a sort of Al Jolson move, a ta-da move, arms out to the side in presentation of himself, weight on one leg, head cocked, vaudeville grin on his face, and he led the entire floor in a raucous rendition of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” which rendition would have been rather touching in its raucousness, had I even the slightest idea what I had done to merit it.
After the song, me still outside my cubicle, there was much backslapping and carrying on, many Go get ’em, Tigers and You’re the mans, even a Well done, Perkins from an old-schooler I couldn’t identify in the melee. I thanked them all, because there seemed to be little else to do, and as I thanked them they slowly moved away, all but Smith, who stood there by my side the whole time, as if we were somehow in this—in what?—together.
I looked at him, and he made a motion with his hand, directing me into my cubicle, a motion that said, Well, let’s go, and so I did. There was a box with all the things from my desk sitting on the floor by my chair and a bright orange Post-it note on my computer monitor. Written there in heavy black felt-tip ink were the words: Perkins! See me! Schmelling!
All those exclamation marks! And why was my stuff—four copies of Newsweek, three of Time, a half roll of Life Savers (Wint O Green), an unopened Cross pen and pencil set, a spare tie (always keep one in your desk, Dad had said, one of the last things he’d taught me before his heart exploded)—in that cardboard box on the floor? It could only mean one thing. But then, why were all the others so proud of me, winking and backslapping and congratulating me with song? Could it be that they all hated the IC, that they envied my imminent dismissal? And really, what had I done that was so outrageous? All I had done was not ask any questions; really, it was a matter of respect for the IC and its decisional prowess; I had gone where they told me to go, read what they told me to read, sort of, and signed what they told me to sign, and if I had been doing such a bad job, why had it taken six months for them to notice? I had certainly not done anything like Terrence McNeil, nothing even as bizarre as what I’d watched this Schmelling do not once, but twice, in successive weeks, what he had apparently done enough times before to become a hero to everyone on seven and God only knew what other floors as well. And now he—Schmelling!—wanted to see me—Perkins! Perkins who had never done anything truly wrong in his life, Perkins who just wanted things to go easy, who didn’t make waves, who kept his head down and turned his work in on time, who had a house and a wife at home—sure, she’s a little odd, she’s an artist, try to understand—and if they wanted me to go back to PR, I’d go. It was all a terrible mistake, but it wasn’t my mistake, see, and the thing is, I was only trying to keep whoever had made the mistake from getting in trouble, I wanted to be a good team member, and yes, I should have known better, I know Contracts is far too important, Contracts is no place for a person like me, Perkins! I’ll never let it happen again. I promise.
At that moment, I heard a noise outside the cubicle. At first I thought it was my heart again, but the sound soon grew too loud even for that. It was a clap, then a stomp, then a clap, then a stomp, and soon all the employees on the seventh floor were doing it, clap, stomp, clap, stomp, in unison, and somewhere in the midst of it all, a woman began to sing, the words, if there were words, unintelligible, the tune a whiny, unmelodic descant above the percussion of clap, stomp, clap, stomp. I looked out and saw Smith standing across from me, sweat popping out of his forehead and that forehead red again, much more so than the day before. He was clapping and stomping and clapping and stomping, and his teeth were clinched, his mouth a rictus of pleasure and pain at once, his yellow teeth glowing against the redness of his cheeks and neck, his eyes shut tight behind the thick black frames as if he were so transported that to look on anything in a world as banal as this would be unholy, unnatural.
Afraid to move from my cubicle, I decided—decided is too strong a word, I was beyond deciding anything—to stay where I was and wait for whatever was causing this apocalypse to come to me. But I was beyond being able to do even that, beyond being able to do nothing. As if some unseen, giant, but still gentle hands had hold of me, I felt myself being led—not drawn, but led—out into the hallway between the cubicles. It was an irresistible force, and I didn’t even try to avoid it. I knew that whatever I would see on the other side of my partition would change me forever, irrevocably, from being who I was to being someone I was not prepared to be, and I could only hope that somehow, as I had been led to Contracts and led to the window to watch Schmelling that first day, I would be led to an understanding of my new self, to adapt and grow and somehow live with what I would soon become.
There in the hallway, the workers were lined up, clapping and stomping, clapping and stomping. The woman singing was now in a wailing frenzy of sound, and there was no longer any question about words; it was just sound, animalistic, primal, going from groaning to screaming and haphazardly hitting every octave in between. Some people were falling on the floor and rolling about in some kind of corporate Pentecostalism, still clapping and stomping all along. The room, the floor, had become incredibly hot, from all the strenuous activity of the untested muscles and lungs, yes, but also from some other source, as if hell, if you believe in that sort of thing, had opened a branch office right here on seven. I was beginning to come back to myself in some way, to realize that what was happening here was wrong, and again, that urge to flee that I had felt briefly the day before returned to me.
I thought of the box of stuff on the floor near my desk, turned right to look for it, and there was Smith, grinning wildly. I turned my head left, and there was Smith again, still grinning. I looked away, closed my eyes, and set my feet to run the gauntlet of my writhing coworkers, but just as I did, I felt Smith lean in near my ear. “Are you ready for Schmelling?”
I opened my eyes, and I saw him.
It was Schmelling, and this time he was walking—if you can call it that—under the weight of an enormous ledger that he carried on his back. The book was as large as a queen-size mattress, made of brown skin the color of cedar, its brass rings as wide as Hula-Hoops, the pages thick and coarse as canvas inside. I don’t know how he was able to carry the thing by himself. I knew he was strong—you try the crabwalk sometime, it’s tough—but I would have thought ten men would have strained under the weight of the astonishing book, and it hurt me to see him bearing it alone. Forget for a moment that I should have been thinking, What the hell is the deal with this huge ledger? And why is he lugging it through this madhouse to begin with? For all I can tell you is that at that particular moment, my only thought was to help him with his burden.
So I did. I met him halfway across the room, and he, blue eyes popping, face purple with stress, his sandy blond hair matted with sweat, looked up at me from beneath the ledger. All noise in the building, save the sounds of our heavy breaths, stopped immediately when our eyes met.
I said, “I’d like to help you with that, Mr. Schmelling.”
He grunted something that was probably not a word, and at first looked at me with demurral. But I wouldn’t move, and slowly he assented, and slowly he began to jog the ledger higher on his back so I could get my shoulders underneath. I finally did and discovered I was correct about the weight of the book. Together we started to move, and the singing woman sang, Aaaiiieeeeeeee! and the clapping and stomping started again, and we carried the ledger together. I was immediately tired from the strain, but I never even thought of putting it down, of not carrying my share of the load. After a while, the tiredness disappeared, and it was as if we had somehow shuffled off the limits of our selves, the limits that fatigue and fear and pain place on us in this life, and so we carried on, I never asking where we would stop, and he never telling.
Finally—I have no idea what time it was, it was late, it was dark outside the windows—we came to an area of the floor that was cleared of cubicle partitions, and there we set down the book.
Smith and a couple others scurried out to open the front cover, then they turned several pages at a time, looking for one that was blank. Two of the women rolled caster-bottomed office chairs beneath Schmelling and me, and we collapsed into
