The Smack

Emery quit working for The Company three years ago because the conditions became intolerable. Lay-offs had created work, work hadn’t created new positions, and everybody was feeling trapped. When he went to pick up the last of his stuff, he was still waved down by the fourth cubicle just like old times, as if he might be willing to relieve them of some responsibilities while dropping by. His former practice was to immediately concede, willing to take the extra work if it avoided confrontation. But not this time. Not while he was not even being underpaid to do it.

A year before he left, things had started to go south. He hung on as long as he could. The Company had decided to double their workspace by assigning two people to each cubicle. Every staff member shared a phone, an Ethernet cord, a filing cabinet, and a supply allowance. Most people began stealing boxes of pens from businesses on other floors when they could. One man had begun a black market pen trafficking business in which he sold unused pens from creative, who never left their internet chat programs long enough to write things down, to the goons in accounting in exchange for favors. All of the trafficked pens were stolen, so the operating costs were low, but the rewards were worth the risk. The office entrepreneur, “Black Smack,” as he was labeled, soon had a potted palm tree by his computer and a brand new keyboard.

Three months into that fretful year, a pen deal had gone sour between Emery and the Smack. A week later, Emery was moved into the cubicle closest to the bathrooms, as far from the exit as he could possibly be without being in China. The inside of the bathroom was actually closer to the office exit than his desk, which he shared with a middle-aged pre-teen named Karen Woo. Black Smack was behind Emery’s unlucky cubicle assignment. That was almost certain.

As the months progressed, Emery began expending an intense amount of effort on resenting Karen for her collection of pink postcards, which was slowly encroaching on his bulletin board space. The now sixteen small cityscapes with hot pink bordering were migrating a few centimeters more to the right with each new addition. It began with a postcard from Glendale, California, sent by one of Karen’s many long-distance lovers, which had been posted an inch over the faint gray line that separated Karen and Emery’s board territory. Days later, a postcard from Walla Walla was tacked to the wall in blatant Emery-space. Karen had smiled at Emery while sticking the tack into the wall. He smiled back, but only to spite her. A week later, he quit.

Being self-employed had created a different set of challenges in Emery’s life. He lacked health insurance, so when he was sick he sought Esther’s opinion, which was that doctors were useless shysters. That often cleared the problem right up. When he was broke, which was usually, he had nobody to blame but himself and his lack of motivation. It was three years later and there was still no bestselling novel under his belt. When he was hungry, he simply lost weight. But one day, Emery and run into Karen Woo and Black Smack at Krispin’s. They were deep in discussion and the Smack looked more panicked than Emery had ever seen him.

After eavesdropping for several minutes, Emery gathered that another round of lay-offs had begun at The Company. This time they were in preparation for the closing of the office altogether. Smack complained that he had no alternative employment prospects, being unskilled at anything legal, and Karen agreed, saying she had only one, which was to work at her father’s store. It would take years for everybody to forget how she had driven her cubicle-mate to the extremes of quitting. They thanked their lucky stars for severance packages and got up to leave the coffee shop, drastically under tipping.

Emery remained hidden in his booth until they were a safe distance, then picked up the newspaper that the Smack had left behind. Inside, job postings were halfheartedly circled and a pen, standard Company issue, rested in the fold. Emery took it and pocketed it immediately. He deserved a severance package too, after all. Closing the paper, he set it back down on the table and left to spend the rest of the day lounging on his couch in sweatpants, thinking up a story for his future bestseller, writing furiously with his victory pen. Being self-employed wasn’t so bad. When you aren’t expecting anything to come in that validates your efforts, even a pen can be a gift.