Then We Came to the End Read Online Free PDF Page B

getting my words wrong. The point is, take the bookshelves. Just leave me my chair. It’s my chair. ‘But are they
yours?
’ she asks me. It’s a moral question for this woman, whose they are. So I say, ‘Yeah, they’re mine, but you take them, okay. I don’t want them anymore.’ I don’t want them anymore? Who wouldn’t want those bookshelves? But I don’t want to lose my chair — my
legitimate
chair, so I say, ‘Go ahead, take ’em.’”
    We didn’t want to interrupt him again, but we felt the need to remind him that it was her job, as the office coordinator, to keep track of office furniture and the like.
    Yop ignored us. “What is that she has on her wrist?” he asked.
    Yop was asking about the office coordinator’s tattoo. It was of a scorpion whose tail wrapped around her left wrist.
    “Now why would a woman do that to herself?” he asked. “And why would we hire a woman who would do that to herself?”
    It was a good question. We assumed he knew the joke.
    “What’s the joke?” he asked.
    The scorpion was there to protect her ring finger.
    “Let me tell you something,” he said. “That’s funny, but that ring finger doesn’t need any protecting. But okay, whatever — she’s just doing her job. How we
ever
hired a person with a scorpion on her wrist is
far
beyond me, but okay, she’s doing her job. But that’s my legitimate chair. It’s
my
chair. She takes my chair, that’s not her mandate. So she says to me, she says, ‘Why would you offer me your buckshelves if, as you say, they’re really your buckshelves? I don’t want them if they’re yours,’ she says, ‘I only want them if they’re Tom’s. All of Tom’s stuff has disappeared and it’s my job to get it back.’ So I say, trying to act all innocent and unknowing, I say, ‘What all did they take?’ And she says, ‘Well, let’s see. His desk,’ she says. ‘His chair, his buckshelves, his —’”
    We apologized for interrupting, but he was doing it again.
    “What’s that?” he asked.
    Saying
buck
shelves.
    Yop raised his arms in the air. He was wearing a ratty Hawaiian shirt — the hair on his arms was going gray. “Will you
listen
to me, please?” he cried. “Will you all just please hear what I’m trying to say? I’m trying to tell you something really important here.
They know everything!
They knew everything we’d taken! So what choice did I have? ‘You can have the buckshelves, okay?’ I say to her.
Just don’t take my chair.
‘But are they
Tom’s?
’ she asks me.
That’s
what’s important to her. She wants to know, ‘Did you take these buckshelves from Tom’s office?’ And that’s when it hits me. I’m going to get shitcanned just because I took Tom’s buckshelves.”
    Book
shelves! we cried out.
    “Right!” he cried back. “And for something as simple as that I’m going to get shitcanned! Hey, I have a mortgage. I have a wife. I’m a fucking professional. I get shitcanned this late in my career, that’s it for me. It’s a young man’s game. I’m too old. Who’s going to hire me if I get shitcanned? I see no alternative but to come clean, so I say to her, ‘Okay, listen. These buckshelves, right? I’ll get them back down to Tom’s office. I promise. I’m sorry.’ And she says, ‘But you’re not answering my question.
Are
they his?
Did
you take them?’ So you
know
what I’m thinking at this point. I’ve tried to be somewhat honest with her. I’ve tried to tap into something human and feeling in her. But it’s not working. She ain’t nothin’ but a bureaucrat. So what I say is, I say, ‘All I know is, they were here when I came back from lunch.’ And she says, she looks at her watch, she says, ‘It’s ten-fifteen.’ And I say, ‘Yeah?’ ‘Ten-fifteen in the morning,’ she says. ‘You took lunch at, what? Nine-thirty?’ Then she points at the buckshelves and she says, ‘And I guess all these bucks just appeared when you came back from lunch, too, huh?