Debra needs espresso, but not the jitter-making kind. It’s Tuesday, 11 AM—the day second worse than Monday. Standing at the break room counter, she places her mug under the machine’s spout and atop the grid of drainage holes. Debra’s jab at the orange button for decaf starts the whirring, then gurgles of a dark, almost painful, nature. She’s already savored a cup of real espresso, what she herself made here.
The word “Mother” sprawls across her mug—a scrawl of rainbow letters, painted by her dear nine-year-old. It reminds Debra of how much she and Lisa would lose, if finances force her to take Lisa out of her private school.
The intoxicating fragrance of coffee lifts her from worrisome ruminations. Her hand goes to her hair to push a loose blond strand in place, smoothing it into her ponytail—the right style for a woman with not enough dollars nor minutes for frequent salon visits.
In her new economy Starbucks stops have dropped away. After dropping her two at grammar school, she now comes straight here and makes her espresso at the office. At this point she’s too edgy for the leaded stuff. The yellow packet of Splenda trembles in her hand while she waits for the dark stream. The machine gurgles, then spurts its spirit-boost into the hot milk in her mug. Black turns to a luscious creamy brown. The magic she lives on.
Footsteps. It’s Bob. Whose drawl speaks of origins far from Silicon Valley. Somewhere she used to make trips to when both parents were alive, where Mother grew up.
“Hey, Deb, I see you’ve broken out! A new fashion statement.”
She knows now he speaks of her blouse. The first time, confusion blanketed her when the man made this ridiculous comment. Today Debra doesn’t need to glance at her blouse to know his meaning—her button-down shirt is the same she wears every stress-jammed work day. The same old style—one of five identical white shirts she launders and hangs in her closet.
Bob’s shirts, like his speech, are flamboyant, often striped or colored. Sometimes Debra takes his ribbing as a barb disguised as humor. On her better days, she considers it mere teasing. Today her need overpowers annoyance. She doesn’t skewer him with a dark stare, but concedes an upturn of her lips, a smile small as a granule of sweetener.
“How’s it going?”
She hears the refrigerator door whoosh as it uncouples and she knows without looking what Bob reaches for.
No men in their section wear dress shirts except Bob. So that and his practically bald head set Bob apart from others of their engineering group. Deb is the only woman among a group of guys with tee-shirts covering their chests and black hair their scalps. With accents more foreign than Bob’s. This morning he seems more familiar than anyone else she might ask for help.
The fridge door shuts. She knows the drink Bob holds. She can’t yet meet the inquiry she feels in the glide of his eyes. The slow lilt of his words, how’s it going? implies he wants a real answer to a standard question. No one else asks it like he does.
She rips open a sweetening packet, then another, summons will power, then looks up. “I guess as well as can be expected.”
Debra stirs her coffee with the spoon she’s brought—to avoid the waste of the plastic stir things the company provides.
“Yeah, every day I slide my card at the entrance and wonder how many more times I’ll be doing this.” His bushy eyebrows lift.
“Oh, come on. You’re set.” Though Bob is new to their group, he’s weathered a few decades with HP. Since he’s smart and stable, Debra considers him immune from impending layoffs.
“Can’t count on anything in a lay-off this size.”
She harrumphs. A few months back after encountering Bob, she slammed his noise level as too high, his teasing too barbed and his questions too many, but kept it to herself—a silent grievance.
“Really. It’s true. They might choose a new hire over me. You see, I’ve never wanted to step off the engineer track. A new hire could be kept on for his, or her, management potential.”
Bob scrapes open his ever-present Coca-cola and while he lifts it up to his lips, she notes again the paunch hanging over his belt. Idiotic to drink so much sugar at least three times a day.
He lowers the red can and something in his creviced brow seems familiar. Something like Dad’s. His smile is wavy and he looks away, as if he too feels disoriented. She studies his face. Vine lines stretching from his eyes, like the rays her son crayons, yellow lines from a tiny sun. Something shifts inside her and Debra chuckles. It’s bumpy, like staccatos, what Lisa has been plucking on their piano.
Lessons—another thing that can go. Subtracting a hundred twenty dollars from monthly expenses would help. Necessity relabeled luxury. (If only Gary, her ex, could pay spousal support. Jobless, he receives the checks the court has ordered her to send him!)
