Something Happened

'You work for me! I can fire you, you damned idiot. And so can two hundred other people neither one of us even knows about. Do you doubt it?'

'Christ, no.'

'Isn't that reason enough? I can bully and degrade you anytime I want.'

Oh, Christ, yes — he's got the whammy on me still. He can't fire me; but every cell inside me is convinced he can and bursts open in panic. (My mind has a brain. My glands don't.)

And I do not trust myself to reply without stuttering disgracefully, effeminately, a sissy. I do not feel I can unblock my mouth, unlock my tongue, and unlimber all my cheek and lip muscles to try a single word until I have sorted through all possible sounds and selected what that first word should be, and at least the one behind it, which might guide me safely to the next. (If I keep my sentence short, I might get out a complete one. I must begin with a one-syllable word. All possible sounds go clumping about in my mind like a jumble of lettered wooden blocks in a noiseless children's classroom.) Otherwise, there might merely come from me an unintelligible gabble or shriek. I feel like a slice of scorching toast ablaze in a toaster, and then my pores gush open in a massive flow of sweltering perspiration before I even have time to recollect that they don't have to. I don't need to be afraid of Jack Green anymore. I merely have to pretend. But I am.

(And I fear I always will be.) I hate him so and wish him dead as Kagle. I wish he had cancer of the thyroid, prostate, and colon. He hasn't. Him I probably would visit in the hospital just to hear him speechless and see him wasting away. I'll probably be in a hospital before he will, and he will not stoop to visit me. (Perhaps he will — just because he'll know I'll think he won't.) I wish I could be like him. I envy and idealize him, even now as he gazes away from me with a look of studied indifference that approaches boredom. He will not even give me the satisfaction of gloating victoriously. (I am not that important to him. How marvelous.) I wish I could do that. Maybe someday, if I practice regularly (when he is not around to observe with excoriating contempt that it is he I am training myself to emulate), I'll be able to carry off similar things with other people with the same disdainful composure.

Green is not going to fire me now — he merely wants to abuse. He is having one of his tantrums. (He has static in his head.) But my fear blows hot and my fear blows cold. And I sometimes think I am losing my mind. The fear (and the mind I am losing) does not even seem to be mine (they seem to be his) — broiling on my insides one moment like a blast furnace, chilling my whole skin like foggy whiter wind the next, alternating out of control against me from within and without inside the sagging pavilion of my tapered, made-to-measure, Swiss voile, powder-blue shirt, the very finest shirt fabric there is, Green has told me. It's almost funny. I could have worn a dark broadcloth or heavier oxford weave to work today that would have contained without blotches the flows of telltale sweat spreading beneath my arms and trickling down my chest and belly from my breastbone.

'Try wearing a sweater next time,' I can almost hear Green saying, reading my mind. 'Cashmere. A cardigan. Like mine. That's why I wear one,' I can hear him add, reading his.

It's almost uncanny the way he's still got the whammy on me. I wish he would die. But this one, I feel with some basis, I might eventually be able to lick. I have age, Arthur Baron, and spastic colitis on my side.

But not as easily as I'd hoped.

I'd like to shoot him in the head.

I wish I could make a face at him and stick my tongue out. (I wish I could have a hot sweet potato again or a good ear of corn.)

'Do you want to fire me?' I ask awkwardly instead.

'I can humiliate you.'

'You are.'

'I can be a son of a bitch.'

'Why should you want to fire me?'

'Without even giving you a reason.'

'You'd have to replace me with somebody else.'

'To make you remember I can. You're not a free citizen as long as you're working for me. You sometimes seem to forget.'

'Not anymore.'

'Neither am I. To let you feel what true subjugation is. You wouldn't be able to get a better job without my help, and you wouldn't be able to take it if you did. You'd have to give up your pension and profit sharing here and start wondering all over again if they like you there as much as we do here. You'd spend three years and still not be sure. You're dependent on me.'

'I know that.'

'And I'm not sure you always know that. I always want to know you are. I always want to be sure you know you have to grovel every time I want you to. You're a grown-up man, a mature, talented, middle-level, mediocre executive, aren't you? You don't have to stand there sweating like that and take this from me, do you? You do have to stand there and take it, don't you? Well?'

'I'm not going to answer that.'

'Or I can give you another big raise and humiliate you that way.'

'I'll take the raise.'

'I can make you wear solid suits and shirts and striped ties.'

'I do.'

'I've noticed,' he answers tartly. 'You're also playing golf.'

'I've always played golf.'

'You haven't been.'

'I play in the tournament at the convention every year'

'With a big handicap. You're in there as a joke, along with those other drunken charlatans from the sales offices. And that's another thing I don't like. You don't belong to the Sales Department.'

'I have to work for them.'

'Would you rather belong to Kagle?'

'You.'

'Why?'

'You're better.'

'At what?'

'What do you want from me?'

'Who do you work for, me or Kagle?'

'You.'

'Who's nicer?'

'He is.'

'Who's a better person?'

'He is.'

'Who do you like better?'

'You.'

'Now we're talking intelligently. You shouldn't be thinking of a better job now, Bob.' His pace slows, his voice softens. He is almost friendly, contrite. 'I really don't think you could find one outside the company.'

'I'm not, Jack. Why should I want to?'

'Me.'

'You're not so bad.'

'Even now?' His eyes lift to look at me again, and he smiles faintly.

'You do things well.'

'Everything?'

'Not everything. Some things, Jack, you do terribly. I even like the way you've been talking to me now. I wish I could be rude like that.'

'It's easy. with someone like you. You see how easy it is? With someone like you.' He sighs, a bit ruefully, sardonically. 'I'm not going to fire you. I don't know why I even started. I get scared sometimes when I think about what would become of me if I ever had to leave the company. Do you know what's happening to the price of meat?'