Meanwhile--and I need to get back to this point--Fred's reciting words two octaves above his normal register.

And that's the thing, see. It's not his own voice, but his proxy voice; that dumbed down caricature of a voice that people use to fill what would otherwise be gaps in recounted dialogue. Most people use a proxy voice of some kind, typically to mock their siblings:

Victim: "Ow! Stop touching my neck!"

Assailant: "Dop duching by neck, yuh yuh yuh!"

That's a good example of the hapless wean. There's also the huffy voice of authority, the whine of the disinclined, and the dullard's babble. Interpretations of these archetypical anti-heroes are present across cultures. I first realized that the proxy voice was universal on a trip to the Songam Art Gallery on an Incheon city bus a few years back. I passed the time listening to a conversation between two Korean women who were, by all outward appearances, well-adjusted and mature. Yet it was clear to me that they were talking about someone else--a third party who was not present--because their dialogue was punctuated in that very distinct way:

"Boeeo jeff sahm, 'Chawn mahn yawng kyeh!' sum nee, dah kaseyo."

Technorati Tags: caricature, coworkers, idiot, imitation, office, proxy voice

"Then jeff says, 'I'm most certainly not cleaning that up!' you know, like he does."

Since when do I say, "most certainly"? And though my voice does have a soft note to it, it does not usually summon images of helium-huffing priss. Fred has used that voice before--he uses that same voice for everyone. That's why I loathe him, really. Fred is an oaf whose palate runs to crude parody over accurate or artful recitation.

Kelly is giggling at Fred's caricature portrayal of me, and why not? If the man makes me sound like an anxious Lord Fauntleroy sock puppet, she has no stake in it. Oh, Kelly, you must be dispensed with. When Fred turns his back to write something on the whiteboard, I get Kelly's attention and point at my teeth, and move my tongue as if I'm trying to dislodge a morsel of food. Duly horrified, Kelly gets to work immediately. Now she'll spend the rest of the meeting paranoid, sucking at her teeth, and smiling that lower-teeth-only smile.

Meanwhile, Fred, having reached the conclusion of his cartoonish walk though history is looking to me for a response. In the corner of my eye I can see Kelly trying to be inconspicuous as she sucks at her lips like a lamprey.

"My father just died this morning," I say.

Fred is silent, for perhaps the first time in his life. Tears come to my eyes, because this is too delicious for words, in fact.

"Oh no," he says. "When did you...?" The man is struggling now, his joviality forgotten. "Jeff, you need to go home."

And, in a final, gleeful act of self-destruction, I spring from my chair, do a jester's jig, and say, "Jefffff! You need to go hoooome!" For my depiction I choose the hoarse windbag, and, I daresay, I think I've nailed it.

"Oh, you fuck!" Kelly says, glaring at me. Fred's face is a confusion of emotions, as if he's still trying to sort out a minor stroke. But the real beauty of my performance is that I'm absolutely beyond retribution this time, because my father really did die this morning.

What We Learned About

office · idiot · coworkers · proxy voice · imitation · caricature

"You're not kidding?" he asked after I'd made my announcement. "What's the deal?"

I shrugged. "I told you why, and I'm sorry, but... it's just not right for me, the way you jog. It's just wrong."

Dale stood stock still, his head cocked to the side as if that might make it easier for my words to penetrate. Then, "So... it's about vanity? I don't get it. Assuming I'm not moving my arms the right way, you're worried that people will think we're... what, deviants?"

"It's not vanity at all. The way you run is conspicuous the same way that someone chewing without removing the fork from their mouth would be conspicuous. Naturally, it draws the attention of onlookers, and, frankly, I'd rather not be noticed like that. That's not vanity."

"But your base concern is superficial, isn't it?"

"This isn't about wearing the wrong color shorts or not having the coolest haircut," I said.

"No, I mean, isn't this like... casting out a friend because they're knock-kneed?"

I shook my head. "I'm talking about a choice here, an indefensible choice. You and I are no different physically, yet you're running with your arms pinned to your sides, why? Is it because you'd be flung off balance into a ditch otherwise? No, it's because that's how you choose to conduct yourself. I mean, if you smoked a pipe while we were jogging, or... if you insisted on wearing a feathered headdress, then I'd have to take the same considerations, wouldn't I?"