“Sorry for my strangeness. It’s not knowing what’s next. This tension. I haven’t even started to look at what’s out there. Can’t find the time.”
It’s been more than a year since Dad’s death, since her GPS got ripped away and nightmares started. They halted a few months ago, but—since the CEO’s warning of cuts, bad dreams have returned. In bed she’s a lost child. Men with stern faces storm past her.
He takes a swig. “I’ve been looking. The job market is not encouraging.” He leans back against the counter.
His stance feels like an invitation to linger, to allow something to trickle out. “I turn on the computer after I tuck in the kids, trying to make myself invaluable.”
“At least you’re young. Not a grizzled guy like me. I’m not sure I’m going to find anyone to take me. And more college tuition coming up.”
“Yeah, I guess you got reasons to worry too.”
He nods. “Say, my wife is telling me to clear things out. Need to downsize. I subscribe to Fast Company and it piles up. Great articles, but it’s got to go. Do you ever read that magazine?”
She shakes a no. Footsteps announce Hiroshi’s entrance. Another competitor—granted, he isn’t so creative, but he arrives before Debra and is at the office still when she goes to pick up kids. He’s often submitting code with a midnight timestamp, especially since the all-hands speech telling of a market downturn and the necessity for layoffs.
After a brief exchange with Hiroshi, she turns to go.
“You’re burning so much midnight oil, you might go up in flames!”
She knows he directs it to Hiroshi, but with two idioms, plus humor, it’s sure to be over Hiroshi’s head. Dead quiet ensues. Bob is clueless.
With him in the breakroom still, she can peer at Bob’s cubicle. It lies on the way to the toilets. A small glass sphere on his desk encloses tiny pet shrimp. Next to it, a disarray of programming and engineering books. A family photo shows Bob looking thinner. His arm encircles a woman, presumably his wife, while a young boy and a girl lean into the couple. A more recent shot pictures what appears to be the same girl, but older and wearing a UCSB jersey. Another photo perplexes her. Bob at an age in between young and now, no longer thin but still with hair. He stands close by a different woman and her arm wraps a skinny boy with sagging shoulders. A sister?
Time to stop spying, before she’s discovered.
After the restroom and on returning to her desk, Debra walks by Ashok and Jungwook’s desks—both better engineers than she. When someone gets the ax, it won’t be them. She has no such certainty about herself. Once she bested ninety percent of her college class, one of two females in her cohort. As a newbie at HP she was a quick study and moved steadily upwards. And that despite giving birth to Lisa and returning to work soon after. But her sparkle has faded. Mommie brain she calls it. The real onset came after pregnancy with Owen. The fatigue and the glue in her mental circuits. She opted out of the paid workforce and stayed away three years. Two children under six created work enough. But then her husband left. Back to work—two years with one group and six months with this one, lurching like a novice on a ropes course. Last week the CEO reported that many small internet firms had folded and server sales plummeted at Sun and others. That meant fewer orders of HP’s products and a pruning of employees was required. As if people were sticks to be cut and tossed.
She reaches her work space and a red light flashes. Her phone. Voice mail instead of e-mail—a summons from her boss? Disturbing. The cut is always pronounced in person—away from your cubicle and behind closed doors. Is this it? She stares vacantly before she pushes, replay.
The message is simple. She’s forgotten a meeting. Red-faced and apologizing, she joins the group. Guilt is nasty. She caves in to an unwanted assignment: a project with C++ language. At best, C++ is eclectic. At worst, it’s cumbersome and painful, but other than a grimace, she doesn’t complain. When she returns to her cubicle, it’s noontime.
Lunch is pb and jam at her desk, while catching up on personal e-mails. She allows herself a two-minute visit to the “Why C++ sucks” website. A new post says, “Like trying to turn a dog into an octopus by nailing four legs onto it.” She posts a comment: Ha!
A movement to her side. It’s Peter, her boss. He blinks rapidly. She jerks—caught playing.
“Just finishing up my lunch. Need something?”
“No worries. Watch all the YouTube you want at lunch. I’m coming back from the cafeteria.” His ears twitch. “You know that code you sent for review—the destructor on the base class wasn’t virtual.”
Her stomach flinches as if her youngest, Owen, ran a head banger into her gut. “Oh, gawd. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. I promise.”
