Everyone returned from lunch to find a window open at the office. The opening stretched from floor to ceiling. Everyone worked on the twelfth floor, the penultimate floor, of an all-glass building. Everyone thought the windows weren’t supposed to open.
“Actually,” Sam said, when everyone noted the open window to the next-door coworker, “having windows that open was the plan at one time.” Sam stood up from her or his desk, volunteering to show everyone.
Sam had a crush on everyone. Everyone knew about it and felt awkward whenever she or he was alone with Sam. Everyone’s spouse was intensely jealous, and now that they were separated, Sam’s crush was unbearable. Everyone wanted her or his spouse back, and everyone was trying to make that happen. One wrong move, everyone knew, and the spouse might have grounds for the divorce.
At the window Sam pointed to the metal landing to the window’s right. “These were supposed to go across the whole building,” Sam said.
“I thought those were fire escapes,” everyone said.
“Now, you’re no longer ignorant,” Sam observed. “Congratulations.”
Sam pointed out the screen and then pushed on it so that the window closed, except for the glass.
Everyone realized how unobservant she or he had been these many years everyone had worked in the office building. How many other things had everyone not noticed? Everyone suspected she or he had been too focused on archiving records for the Dasney Amusement Park Malls. Perhaps, everyone mused, that is why her or his spouse had left.
Other people were at the window also, enjoying Sam’s lesson on architecture. Everyone had been ignorant. Now no one was.
J. D. stood against the screen. “The company could have saved oodles on electricity last summer,” she or he said. “It’s cold up here.”
Papers lifted and fell from the desks of nearby cubicles. There was quite a breeze.
Other people stepped toward the window, looked. Harvey pushed the screen back, opening the building to the sky. Alice pushed it closed.
Everyone backed away. The open window made everyone nervous -so high up -and only that flimsy metal landing to stop a body.
Everyone went back to her or his office. Sam trailed google eyed. “Is there anything more you’d like to know?” Sam asked, standing in the frame of everyone’s door after everyone had sat.
Everyone shook her or his head.
Sam dawdled, playing a song on the doorjamb with her or his fingertips.
Everyone smiled awkwardly, looked down. Waited.
All afternoon, everyone could hear the screen on the window squeak open and slam closed, squeak open and slam closed.
Everyone stayed away.
No comments:
Post a Comment