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I just got better at ignoring it.
And by the time lunch hour came around—no food for me because of aforementioned clawing sensation inside—the swelling and redness on my face had gone away, so I grabbed my bag and keys, and headed into town, telling myself it was better to get this over with sooner rather than later.
I was sure Andres had told Mike and the others by then. Dealing with their raging and jeering was best dealt with as soon as possible.
The office almost felt foreign when I opened the door and moved inside.
Save for, of course, the fact that none of the guys had cleaned up a damn thing while I’d been gone. Garbage cans overflowed, coffee cups collected on every available surface, and there was a mountain of paperwork piled on my desk for some reason.
Punishment, maybe?
Trying to push down a grumble, I moved to my desk putting my bag in the drawer, and starting to go through the paperwork. Which all seemed like shit that the guys had taken out or created, and hadn’t wanted to file themselves.
Granted, I probably had a world of shit coming to me for getting us fired, but I was nobody’s secretary in this office. So I separated the files into four piles. One for each coworker. Then I put them on their goddamn desks.
I’d accomplished that task, and was weighing the merits of cleaning up the coffee cups. On the con side, they would expect it of me in the future. On the pro, though, I wouldn’t have to be breathing in toxic mold or dealing with some sort of bug infestation if I did clean it up. Just this once.
That was when I heard their voices getting louder, coming closer.
When I looked over, I saw the door to the back room opening, and the four of them were moving out into the office with a fifth man with them.
There was one panicked, gut-punch second where I thought it could be Andres.
But it wasn’t.
This guy was shorter and older, wearing a suit, not A’s more casual clothes.
Mike moved out, using his body to actually shield the prospective new client from seeing or interacting with me as they passed, all the while kissing this guy’s ass as they led him to the door.
It wasn’t until he was safely outside that they all turned to me in unison.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Mike asked, making me jolt slightly.
“Working?” I said, brows pinching.
“Shouldn’t you be working at Andres’s house?” he asked.
So he hadn’t fired us.
Yet.
I mean, it was a yet, right?
If he’d, you know, handled that situation at the port, that is.
I hadn’t even asked.
I mean, if he had, though, I had delivered. I’d pointed him in the direction of his snake. It was on him to chop his head off. Metaphorically. I hoped.
So we wouldn’t be fired per se.
The job would just be done.
We’d get paid.
And no one would be the wiser.
That, at least, was one small glimmer of hope in a world that suddenly felt engulfed in darkness, in emptiness.
“There is other work aside from A’s case,” I said, shrugging. “And you all seemed to have completely forgotten that this is an office, not a giant petri dish,” I said, waving a particularly molded cup toward them. What the hell was even in the coffee to have molded that much that quickly?
“He’s your only case right now,” Mike said, and I just went ahead and ignored that.
He must have seen the merits of allowing me to clean up their mess, though, because he said nothing else to me for the rest of the day. As I cleaned up, as I dealt with some of my old files, as I answered the phone.
Anything, literally anything but having to let my own personal thoughts creep in once again.
“Yo, we’re closing up,” Mike said, snapping me out of… organizing my desk drawer. Yeah, that was how low I’d sunk. I apparently had a lot more thoughts and feelings about the order of pens, pencils, and markers than I ever could have imagined.
“Right,” I said, closing my mostly organized drawer with a sinking sensation inside, knowing there was no way to hide from my thoughts and feelings once I was back in my empty apartment with next to nothing to do.
Why couldn’t a new job have come in?
I could go for some life-or-death scaling of scaffolding to get some cheating pictures for some wife who wanted to get a decent divorce settlement.
“You heard from A today?” Mike asked as he turned to lock up after I moved outside.
Sure, turn the fucking knife, Mike.
“No,” I said truthfully.
“You don’t think that’s… odd?” he asked, the accusation hanging in the air.
“Not at all,” I said, shrugging as I turned to walk away.
I mean, it wasn’t, was it?
He’d made himself pretty damn clear.