"Well, here is one place where I draw the line," I said. "The line is drawn."

Determining interpersonal relationships based upon unreasonable criteria is a recipe for a solitary existence. I know that. I merely expect a modicum of social propriety. This is a long-standing principle of mine, and it's always stood me in good stead.

I was only 10 when our father moved to a new house in the suburbs, and my younger brother and I took the opportunity to creature around the neighborhood to get the lay of the land. Before long we were approached by a boy around my age who invited us into his home to see his dad's piranha--a promising start to a provisional friendship.

After some friendly chat the three of us headed back out into the summer heat so the boy could show us his favorite spots, including an impressive rope swing over a deep creek, and a nicely-appointed fort in the crook of a dead tree. "Do you guys climb?" the boy asked. My brother and I glanced at each other, then shook our heads. "Trees," he clarified, indicating the branches above. "I climb all the time. I never wear shoes."

Indeed, the soles of his feet were like dried leather. As he scaled the tree the bark stripped away to reveal spiky pulp, but his feet were so tough that the splinters bent back like dry grass. I winced with amazement: my own tender feet would have been instantly impaled.

My brother and I craned our heads back to follow the boy's progress, and that's when things took an unfortunate turn. Like a wee baby gerbil emerging from its bed of cedar, a single pink testicle greeted us both from the boy's red shorts. To my horror I found myself unable to turn away for a moment, standing agape as the boy's vertical thrusts all but assured the wayward scrotum's imminent and glorious freedom. The boy's utter obliviousness to this anatomical travesty only made it that much worse.

When I looked over at my brother he was already looking back at me, and there was suddenly no need for communication. A primal need for survival had kicked in and we were of a single mind. When we turned to leave it was perfunctory, the way you leave the theatre when the curtain slides closed and the lights come up.

"Hey! Guys?" The boy was fifteen feet from the ground, and straddling the trunk of the tree like a koala. I turned around without breaking from our retreat. "Where are you going? You wanna do something else?"

"No, that's okay," I said, realizing only then that we would never know the boy's name. "We have another thing we have to go to now, so, we're gonna-"

"Okay, I'll see you next time, okay?"

You have to draw the line somewhere though. Even a child knows that.

Come on, baby,
Keep shopping it, right on.
You know I got what you need,
At bargain prices...

Seductive, possibly--there's a time and place for everything. But why do the bells start before jack-o-lanterns have even had a chance to rot into orange sludge on your front deck? It was never like that in the old days, and there's a hint of desperation to it now. Premature bells is like someone dropping Barry White on you when you're not even dressed for the date yet, before you've plucked the encroaching monobrow or un-boxed the good underwear. No, worse: it's like an interested party playing Barry White in the background when he calls you up for a first date.

"So, dinner? Thursday night?"

"Okay, that sounds... ah, what's that noise? In the background?"

"Hmm... What?"

"Music. Is that music?"

"No. Well, I mean... I do have a little something on here, sure. You know, to make the call... sweeter."

"Sweeter? Well it's getting louder--I can barely hear you now. Is that... Barry White? You're playing Barry White over the phone before we've even gone out? Isn't that a touch optimistic?"

"Look, baby. We're going to be a thing, you and me. In a couple of months it'll be fully on, so I want to ease you into it now. Start early. Cuz I like it slow, you know what I'm saying? Ring a ding ding."

The thing is, for me the bells--the jingle bells if we're being honest--are more akin to the Psycho violin stabs. Rhee! Rhee! Rhee! Rhee! Now up to 50% off, through Monday! And before you know it, there's some guy in a costume standing over you, watching the water swirl down the drain.

Well I'm done with that. Enough with the fucking bells, people.

However, there are certain risks involved with even the most harmless of pursuits, as my experience with my partner this evening perfectly illustrates. The group of four adjacent to us was a spirited lot, and I found myself following their conversational thread for a few minutes before something the eldest woman said caught my attention. She said, "Well she didn't know his father was a cop, you know, so when she saw his motorcycle..."

That brief snippet of dialogue conjured up a memory of my own, so I wasted no time. "L., I told you my father was a cop?"

She sipped her wine, then nodded. "You'd mentioned it, yes."

"I was just thinking about the time my first childhood girlfriend visited our house. I guess I'd never mentioned the fact that my dad was a cop, so when she saw all the guns lying on the table one day, she assumed-"

I stopped short just then, the way you do when you see four people glaring at you from the adjacent table.

