The Office Manager Read online

ten year sentence, but even his brother refused to communicate with Guthrie. So, he talked to me. With a bit of remorse I wish I could’ve felt sorry for Guthrie, but I couldn’t. I had my own problems, and I had too much paperwork to do. Initially, I tried to listen to his stories about ranching in Montana. But who cares about that stuff? This is Los Angeles.

  I’d never seen a cow, or a snowstorm. I didn’t know what the hell bear-scat was. And when he did tell me I was disgusted. Mind you, Guthrie was a man who never drank. Said he never drank a beer his entire life. That I believe. He had his own dream world. He didn’t need alcohol. He was a dry, monotonous pain in the ass. Boring. Probably why his wife cheated on him. At least that’s what he told me. She ran off ten years ago, during a Montana blizzard, before he woke up on Christmas day. He said she ran off with a Hutterite sheep herder. Naturally, it turned out to be his best friend. I had to laugh. Merry Christmas, asshole!

  As I said, anyone can listen to a man’s grief once. Common decency demands it. But if you hear it a dozen times, you wonder if you, or the man himself is crazy. I told him to stop. I’m sure I told him several times. He’d agree, then the next day he’d start up again. I couldn’t fire him. I had no authority. Fred Medley, the regional manager had to. But Medley was always in Sacramento hob-nobbing with executives, drinking at fancy bars, and getting his chain pulled at an escort service.

  He occasionally sent emails describing his behavior, loaded with photo attachments of middle-aged prostitutes sprawled out on his motel bed. It was vulgar. The rooms had torn curtains and stains on the wall. And the women were downright ugly. He was obviously drunk when he met them, and drunk when he sent those photos. But Medley pulled in a six figure income, at least that’s what he told me. Each Friday, at the end of the week, he demanded the weeks inventory from me. He’d send an email with an attachment of these ridiculous photos. He thought it was entertaining. It was disgusting.

  I guess I’ve digressed.

  I recall that horrible day in January when Guthrie shuffled into work at 6:05, leaving the front door open again for every dog and wino in the neighborhood to drift in.

  My heart jumped. I could’ve killed him right there and then. I raced out of my office, dashed down the hallway and slammed it back shut, but not before some stray cat darted in. It would be more than a week before we found it, squashed behind a shipping crate.

  “Sorry pardnur’,” he shot back, as the cat ran in. He then drifted into the dark of the waiting room to sit two more hours before working. I was nauseous. I realized I had to listen to him, again, droning on for two whole hours about how California wasn’t as cold as Montana, or that mules couldn’t reproduce. Then suddenly I got pains in my chest. I felt dizzy. It felt like another heart attack. I thought I was going to die. But luckily it left, and when it eventually did leave, it dawned on me that I wasn’t helpless. Nobody else would be coming in to work for at least an hour, a very long hour. It would be only me and this boil on my ass, in a giant warehouse with a thousand crates waiting to be shipped out to India, Shanghai or some other god-forsaken place.

  I remember it all as if it were yesterday. I wasn’t feeling too good that morning. I don’t remember eating any breakfast, so I guess I was lightheaded. Only had a couple hours of sleep, so I was grumpy even before he arrived. But something odd happened as I took a gander at this pelican. I saw him lower his cowboy hat over his eyes, then raise his index finger into his nose. The tip of his hat hid what he was doing, but I knew, and I wanted to throw up.

  My head began to spin. I entered a twilight zone, half-hypnotized, half-exhilarated by an idea that sprung up. I could solve this damn problem--I simply needed to kill him. I knew I could, and nobody would find out if I just stuffed him into a crate bound for Asia. I could do it if I made up my mind, and when I did make up my mind I was relieved. I no longer felt any anger, or pain. I grew calmer immediately. I even found myself smiling for the first time in months, then I found myself asking him if he’d like a cup of coffee.

  “Shur’nuf, pardnur,” he cracked, as if he were in some damn cowboy movie.

  “What about sugar, Mr. Guthrie?”

  “Five, pardnur.”

  “No problem, pardnur,” I echoed, looking over his bald head. For one moment he allowed his stained cowboy hat to lie on the lamp stand. I was shocked. It had a small hole in the side, where a nail must have ripped through.

  “Mr. Guthrie, would you be so kind as to do me a favor?” I inquired, with enough civility to grease a wheel.

  “Can’t say that I won’t.”

  “Is that a yes, pardnur?” I mimed.

  “Yup.”

