by Matt Klingensmith

The copier’s scanner light rolls back and forth, back and forth, and will do this forty-eight more times before I sit down to the shrink-wrapped bran muffin I’m having for lunch.  The company I work for produces production efficiency calculation software for other companies, big and small, that want to produce things.  Think widgets and wadgets.  This is the kind of company that started small, in somebody’s garage if the other Bill has his story straight, and grew to occupy all fifty stories of a sky scraper in the business section of downtown.  It has a fancy lobby with marble floors and Latin scrawl above the windows, a parking service for the floor overseers, and a cafeteria where they don’t serve food, they serve delicacies.  I can’t afford delicacies, so everyday I eat one dollar and twenty five cents worth of bran muffin, wrapped in plastic, sealed with a sticker featuring a blue ink picture of somebody’s grandmother’s face, from the vending machine down the hall.

Then, I wouldn’t truly consider this a hall.  It’s more of a corridor made up of half walls that aren’t really walls.  They’re pieces of plastic, one side covered in tackboard, that separate Bill from Sara, Sara from Sarah, Sarah from the other Bill, the other Bill from me, and all of us from any source of natural light.  That’s Bill, Sara, Sarah, the other Bill, and me.  We’re on the left hand side of the half-hall when you’re facing the bran muffins.

I hate bran muffins.  They itch when you swallow them.  Sara doesn’t think so.  She likes them.  She goes on sometimes about how healthy they are in comparison with, oh, say, your average blueberry or chocolate chip muffin.  Bill and I often discuss the muffin situation, and when we do, Sara is prone to say something like, “Sure, you can get other kinds of muffins: cranberry, orange, or banana nut, for instance.  Sure, they’ll probably taste better.  You can even get them low-fat.  But that doesn’t make them good for you, it only makes them less bad for you.  Bran is good for you, boys, it keeps you regular.”  Sara smiles when she says these things.  And she winks.  Sara doesn’t eat a lot of meat, and when she does, it’s only white meat.  Never red meat for Sara.  She has posters and magazine clippings of healthy people running in all the latest shock-resistant, spiffy-looking shoes.  The other Bill makes jokes sometimes about Sara’s trackboard half-walls being covered in Nike “Swooshticas.”  I don’t know why I laugh at the other Bill’s jokes.

When the machine finishes, I take the proposals — fifty copies and the original — back to my half-office and drop them into the out box.  Sharon will be by soon to take them to the guy who takes them to Mr. Davis, who writes the proposals and letters that I check for the kinds of grammatical errors word processors can only identify, not correct.  I’m the guy Mr. Davis goes to when Microsoft Word doesn’t have any suggestions.  He will then send them out via an intern to the forty-nine other floor overseers and then, if we’re lucky, next Monday we’ll all have a brand new corporate policy.

If this particular proposal matures into policy, the employees will be required to keep track of all of the supplies they use throughout the week.  These personal tallies will then be compared to the records in the supply distribution offices on each floor.  This, according to the proposal, will ultimately help Mr. Davis and the other overseers to lower costs by analyzing distribution trends and, possibly, deterring or detecting theft of corporate property.  In other words, no more using company thumbtacks to post Nike ads on tackboard half-walls.

Proposals are the worst and, of course, their contents are confidential until after they’ve passed.  I keep company secrets until they aren’t company secrets anymore.  And when they aren’t company secrets anymore, I play like I never knew a damn thing and hope that Bill, Sara, Sarah, and the other Bill all assume that the blow came from one of the forty-nine floors above us.  Holy crap, I say, I’m shocked.

I unwrap my bran muffin.

Your average bran muffin, which is, in truth, startlingly similar to your above or below average bran muffin, is nothing more or less than bran, all the way through.  No surprises with bran muffins.  Every bran muffin is gritty, dense, and flavorless.  Some of the other employees dip them in milk or coffee.  Sara takes them straight.  Sara’s tough and has an itch-proof throat.  She eats lunch, secure in her good health, while the rest of us choke down the breakfast pastry kingdom’s equivalent to an empty tackboard half-wall.

On the other side of my tackboard wall, Sharon is talking to the other Bill about his mother’s funeral.  He says it went fine.  His speech was a success and the food was fantastic.  Sharon says that’s wonderful, that she knows he has a hard time speaking in front of large groups of people, she’s proud of him.  He’s probably blushing when he says it wasn’t a big deal.  The crowd was small.  She tells him not to sell himself short and shuffles over to my outbox.

“Good morning, Andy.”  She’s smiling.  Sharon’s smiles pull her entire face up and back, revealing off-white teeth that sometimes shine a little bit.  Her cheeks crowd around her eyes until you could almost swear they aren’t there anymore.  “Do you have anything for me to today?” 

She might have just winked at me.

