When it’s summer in midtown Manhattan, coming back into the office lobby after lunch is like a glass of cool water. Your forehead has been oozing sweat into your lips, but now the coolness brings you back to life. When it’s winter in midtown Manhattan, you rush to get back in the office from lunch. The wind slashes into your face like a new razor blade, and your fingers feel swollen as blood rushes to the skin. Then, you step into the lobby and the warmth cuddles you. Your body had been shivering but now the air surrounds you with a hug. It doesn’t matter whether you work in a crisp new office building or further south in a dark antique. You’re home, and getting back to work is a relief from the harshness of the wind and the snow.
But when winter begins to recede, there is that first perfect day. You step outside to discover that the air is cool, but you can still feel the sun right on your face like your sweetheart’s palms. Suddenly, the women all seem beautiful and inviting. You grab a sandwich from the deli and find the ledge of a fountain to sit on, and it’s on that day that you never want to return to the office ever again. Maybe one of those women you’re eying will see you, and kidnap you, and take you home, away from the responsibilities of your ninth-floor cubicle.
Today was that day. Four of the accounting staff at Lefferts and Associates, all in their mid-twenties, were finishing their sandwiches, allowing themselves to be hypnotized by the air and the traffic on Sixth Avenue. Jeremy was especially subject to being seduced by absolutely every long-legged woman who passed, especially those in long light dresses that caught the wind and hugged their mistresses’ legs. Rhonda had been watching him.
“Why are you staring at them?” she asked Jeremy. None of them are going to fuck you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Believe me. I know it. Oh, shit, it’s after one! We were supposed to be back. Did you hear the way Les laid into Eric yesterday?”
They had let themselves be hypnotized by this first perfect day, and now rushed back, dodging pedestrians crossing through red lights, and forcing themselves into the office elevator even though there wasn’t really room for all of them.
As they reached their floor and filed out of the elevator, they saw Les standing there in the elevator bank. First Les looked up to notice that the elevator was going up, not down, then he looked at his watch and gave each of them a disapproving glance as they passed. Les was waiting there with his daughter. Tiffany had started working at Lefferts and Associates since she graduated from college a year and half a year ago. Everyone knew she was a spoiled brat and they all thought that she had not only the perfect name, but the perfect hair for a poodle – curled into tight blond ringlets that smothered her head.
As they returned to burrow into their cubicles, Rhonda eyed Jeremy with a bit of jealousy.
“You’re so smart to have brought a sweater. Can you hear my teeth chatter?”
Since the weather had officially warmed up, Les turned the heat off. But the office walls were still chilled from the cold night before. They sucked the heat out of the room. Spring hadn’t penetrated to the office. The world was a hot fudge sundae – warm on the outside, but still frosty in the middle. Rhonda tried to warm up by burying herself in her work, the Hammerstone Restaurants account, which for now was a pleasantly distracting mess.
At about one thirty, when the boss and his daughter had returned from lunch, Rhonda saw Jeremy looking exasperated as he talked on the phone. Finally, he hung up and leaned over to her.
“Tiffany called me in.”
Tiffany had her practiced “stern but professional” boss face on.
“Jeremy, you know what Mr. Lefferts’s attitude is toward lateness.”
“Tiffany, we got in four minutes late. How much overtime do we put in? I’ll work my usual overtime and add four minutes.”
“You know it is not about the number of minutes you work. If I’m on with a client, and they have a question that only you can answer, I look bad… the firm looks bad… if I can’t call on you to straighten it out. That’s how we earn our billing rates. By being professional and having the answers for our clients… when they need the answers.”
“Tiffany, you took a late lunch today. You weren’t in the office.”
“You didn’t know that until you got in… late. And besides, when you were supposed to be here – I was still in my office. I’ve made myself clear, I hope. And you know the three strikes rule.”
“I know the rule. By the way, how is that CPA exam coming?”
“I’m confident I’ll pass it next time. I know you think it’s easy, but unlike most of the staff, I didn’t major in accounting. I went to a liberal arts college, so I came here starting from square one.”
“Well, good luck this time around.”
“Your good wishes are very appreciated.”
As Jeremy returned to his cubicle, he tapped Rhonda on the shoulder.
“Oh my god, you scared the crap out of me!”
“It’s alright. Tiffany did the Tiffany thing. I never thought I’d say this, but you’re lucky you work for Les.”
“I’m not lucky. But for some reason, Les loves me, so I get away with a lot of shit.”
“I’ll trade you my sweater if I can work for Les and have him love me as much as he loves you.”
“Keep the sweater, darling.”
And Rhonda went back to her computer screen and that was the end of it for an hour.
Until Mary got a call, and they saw her get up and walk to Les’s office. Rhonda could only see the side of Mary’s face, and only for a millisecond, but it was obvious that all the muscles and skin in Mary’s face drooped with shock and fear.
“I should never have invited her to lunch” Rhonda told her friend. “I should have been more careful. I forget all the things that I get away with. I feel responsible.”
“Mary’s a big girl. She can take care of herself.”
“But Jeremy, Mary is pregnant and she’s single! You have no idea what that means! You will never know!”
Everyone in the office could hear the agitation spilling out of Les’s office, but no one could make out what was being said. They sure tried. Then finally the clouds seemed to part. There was a pause in the agitation. Then the entire office could make out Les’s two distinct words.
“STRIKE THREE!”
The office strained to hear anything but now the voices from Les’s office were subdued. The emotions had exhausted themselves and were replaced by the analytic demeanor of a career accountant managing another client.
