A JOB WITH PERKS
by Marty Brick

I promised myself I wouldn’t go into the breakroom to tamper with people’s food until I’d reviewed another 5 pages. But I found a bug on the windowsill. It would be so amusing to put it in someone’s salad. And if I wait too long, those early lunchers will being to filter into the breakroom, and I need to be in there alone. I need to proof at least five more pages, but I’m not making any progress because all I can think about is that bug and hopefully one of those temps who talks too much and dresses too loudly finding it in her salad.

What has this job done to me? It has reduced me to adolescent pranks. This is numbing my brain. I am growing dimmer with each day. I should be in graduate school. There is that GRE study book at home that I bought from Barnes & Noble one inspired weekend. I’ve read thirteen pages in four months. How can I not be motivated? Everyday I come to work and feel the gravity of this place claiming me as a permanent fixture. Why can’t I channel that despair into an escape strategy?

I’m not wearing shoes under my desk. I never wear shoes when I am at my desk, even though it is office policy that we must have footwear at all times. Taking them off was perhaps my first act of civil disobedience. It was kind of cold that day, and I wanted to have them on, but when project managers walked by my cubicle I could look out and smile. When that ceased to excite me, I began to paint words on my toenails. Too bad we have five toes, when all the good word s have four letters. I had to get creative. INEPT has five letters. I AM SO on one foot and BORED on the other. MAX IS ~ SO GAY. And BUY ME ~ 5 CENT. But as a technical writer the syntax of 5 CENT bothered me so I had to put my shoes back on.

I’ve made it through a page and a half, when Jordan, my project manager, stops by my cubicle and requests a “short chat.” Max says Jordan is like the number 16, a perfect square, but he really shouldn’t talk. Those two are probably the heart of the Friday-night-overpriced-lounge-crowd. And everyone knows the two of them hook up occasionally. Probably on those occasions when they both realize that they are thirty and still single and own Volkswagon Jettas and make the kind of change where they can go to Europe on vacation without too much saving, but who have they really got to go with? Jordan dresses in this odd way, like she reads both Cosmo and Good Housekeeping. Underneath she wears a thong, but to the visual eye she has a scarf that resemble the slip cover for someone’s sofa. I tell her I’ll drop by in a second, after those five pages.

People here think I’m perfectly normal, and how I labor to maintain that appearance. They don’t know how obsessed with defiance I am. Or how obsessed they’ve made me. My family and friends would be surprised to know who I’ve become. I wasn’t like this in college. My résumé doesn’t hint toward this secret side. I wore sweatshirts, had a ponytail, hardly drank, and got involved in things like Hall Senate. I was the girl who organized group study sessions. Not to say I was a prude or a complete nerd, but I certainly wasn’t being counter to any kind of culture. Not the kind of girl to get a tattoo or an oddly placed piercing.

A little voice in one lobe of my head dares me to forgo those five pages altogether. Who really cares? What is the worst that can happen? Miss something obvious and get fired? Then go back school and make something of my life?

But another cluster of neurons fires in protest. I need this place. I need the fools who work here. In grad school I would have to be straight and have to engage and apply myself.

I’ve become the kind of person who allows ~ not allows, dares, practically begs ~ a stranger in an airport terminal to pierce my nipple because I want that rush of elation when I walk back into the office. I liked knowing that underneath my blouse there was something that would shock my co-workers. When I talked to people after the trip I gave the pat answers to their questions — fine, it was nice, no nothing exciting — all the while my flesh continued to ache. What tiny, shocking secrets. All day I think about the ring and the stranger’ s hands pulling the needle through. All day I think, Wouldn’t you just die to know who I am under this dove gray business attire?

There was a time when a t-shirt could do the trick. I wore my Clash shirt under a blue blazer and felt smug all day. It made me think about other people. What if Wally in accounting wears women’s underwear and feels the same was I do? That should have scared me, but instead I became really chummy with Wally. So I went through a whole clothes phase. Wore my pajamas once, with a scarf tied around my neck and a broach on the collar. No one knew. Looked kind of like a pantsuit. And then there came the being-places-I’m-not-supposed-to-be stage. Closets. The men’s room. The offices of superiors.

I went into Jordan’s office once, while she was on lunch break. I only stayed three minutes and seventeen seconds the first time, but then I began to push it. I sat in her chair and went through her desk. Talk about a boring person. If you knew Jordan you wouldn’t expect to find anything too shocking. She’d not the type to have phone numbers on a cocktail napkin or photographs or anything, but I expected to find maybe a little airline-sized bottle of vodka or something. She is so business. There was nothing personal in there at all. Not a breath mint or a maxi-pad. Just office supplies, which led me to begin to plant things in her desk. One day the tampon dispenser in the ladies’ room was broken or jammed or something, so it was giving out free tampons. I put twenty-one in Jordan’s desk. The look of puzzlement on her face kept me alive all afternoon. The only thing I can compare it to is being a really good secret Santa. When you leave a really good gift and that person doesn’t know, and the secrecy feels better than being thanked ~ that’s what I need every day, or else I can’t make it though work.

I cup the bug from the windowsill in my hand and head off to Jordan’s office for her “little chat.” I’d been looking at websites explaining “slight-of-hand” tricks on office time. More often than not she has a coffee cup on her desk.

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Marty Brick writes: "Currently I am pursuing a Ph.D. in British Literature at Marquette University.  Among the places my fiction has appeared are Sou'Wester, The Beloit Ficiton Journal, Circle Magazine, The Journal of Modern Post, and right here in The Shore."

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