So Tom opened the book. “It might help, I don’t know,” he said. He thumbed nervously through the pages for the passage he wanted. It was probably a fraught moment for both men, a self-conscious and brittle silence as Tom prepared to read. When he finally located the passage he wanted, he began quoting but immediately cut himself off again. “And listen,” he qualified himself, thrusting forward in his chair with abrupt eagerness, “I know it’s maybe a little funny, here’s me talking to you about how you can improve your life with this book and look at me, I’m a total fuckup. This last year has been . . . let’s just say I see the error of my ways. But what it is with me, it’s funny. I see the error of my ways, but I can’t seem to get my head out of my ass, basically, is the basic fact of my life since my wife left me. So, please, forgive the hypocrisy of the unconverted sitting here preaching to you, but I do find that when I read Emerson, at the very least it calms me down.”
“Tom,” said Carl, “I appreciate the gesture.”
Tom waved him off. “‘Let a man then know his worth,’” he read, “‘and keep things under his feet.’” Tom reading out loud to Carl — the self-consciousness in that room must have been
palpable.
“‘Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up or down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in the world which exists for him. But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself . . .’ I’m just going to skip down a little ways here,” said Tom. “Okay, this is the part. ‘That popular fable of the sot,’” he continued, “‘who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince.’” Tom ended his quotation there and shut the book.
“Well,” he said. “Anyway. I think he has a lot of good things to say. ‘Finds himself a true prince.’ That’s hard to keep in mind here, you know? But he tries to remind us, Carl, you and me both — everybody, really — that underneath it all, if we exercise our reason, we’re princes. I know I lose sight of that myself half the time when all I want to do is open fire on these bastards. You see, the problem with reading this guy,” he continued, “is the same problem you have reading Walt Whitman. You read him at all? Those two fucks wouldn’t have lasted two minutes in this place. Somehow they were exempt from office life. It was a different time, back then. And they were geniuses. But when I read them I start to wonder why
I
have to be here. It almost makes it harder to come in, be honest with you.” Tom handed the book back across the desk. He added with a huffy, defeated chuckle, “That’s a ringing endorsement, huh? Anyway, I’ll let you get back to your lunch.”
When Tom had nearly reached the door, Carl called out to him. “Can I tell you something in confidence, Tom?” he asked. Carl gestured for Tom to return to the chair.
Tom sat, and Carl looked at him for a long time before speaking. Earlier in the week, he confided, he had slipped quietly into Janine Gorjanc’s office after everyone else had gone home for the night and taken a bottle of antidepressants from her desk drawer. Since that time, he told Tom, he had been taking a pill a day.
“Is that wise?” Tom asked.
“Probably not,” said Carl. “But the last thing I want is for her to know that I’m depressed.”
“You don’t want Janine to know that you’re depressed?”
“No, not Janine. My wife. Marilynn. I don’t want Marilynn to know I’m depressed.”
“Oh,” said Tom. “Why’s that?”
“Because she thinks I’m depressed.”
“Oh,” said Tom. “You aren’t depressed?”
“No, I am depressed. It’s just that I don’t want her knowing that I’m depressed. She knows I’m depressed. I just don’t want her knowing that she’s right that I’m depressed. She’s right too much of the time as it is, you see.”
“So this is a matter of pride,” said Tom.
Carl shrugged. “I guess so. If that’s how you care to phrase it.”
Tom shifted in his chair. “Well, you know, Carl, I understand that, man. I can understand that perfectly well, being married for a number of years to a woman who was always goddamn right about everything herself. But man, if you’re taking a drug that hasn’t been prescribed for you specifically —”
“Yeah, I know,” said Carl, cutting him short. “I know all about that, trust me. I’m married to a doctor.”
“Right,” said Tom. “So what I guess I’m asking is, why steal it? Why not have somebody prescribe something that’s right for you?”
“Because I don’t want to have to see a doctor,” said Carl. “I hate doctors.”
“Your wife’s a doctor,” said Tom.
“It’s a problem,” said Carl. “Plus if I did that, it might get back to her somehow, and then she would know that she was right about me being depressed. It’s just easier to go into Janine’s and take it from her. She has a million of these things in there,” he said.
He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a prescription bottle and handed it to Tom.
