What Is All This? (9 page)

We'd reached the fourth-floor landing. She unlocks my door, puts the keys on top of the refrigerator, looks around and says “My God, what a mess you made. What could have got into you?”

“I don't know.”

She has me sit on the toilet seat cover, takes my bandage off, says “Look at this; it's awful,” washes and dresses my hand, makes me take three aspirins. I say “I still don't feel too well. Could you stay?”

“All right, but on different sides of the bed.”

I go to bed and sometime later she joins me. My hand hurts like hell. I can't fall asleep. She says “Your jumping around is keeping me up.”

“My hand.”

She turns on the light. There's a lot of blood on me and my side of the bed. She says “I better get you to a hospital.”

We go to one. They take x-rays and say I broke a couple of fingers and part of the rest of the hand.

After they put in a few stitches and a cast is put on, she says “Whatever it was you asked me in the restaurant that was so important to you then, I would have said yes to if just to avoid all this.”

“Who can predict anything?”

“I know. But I only said that about your restaurant question as an expression of how I now feel.”

“Anyway, it only proves you never know what can sometimes happen.”

“Now I know, and you frighten me and made matters much worse for us, much.”

“Don't be.”

“I am. You want me to retract it? I can't.”

“You'll feel different tomorrow or so.”

“No I won't. You scared me silly. Break your hand? Next you're liable to break my fingers and then my face. I feel awful for your hand and your pain and such, but for us you couldn't have made matters worse. I'll get us a cab and see you to your building, but that's all.”

“All I ask is that you sleep on it.”

“No. It's the wrong time to say this now, but I've definitely made up my mind. No more.”

I slam my hand with the cast on it against the hospital wall. She runs away. I'm screaming at her from the floor to never come back, while trying to hold my hand.

I do everything he told me to. Then there's nothing more for me to do. I check over what I did and it seems good as I can get it. I wait. I get up, sit down, look at the clock, walk around. Where is he? And she? Where are they? How long do they expect me to sit, stand, look, walk around, wait for them like this with nothing to do? They say they'll be back in an hour, why does it have to be three? If I could go to sleep or take a walk outside and step in for coffee someplace, it wouldn't be so bad. But if one of them caught me sleeping or not here when they got back, it would. They'd think I always slept or went out when they weren't here. Hell, I've waited long enough. I'm taking a walk and will live with the consequences if they find out.

Going down the stairs, I see them coming up. “Where you been?” I say.

“And where you going?” he says.

“I waited so long, I decided to take a walk. Waiting tired me out, and I need some exercise like walking to pep me up.”

“Now you don't have to wait any longer, and you'll get plenty of exercise working, so come on back up. We still got lots to do, which you could've started doing before we got back here.”

“Like what? I finished what you told me to do and checked it to make sure it was done right. And you didn't leave instructions for anything else to do because you said you'd be back before I was through.”

“You could've cleaned up the place.”

“Cleaning's not what I was hired for. I left that kind of unskilled work for better pay and more demanding work like what you hired me to do.”

“But that's how you could've spent your time. You should've thought of that. Anything can be cleaned. Ten minutes after you clean something it can be cleaned. Soap can even be cleaned. And cleaning or anything like that would've been more productive than getting bored and irritable waiting for us or going out for a walk.”

“Maybe for you it would've been more productive, but for me it would've been the opposite. It would've been going backwards from something I worked myself up to be, which might've ended with my being even less productive for you.”

“Look, you're wasting our time talking. Let's get to work.”

“I'm still so restless from waiting that I've got to take a walk.”

“Walking's not what I'm paying you for except when you're doing it for me. You want to keep your job, you come upstairs now and work,” and they go upstairs.

I think it over and go upstairs. They've already started working and I join in. Later he tells me what else I should do. Later she does too, tells me, and I do it. At times we're working on the same thing together. Other times we're working on separate things or the same thing but in different parts of the room. Sometimes two of us are working on the same thing and one on another thing. Other times one of us is in the restroom or on the phone or making coffee for us all and two are working on the same thing or separate things in the same or different parts of the room, and so on. Then it's all done. I even worked an hour longer than I'm being paid for and there's more work to come. We put what we worked on into boxes, tape and address the boxes and bring them to the post office and send them off.

