The park was not great. Across the main road and a side-street away, it was better than having to park the next street over, close to the shopping strip. The walk from there was longer, and there was a higher concentration of nannas milling about, especially on pension day.
At the crossing, he stopped to wait for the lights with the rest of the hordes that had dragged their sorry corpses out of bed.
There, in front of him, loomed Atlas Holdings. Its grey and brown exterior, aged and cracked to the point of crumbling, did nothing to imply that inside was anything different. The windows needed to be cleaned. The sign wanted a fresh lick of paint.
The only thing that stopped it from being just another concrete slab in the forest of concrete slabs was the gigantic statue of Atlas. Muscular, strong, bearing the weight of the world on his back, he was the archetype of what a man could be.
He could carry the heaviest of loads. He could bear the unbearable. He stood until the end of time, reliable and invincible, stolidly facing his task. Atlas could not be shaken, not matter what the world could throw at him because, after all, he was holding it.
The lights went green, Henry pounced off the pavement, coffee in hand, to enter the dull doors and nod politely to Miss Fisher on reception.
He attempted a smile. She reciprocated.
“Hi, Henry.”
“Hi, Miss Fisher. How're you?”
“Fine thanks. How're you?”
“A little sore, actually.”
“That's good.”
She drove a knife into an envelope and pulled the innards out, roughly splashing them on the desk.
“Do you need something?” she asked.
“Ah. No,” he said, “Sorry.”
He hustled over to his cubicle, keen to slip in before anyone noticed. If he got his monitor on and his computer powered, he would be just fine. The machine buzzed to life, flicking through to the login screen after a few seconds.
Henry's Boss, Mister Miro, had seen his entrance and was watching him from under his shaggy eyebrows. This was the menacing pose he struck when he needed to be authoritative. He stormed over.
“Late again, Henry?” he asked, appearing behind him.
He was shorter than Henry. He was dumpy, and fat, and sour-faced, and quite ugly. His suit was permanently attached to his frame. If there was a human underneath the layers of material, Henry could not imagine it. And if he ever tried, his mind turned away, shuddering.
Apparently he was married. Apparently some woman out there had seen through his abrasive personality and obvious mental deficiency, and found him enough of a catch to slip a ring onto his finger. His thoughts turned to what such an amazingly resilient woman would look like.
In many ways, Henry thought to himself, Mister Miro was quite inferior to him.
Why, if it came to a straight-line run, Henry would win hands down. If they had a game of chess, he would be sure to whip his Boss. If there was ever a chance of fisticuffs, oh! if ever there was a chance! But if ever there was, Henry would show him a thing or two.
But Mister Miro, Big M behind his back, was his Boss, appointed and approved by upper management. He was part of the furniture, part of the firm, and there would be no budging from his role as top-dog on the ground floor.
“Not really, sir.”
“Not really? Looks like really to me, Ludlow,” he retorted, holding up his shiny watch.
Henry protested, “It's only thirty two past. And my teeth...”
“Not by my watch. Mine says thirty five past.”
Henry looked at his phone. It agreed with Henry's assessment and, he imagined, pretty much every other electronic device in the office that had access to the internet.
“The phone says...” he began, but thought better of it.
Mister Miro was not one to be corrected. In fact, Henry might have the entire Chronological Institute of Switzerland backing his cause and still Mister Miro would shrug, point to his watch and shake his head.
“I'll add in five off my lunch,” Henry resigned.
“Make it ten to make up for yesterday.”
“But I already... Ah, whatever.”
Mister Miro forced a smile, “That's whatever, sir, Henry. You can lose the attitude.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You don't look very presentable this morning, Ludlow. I hope you haven't any on-site visits today. Why, look at you. You haven't even shaved. And you've got blood on your chin.”
“It's my teeth, sir. They fell out.”
“All of them?”
“Only two.”
He pulled his cheek back to show him. There were two gaping holes staring back.
“Tsk, tsk! Henry, that's no good. No good at all.”
“Tell me about it. One minute I was...”
“No good for the company. We can't have you talking to clients with missing teeth. Where are they, anyway?”
“In my car.”
“What are they doing there?”
“Well, if I'd stop to search for them, I would have been late.”
“You are late, Henry! And unshaven. And missing teeth. This is not how an employee of Atlas conducts himself,” Mister Miro barked, “It's undignified and I won't have it, you hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don't want to see any more gaps in your mouth, Ludlow. At least those two are on the side. Try not to smile so hard and you should be fine,” he instructed in a fatherly manner.
“Shouldn't be a problem, sir.”
Mister Miro, having imparted his unworldly wisdom, nodded to himself, adjusted his tie and marched off to inspect the other cubicles. Henry ignored him and turned to face his rectangular prison.
He sat down at his desk and plonked his coffee on top. It spilled a little, creating a ring around the base that, in an hour or so, would harden to a semi-permanent feature on his desk along with all the other semi-permanent rings that he had built up over the month.
The cleaners never wiped his desk down, he noticed. The only time the rings ever disappeared was when he decided that the terrain on his desk was too uneven to rest his hands on. Surely the cleaners had some kind of vendetta against him. That sounded a little paranoid, and it was, but it was the truth.
The used staples on the floor remained there from last year. He had, as an experiment, coloured one of them with a marker. Every so often he would look down and note that it was still there, waiting patiently for a vacuum cleaner to lift it from its short-pile home and deliver it to a better place.
A better place. A better time. Somewhere that wasn't here or now, Henry mused, somewhere else entirely. Wherever that better place was, it was wherever he wasn't. It was not anywhere at home, or on the way to work, or anywhere around or between.
Perhaps it was in another country. Perhaps all the better places had already been consumed, and all that was left were the grisly sinews, bones and scraps of everyday life. Perhaps there was no such thing as a better place. It was a mythical construct designed solely with the intention of keeping the false embers of hope glowing.
That was a depressing thought, that the best was already gone, that there was nowhere left to go but down.
He looked at the confines of his 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. 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.