  “I have a problem inside the warehouse, Bill. There’s a pallet wedged under crate ninety-four, on aisle thirty. The pallet must have been split from a nail.” I scratched my head affecting perplexity, as Handel’s Messiah was beginning on my stereo.

  “Shoot! Hooked on a jutting nail--it happens. Anyways, ya’ gotta’ reach undah’ the centa’ of the pallet…gotta’ break off that cracked wood or unhinge the bracket with a screwdriver.”

  “Really? That simple, eh?”

  “Hell, yeah--done it before with my own barn in Flathead. I once found myself doin’ the same darn thing. My friend, Jeremiah, that devil who’d be humpin’ my wife, showed me how to slip it into the crack--the crack of the crate, that is. Gave him ten bucks fer’ the help. I guess he thought he deserved a bonus--so he done my wife, as well. Felt like shootin’ both of 'em. But what’s a Christian gonna’ do? Ya’ know, I had my tools in Linda’s car when theys’ both drives’ off on Christmas Eve. Doin’ a man’s wife, then running off with his tools ain’t right, ya’ know. That stinka’ will burn in hell, I guarantee 'ya that. Can ya’ imagine God sayin’ to my wife….”

  “Whoa, Bill. Enough! I don’t need to hear this again,” I jumped in. “We need to fix the pallet. Let’s get it done before the workers get here…the other workers, I mean. Okay?”

  He looked at me with a pained expression. His eyebrows raised and his mouth curled unexpectedly into a snarl, as if I was the man boning his wife. Well, I saw the photo that he carried in his wallet. She was enormous. He should have been glad the sheepherder had to feed her, but obviously I pried open a can of worms.

  I didn’t care.

  After I drove the forklift back inside the warehouse I told Bill, “Now, get on it. We need to drive to the back of the warehouse. Hurry up, I don’t have all day.”

  He climbed up with some reservation, probably with visions racing through his head of naked sheepherders wrestling with his fat wife in a barn, or some outhouse. He kept rubbing his eyes as if he was being tortured.

  Served him right, I thought. She was probably bored out of her skull, like I was.

  “Yuh’ have the tools?” he blurted as he snapped out of it.

  “Yeah, yeah, I brought tools--special tools. I’m fixing this problem once and for all.”

  “Good. Yuh’ know, this is a big warehouse.”

  “I worked here for twenty-two years, Bill,” I blurted. “I should know how big it is. Biggest warehouse in Los Angeles. A man could die in here and not be found for a month, maybe found as a pile of dust--might even be you. We’d just sweep you up, and toss you in the trash. You don’t ever want to die behind one of these giant crates, Guthrie. You might get shipped to Shanghai. All they’d get is your skinny, old body.”

  His eyebrows shot up, “I don’t have no intention of dyin'.”

  “Nobody ever does, Guthrie,” I slipped in.

  He grew sullen, sensing something evil, and he was trying to figure out what. He swallowed hard, then turned to me.

  “Don’t ya’ believe in Jesus?” he pleaded, a tremor in his voice, as I sped the forklift past dozens of aisles.

  “Sure, everybody does,” I smiled.

  We sped past hundreds of crates filled with tons of silicon transmitter filaments, all bound for Asia. Probably to build some nuclear missile for the Chinese to bomb the shit
out of us, some day.

  “No one goes to heaven if's they do's someone evil. Jesus makes ‘em go to hell.” He was glaring at me for some clue, but I remained stone-cold.

  “Yeah, right. That’s what I thought when my wife walked out with my kids.” The very thought infuriated me for the first time in months.

  “Made ‘ya mad, eh’? Well, I know's how ya’ feel. I really do.”

  “Guthrie, you don’t know the half of it. I could’ve killed that bitch, I should’ve killed her while I had the chance--before she got out the front door.”

  “You shuddin’ be sayin’ that.”

  “Really?” I laughed. I had no intention of laughing, but he was so pathetic, and I hated him for it.

  “Them’s evil thoughts, ya’ know.”

  I looked him straight in the eye. “Guthrie, whoever wins...grins! That’s the rule. That’s the law. That’s the world.”

  His lips trembled. He was speechless, his fear growing. But I was feeling better. I felt poison spewing out of me like a geyser. I was euphoric. I felt power flowing through my veins. I could do anything now, and I was going to.

  When we reached the far side of the warehouse I slammed on the brakes, nearly knocking him off. “Get off this forklift, Guthrie,” I hollered.

  Shocked, his eyes widened and glazed over, paralyzed from fear. His eyes started watering. He knew. He finally knew. He uttered something in a rasping mumble, so low and weak