The Ignored (13 page)

How deep did this thing go?

I didn’t know and I didn’t want to know. I didn’t even want to think
about it.

The sky was darkening outside, the sun going down, and the inside of the
apartment was filling with shadows, the furniture that I could see through the
living room doorway shifted slowly into silhouette. I walked across the kitchen,
turned on the light. From here, I could see where the couch had been, where the
prints had hung. I looked into the living room and all of a sudden I felt
lonely. Really lonely. So damn lonely that I almost felt like crying.

I thought of opening the refrigerator and getting out another beer,
maybe getting drunk, but I didn’t want to do that.

I didn’t want to spend the evening in the apartment.

So I got put of the house and drove, hitting the Costa Mesa Freeway and
heading south. I only realized where I was going when I was halfway there, and
by that time I did not want to turn back, although the ache within me grew even
more acute.

The freeway ended, turned into Newport Boulevard, and I drove to the
beach, our beach, parking in the small metered lot next to the pier. I got out
of the car, locked it, and wandered aimlessly through the crowded streets. The
sidewalks were teeming with beautifully tanned bikini-clad women and handsome
athletic men. Roller skaters glided through the throng, maneuvering around the
walkers.

Again, from the Studio Cafe, I heard that music, Sandy Owen, although
this time the music did not seem magically transcendent but sad and melancholy
and, once more, wholly appropriate: a different sound track for a different
night.

I looked toward the pier, toward the blackness of the ocean night
beyond.

I wondered what Jane was doing.

I wonder who she was with.

Derek retired in October.

I did not attend his going-away party—I was not even invited—but I
knew when it was being held because of the notices on the break room bulletin
board, and I called in sick on the day that it took place.

Odd as it seemed, I missed him after he was gone. Merely having another
body in the office, even if it was Derek’s, had somehow made me feel less alone,
had been like a tie to the outside world, to other people, and the office, in
his absence, seemed very empty.

I was starting to worry about myself, about my lack of human contact.
The evening after Derek’s departure I realized that I had gone for a whole day
without speaking, without uttering a single, solitary word.

And it had not made a damn bit of difference to anyone. No one had even
noticed.

The next day, I woke up, went to work, had a few words with Stewart in
the morning, stated my order to the clerk at Del Taco at lunch, said nothing to
anyone during the afternoon, went home, made dinner, watched TV, went to bed. I
had probably spoken a total of six sentences the entire day—to Stewart and
the Del Taco clerk. And that was it.

I needed to do something. I needed to change my job, change my
personality, change my life.

But I couldn’t.

“Average,” I thought, was not really an accurate description of what I
was. It was true as far as it went, but it didn’t imply enough. It didn’t quite
cut it. It was too benign, not pejorative enough. “Ignored” was more
appropriate, and that was how I began thinking of myself.

I was Ignored.

With a capital
I.

I made a point the next day of passing by the desks of the programmers,
the desks of Hope, Virginia, and Lois. I said hello to each, and each one of
them ignored me. Hope, the kindest, nodded distractedly at me, mumbled something
vaguely salutatory.

It was getting worse.

I was fading away.

On my way home, on the freeway, I drove wildly, cutting in front of
cars, not letting people pass, slamming on my brakes when I felt the drivers
were following too close behind me. I received horn honks and middle fingers in
return.

Here I was noticed, I thought. Here I was not invisible. These people
knew I was alive.

I cut off a black woman in a Saab, was gratified to hear her honk at me.

I swerved in front of a punk in a VW, smiled as he screamed at me out
the window.

