The Cubicle Next Door Read online

  The Cubicle Next Door

  Siri L. Mitchell

  Copyright © 2005, 2011 Siri L. Mitchell

  To Tony

  Without you, this book could not have been written.

  Even more than the wind beneath my wings,

  you are the rhythm of my heart.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Carolyn McCready and Terry Glaspey, for being excited about this story. To Beth Jusino, for reminding me to write from the heart. To Kim Moore, for pointing out the places where I needed to give just a little more. To Tony Mitchell and Lanna Dickinson, my first readers; the depth in this book is due to both of you. To my father-in-law, Lynn Mitchell, for driving me around Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs and freely contributing his observations to this work. To Tim Scully, the A-Basin expert. To Marsha Scully, Tim Hayden, and Dorri Karolick, for educating me on the finer points of the interworkings of the Academy. To Dr. Dale Agner, for advising me on flight medicine. To Mike Hutson, who deepened my understanding of John 3:16. To the Bandas, who introduced me to Bollywood. And to those men and women of USAFA Class of ’91, who embody their class motto: Munus Primo, Semper Integritas.

  And to my sister, Heidi Hand, who grappled with difficult questions and made tough decisions with great courage. I’m proud of you.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Epilogue

  One

  So what do you think, Jackie?”

  What do I think? Funny Joe should ask me. He’s just finished reading my blog. He’s just quoted me to myself. Or is it myself to me? Do I sound surreal, as if I’m living in parallel universes?

  I am!

  The blog—my blog—is all about Joe. And other topics that make me want to scream. But the clever thing is, I’m anonymous. When I’m blogging.

  I’m Jackie, Joe’s cubicle mate, when I’m not.

  And that’s the problem.

  Joe is asking Jackie (me) what I think about the Anonymous Blogger (also me). And since I don’t want Joe to know the blog is all about me and what I think of him, I can’t tell him what I think about me.

  My brain is starting to short-circuit.

  If I can’t tell him what I think about me, I certainly can’t tell him what I think about him, so I’m going to have to pretend not to be me. Not me myself and not me The Cubicle Next Door blogger—TCND to my fans.

  I have fans!

  If I were clever I’d say something like “Look!” and point behind him and then duck out of the room when he turned around.

  But there’s so much computer equipment stacked by my desk and so many cables snaking around the floor that I’d probably break my neck if I tried to run away. So that option is out.

  I could try pretending I didn’t hear him. “What?”

  “SUVs. What do you think about them?”

  But then we’d basically end up where we started.

  So how did I get myself into this mess?

  It was all Joe’s fault.

  The year Joe came into my life, I’d been working the same job for ten years, doing the same things I’d always been doing when the department hired one too many people. Had I been working for a private company, it might not have been such a big deal, but I was working at the U.S. Air Force Academy as a civilian in a building classified as a National Historic Landmark. So it’s not as though we could carve an extra office out of a closet or bump out a wall somewhere. At least not without 51 requests in triplicate, 32 meetings with the architect’s office, and a project deadline scheduled for 17 years after the date of my death.

  May God rest my miserable soul.

  We could, however, order extra cubicle panels and subdivide an existing office as long as the panels didn’t cost more than a specified number of dollars.

  So that’s what happened.

  I should know.

  I was the one who ordered them.

  Unfortunately, no one bothered to tell me it was my office that was going to be subdivided.

  Maybe I should have suspected. I mean, how long can a civilian GS-07 keep an average-sized dimly lit interior office to herself? It was only a matter of time, right?

  I ordered the tallest panels I could find. And after they came, I called the casual status lieutenants to install them. They were freshly graduated Air Force Academy cadets who were hanging around the department until their real jobs came open. And when they came into my office, they asked the question that would change my life.

  “Where are they going?”

  “Where are what going?”

  “The panels.”

  “I don’t know. Don’t you guys?”

  “No. Who ordered them?”

  “I did.”

  They stood there in front of my desk, all three of them in camouflage battle dress uniforms, arms crossed in front of them, ready to take on the world. “So…what do you want us to do?”

  “Go find out who they’re for.” Duh. Double-duh.

  They just stood there.

  “Go ask Estelle.”

  That made them happy. Estelle was the department secretary. She knew everything—except how to use a computer.

  That’s what they’d hired me for.

  They sauntered off down the hall, but they came right back two minutes later. “They’re for you.”

  “No, they’re not. I ordered them, but they’re not for me.”

  “That’s what Estelle says.”

  Estelle was usually right, but this might fall under the Scanning Software category of things in which she was completely mistaken.

  The previous year, the colonel had asked me to install scanning software on her computer for the new scanner, and in between the time it took me to store the software disks in my cabinet and come back to show her how to use the program, she’d dropped a textbook on top of her keyboard, pressing all of the F-key functions at the same time.