That didn't take too long,” he says.

“Long enough,” I say.

“About as long as I expected it to,” she says.

“But we did it quicker than I thought we would is what I'm saying,” he says.

“It might not have been quicker but it would've been sooner if both of you had come back earlier.”

“Anyway, we got it done and we'll see you tomorrow,” she says.

“About tomorrow,” I say to him. “If you're both not there or don't plan to be by the time I get to work, could you leave instructions for me if you're going back now or phone them in early tomorrow so I can get right to work rather than waiting around for you?”

“If we're late,” he says, “and I haven't left instructions or phoned them in or she hasn't phoned them in for me, then just clean the floors a little, wash the windows. They're all dirty, the floors especially. Tidy up the place a little is what I'm suggesting, scrub down the restroom and all its parts. If we're really late and neither of us has phoned in your instructions and I don't send them in with somebody else and you've cleaned the entire place where it really shines, give a little paint job to the ceiling and walls. The paint, brushes, turpentine and ladder are in the back closet. One coat. If we're really very late and never got instructions to you and the paint's dried, give it two coats, but no more than two.”

“I don't see how I could do more than two coats in one workday. You said turpentine, which means the paint has an oil base. Oil paint takes a long time to dry. I doubt I can even put on a second coat in my scheduled worktime tomorrow if you have me do all those cleaning chores besides.”

“So put in a couple hours extra.”

“For money?”

“Do it because you like the job. Show me that. And that you want to keep it. Because you complain too much. You ever hear her complain?”

“I've complained,” she says. “Plenty of times.”

“About me you've complained. That I'm not nice enough to you after work. That I don't take you out enough, show you enough attention and give you enough nice things. About those you complain a lot, but I'm talking about at work.”

“About work you're right. I have no complaints. Pay's good and hours aren't too long and work's not too hard.”

“So if neither of us is here tomorrow when you get in,” he says to me, “and I haven't left or I don't send any instructions to you, clean up the place, scrub everything down, and just don't sweep the floor but mop and wax it. And the windows and every shelf—really get this place into tiptop shape. Two coats of paint. And if you later have nothing better to do but sit around, put a few extra hours in painting the doors and window frames and all the furniture and shelves.”

“I'll have to get overtime for that.”

“I don't pay overtime.”

Then I can't give you free overtime anymore. I did it today and plenty of other days for months after you promised you wouldn't keep me beyond my normal workday, but no more.”

“You only worked nine hours today.”

“But I was here for twelve and a half—my half hour for lunch and those three hours waiting around for you.”

“You rest at home, you rest here. No big difference, and for all I know the office might be a nicer place to rest than your home, and it'll be even more so after you clean and paint it.”

“But it isn't my home. No overtime pay, no more extra hours after my regular workday.”

Then I'll have to let you go,” and he asks for my keys to the office, I give them, she waves goodbye and they head toward the park and I go the other way. I turn around when they're a block away and I yell “You bastard!” Neither of them turn around. People walking past look at me and seem to wonder what I'm yelling about and to whom.

That bastard,” I say to people who pass. That one over there. Well, now he's gone, went into the park. But he is a bastard. A slave driver. Let him get another sucker to work overtime for nothing, but not me.”

These days you're lucky to have a steady job,” a woman says. “He fired you?”

“Just now. For what I said. Not giving him hours of free overtime.”

“Can you give me his name and phone? I might like to apply for the job now that it's open.”

“You wouldn't like it.”

“Why? I like steady work and money coming in. Right now I'm jobless and broke. Let me talk to him and decide, unless you're planning on getting your job back.”

“Not a chance.”

I give her his name and phone number. She says This is the best hope for a job I've had in weeks. Because if you just lost it, I'll probably be the first one to apply.” She goes to a phone booth a few feet away.

“You calling him now? I'm sure he won't be at work till tomorrow.”

“What do I have to lose? He's not in, I've lost a quarter. Big deal—I'm not that broke.”

“Nobody will be in, so you won't lose your quarter.”