“Sure. That’s what counts.”
Hours later, she walks through rows of cars. Waiting at the light, she evaluates herself, her day-end habit. What a disaster. That virtual destructor mistake probably pushed her two steps down on the performance ladder. She hoped she’d contributed enough at the meeting today to look useful. Ashok and Chung-Hee usually sound sharper than she and both have worked longer at the company. They’re single and childless, so losing their jobs would not put them in a quandary. Not like it would her. Each probably owns a shiny BMW or Lexus. If someone has to go, it should be them.
She opens the door of her faded Toyota and does a revolution. She has to admit—those two are nice. And herself?
This uncertainty—it’s remaking her. Her colleagues seen as rivals; she a bitch.
The next day steps thud outside her cubicle, but they don’t disturb her gaze at the photo atop her shelves. Her parents in jeans and flannel pose in front of a river, Dad holding his fishing rod. Debra remembers the fresh trout and sweet corn of that night’s dinner, both blackened over a campfire.
“How goes it?” It’s Bob.
She swivels around. His eyes flick from her parents’ photo to the one standing next to it: Debra with her two children. She knows he notices the absence of a father.
“Hanging in there. And you?”
His hands hold magazines. “Thought I’d pass these on.” He extends two copies of Fast Company. “Better to recycle than toss.”
“Um, thanks.” She turns back to her computer and his steps sound behind her.
At the end of the day, she reads the top issue’s headline: “A Case for the Way We View Mentors.”
After leaving the office and driving thirty minutes to pick up her two from childcare, she never arrives home sooner than 6:30. Then the needs roll on, one curve after another, perilous as the hairpins going up the coastal mountains. When the children visit their dad, it gives space for tasks she’s put off, like balancing checkbooks—her own and her mother’s. She never feels caught up. Saturday night she looks at the Fast Company magazine passed on by Bob. She ponders its article on mentors. At the zoo on Sunday, she talks it over with her long-time friend Tina. “Do it,” Tina orders. “You need someone in your field to talk with.”
Before lunch Wednesday Debra gets a nasty-gram from Ashok and the cc list includes her boss. The mistake she’s made could guarantee she’ll be ousted. Her arm trembles as she downs her coffee.
A half hour later, it’s Bob. He’s arrived at her cubicle five minutes early—before she could carry through on her impulse to cancel the lunch appointment she’d instigated. If not for Tina’s command, she’d never would have. “Try Bob—he’s not your Uncle.” So said her friend of many years, the friend who’d heard of the humiliation she’d suffered as a child back at her Uncle’s farm in the South, where men drawled the same way Bob did, where men made jokes at your expense. Not only had her uncle laughed, but everyone else—except Dad.
On their walk across the parking lot, Debra tells of Ashok. “He said I didn’t follow recommended coding procedure.”
“That’s harsh, but everyone’s on edge.”
“But he cc’d Peter.”
Bob strokes his chin. “We all do things like that and Peter knows it. At least once a year. It won’t cost you your job.”
Kind words, but she doesn’t confess: it’s her second blunder this month.
Small talk about family follows as they stand in line at the sandwich place. His childhood tookplace in Memphis, college at Rice, work in Dallas. Fifteen years ago, when his sister in the Bay Area was single-parenting a son with Aspergers, Bob secured a job in Silicon Valley and intertwined his family with hers. The kids have grown up now, both Bob’s and his sister’s.
Soon they take seats at an outdoor table and she sips from her “Go-Go” Vitamin Water. She holds herself back from her routine of coffee.
Bob laments there is no Coca-cola—only Pepsi. “You usually eat at your desk, right?”
She nods and reaches for her drink.
“So, why are you lunching out today? With me?” He raises his busy eyebrows.
Her heart rate shoots up, as if she’d downed a double espresso. “That Fast Company article about mentoring did it.”
Bob grins. “You see I can be useful to you. Earlier I thought you hated me.”
“I’m sorry.” She drinks slowly to avoid looking at him.
Bob chuckles. “It’s okay. I know I come on strong at times. Anyway, I was hoping you’d notice that article. I like being helpful.”
Debra bites into her sandwich and sauce dribbles out. Doubts ooze. Bob would probably try too hard to assist. And just around the corner? It could be awkward. Disastrous, maybe. But she remembers Tina’s words. She wants to say yes to her friend’s questions later.
