Dead End Job by Ingrid Reinke Page B

if to swat away a fly. “A little freaked out, you know. But I’m a big guy and even though I am gayer than Elton John, I can beat some ass if I have to. I’m not worried about myself. ”
    “I guess so,” I replied, even though I had my doubts. I’d seen Martin cry over seeing a smallish brown spider one day in the kitchen. Toughness didn’t seem to be his forte. I decided to change the subject. “Um, yeah, I know my boss is a psychopath, but why are you back in the office so fast?” I asked him.
    “I didn’t really have a choice,” he replied. “Mr. Curtis was just so nice about it and told me to take all the time I needed, but I wanted to get back to work as soon as possible so I could help him with this merger stuff. You know that we can’t afford to screw this up right now.”
    “Sure.” This didn’t make much sense to me. Martin has not always been the corporate cheerleader type—like me, usually he could give two flying fucks about doing extra help around the office. This Sarah thing must have really shaken him up.
    Right then, Jenny walked over. She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped short long enough to take in Martin’s body splayed out all over the floor of my cube. I could only guess that Jenny was completely panicking at the thought of having to talk to me after the Sarah incident, since she refused to acknowledge that I am actually a human being and she didn’t interact with me unless it directly benefitted her.
    “Um, Louisa?” she said, whining.
    “Ugh, hi Jenny,” I replied unenthusiastically. Martin looked up at me and rolled his eyes.
    “Can we talk about Sarah’s workload? Elaine wanted you to take care of dispersing it within the team.” 
    “Oh…yeah. Sure, Jenny.” Not even an acknowledgement of what had happened. Typical. Plus, doing task assignments had always been Sarah’s job. How the hell was I expected to handle that?
    “Great, let’s talk after the all-office meeting this morning,” she said, then walked away without waiting for my response.
    When she was out of earshot I turned back to Martin in a panic. “What’s with the all-office meeting? I didn’t hear about that.”
    “Oh, you must have not been on the invite list because no one thought you’d be here. It’s in the boardroom at ten o’clock. Mr. Curtis and Emily from HR are going to talk about the Sarah thing.”
    “Oh. No. No, I didn’t know about it. You know how much I hate these things. I’d better load up on the meds.”
    “It’s going to be a long one. Take a handful.”
    Martin tried to look sympathetic as he laboriously rolled himself onto his stomach, then slowly scooted on his knees up to a kneeling position, and finally reached up and made an attempt to look graceful while pulling his enormous body up slowly on the corner of my desk. It didn’t work –he looked like he was in the middle of having a heart attack while crapping his pants. I did the charitable thing and ignored his struggle, instead rummaging in my purse for my Ativan. I popped a pill in my mouth. Watching Martin shuffle back to his desk, I thought about it for a second and then swallowed another pill.
    Office meetings were my real-life version of hell. The confined quarters and social pressure to be quiet and act normal pushed me into a frenzied state of anxiety, where I could not pay attention to what was being said, but instead imagined myself either freaking out or passing out. Thank you, Christ, for my anxiety pills. I was convinced that it was only because of the miracle of chemistry that I avoided this fate.
    Thanks to science, by the time ten o’clock rolled around, I was feeling way more relaxed and actually pretty tired and quite a bit loopy. When Martin and I walked into the boardroom, he went straight to the front to sit near where Mr. Curtis and Emily were standing, and I sat down in the back (closest to the exit) while the rest of the office employees filed in. In the haze of my Ativan, I watched