much makeup glances at him and not me, and I make my way to the throbbing heart of the office.

Last time I was here I went right, into the conference like something out of a movie, with deep leather chairs, a long, polished mahogany table, and portraits of old white men all over the walls. This time I turn left to a giant room filled with long tables, here and there divided into mini-lounges by strategically placed plants and shelving units, at which people half my age are tapping away at laptops. Everywhere is furnished with chairs in aquamarine and gold and white, all colors I hate.

They are all here: Zig Zag and Thin Man and Bright Eyes, Gray Suit and Athlete and Blond Highlights, scattered about this testament to open offices. I feel the thrill of the voyeur, except without the maybe-getting-caught part. Oh Natalie, what a birthday present!

I cruise over to see what Gray Suit is doing--she’s the one who had asked how are leaders made and had gone right back to pecking away on her laptop. I peek over her shoulder as she’s logging into Instagram, and I note the password for later misuse. Pics of her at the beach, showing off a decent body badly served by her current ill-fitting outfit. All of her followers seem to look like her. I think of the terrible images I can upload with that stolen password--people fucking each other, people killing dogs, people fucking dogs--and I vow to find those images, later. Meanwhile, my stomach thanks me for skipping lunch.

Next is Thin Man. Where do you see yourself in five years, he’d said, with barely concealed contempt. Still in this interview is the answer I'd wanted to give but didn’t. Contempt had been replaced by a slightly manic look--jonesing for a cigarette, or a drink? The latter, I decided; he had the faint smell of beer that no shower could dispel. Jeff had been an alcoholic, and around lunchtime he’d get jittery, if he were dry. One of many hard lessons I had from him. I dislike the reminder and move on. Thin Man wasn’t my real target, anyway.

***

I stationed myself in the food court to wait for Natalie, whom I knew would want the news. She is one of those people for whom everything works out. When her car breaks down, she always locates a Good Samaritan. When the ATM is out of twenties, she knows just where to break the fifty. When it rains, she finds an umbrella in her car.. I admire and occasionally resent Natalie.

She showed up just before twelve, not looking as if she just emerged from the steam-bath weather that left me smelling like the inside of a sneaker. “Girl, you eat early,” she told me as she plopped her bag on the table. “I had to skip dinner yesterday to even think about lunch before one.” She took a chair and pushed back her explosion of wavy brown hair. “How did it go?”

“I don’t want to even talk about it--that’s how it went,” I grumped, luxuriating in self-pity. Natalie raised an eyebrow to acknowledge my luxury, which was what I needed to break out of it. She knew me too well for bullshit--this last year particularly. The food court was getting more crowded, people spilling through the glass doors and streaming towards Chipotle or The Hoagie King or wherever. 

“From the way you look, honey, I'd say you’ve had quite the day already.” From anyone else I’d have taken that badly, but Natalie had seen me at my worst. 

“They looked at me like--” I bite off they know but I’ll bet Natalie hears anyway. “I can’t believe they even brought me in for an interview.” I gave Natalie the story in lurid detail. “I get that I’m older than any two of them put together, but I don’t see what I did to deserve that kind of treatment.”

“Nothing,” Natalie said briefly. She considered one chipped nail--red giving way to fingernail color. “Honey, they weren’t thinking of you at all.”

“Don’t they hate themselves?” I had that feeling, something hot and heavy and helpless, sloshing around in my stomach. 

“Not if they never consider what they’re doing.” She leaned forward. “We’ve talked about this before. Stop giving these people rent-free space in your head, darling, because right now that’s the only place they are living.” I must have looked like doom, because she eyed me speculatively. Then she rummaged in her bag and produced a plastic ball, flattened on the bottom, along with a small candle and a cigarette lighter. 

“Why are you still carrying a lighter?” The look I got was not the usual Natalie. For all we’ve been through, Natalie can occasionally be opaque to me. 

“I am always able to produce fire.” She lifted the top of the ball to reveal a cupcake within, frosted with chocolate and flecked with purple and yellow, my favorite colors. “Early birthday. You have my permission to celebrate now.”

“Natalie, you’ll set off the sprinklers!” I gestured vaguely upward, but I wanted to hug her. My last actual birthday we’d celebrated at my hospital bed.

“Won’t happen,” she replied, plugging the candle right into the wrinkled-satin surface of the cupcake. She brought in the lighter and flame sprang obligingly to life. “Make a wish, you old queen,” but Natalie fixed me with a stare at odds with the familiar joke. The flame seemed to dance right between her eyes, which reflected nothing. The rejoinder died in my throat, and I knew only the truth would do. But what truth? I consulted my hot, heavy stomach and I knew.