“Yeah,” I say as bits of bran muffin fall from my mouth, landing on her pointy little jet black shoes.  She doesn’t notice.  She probably can’t even see when she smiles like that.

“Well, we better get this to where it’s supposed to be then, right?” She smiles more and, I think, winks again.

See, the thing about Sharon is, she is absolutely infatuated with the idea of being one of the only three employees on our floor to know what may happen to all of us in the near future.  To her, Sharon and I and that guy she’ll give these fifty-one proposals to all have something very special in common.  We are the first floor’s most exclusive club.  Winking is her way of acknowledging that bond.  Sharon is a big fat winker.

She scoops up the proposals, stacks them and slaps the top of my desk.  I’m sure this is supposed to be an affectionate gesture.  Muffin crumbs are jumping.  “Well, have a nice lunch, Andy.  See you Monday.”

“Yeah.”

She shuffles away with the proposals I already know will be passed.  Anything that could possibly result in a cost cut normally is.  I look at the partially eaten muffin on my desk.  It teeters a bit and then falls on its side.

Someday soon, a corporation much like this one will invent a more intelligent word processor.  They’ll think of some really cool name for it, something that screams high technology, and the guys like Mr. Davis will never again be plagued with messages that say Fragment: Consider Revising: No Suggestions.  Then, a proposal will be sent out concerning me and the forty-nine other guys just like me.  That proposal will pass, the ones that cut costs always do.  The floor overseers got to be floor overseers because they’re the kind of guys that would step out into traffic to pick up a penny in the middle of the road a day after winning the lottery.  This may be an exaggeration.  Maybe I can teach English grammar to young computer programs, eager to get out into the world.  Maybe I can pump gasoline.  Maybe I can get a job where they have blueberry muffins.  Or, better yet, danishes.  Cheese or fruit danishes.

On the other side of my empty tackboard half-wall, I hear Bill ask the other Bill how his mother’s funeral went.  The other Bill says it was hard.  He misses his mother but she’s gone now and there’s nothing he can do about it.  Bill says he’s sorry, that he understands loss, that he and his mother have never really gotten along, but he’s sure he’d miss her if she died.  The other Bill doesn’t say anything.  He’s probably nodding.  Bill says he’s sorry again, then pokes his head into my office.

“Hey, man.  I see you already had lunch.  I was wondering if you wanted to join me for a bran muffin over at Sarah’s place.”

Maybe every Bill makes unfunny jokes.

“Jefferson said that dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”

“You’re going to have a bloody revolt?” Bill is still joking.

“My great granddad led a bloody revolt.”

“Yeah?” Bill is picking at a piece of lint on his tie.  Bill’s ties are always lint free.

“Yeah, my dad told me about it when I was a kid.  I don’t remember a lot of the details, though.  I don’t think my dad ever told me any.”

“What revolution was this?”

“A small one, tiny, in a coal mine in Pennsylvania.  My granddad and his buddies against the owners and their hired guns.”  I’m saying all of this and wondering if it’s true.  My father told big stories.  Most of the time they involved people I knew or, if I didn’t know them, I knew of them.  The people were real, the stories were mostly fiction.

“Who won?”

“The miners.  They got better work conditions and the right to unionize.”

“Well, shit, man.  You have to revolt now!  It’s destiny.  Through your veins flows the blood of tiny generals!  What cause could be worthier than ridding the first floor of the dreaded bran muffin?!”  Bill is yelling and flailing his arms, his tie jumping up and down, trying to look comical. 

The other Bill pokes his head aver the top of our shared half wall and it sounds like someone down the hall just dropped something.  The other Bill’s eyes widen. 

“Yeah,” the other Bill squeaks, then clears his throat, “you should see if we can’t get blueberry muffins or something.  Maybe even cinnamon buns.  Can you do that, Andy?”

“It’s official, man.  You have to come up with a plan or we might just have a bloody revolution without our general.”

The other Bill giggles, “Hey, Bill, you’re funny.”

“Not now, other Bill,” I say, trying to look serious, “I need to concentrate.”

Bill may be right when he speaks of destiny.   I know where the proposals, once approved by Mr. Davis, will travel on their way to the other overseers.  I know that he has a stamp that doubles as his signature.  And I know that these proposals, once stamped, will be placed in the care of one of the corporation’s most inept employees; an intern.  Interns are great.  Getting the stamp is the hard part, after that, a child couldn’t screw this up.  It’s perfect.  Sing me that song with the grapes of wrath.  I was made for this.

“No, Bill, no bloody revolt.”  I stand up and push my chair out from under me.  “But I am getting rid of those damn bran muffins, and I do need a favor.”

