The Bend of the World: A Novel by Jacob Bacharach

working on the same project at the same time, but in theory, we were a Global Solutions Solve Team, and we hypothetically reported to an apoplectic thirty-seven-year-old vice president named Ted Roskopf, or, as his email signature put it, R. Theodore Roskopf, MBA, even though he was still a year away from finishing his executive MBA program. There was an unlimited supply of vice presidents at GS; they were functionaries who reported to directors who reported to senior directors who reported to senior vice presidents who reported to division directors who reported to the C-levels; they mass-produced them in the copy room or something, each imbued with glossy charts for brains and endowed with a Napoleonic desire to lay waste to the rest of Global Solutions and remake its codes and social order in their totalizing vision. Ted referred to us quite openly as My People and also referred, whenever he had the chance, to the “gray ceiling,” his own coinage, apparently, meaning the gang of fifty-and-overs who held all the executive offices, and who all conspired to keep Ted from revolutionizing and revitalizing everything, everywhere. If this was a real tech company, he’d say, you wouldn’t have this bullshit. I wouldn’t put up with it. There seemed to be flaws in this analysis, but he was so earnest in his desire to implement impactful change or whatever that it became endearing, and even though he treated us with an attitude of feudal disdain, we felt oddly protective of him, as, I suppose, actual peasants might have once felt about their own backwater milords.
    I suspected that Ted had convinced himself that he saw me as his protégé. Among our team, Marcy and Leonard were unfireable as Diversity, she being a dyke and he being black. Pandu was an Indian, which didn’t count as Diversity, yet as an Indian with a heavy accent, he was suspect in Ted’s estimation and unworthy of special attention. However, he was the only one of us who displayed competence or appeared to know for what reason and to what end he arrived at the office every morning. Tim was too old: the geezer of the group at something over fifty, and probably also Diversity, or at least also unfireable given the potential of Age Discrimination; Kevin was just out of school and therefore too young; the Other Peter was a mystery, a blond Californian with a surfer’s drawl and an attitude of athletic disinterest so complete and imperturbable that one of us, probably Marcy, once said that he was either the Buddha or a retard.
    8
    Dude, the Other Peter said, you look terrible. He was putting his lunch in the refrigerator in the kitchenette, and I’d come in to find coffee.
    Just a little cold, I said. I looked around. Where’s the coffee machine?
    Oh, man, it’s cool. We got a Keurig. He pointed to a machine that looked like something out of Beverly Crusher’s sick bay.
    What the fuck is a Keurig?
    K-cups, man. Single-serving.
    Oh, I said. Yeah. The pod things. Isn’t that wasteful?
    Totally , he said. It produces, like, a bunch of times more plastic waste. But whatever, I don’t drink coffee.
    Yeah, what do you do when you’re hung over?
    Usually go for a swim. What about you?
    I was trying to figure out the machine. Coffee, I said. Do you know how to do this?
    Yup, he said, and he made me a cup of coffee.
    What happened to the old machine?
    I guess they all got junked. Purchasing replaced all the old machines. Didn’t you read the emails?
    Who reads emails from Purchasing?
    You should read the emails from Purchasing, the Other Peter told me. Those ladies pretty much run shit.
    Yeah, well, this coffee sucks, I said. No offense.
    Wouldn’t know, but I’ll take your word for it. You ever drink kombucha?
    My girlfriend’s a fan.
    It totally improves your intestinal flora.
    Yeah. How is it for your liver?
    Don’t know, man. It’s probably awesome for your liver, too.
    Huh, I said.
    By the way, he said, R. Theodore was looking for you.
    Why?
    Didn’t