  Never, ever do that.

  I snatched the book from her computer and contemplated hitting her on the head with it, but I dropped it onto her desk with a bang instead. “What are you doing?”

  “Scanning. The colonel wanted me to scan the chart on page 137.”

  “You don’t scan that way.” It really killed me not to be able to kill her.

  “But you just installed the software, so I held it up to the screen for it to see.”

  “The screen doesn’t scan it
; the scanner scans it.”

  So you see, the Scanning Software category was a gigantic catchall for tasks, both large and small, that Estelle just didn’t and never would know how to do.

  After we replaced her keyboard and reinstalled all of her software, the colonel made me the official scanner person for the department. Which gave me one more title to add to official digital camera person, official video camera person, official department website person, official overhead-slide-projector person, and kick-the-copier-in-just-the-right-spot-to-make-it-work person. That’s why I needed all of my office space. It wasn’t just me in there. It was the scanner, the cameras, the slide projectors, and assorted small appliances that didn’t work anymore but might be useful if there were a nuclear explosion and technology devolved back to the Bronze Age.

  I marched out of my office and down the hall. The lieutenants trailed me to the front office in perfect flight formation.

  “Estelle?”

  “Mmm?” She was rubbing lotion into her hands.

  “Those cubicle panels are not for me.”

  “Of course they are. That’s what the colonel said.”

  “When?”

  “In the e-mail.”

  “What e-mail?”

  “The one where he said we’d be getting one too many instructors, so we’d have to find a place to put him.”

  “And?”

  “And so he said to make room for him. And I e-mailed back that I thought your office would be perfect.”

  It was. It was perfect for me.

  “And someone was going to tell me about this when?”

  “Um…no one told you?”

  I shook my head.

  “That’s funny. Because I thought…” She began dragging her mouse around the screen, clicking at various folders in her Outlook program.

  “See. Right there. It was in April. Good idea. Lt. Col. Gallagher will share Jackie’s office.” She read further, mumbling words, running her finger across the computer screen and leaving behind a greasy streak. “Oh. Huh. I guess I was supposed to tell you. Sorry.” She looked up from the computer and raised her eyebrows. Smiled.

  “Is the colonel busy?”

  “Let me see.” She took a scheduling calendar from a stand on her desk and found the day’s date. Consulted her watch. “Not right now.”

  I told the lieutenants I’d get in touch with them later, and then I stepped around Estelle’s desk, walked about three steps, and knocked on the colonel’s door. I peeked my head around the corner. “Sir?”

  “Jackie? What can I do for you?” He stood up as I approached and fiddled with a pencil on his desk.

  “I want my office back.”

  “Office?”

  “The one you decided to subdivide in April? Because you hired one too many instructors?”

  “Oh, yeah. Well, not really. Greg got the dean’s extension, so he stays for another two years. If he’d gone, we’d have been right on target with the number of instructors. You know how it is.”

  “No, I don’t. Your office is bigger than mine is. Why don’t you subdivide yours?”

  His eyebrows shot up into his hairline. People don’t usually talk to colonels like that. But see, they couldn’t fire me because nobody else knew how to kick the copier. And I was a civilian. And I was a woman. “We chose yours because it’s the only office that will work. We don’t have to reconfigure any overhead lights, there were enough outlets, enough telephone jacks. Space is at a premium in this building. You know that.” He shrugged and sat down.

  The interview was over.

  Two

  The talk with the colonel may have been over from his perspective, but it wasn’t from mine.

  Far from it.

  It was, however, time for a cease-fire.

  I walked outside and stalked around Fairchild Hall a couple of times. No mean feat. It’s the single largest academic building in America, and its low, linear, 1950s architecture broadcast the Academy’s no-nonsense approach to life.

  This summer, like most summers, the brilliant blue skies had been tempered by the smoke of forest fires. But the sunlight still blazed down, unfiltered by the native trees.

  Here at the outskirts of the city, cottonwood trees congregated around streams or dips in the landscape, offering shade to things that didn’t need it. Pines marked the runoff patterns of the hills, ever alert for the next cloudburst.

  Back behind the academic area, beyond the point where the 17 spires of the Academy Chapel pricked the sky, the foothills broke like rows of waves against the horizon. Their undulations were slow and lazy, like the motion of a gentle ocean.

  The spectrum of the Colorado summer ran from the green-golds of earth and grass to the purpled hues of the mountains and the dazzling blue of the expansive sky.

