Everything Changes

let alone move them. Every few hours I take a break to dial Hope’s number at work, then hang up before it can ring and register on her caller ID. My line is blocked, but she’ll know it’s me anyway.
    I miss Tamara.
    I think about Hope. Stupid things. Did she go back to work on Monday, or is she taking some time to get over the whole thing, torturously reviewing the past few months to discern all the signals she’d missed, berating herself even as she burns me in effigy? No doubt she’ll recover quickly, hitting the dating scene with a renewed sense of purpose, undeterred by this tragic detour from her life’s greater plan. I give it three months until she has another boyfriend, some tall, athletic MBA with thick hair and cut abs, a long-distance runner who reads
The Wall Street Journal
and fucks like a porn star. And as they lie glistening in the sweaty afterglow, she’ll tell him about me, pleading temporary insanity, and he’ll listen sympathetically, agreeing with her that I’m a total asshole, saying he’d love to track me down and beat the shit out of me, all the while caressing her breast with one hand, keeping the fire stoked so that as soon as she’s done talking, he can pull her on top of him to watch the way she throws her head back, eyes closed, as he slides into her for the third time that night, his head on the pillow where mine used to be, his hands grabbing the soft flesh of her ass where mine used to, as he thrusts deeply, driving any lingering thoughts of me out of her mind once and for all. God, I miss the way her room smelled in the aftermath of our lovemaking, a complex amalgam of sweat, sex, and her perfumed linens. You never know when it might be the last time you’ll ever make love to someone. If you did, you’d pay more attention.
    On Wednesday, I ride the elevator up with the morning crowd, same as always, everyone staring in silence at the brushed-steel doors, the scent of freshly brewed coffee and feminine perfumes filling the air. I’ve always wondered why no one sells advertising space in corporate elevators. People will look at anything to not have to look at each other. I get out and swipe my magnetic Spandler ID card at the electronic doorplate. I don’t know what I’m expecting, flashing lights and alarms, armed guards maybe, but there’s a mechanical click and the door swings open, same as always. I walk unmolested through the halls, since everyone’s in a sales meeting, and make my way to my cubicle, where I slide into my chair and log on to my computer. Three hundred some-odd e-mails fill my in-box, frantically jockeying for position on the screen. Riding to work, I didn’t know whether I was coming here to save my job or to gather my belongings. But now, as I scroll through the angry minutiae of the communications, the drab details of my chosen profession, a certain calm comes over me, and I shade the e-mails in blue and bulk delete them in one fell swoop, and then conduct similar electronic genocides on my cell phone and BlackBerry, feeling a confounding mixture of terror and jubilation, like an alcoholic pouring the last remnants of his stashed bottle into the toilet. It’s counterintuitive, but on a deeper level, I know there’s a greater good behind it, and for the moment, I’ve somehow amassed the will to back it up.
    Bill’s door is partially closed, and I can hear him on the phone discussing critical competencies and supply-chain solutions. Bill is all about the jargon. I don’t know if I’ve been fired or not. I suppose I should find out, because there are ramifications as far as unemployment and severance. The right thing to do would be to step in there and let him vent a little before terminating me or, failing that, formally present him with my somewhat belated notice. Go out like a professional. But even as I hear him pontificating on the merits of outsourcing (flexible access to assets without capital investment), I can feel the walls closing in, and I know I have to get out of there before I lose my nerve and start begging for my job back. I toss my ID card into the mail slot on his door, and by the time I reach the elevators, I’m actually running. Toward what, I have no idea.

    Hope doesn’t notice me right away. She steps out of her office lobby, dressed conservatively in a long black skirt and a faded orange blouse, her hair tied back in a modest ponytail. She’s just turned to head east when she sees me leaning uncertainly against a