Finally, Mary stepped out of the office and sleepwalked across the hall and into the bathroom. The lock snapped shut. That’s when the wailing began. It seemed as though Mary’s wailing would not only burrow into every open cubicle in Lefferts and Associates, but the sounds would rise through the air ducts and manage to infect every office in the building. Maybe they would rise into the beautiful spring air and travel across all of Manhattan and make their way from Midtown to Wall Street, and they would float cross town to interrupt the proceedings at the United Nations, and travel on their own wings north to Harlem where some anonymous woman would be feeling an uncomfortable chill as she was stopping to pick her children up from school. Perhaps, no one would know for sure, the wailing would even penetrate into Tiffany’s office.
And then the Lefferts and Associates bathroom fell silent.
Rhonda got up and took long strides to the bathroom. She jiggled at the door handle but it resisted her. She banged at it and shouted Mary’s name, but no sound came back for her.
“Who has the key for god’s sake?”
No one in the office moved. No one responded. Finally, Rhonda took her strides into Tiffany’s office.
“Tiffany, do you have the key to the bathroom? There is an employee in there who is in trouble. And no matter what you may think about your father, you are an employee too. And you need to do something now.”
As Rhonda returned to her cubicle, not looking back, Jeremy peaked over the edge of his own cubicle. He saw Tiffany walk to the bathroom door, insert her key, and walk inside.
Nothing could be heard. The office was silent while Tiffany was in there. Jeremy checked the clock and saw that she was in there five minutes. She was not calling an ambulance. Was it too late? Tiffany was in there ten minutes. No one in the office was working anymore. Everything was about what the next chapter of the bathroom saga would be.
And then after fifteen minutes of apparent silence, they could all see the bathroom door open to reveal Tiffany and Mary walking out together both erect and calm. They walked to and summoned the elevators, and when one arrived that was going down, Mary gave Tiffany a brief hug and then disappeared. With Mary now gone, Tiffany took deliberate strides to her father’s office and closed the door.
Then like a thunderstorm that begins with just some cracks you barely notice, sounds began to crescendo in Les’s office. It was a little Tiffany, and then a little Les, and then a back and forth between the two, and then the rhythm accelerated too, until the office could hear them busily interrupting each other but no words could be made out. And then Tiffany seemed to go on for a while until she was cut off, and finally the office made out Les Lefferts’s words.
“THIS IS MY FUCKING COMPANY AND I PAY THE BILLS HERE AND I MAKE THE FINAL DECISIONS. THAT IS MY NAME ON THE DOOR, NOT YOURS!”
Then the clatter of voices continued as just a stream of noise until finally there was a crash as Les’s office door opened violently and smacked against the far wall. Tiffany walked out and then made the same turn toward the elevators that Mary had maybe ten minutes ago. Everyone could hear the nervous and insistent rattling of the elevator button until finally the familiar “ding” announced that the elevator arrived. In a few moments, Tiffany disappeared.
Rhonda stood up and began shouting over the tops of the cubicles.
“EVERYBODY! I JUST GOT A CALL FROM LES. HE WANTS EVERYONE IN THE CONFERENCE ROOM RIGHT NOW.”
As the office filed in, each person noticed that Les was already there, sitting calmly at the head of the conference table. Jeremy was the last in, and no seats were available. It was so uncommon for the entire office to be gathered at once. He slouched into the far corner as Les began.
“I want you to all know that I have chosen to give Mary six months of paid maternity leave. This will give her three months until she delivers her child and three months until she returns to work. I’m sure we all wish Mary the best of health, and the best of health for her child, which I think she said is going to be a boy. The other news is that my daughter Tiffany is no longer employed at Lefferts and Associates. Those of you who have been reporting to Tiffany will now be reporting directly to me.
“Mary is of course quite invaluable to all of us for working with our clients to get the financials we need to do our work. So, we’re all going to have to pull a little harder for the next six months to make up for her absence. I’m asking you all to put in five more hours of overtime every week until she’s back. We all have to support the team. If anyone does not feel he or she can support the team with five hours a week, you know where the elevator is. I’ll be happy to press the down button for you.”
After everyone had returned to their cubicles, Rhonda came over to Jeremy and leaned down under the cube wall.
“Well, you got your wish.”
“What’s that?” Jeremy asked, genuinely curious.
“You wanted to work for Les, right? Well, it didn’t even cost you a sweater.”
There is that first day of autumn in New York. During the summer, stepping outside of the office immediately burns into your face. You walk down the block and you feel the humidity wrapping itself around your neck and turning itself into sweat that soaks your collar. But then a breeze comes along, and for the first time it’s not the hot wind from a hair dryer, it’s a cool invigorating gust that catches under your arms and you want to sail down the street on it.
Today was that day. Three of the accounting staff at Lefferts and associates had treated themselves to Italian ices that they bought from a street vendor on Sixth Avenue. Jeremy was sucking the last drops of chocolate from his cup when a realization occurred to him.
“Hey Rhonda, isn’t Mary supposed to be coming back next week?”
“Les said that she starts up again Monday. Oh my God, those pictures of Brian are so cute. I wish she could bring him in to work.”
“Anyone want to place bets on when we get our overtime cut back?”
“Yeah” Rhonda chuckled. In maybe forty years.
“Whatever happened to Tiffany?”
“I heard she finally passed her CPA and went to work for a Big Four.”
“Oh, a real accounting firm. Not like this shit hole.”
“Good for her,” said Jeremy. “You know the strange thing, Rhonda? The last thing I ever thought in my life would be that I’d be sorry to see Tiffany go. And yet, here I am.”
This reminded Rhonda to check her watch. It was ten to one, and she reminded the rest that it was time to head back.
