They were sitting in a huge glass vase on her desk between keyboard and monitor, a fountain spray of color, swaying ever so slightly in the breeze from the vent over her desk that always made her broil in the winter and freeze in the summer. She sat down, numbed to anything but their beautiful scent. It took her almost a full minute of admiration before she noticed the card sticking askew out of the center.
She removed it from the plastic pitchfork that held it aloft and opened it. “So sorry to hear about your job. We’ll always remember you! –C.” The words had been printed in noncommittal, separate cursive letters by an ancient electric typewriter.
C? Who the heck was C? Carl? Catherine – did she even spell her name with a “C”? Charlene? And what did she have to be sorry about her job for –
Her blood froze. This was it. Rumors had been spinning around the office like miniature tornadoes for weeks, that there were going to be layoffs, but that happened at the end of every fiscal year. Someone must have known this was happening ahead of time, and sent her flowers to —what? Soften the blow (like Charlene would), or twist the knife a little harder (as Carl *definitely* would)?
She started looking around, trying to catch someone’s eye. But lunch wouldn’t really end for another fifteen minutes, and everyone had their heads down, working through it. She sat there for another minute, not knowing what to do. Did this mean she didn’t have to finish the monthly report? Could she keep her bus pass until the end of the month? Should she go talk to her supervisor?
The longer she thought, the madder she became. This stupid company was always saying that it was run like a family, blah blah blah, and that everything was fine when everyone knew it wasn’t. For all she knew, security was on their way down the hall right now, ready to stand there stoically while she piled her accumulated twenty-two years of personal items (in a plastic mail bin that she would have to actually return to this building under penalty of US Postal Service law). She had a few things to take care of before she was going to let that happen…
“Carl?” she said brightly, poking her head around the corner of his office, making him jump just a little. His reaction gave her the guts to finish with, “Looks like you can drag out that bottle of scotch that everyone knows you have in the bottom drawer of your filing cabinet and drink up, ‘cause I’m outta here!”
Patty turned without letting him react. The face he would make looked better in her head that it ever would in reality. She next rapped on Sue’s cubicle, and said in a voice that was just a little louder than it had to be, “Sorry to interrupt your weekly phone call with that married guy from the downtown branch where you plan where you’re going to go for ‘drinks’ after work—“ here, she executed the biggest air quotes she had ever made in her life “—to let you know that your dream’s come true! It’s my last day!”
She spun on her heel to address Yolanda across the aisle, who actually flinched when she met her eyes. She hollered, “And be sure you keep that duplicate key to the cash box well hidden, Yol! You never know when inspection’s coming around, right?”
She went right down the hallway, opening fire on every single one of them. She might not have collected many personal items in twenty-two years, but she certainly had enough dirt to go around. By the time she had gotten back to her desk, half of the office doors had heads peering out of them to hear what she was going to say next, and the other half had been slammed shut, denials and escape tactics clearly being scrambled for behind them.
It took Patty a full minute to realize that the flowers as she finished her circuit of destruction at her desk, and another fifteen seconds to realize where they had gotten to. The flower delivery man, who had clearly heard her verbal barrage and was keeping his eyes shaded under his official delivery man hat, was clearly placing them on Rita’s desk. Rita was there too, eyes puffy and nose running, silently collecting her things and placing them in a plastic mail bin. Charlene stood quietly next to her, looking at Patty as if she had just come shambling out of a swamp.
She stood there, eyes wide, fists clenching and unclenching at her side, as the flower delivery man turned and walked past her toward the front doors of the office, the only place where sunshine was streaming in.
“Oops,” he muttered, never raising his head.
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