Then We Came to the End (39 page)

He let his office phone ring the rest of the afternoon, puzzled why Marcia was calling and not leaving messages, and answered his cell phone only after the workday had come to an end and he had departed the building. When he finally picked up, Marcia was in hysterics. Her youngest brother had gotten into a fight — he was still only a sophomore in high school — and had to be taken to a South Side hospital. Marcia’s mother was crying, her older brothers were vowing revenge, and her father was sleeping off a night shift. Marcia was trying to get ahold of Benny so he could help her keep things together. Benny rushed over to the hospital and inquired at the nurses’ station what room the boy was in.

“When I got there, nobody else was around. Turns out later they were down talking to the doctor. I walked in and took one look at Mikey in his hospital bed — Jim, he was all fucked up. Broken arm, black eyes. Big gash in his chin. But he was awake. The kid was going to be fine. And you know what I said? I just couldn’t help myself. I went right up to him and I said, ‘My boy! Look what they done to my boy!’”

Marcia found out later why Benny hadn’t been picking up the phone, and that’s why she was mad at him. She thought it was a thoughtless and juvenile game to play and it explained why he was still in a cube. “Why can’t you be more like Jim?” she asked.

Carter Shilling stopped by again. “Jim, you coming?”

“Carter,” said Jim, rising at the sound of the man’s voice. “Coming.”

“Jim, it was priceless,” Benny said, once Carter had departed.

“I gotta go do this meeting,” said Jim.

He collected some papers off his desk and Benny was left sitting alone in another man’s office. He was trying to decide whether or not to get up — he supposed there was some work he could do back at his cube, if Ian didn’t interrupt him — when Jim reappeared in the doorway. “So what now?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean if you can get by with quotes from
The Godfather,
and nothing you say matters, that’s pretty bleak, don’t you think? Don’t we want what we say to matter?”

Benny swiveled effortlessly in the chair that wasn’t his and gave Jim a puzzled, surprised look. He unsteepled his fingers and opened his hands into a shrug. “What is this, Jim, what’s wrong with you? I was just having some fun.”

“Don’t you want people to take you seriously, Benny?”

“But why do you have to phrase it like that? Why does Marcia have to ask me why I can’t be more like you, and why can’t Michael listen to my story for ten stupid minutes? What’s happened to everybody? You’re all so serious.”

Jim hung in the doorway, ponderous and unresponsive. “Why did you keep Old Brizz’s totem pole?” he said at last.

“What?” said Benny. “What are you talking about? I didn’t. I gave it away.”

“No, you kept it in storage for six months. Why did you do that?”

“Where is this coming from?”

“I’ve always wanted to know.”

“But why are you bringing it up now?” Benny asked.

“Did you think,” said Jim, “that he was trying to communicate something to you?”

Benny stopped swiveling and grabbed Jim’s armrests. “Like what?”

“I don’t know,” said Jim. “I’m asking you.”

“Maybe he was just playing a practical joke on me. Maybe because he knew I had him at the top of my list in Celebrity Death Watch.”

“Maybe,” said Jim. “But Brizz wasn’t one to play practical jokes.”

Benny nodded in agreement. “No, he wasn’t.”

“And as it turns out, that thing was worth a lot of money,” Jim added. “Leaving someone a lot of money isn’t a very mean practical joke.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“So why’d you store it? Why’d you keep it for six months?”

“It meant something to me, I guess.”

“What?”

“I don’t know,” said Benny.

“You don’t know?”

“I do and I don’t,” said Benny. “You know what I mean?”

Jim bit the inside of his cheek. He nodded slowly in a sign of respectful resignation.

“Hank Neary,” he said finally, shaking his head. He said it again: “Hank Neary.” Then he threw up his hands and went off down the hall to his meeting.

SOME PEOPLE WOULD NEVER FORGET
certain people, a few people would remember everyone, and most of us would mostly be forgotten. Sometimes it was for the best. Larry Novotny wanted to be forgotten for his dalliance with Amber Ludwig. Tom Mota wanted to be forgotten for that incident involving the paintballs. But did anybody want to be forgotten about completely? We had dedicated years to that place, we labored under the notion we were making names for ourselves, we had to believe in our hearts that each one of us was memorable. And yet who wanted to be remembered for their poor taste or bad breath? Still, better to be remembered for those things than forgotten for your perfect parboiled blandness.

