![]() Originally the room must have been a storage closet: a windowless, austere white cube with a low ceiling and walls lined with large metal filing cabinets, which seem even grander in relation to the ceiling. He’s seated beside me, crunching and cramming tidbits of information, littering the floor with illegible, contradictory scribbles about television news tickers, screen shots of Paula Zahn and Wolf Blitzer, gobs of probabilities. Only aware of dry mouth and strong thirst, I thumb through pamphlets about diabetes and whisper to my mental bookie. For long stretches I live in this corner, skimming Time and US Weekly, reading about unremarkable medical advancements and celebrity nip slips. I imagine I’ve been handed my number and shown to my seat in the corner of the waiting room. I sit in an uncomfortable chair that coaxes me into delusions of doctors’ offices. We’re unsure what Pop does, but it must be something important because a business couldn’t stay afloat on our contributions alone. Just the three of us work under Top Boss, who we could call Boss (there’s no middle or low boss), but don’t. As we turned the corner, the boys’ knees wobbled and Top Boss looked down upon the scene like a camp leader, instructing, “Easy with that, boys. He set Pop and me to work with his sons to haul the back section of his old executive’s desk into my office. My first day, Top Boss made it a take-your-teens-to-work day. Usually it doesn’t come up again, but sometimes I get Top Boss towering in the doorway with folded dress shirt arms over whatever I’ve gotten myself into.Īmanda huffs and spins, pulling the hem of her skirt in a wild orbit and leaves me to wonder if she’s found the other files-bathroom breaks, popped neck, yawns. Within thirty seconds, he’ll bustle off with a stout authority and I’ll have agreed to something, presumably, but to what exactly I’m never certain. These are the kinds of exchanges I find myself a part of with Pop, whose real name I’ve forgotten or never learned. “Ya?” I say, and Pop nods like I’ve answered something and is gone. Just then, Pop’s head comes around the corner about five feet up. She looks more frustrated than when she appeared and crunches hard on the lemon drop. “You’ve been keeping this for two years?” she asks. ![]() I don’t tell her how much I enjoy the muted clink of it against her bottom molar. “Last year you averaged two minutes and thirty-five seconds from start to crunch,” I say and she jerks her head, swooping her bleached bangs across her face. She works over another candy in her mouth, nodding yes. She holds up the file of notes I’ve made as I watched her at reception, opening that small metal tin from her purse, slipping yellow lemon candies into her mouth. I finally stop wondering where my crunch statistics have gone and start worrying about what’s coming. ![]() Held at her slim hip is the green file folder. Watching them lift and lower, imagining her stretching toes, I forget to wonder how long she’s been standing there. They make a warm sound, like wood shaped by fine-grain sandpaper. I reach for the desk drawer, and from the corner of my vision, I see her red wooden clogs shifting on the carpet. This is the fourth time she’s hiccupped today, the twenty-sixth time this week.
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