I started buying lottery tickets each Wednesday and Saturday, the two
days on which the game was played. I knew I had no chance of winning—according to an article in the newspaper, I had a better chance of being hit by
lightning than winning the lottery—but I began to see the game as the only
way of escaping the strait-jacket that was my job. Each Wednesday and Saturday
night as I sat in front of the television, watching the numbered white Ping-Pong
balls flying about in their glass vacuum case, I not only hoped I would win, I
actually
thought
I would win. I began to concoct elaborate scenarios in
my head, plans of what I would do with my newfound wealth. First, I would settle
some scores at work. I would hire someone to dump a thousand pounds of cow shit
on top of Banks’ desk. I would hire a thug to make Stewart dance naked in the
first-floor lobby to Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love.” I would yell obscenities
over the corporation’s PA system until someone called Security and had me
forcibly removed from the building.

After that, I would get the hell out of California. I did not know where
I’d go; I had no real destination in mind, but I knew that I wanted out of here.
This place had come to represent everything that was wrong with my life, and I
would ditch it and start over somewhere else, somewhere new, somewhere fresh.

At least that was the plan.

But each Thursday and Monday, after watching the lottery drawing and
comparing the chosen numbers with those on the ticket in my hand, I inevitably
ended up back at work, a dollar poorer and a day more depressed, all my plans
shot to hell.

It was on one of these Mondays that I came across a photo someone had
accidentally dropped on the floor of the elevator. It was an eight-by-ten, a
picture of the testing department that had obviously been taken in the sixties.
The men all had inappropriately long sideburns and wide, loud ties, the women
short skirts and bell-bottomed pantsuits. There were faces I recognized in the
photo, and that was the weird thing. I saw longhaired young women who had become
short-haired old women; smiling, easygoing men whose faces had since hardened
permanently into uptight frowns. The dichotomy was so striking, the differences
so obvious, that it was like seeing a horror movie makeup transformation. Never
before had I seen such a depressingly clear example of the ravaging effects of
time.

For me, it was like Scrooge seeing the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. I
saw my present in that photo, my future in the now-hardened faces of my
coworkers.

I returned to my desk, more shaken than I would have liked to admit. On
my desk, I found a stack of papers and, on top of that, a yellow Post-It upon
which Stewart had scrawled a short note: “Revise Termination Procedures for
Personnel. Due tomorrow. 8:00.”

The 8:00 was underlined.

Twice.

Sighing, I sat down, picked up the papers. For the next hour, I read
through the highlighted paragraphs in the provided pages and looked over the
margin notes that Stewart wanted me to incorporate into the text. I made my own
notes, hacked out a rough draft of the corrections, which I paper-clipped to the
proper pages, then carried my materials down the hall to the steno pool. I
smiled at Lois and Virginia, said hi, but both of them ignored me, and I
retreated to the word-processing desk in the corner and sat down at the PC.

I turned on the terminal, inserted my diskette, and was about to start
typing the first of the corrections when I stopped. I don’t know what came over
me, I don’t know why I did it, but I put my fingers to the keys and typed: “A
full-time employee can be terminated in one of the three ways—hanging,
electrocution, or lethal injection.”

I reread what I’d written. I almost stopped there. I almost moved the
cursor to the beginning of the line and pressed the delete key.

Almost.

My hesitation lasted only a second. I knew I could be fired if I
distributed these corrections and someone read them, but in a way I would have
welcomed that. At least it would have put an end to my misery here. It would
have forced me to find another job someplace else.

But I knew from experience that no one
would
read what I was
writing. The people to whom I gave my updates seldom even inserted them in the
appropriate manuals, let alone read them. Hell, even Stewart seemed to have
stopped going over my work.

“An employee terminated for poor work performance can no longer be drawn
and quartered under the new regulations,” I typed. “The revised guidelines state
clearly that such an employee is now to be terminated by hanging from the neck
until dead.”

I grinned as I reread the sentence. Behind me, Lois and Virginia were
talking as they did their own work, discussing some miniseries they’d seen the
night before. Part of me was afraid that they would come up behind me, look over
my shoulder and read what I’d written, but then I thought no, they’d probably
forgotten I was even there.