In other words, amnesty was a gift, but oblivion was terror.

Most of us recalled in a general way this person or that, their features exaggerated by memory, their names lost forever. Of others we could pull up only the murkiest general outline, as if rather than walking past them in the hall a hundred times a day, we’d encountered them in a cloud once, mumbled a polite exchange, and moved on. Once in a great while, every random detail — tone of voice, where the mole was — came screaming out of the clear blue. What a weird sensation that was. And then there were some people some of us could not shake. Janine Gorjanc couldn’t shake the memory of her lost child. Benny couldn’t shake Frank Brizzolera because Frank had died and bequeathed him a totem pole. Uncle Max would never forget his Edna.

As for us, it was never a worry. We would never be forgotten by anyone.

“You jackass,” Marcia said to Benny later that day. “How could you forget Hank Neary?”

Benny hurried down to Jim’s doorway. “The black dude!” he cried. “With the corduroy coat!”

“Aw, man! I wanted to tell
you
that!” said Jim. He was reading Hank’s e-mail, which had gone to him as well, to an e-mail account he rarely checked. “His face just now came to me,” he said. “How could we have forgotten Hank, Benny?”

“I don’t know,” replied Benny. “I guess it just happens.”

EVERYONE HAD RECEIVED
the same e-mail as Benny and Jim and we all wondered how Hank had managed to track us down, scattered as we were. Most of us remembered him perfectly and recognized his name right away, because it wasn’t every day you worked with a black guy who dressed like a poetry don at Oxford. We used to joke that the only thing missing was a pipe which he could grip with his teeth as he gave ponderous consideration to the iambic pentameter’s slow demise. But no, he wasn’t a poet, he was a failed novelist, and when we got his e-mail, it was like hearing that one of Don Blattner’s screenplays had been picked up by Warner Brothers and George Clooney was starring. It turned out that Hank had published a book, and his reading was taking place at a bookstore on the campus of the University of Chicago. We were intrigued and disbelieving.

We packed the room full. We hardly had time to say hello to everyone when he appeared, book in hand, alongside a stooped, bearded gentleman who took to the podium and introduced him. He had many nice things to say about Hank, whose bashful, averted gaze we took note of as the man spoke. We also noticed that instead of the corduroy coat, Hank now wore a plain white Fruit-of-the-Loom T-shirt that accentuated his dark lanky arms and boyish torso. Without his bulky glasses his face was leaner, more handsome. He wore a pair of jeans and a simple black belt. It was a better look for him all around, and we were pleased to see that he’d moved beyond his weird ersatz professorial phase. We didn’t say so at the time, but it never seemed appropriate.

As the introduction continued, we looked around at some of the familiar faces. Amber Ludwig sat at the end of the third row with a kid in her lap, a little girl who played industriously with a dirty, undressed doll. The poor kid had Larry’s masculine features but Amber’s stout, seal-like body. Larry Novotny himself sat in back, alone, hiding beneath a brand-new Cubs cap. Dan Wisdom was seated next to Don Blattner, and to the right, in the front row, Genevieve Latko-Devine sat beside her husband. He was holding a baby to his chest, which suddenly let out a succession of unhappy cries. In rapid response he shifted the child in his arms and rubbed its back tenderly and it was sleeping again in no time.

Everyone applauded when Hank rose and stood at the podium. We bucked a little at some microphone feedback. He readjusted the mic, gave us a sheepish smile, and began to speak with an endearing quaver in his voice. We could tell he was nervous. All at once, great swells of conflicted emotion flooded over us. One of our own had made good: we were proud, astounded, envious, incredulous, vaguely indifferent, ready to seize on the first hint of mediocrity, and genuinely pleased for him. We were all those things and more. Before sitting down, many of us had taken copies of his book off the display rack, and we thumbed through them now for errata. We read the acknowledgments page to see who he thanked. What was it about, anyway? And who, working our hours, had time to read books? We had to force ourselves to stop and pay attention, as he had finished thanking us for coming and was opening the book to read.

“‘The night before,’” he began. Suddenly he stopped. The room froze with anxiety. He was stiff-arming the podium with a white-knuckled grip and staring down as if trying to recall how to breathe. He cleared his throat. He took a sip of water. The glass quivered in his hand. Then he took a deep breath and resumed.