"Like you don't know," said the patriarch, in an impressive show of suburban bistro chivalry, and then turned back to his clan.

I most certainly didn't know; not exactly. Did they think I was mocking them because our stories both featured father cops? Or perhaps they considered the subject of father cops reserved until they left the premises. How presumptive! But still better than the third alternative, which was that there was some arcane statute of limitations concerning any topic broached by those in one's proximity.

What a hellish world of accounting that would be, and I for one refuse to subject myself to such esoteric mores. That's a choice one makes. If anything, they should have been flattered that I found inspiration in something they had been discussing. But to take offense? It's not like I got up and danced around their table singing the chantey of the father cop.

Oh...
my...
daddy was a COPPER [a kick to their table leg]
who suprised my GIRL [kick]
when she spied his CHOPPER [kick]
with blue lights a-TWIRL! [kick]

Twirl twirl twirl twirl
sound your siren and storm your TROOPS [kick]
twirl twirl twirl twirl
you can spy her knickers with your shiny BOOTS! [kick]

See, then I might understand their disdain--even welcome it. But in this case... I should have chalked it up to mere oversensitivity, as L. recommended I should. But I was just so unsettled by the episode that further conversation was killed for the time being.

I might have used synonyms to camouflage the thematic similarities. "My elder who was a gendarme..." Or perhaps if I had spoken in another language entirely! That is, unless the bone of their contention was in the theme rather than the specific words I'd used. Who could know? Had anyone ever bothered to codify the etiquette around the use of conversational themes overheard?

As it happened, there would be no convenient resolution to these questions tonight. So instead I sat in uneasy silence as we awaited our entrees. The sounds of the bistro crept back to the fore, and before I knew it I was listening in to the dialogue held by our rival quartet again, helplessly. Once I had become sensitized to their signature timbre, it was difficult not to hear it to the exclusion of nearly everything else.

The younger male was talking about his experience writing a novel, much to the edification of the elders. Now there's a meaty topic, I thought, biding my time.

From where I'm standing I can just see the photos, poking out from under my portfolio on the desk. I discreetly tuck them under without drawing her attention. "Oh... no," I say, feigning concern. "You know, I left them at home? I feel like such an idiot!"

My coworker is no longer breezing. "Hold on," she says. "You do know we need those photos for the review, Jeff. We need the photos, or there is no review!"

"Of course I know," I say, holding up my hands in concession. "I just... maybe I can run home and get them."

Liz looks at her watch. "If you can get home and back in a half-"

"Oh, wait, but I took the bus this morning," I say. "So that's probably out."

There is a place in my mind where I can discriminate between truth and utter fabrication, but that place is not unlike an art gallery. Some items are closer to reality, certainly, but does that make the impressionist pieces any less valid from an artistic standpoint? There is beauty in deceit, without question. I lie just to see the resultant frustration bloom--it's the same satisfaction a gardener feels standing ankle deep in loam, his bag of seed empty. People lie to cover their asses, to make themselves look good, or to evade punishment. But any half-rate actor could tell you that drama is only interesting when obstacles are overcome, when the stakes are high. When people are happy and satisfied, well, that can hardly be called living.

This self-crafted problem puts me in mind of an altercation I participated in as a young adult. My stepfather had lost his eyeglasses, and was rummaging through the house like a truffle-obsessed pig. It was a sight to see the man so frenzied, and it was as he was peering into the freezer for his missing spectacles that the compulsion came over me to announce that I had taken them.

"Jeffrey, why would you even touch them?" he asked with a relief masked only by anger. "Where did you leave them?"

"I don't know," I said. "I was playing with them, but I don't remember where I put them."

There was a moment of delicious incomprehension, when my stepfather could not even articulate his thoughts. I wish I had an album of photos featuring all the people in my life whom I had seen wearing that same expression. It's a unique configuration in the facial musculature that is at once rapt and wholly disengaged, and it's as beautiful as a rare flower. Maybe that's the thing I seek.

"That's unacceptable!" my stepfather yelled, and grabbed me by the arm. "Let's go. Where were you?"

