No Relation (2 page)

“Shit.”

“What’s this all about?”

Bob sighed, then looked at the ceiling as he spoke.

“You’re out, Hem. It’s over. We have to let you go. Today. Now. I’m sorry.”

I laughed. Well, it was more of a chortle.

“You’re kidding, right?” I looked around the office. “Where’s the camera? This is for the Christmas party, right?”

I could tell from his face. No, this wasn’t for the Christmas party. I just looked at him for a moment as the news settled over me like ash from an angry volcano.

“Bob, I’m shocked. I don’t understand this. I’m hurt. You could have at least given me some warning.”

“Shit, Hem, I floated the balloon last week. You seem to be the only one in the agency who didn’t pick up on it.”

Come to think of it, in the last few days folks had been kind of giving me the cocked-head, arched-brow, sad-eyes routine as they hustled by.

“Bob, I’ve been here fifteen years. I’ve won awards! You promoted me last year and gave me what I thought at the time was only a modest raise. But still, you did give me an increase!”

“Hem, calm down.”

Calm down? That was a surprise. Incarcerated in that couch, how could I look anything but calm? I could move only my upper body. I guess I may have been waving my arms around a bit.

“I am calm. Calm and flabbergasted. Calm and furious. Calm and, um, apoplectic. What possible rationale can you have for firing me?”

“Hem, we’re not firing you. We’re just letting you go. We’re thanking you for your years of service, giving you a generous settlement, and parting ways. That’s all. It happens all the time in the agency world.”

“Well, it’s never happened to me,” I said. “And you still haven’t explained why.”

“Hem, come on. You really don’t know? You’re a long-form copywriter. You’re a relic,” Bob said, waving his arms around a bit. “The world has changed. In fact, it changed a decade ago. I’m amazed you hung around this long,” he said. “Everything is short and punchy now. We live in the 140-character universe. Ad agencies don’t need long-form copywriting any more. We held out as long as we could. I’m sorry.”

“But I’m good at my job. I’m in on virtually every new biz pitch. My writing has won the agency awards. I’m … um, good at my job. I’m great at my job!”

“Come on, Hem, don’t fight this. Don’t make this difficult,” he soothed. He pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket and held it out to me. “Hem, you’ve got a
huge
package.”

“Well, kind of you to say, Bob, but I’m really more interested in the settlement you’re offering,” I deadpanned.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have deadpanned. Bob was befuddled. I opened the envelope. The cheque was for the equivalent of a year’s salary. Wow.

“It’s well above the legislated requirements. Don’t bother trying to negotiate. This is as much as I could get for you. If you choose to push back, the offer will be withdrawn and you will receive the bare legal minimum.” Bob said this part like he was reading me my Miranda rights.

I know I should have fired back with both barrels blazing. But I really wasn’t good at this. I was out of things to say. I had nothing.

“Hem, think of this as a gift. You’ve got at least a year to do what you want. You can finally write your novel. Think of this as freedom.”

“Freedom?”

“Yes, freedom.”

I wanted to say, “Fuck you, Bob,” like they do in the movies. But I just couldn’t get it out. My civility instinct prevailed.

“Hem, you have to go see Marlene. She has all the paperwork. You need to sign it all if you’re going to keep that cheque,” he said, almost in a whisper, as if he were talking me off the ledge. “Pop back here before you go.”

I nodded and tried to get up.

“Bob, do you mind?’ I reached out my hand.

“Sure, Hem.” He pulled me up and out of the couch.

It only took a few minutes to deal with Marlene and her stupid paperwork. She was Macdonald-Clark’s human resources specialist, or as she was sometimes known among the account teams, Human Overhead. She was nice to me. I signed without even reading the termination agreement. The cheque stayed in my pocket.

It’s such a cliché to load your personal effects into a cardboard box before making the long walk to the elevators. So I was relieved when Marlene actually gave me a largish clear plastic bag instead, in return for my key and security card. It didn’t quite seem a fair exchange. I emptied my desk drawers and bookshelves of all the personal stuff that just seems to accumulate over a decade and a half spent in the same office. Marlene hovered outside my door as if I might steal a pad of Post-it notes on my way out. I could feel anger building. Finally, I picked up the framed shot of Jenn and me taken at Club Med in Jamaica four years ago, just before we moved in together. We
both looked deliriously happy. And I guess we were. I tossed it into my plastic bag where it landed photo side up and stared back at me. The bag was full and heavy. Being able to see my “personal effects” through the clear plastic made the whole scenario seem all the more pathetic. I left the plants where they were. They’d die if they came home with me.

It took some effort, but I thanked Marlene for her assistance, balancing curt and courteous – call it “curteous” – and headed back to Bob’s office.

True to form, he was sitting at his utterly empty desk, gazing out the window.

“Settle down, Bob. You have to pace yourself or you’ll just burn out,” I said.

“I’m sure going to miss your sparkling wit, Hem.” Bob sighed as he stood. “Did you sign off with Marlene?”

“I did, but just now, when cleaning out my desk, I had a change of heart. You can tear up the paperwork, I’ve decided that you can’t terminate me because I resign,” I said, staring him down.

Bob smiled and held out his hand. It sort of looked like he wanted to shake, so I automatically reached out my hand. He shook his head.

“No, Hem, not your hand – the cheque, please,” he clarified. “Since you resigned, you have to give back the cheque. There is no settlement when you resign.” His hand stayed there, outstretched.

I thought long and hard, for the next three nanoseconds.

“Whoa! Hang on, I wasn’t quite finished,” I stammered. “What I was about to say was that I resign, um, myself to the, um, decision and associated settlement that you and I agreed to earlier.”

“Sound thinking.” Bob smirked as he dropped his hand.

