The Recruit

It was officially seven seconds past the hour. I knew that not because I was counting or watching the clock, but the room was so silent that I felt the tick of the paper-thin clock hand as it began its journey for the 19^th time that frozen January day.

One of the worst parts about winter is the sun being around for no more than a cold, visible breath, if at all. At what had then become 7 p.m. and 21 seconds, I sat in my dark cubicle alone, staring at the spreadsheet on the screen as the numbers began to form a dark gray blur, much like the color of everything in my new, small industrial office cubicle.

It was my second week doing data entry at Flipped Furniture, a recently successful start-up that was described to the masses as a furniture exchange for people that didn’t want to have garage sales. It was honestly incredible how much money the company had made in such a short time out of such a small space, but who was I to question the hand that fed me? Like most recent college graduates, mindlessly entering digits into a document while earning a salary that was enough for a twin bed in a friend’s apartment, I was more than content. As the only new hire plucked right from a campus, I wanted to make sure I stood out by “staying late” to “get more work done.” Although I was in fact doing some work, we both know it was more about the appearances being kept up than anything else.

I was ready to head out for the night, so I stood up to rid my body of the four cups of coffee that got me through the day before I left. With my first time seeing a window since the early afternoon, I was greeted by flurries of snow falling at a rate that would make traditional gravity blush. I shrugged and assumed I could just wait it out a bit longer when I noticed the door at the end of the hall was slightly ajar. In my eight business days in the building, I never once saw anyone in that room, but that was also because I assumed it was a janitorial closet and they would most likely be here after hours. Seeing as whoever worked that post was now a kindred spirit of mine in burning the midnight oil, I thought it was worth my time to introduce myself; a semi-ambitious 22-year-old cannot have enough connections, after all.

I gently pushed the door open and found no person nor entrance to Narnia, but a dimly lit space filled with a horde of uniformly unmarked boxes. Each sepia-toned cube appeared to be a few feet wide in each direction and ready to ship, but without the traditional labels. There was, however, a single box in the middle of the beige cardboard sea with a single flap standing at attention.

If you saw that, your curiosity would be piqued too.

I went to gingerly move the few boxes in front of it only to find that each one was much heavier than I thought. I was more intrigued than ever as to what the hell was in these but was not about to open a fresh one with hoping to graduate from a twin mattress to a queen someday soon. Finally making my way to the lone wolf, I released the other three corrugated flaps to find a couch cushion. The cabernet-colored suede piece sat by itself in the box, which made me raise an eyebrow further at the weight, but definitely not at the contents of the box itself. As the new guy, it was not my place to question why any couch cushions, headboards, or folding chairs were in random places. I decided to just move them back, keep the small mystery in my head until tomorrow, and go watch a movie on my phone until the snow quieted down.

I began to close up the mystery box save for its rogue right fold when I heard keys jingling at the opposite end of the office. I assumed it was my friend in sanitation until I heard multiple voices, one being that of my boss, Mr. Clark. I saw the shadow of his stocky mid-forties figure begin to round the corner, where he would ultimately be staring at me from 60 feet away, wondering why I was in the room few ever enter. His shadow was joined by one that covered a little less surface area, but seemingly carried just as much weight. That shadow was attached to a Spanish-speaking voice that I had yet to hear in my eight brief days, as well as a third larger, more imposing shadow than that of Mr. Clark’s exaggerated frame.

My first thought was to find an empty box in the room to pack in the coffee mug and succulent on my desk for my inevitable firing. My second was to close the door to the state that I found it and find a place to hide. I went with the latter because, well, panic sets in quick.

The single low-watt lightbulb somehow felt darker than when I entered. Sweat from the only mop in the room dropped down at my feet as I scrambled in the broom closet-turned-warehouse-turned-holding cell, preparing for a round of bad cop, bad cop, and most likely worse cop.

The voices grew louder as I sat the final cardboard cinderblock in its initial place. The empty workshop-style aluminum shelving along the longitudinal walls and the boxes on the floor made hiding impossible, something that I failed to realize in my panic. I took a deep breath and just hoped that logic prevailed, because who gets fired for looking at inventory?

I wiped the saltwater from my brow and took my place against the southern shelf in an attempt to act casual. My mind’s eye had me looking like a greaser ready to hit a jukebox as a party starter. Reality, I knew, would find me more akin to a middle schooler fearfully supporting a concrete block wall during a dance. I inhaled deeply while closing my eyes to prepare for what was to come and opened them as my breathe exhaled with a quiet, nervous stutter.

“Hmm,” I heard Mr. Clark say, presumably about the door I was facing at a diagonal. “That’s strange.”

The door opened wide at when he said the final syllable and I collectively met all six eyes at a rapid rate. Well, four of them at least, as the mountainous Latino bodyguard wore sunglasses at nighttime in January. It seemed to be a sort of oddly timed intimidation factor, which was absolutely working.