"I don't remember! I think I gave them to someone!" By that point he knew I was goading him, and damn the consequences. So he dragged me to his den to administer punishment. The funniest thing about that memory is that he put on his glasses, which were sitting on the low table next to his reading chair, before spanking me. And he didn't realize he had them on.

It demands all the impulse control I can muster to keep from telling Liz that I have the photos after all. To sabotage my own deceit, that is. Such a revelation would instantly right everything, save for my reputation, perhaps. But though a less committed practitioner of tall tales might not hesitate to reveal the ruse for what it was, I am not about to snip my false flower. Not after I've spent so much time cultivating it.

I know every single detail about Fritz's life, because he is a man without propriety. He is not a practitioner of "polite phone volume." His intonation is the same whether he's speaking with his boss at his desk or on his cell phone with Dr. Nathan Baldwin, who is his gastroenterologist. I wouldn't even mind so much if his life's minutiae were interesting--I'm a sucker for a good story. But the fact is that since his house burned to the ground and his daughter perished in the blaze, Fritz has become the most annoying coworker I've ever worked with.

Everything in his life is about logistics now. "Our insurance guy is staying late, so tell Amy I need the car back before tonight," he says. The request is particularly unnerving because he's looking directly at me when he makes it, and I feel compelled to tell Amy that Fritz needs his car. Except I don't know an Amy, and Fritz isn't looking at me so much as he's staring through me. He tends to stare in my direction when he's on the phone the way a grocery store fish stares up at you from its bed of ice.

He's putting me to sleep! I'm actually tempted to say something in response, just to see if it registers. If I answered aloud would it snap him out of it? It's not wise to play games with a man whose family has undergone such tragedy, but is my suffering any less valid? So I say aloud, "If you want the car then you're just going to have to find it yourself." I'm looking right into his lantern eyes when I say it, and the directness is nothing less than eerie. I immediately feel shame, and my skin grows hot. What was I thinking?

Without missing a beat, Fritz says, "Fine, whatever, I'm going to go either way, so you make up your mind." He hangs up the phone and I quickly look away. Was he talking to me? Surely not, but the notion is insistent. There is, after all, the possibility that there was no one on the other line at all--and that there never has been. I must consider that my coworker is insane.

Regardless, neither tragedy nor the resultant loss of sanity are reason enough to grant a person absolute free reign. My productivity has taken a nose dive because I can't help but follow along as Fritz narrates the mundane details of his existence.

"Did Steve call?" Now he has his cell phone pressed to his ear, and he's pacing. He paces a great deal more than he used to, and shows as little regard for personal space as he does for vocal modulation. I've seen him walk right up behind someone and stand by their chair as he talks. Fritz has become invulnerable to social grace, and no one dares to speak of it. Because the man is struggling to put his life back together one piece at a time, he can do as he pleases. At this point Fritz could rest a coffee mug on his boss' blonde head and blow nose missiles at her kids' crayon renderings and not receive the faintest admonishment.

If I severed the end of my pinky after receiving a particularly grievous paper cut, and then had it surgically reattached, would it be enough to allow me to spit on the conference room table during a meeting? How about if I lost the severed finger, and doctors were forced to graft on one of my toes as a replacement? Sure, I'll bet that if I showed up to work with toe hands I could at least tell Fritz to shut the hell up and sit down with impunity. And people would thank me for it, I can tell you that. Just let tragedy strike, and then I'll speak my piece.

I don't think I'm better than Jacob is. I don't. But to be honest, I do suffer from the fear that I'll think I'm better than he is. To some degree I've been plagued by this paranoid-superiority complex since I was was old enough to think I might be different from anyone I didn't make up in my head. Under the burden of these thoughts I endure countless circular arguments with myself on the topic of superiority, particularly when I'm conversing with one of my rural-bred relatives.

You think you're better than he is.

No I don't.

That's absolutely ridiculous. How he talks is immaterial.

Yet even as you say that you're fairly certain that he wouldn't be able to use the word "immaterial" in a sentence. You're artificially governing yourself so as not to seem overly intelligent. In fact you're over-compensating, and it makes you sound aloof. You're spending an inordinate amount of time trying to buffer the disparity between you and this creature of the hills.

So much nonsense! That's just noise! Shut up!

"So whatcha been up to lately?" Jacob asks me. "How're things in Caylafornia?"

The land of fruits and nuts--you know that's what he's really asking.