It’s possible I’ll get caught, that Mr. Davis will find out, somehow, that the proposal got tampered with while en route to the other overseers.  Of course, if this happens, I’m history.  This is sort of alright.  I’d only be hastening the inevitable.  In the end, I’m history anyway.  Fragment: Consider Revising: Here Are Your Suggestions…

Bill is waiting by the bran muffins for Mr. Davis to leave his office for lunch.  On Fridays, Mr. Davis gets lunch at the fancy café down the street from the office.  Mr. Davis never eats bran muffins.  I’m waiting by the elevator for the intern.  Bill’s job is to distract the secretary, a previous flame, while Mr. Davis is out to lunch.  Then, I can sneak into his office and get his signature stamp.

The second I see the intern, I know he’s an aspiring software man.  He’s almost too perfect: thick glasses, hair parted down the side and combed over, much too short pants, mismatched argyle socks and a pair of old beat up loafers.  He walks quickly and doesn’t bend his knees.  I almost have to grab his arm to keep him from waddling straight past me.

“Hey, kid, hold on a second.”

He stops, jerkily, and almost drops the manila envelope on the ground. 

“Uh, I’m sorry, sir, but I have to get these to the other floors.”  He’s fidgeting, a happy fidget, an excited fidget. 

“It’s really important, know what I mean?” He winks.  Another damn winker.

“Yeah,” I say, “I know.  It’s my job to proofread what you have in that little envelope there, and I think I may have missed something.  I’m going to need you to come back for them in a bit. I’ll be in that cubicle over there.”

“Wow, I thought my buddies were joking when they told me that this company had guys hired just to check the grammar of letters and stuff,” he says, smiling, not fidgeting. “Seems kind of antiquated.  Don’t they have word processing software here?”

I put my hand out, open, expectant.  I say nothing. 

He looks at my hand, then at me, squints a bit and says, “So, uh, do you grammar guys have any say in who gets hired over in the software department?”

“No, we don’t have any say in who gets hired in any department.” My hand is still out.

“Then get this done quick, I have to meet some of the other interns in the cafeteria for lunch in about an hour.”

“Just give me the damn envelope.”

Getting Mr. Davis’s signature stamp was easier than it should have been.  This is partly because Bill broke it off with the secretary, not the other way around.  Women never break it off with Bill.  And then all he had to do was give her five minutes of his time.  Five minutes and she was off, paying for his meal at the cafeteria.  Women like Bill.  Bill likes one woman for a short amount of time, then he likes another.  For the last half hour, because he’s a true patriot, Bill liked Mr. Davis’s secretary again.

While the two of them enjoyed their delicacies, I stole into Mr. Davis’s office.  Lots of plaid in Mr. Davis’s office- plaid wallpaper covered in pictures of old men golfing.  On his desk sat a Phil Collins album, a black and white photograph of Bill Clinton, a gold plated pen (purely decorative), and the signature stamp, sitting smugly next to its own private ink pad.  I know Mr. Davis has a Mrs. Davis, but I didn’t see any pictures of her.

The copier’s scanner light rolls back and forth, back and forth, and will do this forty-seven more times before I can give the new proposals Mr. Davis’s seal of approval.  What I’m doing now, I do for every employee who’s ever had to swallow countless bran muffins.  I do it for Bill, Sara, Sarah, and the other Bill.  I do it for myself.

Bill and the secretary are just getting back from their lunch date.  They’re both smiling.  With all of the typing, planning, and copying, I haven’t had time to get Mr. Davis’s stamp back into his office yet.  Well, shit.

Bill leans over and whispers into Mr. Davis’s secretary’s ear.  He presses her hands between his, kisses her on the cheek, and says goodbye.  She sits down at her desk in front of Mr. Davis’s office.  She’s still smiling.

When the machine is done, I take the forty-nine new proposals over to my half-office and have Mr. Davis sign the bottom of each one.  On the other side of my barren tackboard sorry excuse for a wall I hear Bill ask the other Bill if he’s feeling any better.  The other Bill says no, he’s not, but he’s sure he will after he’s gotten some sleep.  Bill says that the other Bill is probably right, that time makes all wounds a little less obvious.  The other Bill would agree if the circumstances were different.  Bill tells him to cheer up, to let him know if there’s anything he can do, and pokes his head into the office that probably won’t be mine for much longer.

“You done yet?” He says, rapping his fingers on the half-wall.

“Yeah, done, how’d it go with the secretary?”

“Better than expected.” Bill grins.

“Eyes on the prize, Bill.”

“Right.”

I slip the forty-nine validated proposals into the manila envelope and place Mr. Davis’s signature in my pocket.

“Tell me you have those proposals done, man,” the intern says as he pokes his head into my office.  When he sees Bill, he stops for a moment, surprised, then apparently writes him off as nothing more than another one of me.  He resumes his carefree tone. “I gotta go, man.  Give ‘em here.”

