The Ignored

What would happen, I wondered, if she met someone with more skillful hands, a faster tongue, a bigger penis?

I didn’t even want to think about that.

“I… love you,” I said.

She looked surprised, and her expression softened. “I love you, too.” She kissed me on the mouth, on the nose, on the forehead, and we snuggled together and pulled the blanket higher and watched TV until we fell asleep.

Seven

Acknowledgment of my mediocrity only seemed to hasten my fade into the woodwork. Even Hope no longer spoke to me unless I addressed her first, and more than once it seemed that she’d forgotten I worked at Automated Interface. It was as if I were becoming a shade within the corporation, a ghost in the machine.

The weather changed, became warmer, became summer. I felt melancholy, sad. Sunny days always made me feel that way. The sharp contrast between the blue beauty of a summer sky and the drab grayness of my life made the difference between my dreams and my reality seem that much more pronounced.

I was working full-time on GeoComm now, writing a real instruction manual, not playing around with the piddly-ass projects to which I’d previously been assigned. I was given access to computer screens by the programmers; I was given demonstrations of the system; I was allowed to play around with the system on one of the terminals in the test facility. I suppose the work could have been considered challenging — could have, had I had any interest in it at all. But I did not. Assistant Coordinator of Interoffice Procedures and Phase II Documentation was a job I had taken not out of choice but out of necessity, and its specifics held no allure for me.

The one person who did not ignore me was Stewart. He seemed more hostile than ever. I was a constant source of irritation to him. The fact that Banks, or someone above Banks, had decided to let me work on a legitimate project made him furious, and at least once each day he would come into the office, nod to Derek, then move in front of my desk and stand there, looking down at whatever I was working on. He would not say anything, would not ask me what I was doing, would simply stand there, staring. It annoyed me and he knew it annoyed me, but I refused to give him the satisfaction of letting my feelings show. I would ignore him, concentrate on the work in front of me, and wait him out. Eventually, he would leave.

I’d watch him go, and I’d want to just punch him.

I’d never been a violent person. Even my revenge fantasies had usually involved humiliation, not physical harm. But something about Stewart made me want to just beat the living shit out of him.

Not that I could.

He was in a hell of a lot better shape than I was, and I had no doubt that he could’ve easily kicked my ass.

I finished documenting the functions from the first GeoComm submenu. I gave the instructions to Stewart, who supposedly gave them to Banks. I heard nothing back from either of them and began work on the system’s second submenu.

It was Thursday, the day of Jane’s night class, and though we didn’t usually have sex on Thursdays because she got home late and tired, I convinced her to do it this time. Afterward, I rolled off her. We’d done it in the missionary position, I realized. We always did it in the missionary position.

We were silent for a moment, lying next to each other. Jane reached for the remote and turned on the TV. A cop show was on.

“Did you come?” I asked her finally.

“Yes.”

“More than once?”

She propped herself up on one elbow. “Not this again. Am I going to have to reassure you each time we make love?”

“Sorry I asked.”

“What do you want from me? I came, you know I came, and you still have to ask me about it.”

“I thought maybe you were faking it.”

“I’ve had enough of this.” Angrily, she pulled up the covers, bunching them beneath her chin. “If I knew I was going to have to go through all this crap again, we wouldn’t’ve done it at all.”

I looked at her, hurt and trying to show it. “You don’t like having sex with me.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!”

“How am I supposed to feel, huh? I mean, how do you feel about me? Do you still love me? Would you still love me if we met today for the first time?”

“I’m only going to say this once, okay? Yes, I love you. Now that’s it. End of discussion. Drop it and go to sleep.”

“Okay,” I said. “Fine.” I was angry with her, but there was really no reason for me to be angry.

We turned away from each other and fell asleep to the sounds of the television.

Eight

I began to see flyers for Automated Interface’s annual employee picnic tacked up on the bulletin board in the break room, taped to the doors of our department. I ignored the flyers, preferring not to think about the picnic, though I overheard the programmers talking about it. The event seemed to be a biggie, and apparently, from what I gathered, attendance was required.

Required attendance. That was what bothered me. I knew that I would have no one to go with, no friend to sit next to, and the idea of sitting alone at a picnic table while everyone else around me talked and laughed and visited and had a great time worried me.

I worried more and more about the picnic as the flyers proliferated, as conversational references became more common. It was turning into an honest-to-God obsession. As the week, and then the day, grew closer, I found myself hoping absurdly that some sort of natural disaster would occur and prevent the event from taking place.

On Tuesday, the night before the picnic, I even considered calling in sick.

I don’t know what prompted this almost pathological fear of the picnic, but I suspect it was a combination of things: my inability to fit in at work, the recent discovery of how hopelessly average I was, the increasing rockiness of my relationship with Jane. My self-esteem and self-confidence were at an all-time low, and I didn’t think my ego could stand the sort of bashing the picnic would provide. Like Charlie Brown said, “I know no one likes me. Why do we have to have holidays to remind me of it?”

This wasn’t exactly a holiday, but it followed the same principle. I was nothing, I was invisible, and this would only serve to bring it home.

The picnic was scheduled to start at noon and finish at two and was being held in the oversized greenbelt behind the Automated Interface building. At eleven forty-five, the toadlike man from upstairs who ate lunch with Derek stopped by the office, said “Ready?” and he and Derek went out to the picnic. Neither of them spoke to me, neither of them invited me to accompany them, and although I hadn’t expected them to invite me to come along, the fact that they didn’t pissed me off.

In the hallway, I heard other voices, saw other people pass by, but I remained at my desk. I wondered if I could close the door and stay here, hide and not go. No one would notice if I was missing. No one would know if I didn’t show up.

There was an interruption of the Muzak piped over the building’s speakers, and a deep-voiced man announced: “The annual employee picnic has now started. All employees must attend. Repeat. The annual