The Ignored

or what for, but I figured that between the two of them, Banks and Stewart had finally come up with a plausible reason why I should be let go.

I was nervous as I waited for the elevator. I didn’t like my job, but I certainly didn’t want to lose it. I stared at the descending lighted numbers above the metal doors. My palms were sweaty. I wished Banks had not asked me up to his office. If I was going to get fired, I thought, I would have much rather been notified through the mail. I had never been good at personal confrontations.

The elevator doors opened. An older woman in a loud print dress got out, and I stepped in, pressing the button for the fifth floor.

Banks was waiting for me in his office, seated behind his huge desk. He did not say hello, did not stand when I entered, but motioned for me to sit down. I sat. I wanted to wipe my sweaty hands on my pants, but he was looking straight at me and I knew it would be too obvious.

Banks leaned forward in his chair. “Has Ron talked to you about GeoComm?”

I blinked, stared dumbly. “Uh… no,” I said.

“It’s a geobase system that we’re developing for cities, counties, and municipal governments. You do know what a geobase system is?”

I shook my head, still not sure where this was leading.

He gave me a look of annoyance. “Geobase is short for geographic database. It allows the user to…”

But I was already tuning him out. I wasn’t going to lose my job, I realized. I was being given a new assignment. I was going to be writing instructions for a new computer system. Not just partial instructions, not just one-page rewrites, but an entire manual.

I wasn’t going to be fired. I’d been promoted.

Banks stopped talking, looked at me. “Aren’t you going to take notes?”

I looked at him. “I didn’t bring a notebook,” I admitted.

“Here.” Sighing heavily, he pulled a pad of yellow legal paper from the top drawer in his desk, handed it to me.

I took a pen from my pocket and began writing.

When I returned to my office an hour later, it was a little after eleven-thirty. Derek was gone. I put my notes and the papers Banks had given me down on my desk and walked over to Hope’s station. She was gone, too.

As were the programmers.

And Virginia and Lois.

They’d already left for Stacy’s birthday lunch.

I did what I always did, waited until twelve-fifteen, until most of the other people in the building had gone, and then drove to McDonald’s, ordering my lunch from the drive-thru and eating in my car at a nearby city park. I don’t know why, but I was hurt by the fact that they hadn’t waited for me. I shouldn’t have expected anything else, but I’d been asked to sign the card, Hope had written “See you at the lunch!” and I guess I’d let myself think that I was actually wanted and welcome. I ate my cheeseburger, taking out the pickle, and listened to the radio as I stared out the car window at a teenage couple making out on a blanket on the grass.

I drove back to work feeling even more depressed.

They arrived back from the lunch a half hour late. I was walking from desk to desk, passing out interoffice phone directories that Stewart had left in my in box and asked me to distribute, when Virginia and Lois passed by me on their way to the steno pool. They were both walking slowly, both holding their hands over their obviously full stomachs.

“I ate too much,” Lois said.

Virginia nodded. “Me, too.”

“How was it?” I asked. It was a pointed question. I wanted to make them feel guilty for not waiting for me, like Charlie Brown in the Christmas special when he sarcastically thanks Violet for sending him a card she obviously did not send.

Virginia looked at me. “What?”

“How was the lunch?”

“What do you mean, ‘How was the lunch?’”

“I was just curious.”

“You were there.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

Lois frowned. “Yes, you were. I was talking to you. I was telling you about that accident my daughter got in.”

I blinked. “I wasn’t there. I was here the whole time.”

“Are you sure?”

I nodded. Of course I was sure. I knew where I’d been for lunch, knew what I’d done, but I nonetheless felt chilled, slightly uneasy, and the thought irrationally crossed my mind that there was a doppelganger out there, a double acting in my stead.

“Huh,” Lois said, shaking her head. “That’s weird. I could’ve sworn you were there.”

I was ignored. By everyone.

I hadn’t noticed the extent of it at first because the company was not one big happy family. It was a pretty impersonal place to work, and even friends did not get much of a chance to speak in the hallways beyond a quick “hi”.

But people seemed to go out of their way not to notice me.

I tried not to think about it, tried not to let it bother me. But it did bother me. And I was reminded of it each workday, each time I sat in my office with Derek, each time I walked through the halls, each time I took my breaks or went to lunch.

It seemed frivolous to dwell to such an extent on my own problems, to be so chronically self-absorbed. I mean, there were people in Third World countries dying every day from diseases that science had the means to eradicate completely. There were people in our own country who were homeless and starving, and here I was worried that I didn’t get along with my coworkers.

But everyone’s reality is different.

And in my reality, this was important.

I thought of talking about it with Jane, wanted to talk to her about it, even planned to talk about it, but somehow I never seemed able to bring it up.

On Friday, Hope passed out the checks at four o’clock, the way she always did. I thanked her as she handed me my envelope, and I opened it up to look at the check.

It was sixty dollars less than it was supposed to be.

I stared at the printed number, not sure of what to do. I looked over at Derek. “Is there anything wrong with your check?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Don’t know. Haven’t looked.”

“Could you check?”

“It’s none of your business,” he told me.

“Fine.” I stood up and took my check down the hall to Stewart’s office. As usual, he was sitting at his desk, reading a computer magazine. I knocked once on his doorframe, and when he didn’t look up, I walked in.

He frowned at me. “What are you doing here?”

“I have a problem,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”

“What kind of problem?”

There was a chair available, but he didn’t offer it to me and I remained standing. “My paycheck’s sixty dollars off.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” Stewart said.

“I know. But you’re my supervisor.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? That I’m responsible for everything that goes on in your life?”

“No, I just thought — ”

“Don’t think. I don’t know anything about your little check problem, and to be honest with you, Jones, I don’t