“Troy?” Mr. Clark said quizzically as his friends looked on. “What the hell are you doing here?”

I looked up and around, trying to pick words off of the empty shelves. “Sorry, sir. I was working late and noticed this door was open and —”

“And what?” He scolded, reserved yet still slightly foaming at the sides of his mouth. “You saw your name tacked onto the door all of a sudden and felt this was your new office? Thought it best you come dig around?”

“No, sir, that’s not it at all.”

“Well, what exactly did you see, Mr. Brimmer?”

I paused for a moment, assuming that his speech pattern indicated there was a correct answer, and that correct answer was not, in fact suede maroon couch cushions.

“All I saw was one suede maroon couch cushion. Just one.” I said, looking through his eyes and then darting back down to the ground, just to slowly look up to see his reaction and adding, “Sir.”

“See Phil, he saw the couch cushions,” the shorter Latino man said through a thick accent out of the corner of his mouth. “Because that’s all that’s in here.”

Mr. Clark, Phil himself, acknowledged the man’s thoughts and looked up and off into the distance in a contemplative way. He was silent for what felt like seven seconds, but I was definitely not counting because I simply could not. My brain was in shambles. Gray matter was probably splattered everywhere within the confines of my skull. I had no idea what he was going to say, but I was surprised at his conclusion.

“Well,” Phil stated, holding his hand to his right temple. “He’s probably in the clear, but I don’t care. You’re coming with us now, Mr. Brimmer.”

Once he said that, the bespectacled landmass began moving all of the boxes to the sides of the room.

“Sir, um, where exactly are we going?” I asked, my Adam’s apple the weight of a golf ball. By the time that question escaped my mouth, the bodyguard had made his way past the single-flapped box to reveal a rug underneath the cushion fortress. He flipped the rug up and I saw what appeared to be a door with a small brass circle affixed to the top of it garnering all of my attention. We were on the first floor of our building, so that of course had to mean that a dark, Bond-villain basement was on the other end of that hardwood.

When the group’s muscle opened the door and walked down, Phil rested his hand on my shoulder and guided me behind his smaller associate like a sort of sadistic conga line. Everything from buried treasure to a coffin with my named etched in it, along with still holding my bladder, crossed my mind as we took the first few steps down the dark descent. The light at the end of the staircase was a needlepoint in my initial perspective, meaning that we were going quite a long way below any old basement.

We walked for more than a few minutes until I could begin to hear the noise of machinery and the diligent metronomic tapping of hands. The proverbial blindfold came off to reveal a room larger than my two-bedroom apartment and filled with a dozen or so tables that held white powder, sewing machines, rubber-banded stacks of money, and a woman I recognized from payroll sitting at a laptop and striking the keys with emphasis. She was the first to see us and made everyone else stop what they were doing when she stood up and exclaimed, “What in the hell is one of the new kids doing here?”

“Easy, Kathy,” Phil nearly whispered as he held out both of his hands to give her pause and take a breath. “Someone down here must have left the door to the office open and Troy here,” he continued, moving one step away and presenting me as if a spotlight was to shine down. “Troy decided today was his lucky, or maybe unlucky day.”

Kathy shrugged him off. “Well, whatever. As long as he keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t get in my way.”

“Tomás,” Phil said, motioning to the large man. “Can you please grab one of our best-selling couch accessories that Mr. Brimmer stumbled his way upon tonight and show him why they are such a hot commodity?”

Tomás and his Ray-Bans sauntered over and picked up one of the pieces off of a table with ease that I wished I had moving them earlier. He pulled a knife out of his pocket and damn me if I didn’t wince, even though Phil clearly stated it had something to do with the cushion. Tomás sliced through the cushion and everything became clear, nearly crystallized but not quite, in that moment as tight bags of white powder cascaded out of the piece of furniture.

“Congratulations Troy, you now know too much,” Phil declared, coupled with a sarcastic few claps. “So, the question is, do you want to accept your promotion, or turn it down? Though I’m sure you recognize this opportunity of a lifetime.”

I had no idea what to say. It was either death, or something that sounded a lot like death, or get involved with what I now learned was an operation with an international drug cartel. The decision was actually not as challenging as one might think.

“So that’s my story,” I announced to no one except the equally curious, doe-eyed girl who had started at Flipped a few weeks back. “Now that we’ve taken that wonderful walk down memory lane, you’re faced with the same choice I was given just a year ago in this very basement warehouse.”

Her head swiveled as she looked around the room, a feeling I remember well. A few beats passed as I looked down at my Rolex to both speed her up and further assert my position in the room. She looked over at me, stammering incoherent words before I and the clock decided that time was up.

“Well Angela, are you in?”