Final Scene

Mr. Cistern had his business grin on, the one that made everyone shudder when caught in its arid bearing. He swept the room with it like a spotlight, casting stagefright upon wouldn’t-be actors and testing to see who had remembered their lines. It could not be escaped. Everyone in the wings, before and after the turgid sweep, struggled to retain their continence.

At the same time everyone knew that it was all a ridiculous show. He pretended to be making rounds, being Mr. Friendly With The Troops, while we the grunts pretended in return (as if we had a choice) to be bred with some kind of patriotic respect for Cistern and Sons, our employer-exploiter, the proud producer of Garden Brand Chemicals. But I the disenchanted exploitee had grown tired of pretending. I was thinking of deserting, running away from the circus, and I had provocatively expressed as much, although perhaps with a little more pungency, just yesterday morning on a stall wall in the company can.

He coursed in a zig-zag amble, following a secret itinerary, first here, then there, then back over this way. “Hello, Marcie,” he said on one side of the shop. “Good to see you made it in today.” “Yes, sir.” Amble, amble. “Hi, Bob. Let’s get those numbers up.” “Yes, sir.” Smile, smile, smile and over to the other side of the room. “Janet, well, it looks like things are piling up for you.” “Yes, sir.” “Maybe we ought to get you another In-basket.” Smile and chuckle.

Everyone smiled back, too, like the Cheese was their uncle. Yet everyone could see, had to see, the cold aim of his big fat furtive glances. Beneath Uncle’s temperate banter and bandy loomed just one frigid purpose. He had emerged from his plush-pit with just one place to go, just one thing to say, and he was, between each zig and zag, directing himself my way.

The stroll and the gab were greased up with a warmth as synthetic as if it had come out of a tube. Not even the worst brown-nosed kissups were fooled. I had thought once that maybe these creatures lived too far out past the fringes of reality, until one day a notorious b.n.k. advised me that I “really should play along.” Yet he had confirmed it: in absolutely everyone’s peonic mind it was all a miserable game. And today even this b.n.k., lapping it all up while the spotlight shone, could be seen wearing a shriveled puke look after the C. had passed him; today it seemed particularly putrid, everywhere you looked.

I waited for him. I didn’t even try to look busy. Only when he eventually made it to the edge of my desk did I look down at my work, and then it was with full attention, as if no one else existed. And it was exclusion, not dedication, only a guise of head-hanging shame to hide the subtle snub. He pretended, too, not to notice.

“Hello, Jenson.” He spoke with frostiness. I looked up out of my own chilled atmosphere, thinking one of us might have shrunk the stupid smile. But it still glared icily, and the lips were even further stretched and taut. “Jenson,” they said again. “Good morning.”

“Mr. Cistern,” I acknowledged, sounding in fact much like an “Mmmmph.”

“Darin, you know, I’ve been meaning to talk to you.” His voice dipped just higher than a scratched whisper, with the intimacy of a swamp lizard and the integrity of a snake. I shivered as one cold-blooded paw (or the snake itself) dropped onto my shoulder.

“Sir?” Be polite now, I thought. Just a little more.

“Tell you what, Darin, let’s set up an appointment, you and me, okay?” He spoke with blatant condescension. “Strictly for conversational purposes,” he said.

“What about, sir?”

“I’ll just put you down for about four-thirty, how does that sound?” The grin was noisome.

“What’s it about?” I asked.

“We’ll meet in my office, of course, but I suppose you know that much, don’t you?” He laughed.

“Sir?” No rudeness, not yet.

“Put your nose back into it, Jenson.” His voice had boosted up again. Once more everyone could choke on the bossish humor. Then he patted me on the back, which made me feel just a little closer to wanting to hit him. Self-control, I told myself. Therapy, look away, turn a cheek, don’t watch the queen of shovelfuls mosey back into the pit. I gripped my chair handles and stared anywhere away and apart from his ambling departure. My mouth tasted acridly mad. My eyes stared emptily into the room, away and apart, and only happened to land on the face of Janet Praxis, chuckling in mime exaggeration. Fuck you, J. She stuck out her tongue (such a child) and smiled as stupid as the Cheese, except that it was real and she was a girl and there was something remotely attractive about it. Oh, go to hell, Praxis, we’re just pretending, too.

Cistern was nearly back to the door of his office, almost escaped and victorious, to apex my misery. Janet, compounding the misery, started laughing audibly, just loud enough at first, but with a threatening poco crescendo. I wondered if I was ever going to do it, or if it was going to be suddenly too late. I wondered how long I would be entranced by the last several steps of the queen on one side and the ascending giggle on the other, trapping me and rendering me unable to stand up and prove something, anything, once and forever, making me into a fool and the biggest Employee of them all, the grand pretender. I wondered, I almost whimpered, cried when suddenly my voice found itself and it wasn’t a whine.

“Mr. Cistern!” Just loud enough.

He stopped midway between his final to and fro. He erased the stupid grin without any detectable motion, and he had a little trouble finding a voice himself.

“Jenson?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’m through playing.”

“Excuse me?”

“I quit, sir.”

“Jenson, perhaps we might discuss this privately.”

“No sir.” There was nothing to talk about. “I’m through.“

And I couldn’t add anything after that. I looked over at Janet Praxis, and saw her disappointment. Not enough bravado, I suppose. But that was it. I scooped a few things out of my desk drawers and grabbed my coat and quietly walked out the door.