“Well, Bob, it’s been a real delight,” I said as we shook hands a final time. “Of all the colleagues I’ve worked with in my fifteen years here, I will always remember you as, um, one of them.”

Then, without missing a beat, I spun on my heel and walked out, lugging my plastic bag. Man, I sure told him.

I was in a surly mood by the time I made it into our apartment on Bank Street, almost at Bleecker, in the West Village. It wasn’t just losing my job. I’d remembered on the way home that I’d lost my wallet on the subway the day before. Funny how losing your job can make you forget about losing your wallet. It was well and truly gone. Stray wallets don’t last long on New York subways, and they never make it to the
MTA
’
S
Lost and Found.

When the elevator opened, Jenn and her brother, Paul, were standing there in the corridor with a cardboard box and a couple of suitcases.

“Oh hi, Paul,” I said. “Are you moving in for a while?”

Jenn had kind of a dazed look on her face.

“Shit,” she said.

“Believe it or not, you’re the second person to say that to me this morning,” I replied.

“Good to see you, Hem,” Paul mumbled before turning to his sister. “I’ll wait in the car.”

Paul took the box and hit the elevator button. When the doors didn’t immediately open, he and his box sprinted to the end of the hall and disappeared into the stairwell.

“Very odd,” was all I said.

“Hem, what the hell are you doing home at this hour? You’re supposed to be at work. Are you sick?”

“I wish I were sick. Instead, I’m unemployed,” I reported, trying to hold it together. “I was just laid off. On the upside, I have a big cheque in my pocket that I can deposit just as soon as I can get a new bank card.”

“This can’t be happening,” she said, almost to herself. “Well, that’s just great news, Hem. Your timing couldn’t be better.”

It wasn’t the sympathetic response I was looking for. She just stood there with this strange look on her face. Uh-oh.

I figured it out.

“Shit,” I said.

“Hem, um, look, here’s the thing. I’m really sorry about your job. That just sucks. But, I’m leaving. I didn’t want there to be a scene so I was going to call you tonight.”

“What? Hang on. For a second there I thought you said you were leaving. I must not have heard you correctly. Just run that by me again.” I made a show of leaning in to hear her better as my anger took over.

“I obviously didn’t expect you to arrive home in the middle of my … um …”

“Getaway? Great escape? Betrayal?” I offered. I always try to be helpful when people are searching for le mot juste.

“…  departure,” she chose, bobbing her head and scrunching up her nose. From experience, I knew it as the precursor to tears. “Hem, don’t make this difficult.”

“Believe it or not, you’re the second person to say that to me this morning.”

“Hem, it’s time. You must have seen it coming. We’ve lived together for four years, but the last two we’ve really just been roommates. You know that. It all slipped away. You had to have felt it. How could you not?”

“So you were just going to sneak away without saying anything and hope that I wouldn’t notice. Were you going to leave me a note?” I said, my voice rising. “Jenn, this isn’t public school. We’re adults. We talk things through.”

“Yeah, right,” she countered with an eye roll. “When have
we
ever ‘talked things through’? Whenever I’ve wanted to talk about it, you’ve gone to ridiculous lengths to avoid a meaningful discussion. I know how you think, Hem. If we never talk about it, there’s no problem. It doesn’t exist. Well, I can’t do that any more. I’m done with that delusion. There is a problem, and I’m solving it on my own.”

I realized we were still standing in the corridor where we could be overheard by curious neighbours with ears pressed to doors.

“Jenn, at least come back in and let’s talk about it. I’ve now got plenty of time on my hands.”

“I can’t. It’s too late for that. We haven’t been in a real relationship for a long time. If I don’t do something about it, you’ll just carry on, stuck in this rut, but unable to take any action to climb out of it. You’ll just deny, avoid, distract, and crack jokes. It’s what you do. It’s what you always do. Well, it’s time to be a grown-up, Hem.”

She exhaled. It was a sigh of fatigue, not of sorrow, not of regret. I could tell. Again, I had nothing.

“Paul has his van loaded. I’m staying with him for a few weeks until I find a place. I gotta go.”

She leaned in and kissed my cheek before bolting for the elevator, dragging her suitcases behind her. Mercifully, the doors opened quickly and she leapt in.

“Think of this as freedom,” she said as the doors closed.

“Believe it or not, you’re the second person to say that to me this morning,” I muttered to myself.

The apartment was pristine. She and Paul had worked hard and fast in the four hours since I’d left that morning. I felt as if I were in some kind of a time warp. The rooms all looked almost exactly as they had before Jenn moved in four years ago. No, they actually looked better. Beyond a couple of framed photos of the two of us, every other vestige of Jenn was gone, as if Orwell’s Ministry of Truth had expunged the last four years. It was almost surreal.

I dropped into a chair in the living room. I loved our apartment. Hardwood floors. Big windows. Parking under the building. Blessed air conditioning. A fair chunk of real estate in the West Village for the money. And it seemed I was back to having the space all to myself. I loved my apartment. I may have been in shock right then, but I was thinking about my apartment and not about Jenn bailing out on me, on us.

I took a moment to catalogue the woes I’d collected in the previous twenty-four hours. I had no wallet. I had no job. I had no girlfriend. Losing your wallet is really no big deal. It’s a royal pain in the ass, but it’s just inconvenient, not a threat to your mental stability. On the other hand, losing your job and your girlfriend in the same day is like getting beaten badly in both ends of a psychological doubleheader. I felt terrible. Miserable. Depressed. But to be completely honest, I probably should have felt worse than I did. Beneath the body blows to my ego that would ache for a long time, I was perched on the precipice of a brand-new start. A rare gift. I like my glass half-full. I had a year’s salary, a seriously simplified love life, a lovely apartment that hadn’t been this neat and tidy … ever, a novel to write, and time on my hands. To coin a phrase,
think of this as freedom
.