Temporary

I never loved my job as a temp at a big tech company, but I didn’t hate it. My boss’s name was Kevin, he had a balding head and kind blue eyes, a real friendly-executive face. Kevin had a habit of pacing around the office and stopping by to talk to people at the watercooler and the printers. Back then I only knew two of the software engineers that worked on my floor, Jay, and Cathy, because their cubicles were across from my desk. On Monday, we all happened to take a water break together, and of course, Kevin spotted us. 

“Hello Dylan, how are you?” he walked up to the water cooler. 

“Good how are you?” I asked. 

“Good, have you thought about applying for a job here after you graduate? We could use somebody like you.”

I smiled.

“I was quite delighted a student from Waterloo chose to intern here,” Kevin added. 

“My parents live here, sir, I wanted to stay with them for a while.”

Waterloo had been a lonely, stressful place, so I returned home for the summer.  

Kevin nodded and turned his attention towards Jay. 

“Hello Jay, how are you?”

“Good,” Jay said. 

“You know, I read one of your short stories online yesterday, it was quite impressive.”

“You write short stories, that’s so cool,” Cathy said with a huge smile.

Jay ignored her. She talked, and he ignored her, it happened often, I didn’t know why. Jay had been at the company for ten years, he started as a temp like me, then he got a job as a software engineer. A boring job, in my opinion, but probably one I was destined for.

“Cathy, how are you?” Kevin asked, clearly saving the best for last. 

“I’m good Kevin, you?” she chirped. I know that sounds weird, but she did chirp. That’s how bubbly her voice was. 

“I’m very good. How was your weekend?”

There was a reason Kevin didn’t ask me or Jay about our weekends. Mine was spent at home, talking with my parents, reading, and playing video games with some friends from Waterloo. I don’t even want to imagine Jay’s weekend.

“I’m glad you asked Kevin,” Cathay said, “I went skiing up at Assisipi resort.”

“Skiing huh? A bit too extreme for me.”

“It’s always scary at the top of the hill, but by the time you finish and you’re at the bottom safe, you feel a sense of accomplishment. This great feeling as the adrenaline subsidies.” 

Cathy was patronizing Kevin. She was an athlete, for her skiing was a fun way to leave behind the stress of work, for Kevin it was a good way to end up in the hospital. 

“I’ll just take your word for it,” Kevin said. 

“I think that’s the safest option for you, sir,” I said. 

My backhanded comment made Cathy tense up, and for a moment I regretted saying it. There was silence, then Kevin laughed. 

“I like you, Dylan. A software engineer with a sense of humor is a bit of rarity, trust me you’ll make a good one in the future,” he said. 

“Humour wasn’t part of the job description way back when I was hired,” Jay said. 

Cathy was the first to laugh. She was always the first to laugh when Jay said something. Kevin smiled, walked back to his office, and we got to work. 

*

My brown desk, twelve cubicles, and Kevin’s office. All of this was surrounded by a panoramic window that offered us a good view of downtown. The buildings were tall and proud, the streets were covered in dirt. I could see the MTS arena from my desk, a huge stadium that hosted shows and sports games. Our watercooler was near this window. Cathy and I often took water breaks together, sometimes Jay joined us, but not today.

“Guess what Kevin and I talked about,” I said. 

“I'm dying to know,” Cathy said. 

“This new video game, I don’t know if he was interested in it but he asked a lot of questions and knew a lot about it too.”

Cathy was three years older than me, but we never brought it up. You wouldn’t be able to tell anyway, with her youthful brown eyes and her pretty smile. 

“Where did he catch you?” She asked. 

“He cornered me by the printer.”

“You gotta give the man credit for trying,” she said. 

I nodded and sipped some water out of the plastic cones they had as cups. 

“Are you coming to my party tonight?” Cathy asked. 

“Well, I already said yes to the evite, guess there’s no turning back now,” I said, hoping that she would laugh. 

Instead, she just smiled. 

“Who else is going?” I asked. 

“Everybody else said yes, except for Jay. Do you think he doesn’t like me?”

The question caught me off guard. Jay wasn’t the type of person who liked many people, that was Kevin’s thing. But everybody liked Cathy.