“Good, then I'm losing nothing by calling him.”

“Time. You'll be losing time.”

“What else do I have to lose now?”

“Also your common sense. Because I just said he won't be in, yet you still want to call him. You'd think you'd take my advice because you'd think I'd know. Besides, even if he was in, I don't think he'll hire you. Or maybe he will. Maybe you're just the person he wants, someone who'll knuckle under to everything he tells you to and do any number of free hours' overtime for him.”

“If you're saying all this to stop me from applying for the job or just to insult me, it didn't work.”

She puts some coins in the telephone and I go home. By next day I've thought about it a lot and call him and keep calling him till I get him at eleven and say “Listen, I lost my head yesterday and I'm sorry. If you give me the job back and if you still want me to, I'll work a couple of hours overtime for nothing today and with no complaints.”

“I already hired someone you told about the job. She said she wasn't using you as a reference, though, because you insulted her when she started to call me.”

“All I told her was that she wasn't showing good common sense in trying to call you minutes after you fired me, since I knew you wouldn't be back at the office right away and that you were probably gone for the day.”

“I did go back a few minutes after I left you. Went to the park but suddenly remembered I forgot something at the office, and she got me when I was coming in the door. She said you told her you got fired and that she's exactly the opposite of you in that she's willing to work overtime for no pay anytime I want.”

“So will I,” I say. “And me you won't have to teach how to do the job. Think of all the time you'll be saving—the worker's when he doesn't have to be learning what he already knows; and yours, because you won't have to teach him.”

“What time? A few minutes? Half hour at the most? For what's so complicated about the job? I'll miss a lunch, that's all, and what do I do at lunch but sit around and get fat and maybe take a nap.”

“You sonofabitch.”

“You know, that's the second time you cursed me in less than a day. Yesterday you called me a bastard. I didn't answer or turn around, so I don't know if you knew I heard. I know it wasn't meant for your coworker, as you've no reason for calling her one. How do you expect to be rehired, cursing me like that?”

“You weren't going to rehire me.”

“You don't know that for sure, and I won't tell you. I'll make you sweat, except to say I told the woman to call me at noon today to see if I still wanted her to start work tomorrow.”

“You're just trying to make me feel as if I really lost something in not working for you. But I'm telling you I didn't, because there are always just as good jobs and better bosses around, and for you to go to hell.”

Three times in less than a day,” he says. “I think that's a record for me. Now I'll level with you what was in my mind before you cursed me a second time, and still in my mind but only by a little before you told me to go to hell. I was going to ask you to come back.”

“Bull.”

“Nothing you say now will make it any worse or better for you. So if you want to stay tuned only to hear what was in my mind before, I'll tell you, which I feel free to do now. I was going to rehire you if you agreed to working overtime for no pay whenever I needed you to, but which I wouldn't be so excessive at, if I have. I thought maybe I'd been unfair to us both in so quickly firing you, since as workers went you were okay, and should I expect anyone better—more reliable or less complaining—in that kind of job for the pay it gets? If you agreed to my terms, then when she called I'd tell her I rehired you but would keep her in mind in case things didn't work out. But when you called shortly before I was going to call you, I thought I'd let you shoot off your mouth and agree to all my terms without my even asking them, which'd make it easier to ask more things out of you in the future. Though I doubt it, because you're so pigheaded, I hope you learned something from this,” and he hangs up.

I interview for a number of good jobs after that, but nobody will hire me because of the lousy reference my ex-boss gives me. So I start saying he had something personal against me, which had nothing to do with my job performance or even with reality, but none of the people interviewing me will accept that for not giving them his name and phone number. I finally land a really rotten job that doesn't ask for any references, where I work about ten more hours a week than the last one and for much less money. I also have to put in a lot of free overtime. I never complain about it and I in fact say I'll do it gladly, and after a year there, I get a small raise. It takes another two years before I'm making as much as I was paid by my last boss. But the cost of living's gone way up since then, so in what I can buy with my salary I'm actually earning half what I did at the old job. But like the woman who replaced me there might still say, with so many people being laid off and looking for work for a year or more, I feel lucky to have a job.