Shut up.

"Not much, actually. Just tryin' to take it easy."

You said "tryin'" to sound rural! For shame.

Not so, we're just having a conversation.

"We's jus havin a convuhsahin, ain't that raht?"

I don't think like that! And I don't think of myself in terms of being better than someone else.

Oh, so by thinking about thinking you're superior to Cousin Jacob, you're not actually thinking it first hand. You're preempting the thought entirely by denying it before it's yours. So it's just me thinking it, isn't it? It's not something that would even occur to you, right?

If you would shut up about it.

"You tired from the plane trip?" As he draws a sip from his beer, I sit back in the wicker chair which squeaks in protest.

He's asking you that because he knows how you feel about him. Look at him looking you over, full of holy certainty. He's got a bead on you. He knows you think you're better than he is, because it's impossible for you to conceal it. If you're quiet then he'll know you're ridiculing him, and if you're verbose then he'll know you're showing off. You feel awkward because you're embarrassed. You feel sorry for him.

Stop!

Go on, spank that muskrat-eater with your frontal lobe!

"Yeah, those plane trips are always draining. Makes me feel asthmatic."

The jet-setter! Just in from the exotic west. Show the natives your shiny shoes! "Where I come from we stalk Suicide Girls on the internet, and picket Wal-Marts. We're all gay!"

Please! We are who we are, and that's all there is to it.

Jacob leafs through his tome halfheartedly. "Me, I never saw much reason to travel, I guess. Seems like everything I need is right here."

"All I needs is my bible and my whittlin' knife."

Unbelievable.

You think that by denying the thought, you're not thinking it. But in order to deny the thought it has to cross your mind, so you are indeed thinking it. In fact you're obsessed by the thought.

No.

Go on, say something erudite.

No.

Because it goes without saying, doesn't it?

If I didn't politely dismiss myself to hole up in the guest room then that internal chatter would continue indefinitely. By the end of it, all I can say is that if this is the price of superiority then I'd much rather be one of you losers.

Many years ago I was that kid with the weird clothes. My attire was completely out of tune with that of my peers, owing to the fact that my mother refused to buy clothes from clothing stores. "A fancy logo got nothin' to do with keeping your butt covered," she'd tell me. But it has a lot to do with me getting my butt kicked, I thought. I wasn't asking for much. I would have settled for jeans that didn't feature a yarn and studs depiction of that weeping Indian from the "Keep America Beautiful" TV campaign. But try telling my mother that retirement home craft fairs were not bastions of haute couture.

I had no say in matters of wardrobe. I could only wait for my clothing to deteriorate and hope the replacement would be less of a fist magnet. Needless to say that I helped this process along where I could, scraping along the school's cinderblock halls, or packing my pockets full of rocks until the seams were strained to the breaking point. But despite the cardiovascular benefits of hauling around ten extra pounds every day, my behavior was viewed as eccentric, and it won me no friends.

Neither was I safe in my own home. Money was tight, and we were living with my step-grandparents at the time, a cynical couple with whom I'd developed an adversarial relationship. My grandfather in particular was a balloon-bellied orangutan-like man with arms like the proverbial ten foot pole. One of his most cherished pastimes was cuffing me across the back of the head whenever I passed by his recliner on the way to my room. Regardless of my pace or bearing, his hand always seemed to land its mark. He could be in a gin stupor and fully reclined, and still catch me upside the head as I tried to sneak by.

Where apparel was concerned, shoes became a particularly touchy subject. With my mother perusing church flea markets every weekend there was simply no predicting what would end up on my feet--half the time I was lucky if I got a matching pair. For my birthday I got obligatory new shoes, logo-free as expected, which turned out to be moccasin / saddle-shoe hybrids with a "stars and stripes" bicentennial theme. They were straight out of a playground bully's wet dream.

No, they were better than that: their sonic footprint was virtually nil. Indeed, they were the silent shoes of every kid's fantasy. Children hold few other things with as much reverence as silent shoes: secret pockets, found money, and snow days, to name several. But none of them conjured such whimsical thoughts as silent shoes. Wearing them was like suddenly gaining a new super power. Indeed, once I stopped packing my pockets with gravel, my gait became a fearsome thing: lizard-quick, but silent as butterflies.