“Sure, he’s just kind of shy. Why do you care what he thinks of you anyway?”

Sometimes all the extra attention Cathy gave to Jay made me feel... tense. She was probably just concerned about him, but what if there was something more? What if she loved him?

Cathy blushed. She paused to think.

“Jay used to live with his fiancee, she loved to go out, he preferred to stay in. So, she started going out without him.”

“Well, he doesn’t seem like the most exciting roommate ever,” I said.

Cathy looked hurt.

“I’m sorry.”

“She was always going out alone,” Cathy continued, “until she found a new boyfriend and left Jay.”

She paused, I didn’t say anything. 

“I was the one who told Jay she cheated on him, he deserved to know, and he’s been distant around me ever since.”

“You’re kidding me,” I said. 

Cathy shook her head. Her brown eyes were big and sad. 

“I’ve never heard Jay say more than three sentences in a row, how do you know all this?”

“His ex-fiancee was my big sister,” she said, tears in her eyes. 

I wanted to comfort her, but I didn’t want to cross any lines.

“Oh,” I said. That was all I managed to say. 

*

Cathy lived in a glass building near the office. The windows showcased the MTS center, the Rogers building next to it, skyscrapers and cranes. The lobby was huge, with suave leather seats scattered around in clumps of three, a dark marble floor, and a posh brown carpet leading up to the elevators. 

Jay decided to come to the party after all, and since his house was near my parents’ he offered to drive me. We sat in silence for a long time, I got sick of it, so I said this:

“I had a pretty constant stream of girlfriends in high school, but that stopped when I went off to University.”

“Why’s that?” Jay asked. The random comment didn’t seem to bother him.

“Well, my parents couldn’t afford to help pay for my bachelor’s degree, so I had to find a couple of jobs. That’s when I signed up at the temp agency. I decided to get my Master’s too, I have one more year to go after this summer.”

“That’s good,” Jay said. 

“Well, it hasn’t left me with any time for a girlfriend.”

“No need to rush into anything," Jay said.

The comment was sad. It made me think of the irony of how the older one gets, the slower they go about their life. Then again, not everybody was like that. Some people only sped up, some had a mid-life crisis. I couldn’t imagine Jay going through that though; buying a flashy car and dressing like a teenager to cling to his youth. What was Jay like before we met? Before Cathy’s big sister left him? 

The elevator in Cathy’s apartment had beige walls with a mirror in the back and red felt on the floor. We rode up in silence. There were two reasons I liked Jay, and they always made me feel guilty. Firstly, he was a good listener. Secondly, he made me feel better about myself, about having my whole life ahead of me and not being afraid to talk to people as much as he was. Would I have liked him if we met earlier, at a better point in his life? We knocked on the door and waited for Cathy to open it.

“Hey guys,” she said.

“Nice apartment,” Jay said. 

Cathy smiled, the type of huge smile you have after you’ve seen a great movie with a happy ending. 

“Thanks! Come inside guys.”

Jay was right. The apartment had a big kitchen with a round wooden dining table. Next to that, separated by a bar, there was a living room with a wooden floor and brown vinyl furniture. It looked like the inside of a very nice log cabin. Jay sat on a couch in the living room and stayed there for a long time. 

Everybody else was standing around, a glass of wine in hand and a relaxed smile on their face. They were all in their respective cliques. Nobody socialized outside of their little groups, we were tech people after all, not salesmen. The only exception was our charming boss, Kevin, who bounced from group to group like a pinball.

He even sat next to Jay on the couch and began talking about his favorite short stories. It was impossible to tell if Jay enjoyed listening to Kevin speak about ‘The Cathedral’ and ‘The Cask Of Amontillado’ but Kevin sure enjoyed listening to himself. 

Cathy and I sat in the kitchen. Kevin spotted us, excused himself from Jay, and came over. He produced a deck of cards from his pocket. 

“How about a game of war guys?” He pulled the cards out and began dealing. 

“How can we refuse?” I asked a little too sincerely. 

Cathy laughed, it made her brown eyes glow.

The game went well for me. I beat Cathy and Kevin but not so bad. Everybody had fun. Kevin put the cards away and clasped his hands together on the table. 