“‘The night before the operation,’” he started up again, to our great relief, “she has no association dinners to go to, no awards ceremonies, no networking functions. A plan comes to her impromptu in the back of the cab as she steps in and instructs the driver to take the Inner Drive. She envisions her sofa, her two cats, something good ordered in, and a bottle of wine she’s been saving. They ask you not to eat anything twelve hours before, but honestly, that’s unreasonable, isn’t it — your last chance at a normal meal for how long?’”

The room was silent but for a few hushed noises issuing from the faraway registers and Hank’s lone, crackling voice, amplified by the microphone, which accentuated the subtle cottony smacks of words formed within his dry mouth. We were so nervous on his behalf that, once he had started up again, it was hard to concentrate on what he was saying. We were just happy to see that he wasn’t going to faint.

He shifted his stance from one foot to the other, relaxed his arms a little, and read now with an easier, more pleasing rhythm. “‘. . . better to see them
with
someone, though. Alone, there is that awkward ten minutes between the time you arrive and the time they dim the lights for the previews when against all reason you believe everyone in the theater is staring at you because . . .’”

We kept looking around at the familiar faces. Plump Benny Shassburger and freckle-faced Jim Jackers sat together, and between them, Marcia Dwyer with a rather dated haircut. Carl Garbedian was there with Marilynn. He was hardly recognizable. His gut was gone and he was tan as an almond. He was wearing a dark blue linen blazer with an open-collared shirt and he’d done something with his hair. His legs crossed, he was focused on Hank with great curiosity, perfectly still, listening.

“‘. . . walking the hallway toward some associate’s office. Is she really longing to be a part of
that?
She would replace these bright and open spaces full of the world’s best footwear, fashions . . .’”

Karen Woo was there, which we had mixed feelings about. No Chris Yop that we could see. He’d apparently never forgiven us for that long-ago slight. No Tom Mota, either, and we guessed he was probably in the pen somewhere trying to convince the guards to let him grow tomatoes alongside the edges of the basketball court. Janine Gorjanc was changed. She wore a pair of leather chaps over her stonewashed jeans and had a matching leather vest. Dangling silver earrings, which might have been made in Santa Fe, flashed beside her hair, which she had allowed to grow long and turn gray. Before the reading, she introduced us to her boyfriend. He wore a leather vest as well and sported a bushy handlebar mustache. His name was Harry and he had shaken our hands much more timidly than his facial hair indicated he would. They had ridden to the reading on Harry’s hog and both carried vintage black helmets like those worn in World War II. It was kind of weird to see that Janine was into motorcycles now. When the reading began, she and Harry settled themselves in one of the back rows.

“‘. . . inside now — the place had an airy, echoic atmosphere, rumbling low with hushed voices, and footsteps on marble stairs she could pick out one by one. He took the blindfold off and they spent an hour . . .’”

If Old Brizz had been there, he probably would have cut out for a smoke break, as Hank’s reading was taking longer than we had anticipated. We had stopped paying attention altogether. Our long-suffering preoccupations got the better of us — family concerns, projects going on at work, the weekend and what it held in store, something funny said at lunch, the genius of the infield-fly rule, nice jacket there, bad shoes on her, could really use a drink — all that. Hank’s soft, steady voice floated over our heads like clouds drifting over the tops of buildings.

“‘. . . watching the sky open at her window, it is magnificent, especially after all the work she’s put in . . .’”

And we couldn’t stop wondering where Joe Pope might be. He had always appeared to like Hank. Odd for him not to come out and support him like the rest of us. And then we thought, wait a minute. Had five years been so unkind to our memories that we could forget where to find Joe Pope at that hour? He was still at the office, of course, working.

Finally Hank closed his book and said, “Thank you.” We applauded approvingly.

AFTER THE READING CONCLUDED,
we milled about. We bought copies of Hank’s book. We went up to congratulate him. We were all handshakes and hugs and he signed our books with personal good wishes. Someone asked him if this book was the same book as the one he had talked about during our time together, his small, angry book about work. Thanks to being laid off and forced to find new jobs, we had discovered that every agency has its frustrated copywriter whose real life was being a failed novelist working on a small, angry book about work. Work was a fetishistic subject for some of our colleagues, but unlike Don Blattner, who wanted everyone to read his screenplays so long as they signed confidentiality agreements, the book writers played their cards much closer to the vest, and usually ended up folding. Howling screeds went mute inside desk drawers. Lovingly ground axes melted in fireplaces. We felt grateful on behalf of the world.