Then We Came to the End Read Online Free PDF

“So I say to her,” Yop said to us, “‘Tom Mota’s? What, those?’ ‘The bookshelves,’ she says. ‘Are those Tom’s?’ ‘The bookshelves? No,’ I say, ‘those aren’t Tom’s. Those are mine.’ ‘Well, someone took Tom’s bookshelves out of his office,’ she says to me, ‘and I have to get them back.’ At this point, Tom’s been shitcanned, what? a day? This was last Tuesday — I mean, the body’s not even cold yet, and she’s standing in my doorway accusing me of stealing? So I repeat to her, I say, ‘Those aren’t his bookshelves, those are my bookshelves.’ But then she walks into my office, right, get this. She walks into my office and she says, ‘Is that his chair? Is that Tom’s chair you’re sitting on?’ She’s pointing at it, right. She thinks it’s his chair. It’s my chair. Those are his bookshelves, sure. I took them out of his office when he got shitcanned and brought them down to mine. But it’s for damn sure not his chair. It’s my chair! So I say, ‘This? This is my chair. This chair is mine.’ And she says, she walks into my office and stands very close to me, she says, she’s about a foot, maybe two feet from me, she says, pointing at my chair, ‘Do you mind if I look at the serial numbers?’ Now, who knew about this?” he asked us. “Who knew about these serial numbers?” None of us had ever heard anything about serial numbers. “Yeah, serial numbers,” Yop continued. “They keep serial numbers on the back of everything. That way they can track everything, who has what and what office it’s in. Did you know about this?”
    We let him go on about the serial numbers because his outrage was typical of the time. Chris was a nervous man, and as he spoke, his whole face seemed to quiver. His animating hands shook a little, as if battling a caffeine dip. He had encouraged us to call him Yop because it made him feel younger, cooler, and more accepted. He kept his graying hair long, so it curled up near the ears, but age had thinned it on top. He was married to a woman named Terry and on weekends he played bad rock songs for a seventies cover band. He was always asking everyone what they were listening to these days. We considered it half-noble, half-pathetic when passing his office to hear some new rap album issuing from his CD player, when everyone knew what he really wanted to be listening to was
Blood on the Tracks.
We listened to his story about Tom Mota’s chair from various locations in Lynn’s cluttered office. She had a glass-top table and a white leather sofa and we hung in the doorway and leaned against the walls, killing time while waiting for her. Karen Woo kept looking at her watch and sighing because Lynn was running late to her own meeting.
    “I was like, ‘Serial numbers?’” Yop continued. “And she says, she’s standing behind me, right, she says, ‘Have a look.’ So I get off my chair, I take a look — serial numbers! On the back of my chair! ‘Where’d these come from?’ I ask her. She doesn’t answer me. Instead she says, ‘Can I borrow a pen?’ She wants to borrow a pen so she can take down the serial numbers! I’m thinking, what sort of fascist organization — ‘Hello?’ I say. ‘This is my chair.’ But she’s not paying any attention to me — she’s taking down the serial numbers! Then she goes over to the buckshelves, she starts taking down the serial numbers on them and she says, ‘And what about these buckshelves?’ Now I’m in a fix, because I lied about the buckshelves, sure, but I’m telling the truth about the chair. I could give a
shit
about the buckshelves. Take the buckshelves. Just leave me my chair.”
    We told Yop he meant to say
bookshelves.
    “What’d I say?” he asked us.
    We told him he was saying
buck
shelves.
    “Buckshelves?”
    Right — at first it was
book
shelves, but then he started saying
buck
shelves.
    “Listen, don’t pay any attention to me,” he said. “That’s just me