“Do you know anything about what’s in here?” asked Tom, shaking the bottle gently and reading the label. It was a three-month supply. “Three hundred milligrams,” he said. “That sounds like a lot.”
“I just follow the instructions on the label,” said Carl.
Tom asked him if he had noticed any change in his mood.
“It’s only been a week,” Carl replied. “It’s probably too early yet.”
There was a knock at the door. In silence Tom handed Janine’s drugs back to Carl and Carl returned the bottle to his desk. When Carl called out, Joe Pope appeared.
“Sorry to interrupt you at your lunch, Carl,” he said.
“That’s okay.”
“I’m actually here for Tom,” said Joe.
Tom turned in his chair and gave Joe a sidewinder gaze.
“I wondered if you wouldn’t mind joining us for an input meeting later this afternoon,” Joe inquired of him.
“Sure,” Tom said. “What time?”
“Three-thirty, Lynn’s office?”
“You bet.”
When
that
got around —
Sure, what time? You bet.
— we didn’t know
what
to make of it. All Tom would say was, “What was I supposed to say — no? Go shove it up your ass, Joe, no input meeting for me? I got child support to pay, man. Believe it or not, I need this job.”
We didn’t doubt that. It was just that we could recall a time in the Michigan Room when Tom Mota was less agreeably disposed toward Joe Pope. All of our conference rooms were named after streets running along the Magnificent Mile, and the view from Michigan was stupendous. The whole city was spread out before our eyes, layer after layer of buildings tall and squat, wide and thin, a giant matrix of architectural variation cut up by taxi-glinting thoroughfares and back alleyways and the snaking Chicago River, and every surface from burnished window to ancient brick was brightening under the August sun. The irony of the view from the Michigan Room was that it drove us mad with desire to be out there, walking the city sidewalks, looking up at the buildings, joining the swell of other people and enjoying the sun, but the only time we ever felt that urgency was when we were stuck at the window in the Michigan Room. Otherwise we left for the night and all we could think about was getting around the goddamn tourists and heading the fuck home.
On the day Tom and Joe really had it out, a month or so before Tom’s gift to Carl, it had evidently gotten back to Joe what was said here and there — at a lunch, before a meeting. Idle speculation, you know. Sometimes material for an honest debate where everyone took sides, but more often just as a joke. It’s what we did, we
talked.
We weren’t doing anything the Greeks weren’t doing around their shadowy, promiscuous campfires. And neither, apparently, was Joe Pope, because just as we were capping our pens, all our notes taken and questions answered, and now only a half minute’s distance from the restroom or telephone or coffee bar — whatever beckoned loudest — Joe, who was running his own input meetings by then, said to us, “Oh, one last thing.” He paused. “Sorry, just give me one more minute here.” We settled back down. “I feel the need to bring this to our attention,” he said. “Look, I understand the need to talk. Most of the time, that’s a good thing. We talk, we laugh. It makes time go faster. But I’m not sure we’re always aware of some of the things we’re saying. We might not mean anything by them, this or that or the other thing might just be a joke, but it gets around, and sometimes, one person or another hears about it and they get upset. Not everybody. Some people just laugh it off. Look, as an example, I know I’m talked about. No big deal to me. I take no offense. But other people, they hear things, it hits them in a certain way. You can’t blame them. They get bothered, or hurt, or it embarrasses them. I’d prefer those type of things we try to keep to a minimum. I’m not saying don’t talk. I’m just saying, reduce the volume a little, make sure that what you’re saying doesn’t hurt anybody. Okay?”
There was a long, unendurable pause as he looked around at all of us in case we had questions. “Okay, that’s my little speech,” he concluded. “Thanks for indulging me.” At last we were released. We started to get up again. We had no idea Joe carried with him the reformer’s spirit. We had mixed feelings about reformers. Some of us thought they were noble, and likely to change nothing. Others were outright hostile.
Who the fuck is he
— that sort of response.
“You know, Joe,” Tom Mota said, just as we had started to file out. “There’s really nothing wrong with being gay.”
Joe cocked an ear at him, but managed still to look him firmly in the eye. “With what?” he asked.
“Hank Neary’s gay,” Tom continued, avoiding the direct question. Hank was just then pushing his chair in. He looked startled to be the sudden subject of conversation. “Aren’t you, Hank? And he has no problem with it.”