“Unapproved, non-illness-related absences of over three days will be
grounds for termination by electrocution,” I typed. “Department and division
supervisors will flank the electric chair as the death sentence is carried out.”

I waited for repercussions from my Termination Procedure stunt, but none
came. A day passed. Two. Three. A week. Obviously, Stewart had not bothered to
read the update—although he’d had a bee up his butt about getting it done
instantly, that day, as if it were the most important thing in the world.

Just to be safe, just to make sure, I asked him about it, caught him by
Hope’s desk one morning and asked if he’d gone over the update to make sure it
was correct. “Yeah,” he said distractedly, waving me away. “It’s fine.”

He hadn’t read it.

Or… maybe he had.

I felt a familiar churning in the pit of my stomach. Was what I wrote as
anonymous as what I said or did? Was my writing ignored, too? I had not thought
of that before, but it was possible. It was more than possible.

I thought of my C’s in English on that report card.

On my next set of screen instructions for GeoComm, I wrote: “When all
on-screen fields are correct, press [ENTER] and your mama will take it up the
ass. She likes it best that way.”

I got no comment on it.

Since no one seemed to notice me, I took it a step further and began
coming in wearing jeans and T-shirts, comfortable street clothes, instead of the
more formal dress shirt and tie. There were no reprimands, no recriminations. I
rode up on the elevator each morning, denim-clad amidst a sea of white shirts
and red ties, and no one said a word. I wore ripped Levi’s and dirty sneakers
and T-shirts from old rock concerts to my meetings with Stewart and Banks and
neither of them noticed.

In mid-October, Stewart went on a week’s vacation, leaving a list of
assignments and their deadlines on my desk. It was a relief to have him gone,
but his absence meant that what miniscule interaction I had with other people
was for that week suspended. I spoke to no one at all while he was gone. No one
spoke to me. I was unseen, unnoticed, entirely invisible.

Friday evening I got home and I desperately wanted to talk to someone.
Anyone. About anything.

But I had no one to talk to.

Out of desperation, I looked through an old magazine and found a number
for one of those porno calls, the ones where women talk to you about sex for a
three-dollar-a-minute toll. I dialed the number, just wanting to speak to a
person who would speak back.

I got a recording.

When I arrived at work the next Monday morning, someone was sitting at
Derek’s desk.

I literally stopped in my tracks, I was so surprised. It was a guy about
my age, a little older maybe, with a brown beard and thick, longish hair. He was
dressed in regulation white shirt/gray pants, but his tie was wide and silk and
brightly colored, with a print of toucans standing on pineapples. He grinned
when he saw me, and his smile was wide, generous, and unaffected. “Hey, dude,”
he said.

I nodded hello, unsure of how to respond.

“David’s the name.” He stood, extended a hand, and we shook. “I’ve been
transferred here from Bookkeeping. You must be Bob.”

Again I nodded. “You’re taking over Derek’s job?” I asked dumbly.

He laughed. “What job? That position’s gone. It was nothing but a title,
anyway. They just let that guy hang on until retirement out of pity.”

“I always wondered what he did.”

“So did everyone else. How did you get along with him?”

I shrugged noncommittally. “I didn’t know him too well. I just started
working here a few months ago—”

“Come on. The guy’s a dick with feet.”

I found myself smiling. “All right,” I admitted. “We weren’t bosom
buddies.”

“Good,” David said. “I like you already.”

I walked over to my desk and sat down, feeling good. It had been so long
since I’d had an actual conversation with anyone that I was emotionally charged
by even this small contact, my spirits absurdly buoyed by the fact that I had a
new office mate who had actually noticed me.

Maybe my condition was reversible.

“So what is your job?” I asked.

“Still bookkeeping,” he said. “Only for your department now. I think
they invented this job so they could kick me upstairs a floor. None of the old
farts in my department like working with me.”

I laughed.

“I’m stone serious.”

I smiled. The people in his department might not like working with him,
but I could tell that I would.