I wish I could say that I gave in to my darkest whims, that I took advantage of the situation. It's a romantic notion to think of myself becoming so proficient at sneaking up behind my adversaries that they had to slink around with their backs to the walls like Vice cops on a bust. But in fact I realized the greatest benefit at home, where, thanks to my newfound ability to evade detection, I could now slip by my step-grandfather unharmed.

It was all too good to last however. I enjoyed my silent shoes for about three months, from the end of school through the last days of summer break. But my mom wanted me to start the school year off right, so she did the worst thing imaginable: she bought me corduroys. I was beside myself. I mean why get a kid silent shoes if you're going to then saddle him with the loudest pants on the planet? And just when things start to get good? For the child with silent shoes, cords were like kryptonite to Superman. In addition to producing a sound not unlike a walrus war cry, these pants generated enough static electricity to melt a Tesla coil, a fact that annoyed my step-grandfather for the extra jolt he had to endure when spanking my skull.

Stealth alone had improved my quality of life to such a degree that I wasn't about to let it go so easily. Committing an unfortunate miscalculation in judgment that I've regretted every day since, I began to walk with my legs farther and farther apart to keep the material from announcing my presence. That this was an act of futility didn't prevent me from lumbering from side to side as if I were playing hopscotch. My days as a graceful walker came to an abrupt end, and the first days of school after the break found me darting down the halls like a little carnival-clothed crab.

I haven't been able to walk naturally since then. Because I was made self-aware of such a basic thing as ambulation, the method of it became a matter of conscious decision. It wasn't allowed to develop automatically. Do insects face such mechanical quandaries? Do they ever think, "if I beat my wings a bit more quickly might I hum at a more pleasing pitch?"

Living an automated life puts me at a disadvantage, insofar as it sacrifices flexibility for routine. To wit, my near encounter with Gerald earlier this week. Just feet away from my goal, I was forced to break my steady pace to dance around Gerald, who was staring down at his tray as he walked. The grace of my pirouette was such that he took no notice of me. Even so, my momentum had been compromised, and where I normally arrived at the microwave on my left foot, I now arrived on my right, and had to make an additional half-step on my left just to be positioned appropriately. It's a small matter, but I only realized the consequences as I went to enter the cooking information into the keypad. My mind was a complete blank.

Meanwhile, and more importantly, my finger was pointing at the microwave's keypad, frozen, as if I were accusing it of something. Of course my most obvious fear was that I'd have to leave the kitchenette and enter again--without interruption this time--in order to cook my meal properly. Was this really what it had come to?

Alyssa approached on my left, popped a soft pretzel into the microwave next to mine, and asked me, "Forgot your code?" She understood. That, or she was tossing out the most ridiculous thought just for laughs. Hang low, creature of routine.

Now I have a new disdain for interruption, but it's rooted in fear that I could stall at any moment. How much of what I know--no, how much of what I do--is talent, or cunning, and how much of it is a matter of cold rote action? If someone asks me a question in the middle of a presentation, how far will I have to regress in order to get back into the stream? Already there are signs that point to this happening. When someone asks me for my ZIP code I can't respond until I've rambled through my entire address under my breath. I wouldn't be surprised if my eyes rolled back in my head while this was happening, not completely unlike one of the aging automata dotting the shores of Disney's unnerving ride.

Her office isn't far from mine, so, weather allowing, we meet in the park for lunch once or twice a week to mull over anthropological observations, or to make conspiratorial plans. The latter has become a rather long-standing tradition between us. Before we part ways we exchange details regarding corporate espionage, ranging from the cleverest way to take out a stairwell, to the smaller matters of psychological warfare, such as using up 98% of the ink in every pen on her manager's desk. Of course we never go through with any of it, but it's not in the accomplishment, but in the planning.

Julia rummaged through her backpack, and I tossed a cookie crumb at a pigeon. Looking at Julia, you'd never know these thoughts were going on in her head. That was the beauty of it. In fact you'd only remember seeing her a few moments after she'd gone. She would make a great spy--a fact underlined by the object she held out to me.

I read the nameplate: "Chris Berkovsky."

"My boss," she said.

"You have his desk plaque thing."

She hugged it to her chest, "I do, and for an hour it's mine to do with as I please."

This was new. "You stole his name," I said, laughing.

"Borrowed it," Julia corrected. "I have to return it after lunch without being caught. That's the challenge."