“This, Bill, is the future of our software department.”

“Yes, I can see.” Bill stands, smiles, and extends his hand.  He’s probably about a foot taller than the intern.  “So, you’re vying for a position in my department, huh?  Name’s Bill, software management, first floor.”

The intern’s left eye begins to twitch.

“Oh, uh, crap…I’m really sorry, man, er, Mr.-“

“Bill.”

“Yeah, uh, Mr. Bill.”

Bill’s smile is more of a confident grin. “What’s your name, son?”

“William.”

“Yes, well, William, why don’t you go ahead and distribute these to the other floors.” Bill pats the manila envelope on my desk.  The intern takes it and tucks it underneath his arm.

“Sure thing, Mr. Bill.”

“Call me Billy.”

“Uh, ok, Billy.  Right away.”

“Alright, kid, now go.  Keep up the good work.” Bill gives the intern a thumbs up.  The intern beams, nods, and heads for the elevator.

“Oh, and, kid?”  The intern stops and turns, still smiling. “Yes, sir?”

Bill’s voice, bright and almost melodic until now, drops and assumes what seems to be an impossible severity.  He points toward the intern, raises his eyebrows, and rumbles, “Watch your fucking attitude.”

The intern almost drops the envelope, spits a series of apologies, and shuffles backward toward the elevator door.  Bill isn’t even remotely involved with software.

We watch him get into the elevator.  The double doors slide shut, *bing*, and the proposals are gone.  Blueberry muffins for everybody.

A few hours later, Bill and I gather our things together to leave for the day.  People all around the floor are doing the same.  Sharon is waddling back and forth between cubicles, saying goodbye, remembering what it is she forgot to say, winking.  Sara and Sarah are already gone.  Bill and I put on our jackets and decide to go get a drink.  A cheap drink.

We walk down the half hall, past the bran muffins, and are intercepted by the other Bill. “Hey, guys, what’s up?  Did you do it, Andy?  Did you?”

“I’m going over to talk to her, meet me over there,” Bill gestures toward Mr. Davis’s Secretary’s desk.

“Alright, see you in a minute.” I nod and turn to the other Bill.  He looks like a six year old ten minutes before Christmas.

>“Well?”

“Yeah, yeah, I did it.”

“Did it work?”

“Wh-” he can’t be serious, “I don’t know, I mean, shit, man, the proposals only went up three hours ago.”

“Oh.” His shoulders sag a bit and he actually looks disappointed.

“Well, I have to go, have a good weekend.”

“Um, Andy?” I stop, already half way to Bill and the secretary.

“Yeah?”

“I spoke at my mother’s, uh, I spoke at the funeral.”

I turn.

“I know, I heard you practicing before you left town.”

“Oh.”

I walk back to him and he looks at the floor.  Maybe he’s looking at his shoes.

“How’d it go, really?”

He looks up at me, unsure, and then, after only a few seconds of hesitation, blurts out all at once, “Andy, it was horrible.  I completely screwed up the speech, and, well, not that it mattered because nobody was listening anyway, and there was this guy sitting in the front who I’d never even seen before and he kept checking his watch and after the funeral I sat in the corner of the reception hall and ate wieners and listened to my family talk about the most pointless things and it was like they didn’t even care and, really, Andy, I practiced that speech for days and-”

“Whoa, hey.” I grab his shoulder. “Relax, man, I’m sorry it was rough.”

“Yeah, Andy, it was rough.”

“I’m sure they cared.”  I try to sound reassuring.  The other Bill doesn’t look reassured. “And, uh, if they didn’t, well, at least you do…right?”

This, apparently, is not the right thing to say.

“Listen, other Bill, if there’s anyone I’ve ever met in my entire life that needs a good, stiff drink, it’s you.  Let’s go.”

And he lights up.  I guess that’s all it really takes.  The other Bill is ten years old again.  I tell him to meet me over at the secretary’s desk.  He practically skips off to grab his coat.

Over at her desk, Mr. Davis’s secretary and Bill are talking, their faces close to one another, and she’s smiling.  “Hey, Bill, we’re going soon, we just have to wait for the other Bill to get his things.

Bill, predictably, looks surprised. “The other Bill, really?”

“Really.”

“Well,” Bill looks at the secretary, she smiles, “that makes four of us.”

When the other Bill shows up, the four of us leave.  As we walk toward the elevator, I look into Mr. Davis’s office.  The door is open and Mr. Davis is crawling around on his hands and knees.  He’s looking under his chair, under his desk.  The Phil Collins album is on the floor next to the expensive pen.  He’s mumbling something to himself.  I walk away with his seal of approval in my pocket.

“The Jeffersonian” by Matt Klingensmith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.