There's a large wet spot in the elevator. I imagine the carpet was shampooed the night before. I imagine someone spilled their vitamin water. I imagine someone pissed in it. Then, maybe it got shampooed also. I work on the second floor and the elevator slows and the doors push open a bit but I can see through them that the elevator is still inching toward the second floor and the doors open all the way. I wonder if the doors of the elevator have always opened early or if after thirty years of dragging people up and down and listening to meaningless office chatter and watching people bang their heads against its walls, it's just getting tired.
"I hear you," I say.
I haven't been there thirty years. A few months. I step out and orient myself with the layout of the floor like I do every morning. There are four elevators and my head can't wrap itself around which direction to walk out of any of them until I stop to look around. I think I'll get it figured out eventually, but I also think I don't want to.
My office is just beyond one direction from the elevators. Tucked away, just out of sight. It is not a large office, and when I came in to apply for the position I thought they had just moved in. It is sparse, and arranged odd. Some desks here. A hall for no reason. Some desks there. The lights are all on and the sounds of the morning hum along. Computers starting. Someone in the small kitchen clinking glasses. A shuffling of papers. There are only a few of us in the office, and fewer in the morning. My desk is in the first set, and in the middle between two women who have worked here longer than me. Who have a history. Who are almost opposites, but not quite. Neither are here yet.
I set my bag down on my desk and take my breakfast out and set it in front of me.
I turn on my computer and while it boots I go to the small kitchen and whoever was in there isn't now and I take a paper plate and a plastic knife and fork and go back to my desk and sit down. I had bought a breakfast sandwich from the gas station across the street. I throw the bread in the garbage and set the meats and egg on the plate and start cutting it up.
My computer loads. I log in. Clock in. Open my email and the programs I'll use throughout the day. I take a bite and watch my email catch up since it was last used. A small cascade of always very urgent messages in broken English and spreadsheets pour down and I think today will be like any other day, and I think I thought that yesterday. And maybe the day before.
I stare at my emails as I eat. Anxiety builds because somewhere in that mess there's a few issues I can't solve. Questions I can't answer. I can ask for help. I can see what some of these other people here know. I'd have to get up and ask though. I'd have to humble myself and look someone in the eye. I'd have to speak and explain that even though I have been here for a little while I'm ignorant to something that will be so simple. It's always simple.
I finish my breakfast and throw the plate and plastic wear in the garbage. I begin working through the emails and my back hurts. It's been hurting for a few weeks. Marie says to get a lumbar pillow. I don't want to spend the money. I am trying to save as much as I can and buy us a better life but I can't. There's always something. Always something and I have to say 'No, we can't buy that right now' and 'No, we can't afford that' because I know if we want to live better we need to suffer now and so we do unhappily, or not as happily as Marie deserves. I can see it in her eyes and I feel it in my chest, but someday. Someday.
I take a bottle of ibuprofen from a drawer in my desk and take four and recline my chair and read more emails. I flag one. It is irrelevant until a few hours from now, but I will forget it's there if I don't flag it.
The phone rings and the day begins. A thousand possible questions bear down on me and I hope I have the answers.