“You’ve been here a while. How do they decide who to layoff? Performance reports are key, right?”
“Well, it’s a bit of a mystery and the powers-that-be seem to like it that way.”
After a long draught, Bob belches. “Excuse me. Anyways, they don’t lay off all the young ones. Or the seniors or else they’d be sued for age discrimination. Smarts and performance help, but they’re not everything.”
“I’ve been here only two years plus.”
“It’s not necessarily newcomers that get cut. Some strange combo drives it. Don’t assume.”
“You’re not saying that to make me feel better?’ She unclasps her bottle.
“No. Ask anyone around at the last big layoff.”
Bob munches on some chips—food she avoids. He’s not like her father nor her tennis coach of years past. Not at all. Still, he’s here.
“Could we meet sometimes to discuss work issues?”
“Sure, as long as you’ll buy me a sandwich!” He chuckles. She nods.
“Kidding, you know.”
She wasn’t sure.
A month later, there’s still no news of the layoffs. Waiting is torture. Unable to find a band in her rush to get out this morning, Debra wears her hair loose to work. Before starting her work she stares at a photo of her parents on her desk. She finds herself reverting to an old habit—lifting a strand to her lips and inhaling the comforting, familiar scent. She sighs, turns on her computer and immerses herself in programming.
A strange metallic rustle echoes down the corridor. She turns. A streak of purple and orange streams by. It’s the engineer with multi-colored hair cruising on rollerblades. He must have a high ranking or he wouldn’t dare. Attention-starved people deserve to get cut. She’s not ready to concentrate yet. Exhaustion pulls her. She needs a second jolt of caffeine. Rainbow mug in hand, Debra walks to the break room. There the TV plays a home improvement show. As Debra punches buttons for a mocha espresso, she reflects. It’s been helpful to talk with Bob every week—his calm demeanor and reassurances soothe her nerves, but that didn’t save her last night. She stayed up late looking on-line for jobs.
When she returns to her desk with a nearly full mug, Bob stands there.
He says, “Oh, good. Looks like you’re okay.”
“Yeah, what?”
“Half an hour ago Hiroshi came out of a conference with the boss, looking white as China. He’s about finished packing up his desk now.”
“Poor guy.” She plopped her drink down and expresso sloshes out. She grabs a tissue to wipe it off. “Will there be more cut from our group?”
“Rumor has it that only one needed to be cut. You’re safe.”
“You think.” She steps closer to Bob, checking his eyes to see if it’s mere reassurance.
“Well, if there was going to be a second cut, it would have been done immediately after Hiroshi.”
“You’re sure?”
“That’s what Ashok says. And he’s been around the bend a few times.”
Debra finds herself trembling. She doesn’t know if it’s from her mocha or the let-down of all the built-up tension. Bob tentatively raises an arm and she doesn’t draw back. He lightly rests it around her shoulder—something her father used to do. She leans into his vigor. Just for a moment, then she straightens, pulls away, and he withdraws his arm.
“Well, back to work now,” Bob says. “And I’ll say good-by to Hiroshi and say we’ll lunch with him another day.”
“Oh, yeah. Good idea. I’ll go say good bye too.”
But first Debra picks up her coffee and sips. Its luscious chocolate sweetness coasts down. She admits it—she’s focused completely on what Hiroshi’s departure means for her, but Bob saw more. He’s thought of Hiroshi’s side.
Debra lifts a hand to her hair and her fingers comb it, pulling apart tangles. The past and present separate and shift within.
She thinks, Bob’s jesting is not cruel—only ignorant bravado. Maybe better yet—perhaps kindness streaks his strange brand of brew.
To my job—kept—she thinks. With Hiroshi and Ashok, Debra’s mug taps, softly. With Bob, it’s a clink.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carol Park’s fiction has appeared in the anthology Irrational Fears, The East Bay Review, Inigo, and The Harpoon Review. Actors performed her stories as part of the Pasadena Arts New Short Fiction Series. Her MFA in Creative Writing came from Seattle Pacific University. She’s learned of the geek world through her engineer husband. Her occupation is teaching and befriending English learners from distant places. From them she’s learned how little she knows and how precious is the meeting of minds over tea.