Atlas, Broken Page 3

cubicle, at the aged, bent photographs pinned to the sides, at the scrappy, skin-speckled mouse-pad, at the piles of paper varying from white at the top through to yellow at the bottom. He sighed a long lungful of air. It was hard to imagine what down would be like.

  The ember of hope inside him glowed a little. Maybe it would not be so bad. Maybe, given the right push, he could quit his infernal job and start afresh as a sandwich hand in the cafe over the road. Maybe he could take out a loan and start his own cafe.

  He could learn how to make proper coffee, how to roast his own beans and start a franchise and whip up batches of muffins to feed the hungry workers.

  Or maybe he could stop dreaming a get on with his work.

  He wiggled his mouse to get some life into the cursor and double clicked on his usual pattern of applications. His first stop was his emails. If there was just something about the merger, a little note indicating that the client was pliable, that might be something that could make his miserable morning more bearable.

  He waited with a vacant stare, sipping his coffee while he watched the progress bar slowly fill from the left side to the right. It sat, tantalisingly close to completion, only one more block to go.

  “Hey, Hank,” said Geoff, balding and sombre, poking his nose over the top of the cubicle, “Late again, huh?”

  “Evidently. Thing is, doesn't matter what I do, somehow I'm always getting in at the same time, and you know what? I reckon Big M is waiting for me every morning. Why else would he always be in this vicinity, hmm?” mumbled Henry, taking another sip and wincing as the heat of the coffee aggravated the fresh nerve endings in his mouth, “The ground floor is too big for that to be a coincidence. I think he's got it in for me. I reckon if I got in five minutes early he wouldn't even notice.”

  “Big M's like that, you know. Only picks out the negatives.”

  “How come you're never in late?” Henry asked.

  “I never go home,” he joked.

  Henry looked up at him. Geoff's eyes were puffy and black. His jowls hung low, slack from years of remaining loose and pliant. If there ever was someone who could believably state that he never went home, joking or not, Geoff was the guy.

  He was always just around, always somewhere in the building.

  “You get your coffee from Di Mattina's?” Geoff asked, pointing to the logo on the cup, “Terrible stuff. You should go to Borsello.”

  “Too far to walk. And I cut it pretty fine as it is.”

  “Never too far to walk for good coffee. Only thing that keeps me sane. Ha.”

  “Is that the answer, then? Coffee?”

  “It's a start.”

  “Hey, do you reckon, and hear me out on this, but do you reckon if I bought a cafe, I'd be any good?”

  “Can you make a decent cup?”

  “I don't know. But how hard could it be to learn? You've got uni bums in Di Mattina's who haven't got the wherewithal to tie their laces, and they can make a brew,” Henry said, “How hard can it be?”

  “True, but their coffee is still crap – whoops, here comes Big M,” Geoff said, then ducked back down.

  Mister Miro's shoes marched with their regular time, the heel-toe evident even through the layer of worn carpet.

  “Settled in, Henry? Taken your time, then? Had a good chat, Henry?”

  “Sir?”

  “Leave Geoff to do his work, Henry, and concentrate on yours.”

  “But he was speaking to me.”

  “And you were speaking to him!”

  Henry bit his tongue. Again, no matter what argument he could deliver, Mister Miro would win out. Logic can't compare with a pigheaded lump of cement. He decided to change the topic.

  “The merger's looking the same as it was yesterday night. Haven't had any emails or calls come through just yet. Just some stuff about the up-coming Henshaw account.”

  Mister Miro sniffed, “I hadn't asked, Ludlow.”

  “I thought that'd be why you came over, sir.”

  “I came over to tell you to stop your yapping and get on with doing what you're employed to do! But, since you brought it up, what's the latest?”

  “Um. Like I just said. There's no change from yesterday.”

  “No change?” Mister Miro asked, eyebrows raised, “That's not the kind of news I was hoping for.”

  “Well, um, sorry about that,” he replied, getting a little warm around his collar, “It's just that unless there's an email or a phone call or...”

  “That sounds like loser talk to me, Ludlow. That sounds like you're giving up. You know why? Because a real winner wouldn't be content with letting things just sit. A real winner wouldn't wait for the merger to happen or not happen,” Mister Miro intoned, working up to a fever, “A winner does whatever needs to be done! Not like a loser. You know what a loser does? A loser lies back lazily and takes what comes. And I don't have losers in this office.”