  I walked down toward the Aero Lab, leaned against the wall separating it from the wilds below, and was doused with sunshine. I watched the beginnings of clouds sneak across the sky, heading out toward the freedom of the open plains. They were starting to form into cute cotton ball puffs. Over the course of the next hour, I knew the random dots would congregate and associate to form drifts. By noon I would be witnessing the birth of thunderheads. Like clockwork they would gather strength and advance slowly out over town and then onto the plains. And if the weather reports held true, by the time I got ready to log off my computer, the afternoon clouds would have followed like a blanket, as if someone were spreading cotton candy over the sky.

  I yawned. Stretched. Took a deep breath. Then I turned around and went inside.

  If I were going to be subdivided, then I was going to draw the new boundaries. Two-thirds of the space for me and one-third of the space for Lt. Col. Gallagher. That seemed reasonable. Of course, that meant the door to the office would be on my side of the cubicle, but then I’d be able to see everyone who came in. On the other hand, they would also be able to see me. And only me. But that way, we could all just pretend the lieutenant colonel didn’t exist.

  While the lieutenants installed the new cubicle walls, I stayed busy rearranging my things. If I wasn’t going to be allowed to keep my office, then the department was not going to be allowed to keep its stuff in my space.

  “Which of you is the equipment custodian?”

  There was a pause in the rhythm of the work. A silence of hesitation. And then an answer. “Me.”

  I rolled my eyes as I threw yet another outdated version of Microsoft Office onto a pile off to my right. Disks, books, box, and all. It hit the top and then skidded down to the bottom, an avalanche of computer disks following the trail it had blazed. “Me who?” The lieutenants had already installed half of the panels, and now they were hiding behind them.

  A scuffing of combat boots along carpet, a metallic clink, a loud “Ow,” and my inventory guy emerged from the new cubicle. Oh. Too bad. He was the one I liked best. Maybe I’d have to take him out to lunch. If he’d ever speak to me again.

  “I have a project for you,” I said, trying to smile, trying to think of how to make it sound enticing, but by then he’d already seen the pile of odds and ends I had accumulated. Cassette tape players, broken VCRs, an abandoned Dictaphone hemorrhaging wires. An industrial strength glue gun that had nearly been consumed by dried droplets of its own glue. A toaster oven. A microwave. “All of those need to be turned in.”

  Turned in. Such an innocent phrase, but one which meant many hours of tedious paperwork and coordination between three different offices to delete the items from the department’s inventory.

  His eyes opened wide, his mouth clamped shut, and his face turned red. One of the best and the brightest. Those are the kind of cadets they have at the Academy. For being a brand spanking new lieutenant, he was catching on quickly. He retreated behind the panels.

  They banged and pushed and shoved for another half hour before they left.

  So that’s how I got subdivided. And how I got reorganized. And how, the next week, I came to be tacking up a giant poster of C
he Guevara on my side of the cubicle wall in front of my desk. I had a soft spot in my heart for that bearded, beret-topped, Marxist Cuban guerilla leader. I’d probably get a black spot on my personnel folder; no chance at a secret clearance for me.

  Too bad.

  I didn’t plan on the poster taking up permanent residence. I’d already decided to use the space as a soapbox for my struggle against the Establishment. I had the rotation schedule filed on my Palm. Next month I would feature a poster with a quote about ineptitude. The month after, demotivation. I’d found a great website called despair.com a few months ago while I was kicking around on the Internet at home.

  Because I never do that at work.

  Anyway, I figured that for a couple of weeks I could count on Che to make a statement about the communal sharing of property and which class of citizenry gets called upon to do all the sharing.

  Call me a subversive. Call me an adolescent. One thing I’d learned after working for the government for ten years: If you don’t say it when you feel it, you burn out or blow up.

  “Nice poster. How old are you? Nineteen?”

  Okay, that scared me, a voice coming out of nowhere, interrupting my thoughts. I took the remaining thumbtack from between my teeth and pushed it through a corner of the poster and into the cubicle wall. Leaned back and made sure it was straight. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s not nice to sneak up on people?” I slid off my desk and turned around. “I’m thirty-one.”

  The voice belonged to a Caucasian male, 6′1,″ pilot. After working with the military for a decade, there are things you can tell just by looking. Who is and who is not a pilot is one of them. And it has nothing to do with the uniform because this guy wasn’t even wearing one. He had on Levi’s that looked as old as mine and a faded blue polo shirt. It was something about the way pilots stand. And the way they take in information. As if they’re the ones who make all the decisions. It’s not a fact until they decide it’s a fact. Confident at best; cocky at worst. Pilots have to work extra hard to overcome my initial prejudices.

  Usually, they don’t succeed.

  “Thirty-one? Are you sure?” He smiled. Teeth together. Gleaming. A smile so big his grin was lopsided. He was one of those 110 percent guys, smiling so hard it looked as though his nice solid jaw was clenched. Either that, or he was trying really hard not to laugh.