“Phil,” Roger muttered morosely.
The newspaper crackled as Phil turned a page. Without looking up from the text, the balding, middle-aged man with the thick glasses said, “I’ll expect a full report on my desk by the end of the day.”
“So… you know?” Roger asked.
The crinkle of the newspaper being folded sounded especially loud in the empty shop. Dropping the paper on the table top with a plop, Phil shoved his chair back with a screech of legs on linoleum to stand at his full height of 5’ 3”. Straightening the vest of his three-piece navy-blue suit that made him super sweaty in the sweltering heat but looked dashing and debonair enough to be worth it, Phil looked up at the underling towering above him.
“That your employees are MIA? It’s what I do.”
“Of course,” Roger said.
Phil frowned at the thin man in the rumpled over-sized shirt and too-wide tie with the frolicking kittens/palominos prancing across a background of pale sand.
“And you do know where they are, of course.” It sounded more like a question than a statement.
Roger swallowed. “I think so,” he lied.
“Sure, you do,” Phil said. He pulled a slip of paper with an address written on it in cursive from his pocket, and slapped it on the table top. “Here. Go retrieve your runaways. I expect you all back at the office in the next twenty minutes.”
Grasping his mug of boiling brew, Phil breezed out of the watering hole, the smoked glass door swinging shut behind him.
Roger shared a long look with the pimply adolescent behind the counter.
“Bureaucrats,” Joe Jr muttered.
Roger’s face fell as a fatalistic feeling overwhelmed him. Sinking onto a spindly stool at the tiny table, he wished for the millionth time that he could be anyone other than himself. He didn’t like being a supervisor. He wasn’t very good at it. And other than the tidy salary that paid for his high-rise apartment in the slightly more fashionable 4th circle, there weren’t really any benefits to the job.
“Do you ever feel like you just can’t do anything right?” he asked Jr morosely.
“If you’re looking for someone to cheer you up, you’re in the wrong place.”
***
Roger stood on the patio outside Gina’s apartment, eight minutes later. He could clearly see her and Arlo on the sofa through the sliding glass door to the patio. They were watching TV.
“You know what this film is missing?” Arlo’s voice was clear through the glass.
“A qualified director and a budget larger than $5,000?” Graciela said.
“No. Well, yes but also, nudity,” Arlo said. “Nudity makes every movie better.”
“What?” Georgina asked.
“Well, maybe not every movie,” Arlo said with a nervous giggle. “I don’t think it’d be better for say… family films. No. Or documentaries about old folks in rest homes. Gross. But most movies? Definitely.”
Ghislaine’s sigh was loud.
“Take Night of the Living Dead, for example,” Arlo said quickly, desperate to convince her that he was on to something, “What’s scarier than brain-eating zombies? Naked brain-eating zombies, that’s what. Zombie dudes with their rotting junk falling off. Zombie chicks with rotting chests drooping down to the ground in long, stringy chunks of flesh. Terrifying.”
“There’s something very wrong with you,” Gladiola said.
“Yeah,” Arlo said. “I’m supposed to take pills for it but I don’t like the way they make me feel. All dead inside. Like a zombie. A naked zombie all exposed for the whole world to see and judge, unable to do anything about it because, you know, I’m just a walking corpse.”
“Why do you worry so much about what everyone else thinks?”
“Why do you worry so much about cleanliness?” Arlo countered. “We all have our little quirks. I like people. Even you, Gillian.”
“Well, don’t,” she said. “Like me, I mean. And there’s no use trying to get me to like you, so don’t bother.”
“You know, that’s a pretty fatalistic attitude...”
He broke off at Jacinda’s startled cry. She jumped up from the sofa to stare out at the 4 x 4 of swept concrete where Roger waited, absorbed in their conversation.
“Is that…” she whispered.
Roger was shocked when she ran to the door a moment later and yanked on the latch, the aluminum frame of the glass panel squealing against the track as the door slammed open.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I’m not really sure,” Roger said.
“It’s okay to quit. Nobody really expected you to succeed anyway,” Arlo said quietly from the sofa.
“What did you say?” Jezebel’s voice held a faint warble of fear.
She didn’t take her eyes off Roger, standing before her with more than a little confusion mirrored on his face.
“I said…”
“I heard you,” she snapped.
“Well, then why did you…”
“Oh, I remember,” Roger said slowly. “Janelle, you have a new trainee.”
Roger waited patiently for his employees to acknowledge the fact that they were supposed to be at work right now and not discussing naked zombies in Jocelyn’s living room, but they just stared blankly back at him.
“Ummm…” Roger said uncertainly. He wasn’t very good at confrontation.
“You’ve never come here before, Roger,” Jocasta said.
“Hey, that’s a good point,” Arlo said. He bounced up from the sofa like an excited kid on Christmas morning. “This is big! Roger, why are you here?”
“Because…” Roger said, searching his brain for the answer, but it eluded him.
“Did someone tell you to come here?” Arlo asked.
Roger nodded slowly.
“Who, Roger?” Griselda said. “Who told you to come here?”
“Phil.”
“Who is Phil?” Arlo said.
Roger shrugged. “The Accountant.”
“What does he account for Roger?” Arlo asked.
“That’s a silly question,” Gypsie said with a rude laugh. “What do all accountants account for? Money, obviously.”
“Oh,” Arlo said.
“No.” Roger said. “He mostly accounts for the bean counters, I think,” Roger said.
“Huh?” Arlo and Galaxia said together.
“But also, I guess, the drones,” Roger said. “Every drone has their role to fulfill. There are no exceptions.” He sounded like he was reading from a script that he’d recited a thousand times before.
Arlo and Jell-o exchanged a curious