“Do you guys wanna know why I make such an effort to talk with everybody in the office?” Kevin asked us in a quiet voice. 

“Yes,” I said almost right away. 

Kevin laughed. 

“I have been at our company for seven years, and I’m afraid that I’ve reached my ceiling here. I’ve gone up as far as I can with the connections and the skills I have.” 

He paused to think. 

“There is a concept in economics called diminishing marginal utility. It theorizes that every unit of something we get brings us less utility than the unit before it did. Unfortunately, I have felt this way about everything in my life. Every promotion I get, every new car, every new house is bringing me less joy. I find at this point I am more motivated by restlessness than I am by ambition. So, I go around the office in pursuit of new activities and stories. Not just to be friendly, but to stop being bored.”

Cathy was nodding her head. She didn’t say anything at first. 

“Wow, that’s deep,” I broke the silence. The comment was supposed to be ironic, but I was pretty impressed with the man’s self-awareness. 

“Sorry to spring that on you guys,” Kevin said. 

“Don’t be,” Cathy said. 

Everybody had gone quiet. Jay was still seated on the couch. Cathy drank a glass of wine, her fifth that night, and went to join Jay on the couch. I stood up with her, Kevin didn't move.

“I was hoping to talk to Jay alone for a moment.”

I wanted to say something, but Kevin beat me to the punch.

“That’s fine, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to Dylan about, anyway.”

Was there anything he didn’t want to talk about? 

Cathy refilled her glass of wine, picked it up, and went to sit with Jay. 

“Dylan, you’ve worked so hard to get to where you are today, do you think you’re going to stay here when you graduate?” Kevin asked. 

“I don’t know,” I said honestly, and looked over at Cathy for a moment, “I just might.”

Kevin nodded.

“You seem to be very close to Jay, with that in mind, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

I was worried he would ask me why I liked Jay so much; because he made me feel better about myself. Or maybe he would warn me about staying here just for Cathy. He might tell me that I needed to leave before I turned out like Jay, but in his infinite wisdom, Kevin didn’t do any of that. As always, he surprised me. 

“I know somebody in publishing, and they’re looking for short stories, like Jay’s,” Kevin said. 

I nodded.

“I think he has potential, and I want to show the publisher his stories, do you think he would like it if I did?"

“Yes,” I said.

I paused to think, then added: “But don’t tell Jay, he’s not going to let you do it. Just show your publisher the stories, and if he thinks they’re good enough for publishing tell Jay, if not keep it a secret.”

It could have been the wine, but for some reason, I felt like I knew what was best for Jay. He was still on the couch with Cathy, having a quiet conversation. Then, out of nowhere, Cathy spoke up so that everyone could hear.

“Jay, I’m sorry for what my sister did to you, but I was just the messenger. You should treat me with more respect.”

Jay blushed and didn’t say anything. 

“I’m sorry… I just think we could be good friends… and I feel bad for you…” Cathay stopped at that last part. I guess I wasn’t the only one who felt bad for Jay. 

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t like her much either, and her husband’s tan is definitely fake,” Cathy went on.

It began to feel like one of those soap operas my parents liked to watch on TV. 

“Look…” Jay began, “you just remind me so much of her, I’m sorry, I didn't mean to be disrespectful to you.”

“No, I’m sorry, I should have spared your feelings.”

“I’m glad you told me the truth.”

Everybody stopped talking, again. For a moment, I thought Cathy and Jay were going to kiss, but instead, Cathy hugged him. People resumed their conversations, Cathy and Jay returned to the kitchen. 

“You know what, Kevin, Jay can make his own decisions. You should tell him about the publishing opportunity,” I said. 

Kevin smiled and nodded. 

Jay and Cathy sat down, and Kevin told Jay about the publisher’s interest. 

“Well, I’m not so sure,” Jay said. 

“You should do it,” Cathy said quietly. 

Jay paused to think about it.

“Okay, you can show him my stories,” Jay said. 

Cathy held my hand under the table, it could have been all the wine, but I don’t think it was. I blushed. Kevin noticed, and he seemed just as happy about the moment as I was. I liked my job as a temp at a big tech company.