hopes we’d make it back before She did.
We never did.
Our final warning came one day in the “office” (the third bedroom in her rent-controlled apartment on Seventh Avenue). We’d been giddy because She was on her way to Midtown, which meant at least three hours of non-nail-biting “work” could be done. Our hopes were immediately dashed when instead of walking out the door without saying good-bye as usual, She walked into the office/bedroom with tears in her eyes. They refused to fall to her cheeks, professional that She was, but for once we weren’t fooled. They were there—mucking up her huge brown eyes. The same ones that had convinced me months before that I’d be better off here. That working in a prewar building in Harlem, the same one where Spike Lee shot a few scenes of Jungle Fever, was the right thing to do. If the on button was that clear, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
“One of you forgot to turn on the answering machine…again,” She hissed from the doorway, not looking at anyone, so really everyone.
Blank, scared-shitless stares.
“I obviously don’t know who did it,” She said, still gazing up at the ceiling as if Jesus H. Christ was going to help with the interrogating, “but if it happens one more time, someone’s going to have to go. I’m not sure who. I guess you guys can just decide amongst yourselves or something.”
Was She just being the crazy we’d come to know and loathe, or was She actually this upset about a bootleg answering machine? Once, She brought me into her office (the second bedroom) to tell me that She dreamed about fabric samples at night and understood that the rest of us weren’t as committed: after all, it was her name after the @ of our e-mail addys. I walked out thinking how lazy I was and didn’t IM Jeanne for more than an hour. Then I did something wrong, and She wrote back, “I’ve explained several times that you have to send correspondence/ attachments to my other e-mail account. Thanks.” If I couldn’t make it with her, then with who?
Only once did I get something right. Looking at the Post-it that proved it kept me sane: from going postal, if you will. It was stuck to the invoice to end all invoices. I spent all morning on it. The extra spaces between each letter of her name (added for aesthetics) were symmetrical. The design fee was hiked up to ridiculous, and the whole thing was typed in the passive voice, a tone so impersonal She could have written it herself. The invoice was placed back in my in-box with a two-by-two diploma attached—“Great Job!” Jeanne took a Polaroid as a joke. I laughed when everybody else did, then tacked it to the bulletin board above my computer. Congratulatory punctuation validated my existence. Maybe we should have checked the machine one more time.
After explaining why someone needed firing, She left us there with our empty mouths open. We didn’t defend ourselves or each other. The front door slamming echoed back to us, the ending bell. Still we waited—me, Jeanne, Valentina (who actually was an idiot), and Laura (who just acted like one). Minutes passed before anyone said anything, before anyone breathed.
“Do you think she’s serious?” whined Valentina, whom I mentally nominated to be thrown to the She wolf.
“Ummm, no. She’s just tryna drive us insane,” answered Jeanne.
“Mission a-fucking-ccomplished.” This was me, obviously.
“God, I gotta get out of here,” sighed Laura, who lost it one day when I left a sweaty glass on the antique desk in the living room. It left what I thought was an unnoticeable water mark. Laura hid it under a stack of papers whenever She came around.
That was our life from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.—a constant roller coaster of wondering whether we’d do something stupid enough to get canned or so stupid we thought we deserved it. Like the day I took a retard pill and said I had nothing to do after She asked why I was so chatty with Jeanne. Backpedaling, I explained that usually my “list” was finished before the end of day, thus leaving plenty of time to giggle about bestiality Web sites with Jeanne (don’t judge). I thought this explanation made me look efficient and task-oriented. It’s not like I copped to the countless cups of peach tea I drank in order to have something to do in the bathroom for five minutes every hour. Despite its