"Of course," I said. "This is the guy who pissed you off about a month ago, right? About... something about micromanaging a project you were working on?"

She returned the nameplate to her bag with some satisfaction, and brought out a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. "Oh, he's always doing that. He's on me constantly for the tiniest of details, but his criticism is baseless. I know he's making it all up because after he's barfed all over a project, I'll take it back to my desk for a half hour, make a new printout, and take it to him. Then he's fine with it. As long as he's had his moment to press his thumb to my spine he's okay."

"I'm glad you did that," she said. "Thank you."

"He really makes you march into his office like that? Like you're submitting the products of your toil before the altar?"

"Oh, mm," she said around her sandwich, and batted a finger. "Everyone has to, yes, that's his thing. The carpet to his office is worn all the way down to the ancient burial stones it's built on. The dead influence him."

I shrugged. "They are restless."

"When I'm standing there in front of him all I can think of is, 'Fuck you.'"

I considered it a moment. "That's sad, really."

She nodded. "Not, 'What can I learn from this man? How can I improve my work.' Just, 'Fuck you.'" She rubbed the wax paper between her thumb and forefinger, thinking on something. "Actually, you'll like this." Some of our best conversations had begun that way. I just cocked my head and listened. "On Monday I thought, what if I say 'fuck you' while he's talking, right to him as he's looking at me? Not out loud, but the words would be there just the same if I said them in slow motion. Here's Berkovsky power tripping, and the whole time I'm mouthing one long slow 'Ffffffuuuuuuuuck...' Can you feature it?"

"You've really been doing this?" I asked. "It's compelling stuff. So every time he looks up at you, every five or ten seconds, you're..."

She continued, "'Yyyyyyyoooooooouuuuu.' So in the end, at the conclusion of our meeting, he's said his piece, and all I've said is hello, and fuck you."

I raised a finger, "In slow motion though."

"Mm hm, in bullet time. Which is still legal."

"It's poetry is what it is." I sighed. "You can get away with that. It's your way. And I wish I had my cookie back now, because that story totally makes up for everything. And actually-"

"Now your turn," she prompted.

I held up a hand, "Yes, that's- I can tell you about this experiment I've been conducting with certain parties within my own organization." Julia leaned forward. "Recently I read someone's account of a man who would consider his responses for upward of one minute before actually saying anything," I said. "And my first thought was, is that feasible? On the one hand it sounds, you know, Zen. But on the other hand-"

"Annoying," Julia finished, just as she finished her sandwich.

"Right."

"Perfect," she said.

"Right. So, feasible or not, something about this struck me as being worthy of further exploration. So that became my own test. I've been taking more and more time to respond to people, starting very subtly at first."

"You'd have to."

"And it's interesting, the way people respond to it. The way they react. Like, the sales guy, he can't stand silence or, you know, contemplation. He fills any silence with words, like mortar between every brick. Whereas the marketing woman, Jeanette, waits me out. She waits and she leans forward, like you're doing, like that's going to help. She'll coax the words out of me by concentrating on my mouth. So I play it up; I purse my lips, nod my head, or do that crinkly thing with my eyebrows. And then: '...'"

"Well played," Julia said.

"..."

"I can feel it working."

"See? Now double it. Treble it," I said. "My supervisor's the best. He just gets... it's like a kind of paranoia takes over. The longer I take to consider my response, the more he'll recite bits of the initial question, as if I had forgotten it. He'll recombine fragments until it's just a word here, a word there. Keywords, really. Conversational particulate. Like, 'Johnson agreement.' Like that's the kindling that'll finally get the fire started."

Julia shook her head. "Spooky. I think you're dredging up some dark stuff there. How long do you think you can keep him hanging?"

I sat up straight and stretched. It was getting late. "My supervisor? I think I can work up to a few hours. Eventually I think he'll reach a state of utter trance, muttering words under his breath. At that point I'll be able to leave the office with him in suspended animation. My future is one of casual inter-office junkets and extended lunch breaks."

"Like this one," Julia said.

I nodded. "Even now he's drooling onto the bib I thoughtfully tied around his neck before I left. I should probably return to snap him out of it."

Julia shook her backpack, "I have a little something to see to myself."

When we left the park, each toward our own office, the phrase kept going through my head, "enemies in their midst."