“Tom,” said Joe. “You must not have heard anything I just said.”
“No, I heard you, Joe. I heard you loud and clear.”
People halfway out the door halted in their tracks.
“Then maybe you didn’t understand,” Joe tried to clarify. “The point was there’s right talk, Tom, and there’s wrong talk, and who’s gay or who isn’t gay, that’s the wrong talk, understand? That kind of talk could be construed as slander.”
“Slander?” said Tom. “Whoa, slander — Joe, that’s an expensive word, slander. Do we need to involve lawyers? I have lawyers, Joe. I have so many fucking lawyers it would be no problem putting them to work on this one.”
“Tom,” said Joe. “Your anger.”
“Excuse me?” said Tom.
“Your anger,” Joe repeated.
“What the fuck does that mean,” said Tom, “‘Your anger’? Is that what you just said, ‘Your anger’?” Joe didn’t reply. “What the fuck does it mean, ‘Your anger’?” Joe left the room. “Does anybody know what the fuck he means by ‘Your anger’?” asked Tom.
We knew what “Your anger” meant because we suffered from the same anger from time to time. We suffered all sorts of ailments — heart conditions, nervous tics, thrown-out backs. We had the mother of all headaches. We were affected by changes in weather conditions, by mood swings and by lingering high school insecurities. We were deeply concerned about who was next, and what criteria for dismissal the partners were operating under. Billy Reiser came in with a broken leg. At first everyone was excited. How did it happen? We gathered down at his office as soon as word spread, as if guided by a voice or a high-pitched frequency. Talk was like the flu: if it started with one, soon it infected all. But unlike the flu, we couldn’t afford to be left out if something was going around. We wanted Billy to tell us how it happened. “Softball,” he explained. That was it? “Bad slide,” he elaborated. We couldn’t help feeling disappointed. We told Billy we hoped he felt better soon and left again for our desks. A reason like that was hardly worth getting up for. Then over the next ten or twelve months, Billy proceeded to hobble around on his crutches, and swear to god you could hear the guy coming from six miles away. Jesus, we said eventually, aren’t you off those things yet? “Complications,” he said. He went through a series of surgeries. There were metal pins involved. Doctors said he might walk forever with a limp, so he was considering a lawsuit. We felt sorry for him, but at the same time, Billy heaving himself across a hallway, the joints of his crutches creaking like a nineteenth-century whaler — it might not sound like much, but day-in day-out, it started to grate. We understood “Your anger” whenever Billy passed by, irrational and unforgiving anger which caused some of us to call him, at one point or another, every derogatory name for a handicapped person in the book — mean and insensitive names like “crip,” “gimp,” and “wobbler” — while others we made up on our own. “The guy’s name is Reiser,” said Larry Novotny, “but he can’t even stand up on his own two legs.” Amber clucked at him for shame and the rest of us for the poverty of the pun but from then on we never called Billy by his first name again. It was always Reiser. Of course we took pains not to let Reiser get wind of our frustrations with him, most days. Most days we let human foibles run right off of us, as Jesus commanded. “Let he that is without sin cast the first stone,” for we had among us our fair share of believers. We had a Bible study group. They met for lunch every Thursday in the cafeteria. A motley crew of condo-board executives, South Siders, recovering anorexics, building people, receptionists. It was an ebb-and-flow crowd, mimicking faith itself. The Word was the source that brought us all together. We drifted in and out of it, trying to make sense of the Word as it applied to us in our personal lives as well as in the corporate setting, but most of us just stayed away. More power to them, we liked to say. What were we missing? we wondered at night. How boring to listen to them go on and on about God, we thought every Thursday around noon. We had to ask, was this
really
the place for God? The sight of a dozen Bibles open on a cafeteria table and the familiar heads now bowed in a wild transformation of our long-established expectations of who they were shook us a little, as if forcing us to confront the possibility that we knew nothing, absolutely nothing about the inner lives of anyone here. But that soon passed. Our scope was infinite, our reach almighty, our knowledge was complete. Goddamn it, sometimes it felt like we
were
God. Was it such a blasphemy? We knew everything, we had terrible powers, we would never die. Was it a surprise that most of us did not join in at Bible study?