  “Yes, Mister Miro.”

  “I only have winners! That's how we thrive! That's how we remain ahead of the pack! Atlas is a winner! Look at him, Henry, on your way in and on your way out. He's out there, holding up the world. Rain, hail, or shine! He's dependable. He has to be!” Mister Miro said dramatically, holding his arms up and shaking his flabby cheeks, “He's not a loser.”

  “Yes, Mister Miro.”

  “You don't want to be a loser, do you?”

  “No, Mister Miro.”

  “Good! Good!” he said, his words dripping with sarcasm, “That's a good boy. That's what I like to hear. So what are you going to do about it?”

  “There's not a lot I can do, Mister Miro. We've already made our offer, and if we make a second counter-offer before Gibson makes their first, we may appear desperate.”

  Mister Miro's face fell, “We're not desperate, Henry.”

  “I know, um, I mean, that's right. That's what I'm saying. That's why we need to hold off and let them respond to our offer -”

  Mister Miro repeated, louder, so that everyone could hear it, “We're not desperate, Henry!”

  “Yes, sir, that's why...”

  “And the last thing you want to let our clients think is that we're incapable of keeping our cool. And that goes for our competition, too. Why, if we show any sign of weakness, they'll pounce on us like a cat on a mouse. They'll tear us to shreds! They'll scatter our parts to the wind.”

  Henry's face turned red, “Which is why...”

  Mister Miro smiled his sickly, wide smile, “Which is why Gibson's counter-offer will need to be made before we make a counter-offer. You can't rush these things, Ludlow. You see? Do you understand?”

  Henry's mouth twitched a little. He wanted to punch Mister Miro. He wanted to plant his fist into his jaw. He wanted to pick him up by his shoulders and belt, hold his round frame over his head and throw him over a cubicle or three. He wanted to sock him in his stomach so hard that he barfed all over his crisp pants and shiny shoes, and lay on the ground gasping for air like a goldfish.

  But that would be illegal. It would be considered assault.

  He would be arrested. And then Henry would be out of a job, in jail even, or fined. And none of those outcomes were really what he wanted. He wondered for half a second if it would be worth it.

  “But, sir...”

  “We're not desperate, Ludlow, so just you think twice about what you're doing before you go putting ideas into our client's and our competitor's minds.”

  There was no point arguing. In a roundabout way, Henry had made his point. In a roundabout, unsatisfying, frustratingly painful way.

  “I'll hold off on the counter-offer,” he hissed through his lips, “Just like you said.”

  “Good, Ludlow, good. And you can lose the attitude.”

  Mister Miro eye-balled him for a few seconds before turning on his heels, content that he had performed his duty as Supervisor, Mentor and Overlord.

  Home

  Coming home was different to going to work. You couldn't get fired for coming home two minutes past th
e expected hour, for starters, so the pressure was not there. Still, traffic, the Great Invariant, ensured that the trip back was just as mundane, tedious and predictably unpredictable as the trip to work.

  Henry's car puttered through the city streets, waited in line at lights to reach the inner suburbs, wiggled between lanes in a vain bid to get past a bus or tram or slow moving trucks and crawled up the main roads to finally reach his quiet suburb.

  On hot days such as this one, Henry was always concerned that the added pressure on the car would cause the engine to give out, that the radiator would blow its top or that the oil would come gushing out across the road at the most inconvenient location. He had roadside assist, but there was still the fear of being stuck on the side of a stinking hot road, waiting for hours for the familiar orange lights to show themselves.

  It had been making a rumbling, rattling noise from somewhere deep within, and the other day he found a few tell-tale spots of black oil that had bled from the lower bowels of the engine.

  Loretta had demanded he get it serviced, and he would have done it, if he had half a day and a wad of cash to spare. The coming merger was important.

  His car limped past the rows of houses, each doing its best to look like the next. From suburb to suburb it played out like a silent motion picture of style, a gradual change from weatherboard to brick, from iron roofing to faded tiles, from green grass to yellow, as he transitioned from civilisation to the Land of the Vertical Blinds.

  In Gladstone Park the lawns were patchy. Hedges were uneven. Letterboxes, the sentinel of the suburban abode, were rusted and broken. It was not because the owners were lazy or poor, or that they