The Spoon
I can recall my long days sitting at the office, The humming of the pneumatic tubes, shooting in all directions around me, trying desperately to find their place as I firmly sat in mine. Papers would whistle past my head at speeds beyond my wildest imagination, but for the most part I was content to sit at my desk and read stacks of papers. In these papers were numbers of great importance. The accounts for the entire western division of Poly-Corp resided between their carefully manicured, carbon-copy pages.
Every day was the same routine. I would walk in at approximately 8:07 AM, twenty-three minutes before my shift started, but a full seven minutes later than being a half hour early. It was the perfect time so as not to appear too eager, but just eager enough. I would walk over to the grey filing cabinet to my right and pull a large red lever. From above a tube would open and drop a fresh stack of papers into the first row of filing cabinets. The noise was horrendous, but I didn’t mind it so much.
The room itself looked a tad like the layer of an evil scientist. Nothing all that exciting went on in there, but it looked as though it might. Every corner was filled with a series of clear, twisting tubes which delivered mail to rooms around the office. Carefully nestled in the middle of them was a drop slot. This was where my mail came. After pulling the big lever I would walk to the tube, check for mail, and usually find a small white card.
On this day it read: Thanks Pete for whatever it is you do down there. Keep up the mediocrity! –Sincerely, The Management.
Gingerly, I would pick up the note, grab a red pushpin from the right drawer of my desk, and stick the note to the wall. After the first year I had filled all of the cracks on one wall with tiny white notecards. No one came in to see them, but if they had, I can only imagine that they would have been impressed. Some said: You are adequate. or, Today is Wednesday. Beauty was to be found everywhere in that office. Each corner was full of wonderful surprises for the passerby.
The file machine wooshed and clanked like a giant metal beast from the corner. “Oh hush now, it’s only a thousand leaflets, nothing to worry about.” I said to the machine. It might have looked odd that I was talking to myself, but only the tiny black camera in the far right corner of the room would have seen it. I gave it a smile and a knowing wink, and continued to talk to the machines around me. “Alright boys, another long day ahead of us! Who’s ready to balance some budgets and cook some books.” The angry filing machine belched a cloud of black smoke, signaling that it was finished receiving the day’s load of papers.
When the clock struck 8:25AM it was time for coffee. In a small, brown cupboard sandwiched between two wastepaper bins was an equally small, pristine, white coffee cup. After heaving the stack of papers from the filing cabinets to my desk I grabbed the cup and walked out into the hallway. The walls were a sort of drab grey that reminded me of cold, Russian soup. Why the soup had to be Russian I really haven’t a clue, but the point was that they were drab, and for the most part when I picture borscht that’s what I think of.
The break room was and is approximately twenty five and a half steps from my office. I have counted these steps often as I have had quite some time to do so. The sound that squishes up from the both hard and soft carpet is a fond memory that still brings muted excitement to my tired heart. The door to the break room was brown oak, or imitation oak, and glorious to the point of envy. I opened the door with a gold handle that was almost certainly not gold and entered the break room.
That morning there was two other people in line for coffee. The machine took notoriously long to finish, but usually spat out its contents by around 8:27AM. “Morning.” Sniveled Pierre, a crotchety old caricature of an old French stereotype. His mind had never managed to leave the late 1940s though his body had continued to travel unabated through the waves of time. Where his spine might have once been close to straight there was the beginning of a dowagers hump. That morning he wore a tattered black coat over a soiled, black and white stripe T-Shirt. “Is this coffee going to be ready sometime within the next century?! If I do not have it soon my bowels will seize and rust, only to leave behind the frayed shell of a man who can no longer excrete their contents, and breathes only to become closer to that old friend the God of death.”
He grimaces at the thought of his own statement, revealing a set of teeth more crooked than the streets of San Francisco. “Really Pierre, is that necessary?”
“I’m sorry that I haven’t yet resigned myself to a system which neither provides nor contemplates my basic human rights!” He pointed his finger at the little black bulb on the ceiling and began to curse wildly in French, his accent dripping like maple syrup from a tree.
“Ooh, I wish you wouldn’t do that Pierre.” Said the mousy man in front of him. His name was Jim. He had been there for even longer than me. All I can say about him is that he was unassuming, his shirts never fit quite right, and the hair atop his head more clearly resembled a shrubbery than it had any right to.
“Shut up and make the coffee pig! I know my rights.” I stayed out of the fight, not wanting to interrupt my schedule. It was 8:26 in the morning. We were seconds away from the coffee coming out of the machine when BAM! The door burst open and two men in grey suits with dark glasses burst through the door. Each wore a large earpiece with a plethora of blinking lights on it.
“Get away from me!” Yelled Pierre, dropping his coffee mug and backing against the counter, baring his teeth like a cornered animal. The two men nodded unemotionally to each other and grabbed one of Pierre’s arms each. They dragged him into the hallway. Neither Jim nor I said a word. When they had taken Pierre out I moved a step closer to the coffee machine, taking his place in line.
His fault for not waiting. From the hallway there was a quick gunshot and then the coffee was done.
“Ah, yes, finally. Here you go Pete, made it a little stronger this morning. Busy day ahead eh?”
“Those files aren’t going to organize themselves!” We laughed for approximately ten point five seconds, quickly poured the black liquid into our cups and shuffled back into the hallway. As I stepped into the hallway I noticed two things. One, I had no spoon for my coffee to stir in the powdered milk packets back at my office, and Two, Pierre was lying dead on the floor. Luckily for me, clutched in his hand was a most marginal spoon. I reached down, plucked it up, and continued on my way.
There was a spot of red on the spoon and I cleaned it off with the handkerchief I kept in my pocket at all times. It was pure white like the cup I held in my hand, only afterward it became an off pink. I shoved it back into my pocket and walked back into the office.
The powdered milk fell into my drink, clumping around the top. The spoon served nicely to mix it in and made for quite a pleasant taste. As I sipped my coffee I looked up to one of my white notes which said Business as usual.
Written By,
Ashton Macaulay
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