“I wish I could see what they’re hiding. All of it.” Natalie’s never cracked a smile, and she flicked her eyes towards the candle. I blew the flame out.

Natalie stood and picked up her bag. “I think you have something to do,” she said, and strode away into the growing lunchtime crowd.

***

I swing by Zig Zag’s section in time to catch her on the phone, speaking so quietly that I have to nearly climb on to her lap to hear. I hesitate, then remember So tell us about the you that exists outside of this interview?  I had wanted to answer I’m actually a tall Asian woman. Regarding her artfully crooked hair part, I am sure she knows how to fold a fitted sheet, and looks forward to the experience. She read that question in some HR book and that’s enough for me to hate her, so I lean in--she’s arguing with what must be an insurance company over an oncologist’s bill. I draw back and hurry away. If I hear that conversation I will stop hating her.

I approach Blond Highlights with relish, and up close I see how young he is, Barely old enough to beat up his first girlfriend. Or boyfriend? No, he’d never known discrimination, unless he had kickd out of the Society of People Who Know Other Human Beings exist. But aren’t you actually more of a trainer than an instructional designer, he had said in that tone particular to young men who’ve never been sick, injured, or unlucky. After that he’d slowly slid my resume away from him, not even bothering to look away. 

He’s got coffee in a recycled paper cup and is looking at a spreadsheet--over his shoulder I see bar graphs and pie charts. Laughter breaks out from the table behind him, and when he turns to look, I give the cup a swat. Coffee splatters all over his his keyboard. Hopefully ruining it. I step away, feeling that heaviness in my stomach. I must be nervous about Natalie’s little gift wearing off. More laughter rings up towards the ceiling, and Highlights turns back to the mess, the back of his neck red. I wonder how expensive that computer is.

My quarry is at the end of the office, looking as yummy as before. He had mostly slept through my interview, after exchanging pitying glances with Thin Man. I had hated him for that while still wanting to get into his pants, which made me hate him more. Before I can get close, Athlete rises from his chair and crosses the office, and I fall in behind. View’s just as good from back here. He turns towards the restroom and I smile tightly. Gay men learn fast how to not even appear to peek in the bathroom, but today I would shed that protective habit. Athlete was mine to ogle, just as I had been his to ignore. Let him ignore this.

I follow him in, and he heads towards the first stall. I make to take the second, to maybe stand on the toilet and peek over the divider, but he’s not done. He moves along the stalls, checking each one to ensure they are empty. He thinks he’s alone, and he takes the stall furthest from the door. I duck into the next and lift the seat so I can stand on the porcelain. I don’t want to miss him shooting up, or jacking off, or whatever he is going to do in there. Maybe I can take a video--he won’t see--and put it online. That’s what you get.

He doesn’t pull out a needle, or a vial, or his dick. He does not pull his pants down. He sits on the toilet and holds trembling hands in front of him. I grip the top of the divider as my stomach turns hot. He clasps his hands to stop the shaking, fails. I hold my breath, not that it matters, he couldn’t hear me if I sang the “Titanic” theme in falsetto. My stomach is molten lead.

He puts his head in his hands and starts to cry, softly, trying hard to make sure no one can hear him. My hands on the divider feel numb, and I might throw up. He cries and I watch. He never glances up at me. He doesn’t see me. He never has.

***

The food court has gone from noon-frantic to two-thirty amiable, and the person at my table is just gathering up her things. The candle, the cupcake, and the lighter are still there--why not? They’re no more visible than I am. 

I wait until she picks up her bag, her magazine, her trash, and then I sit in the seat I vacated hours ago and look at the cupcake Natalie had provided. As the song went, you had to be cruel to be kind, and this gift qualified on both counts. The candle is out but still in place, and I take up the lighter. As I click and touch flame to the wick my stomach tightens painfully. It wants me to hang on. Letting go is surrender. I’ll make them sorry. They have to learn.

The fire dances on the candle, and I don’t glance around to see who is watching. No one is watching what a stranger is doing, and I lean close. “I’m done now.” My stomach throbs once more, and then it is lighter. Weightless. I breathe in shakily and blow out the candle. 

The world looks the same, standard food court with standard food and standard diners, but when a pair of white-shirted young men pass I say, “Is this lighter yours?” They glance over and one of them shakes his head curtly, annoyed. I smile and leave the lighter on the table, as Natalie wanted. Like many other things, it’s not mine to carry.

© 2020 Neil McGarry