The Roberts

The sweat beaded down Bob McKowski’s back as he watched Robert’s head floating over the cubicle walls. Ten more feet to the intersection. Bob prayed he’d turn right.

“Good morning, Robert!” Tracie called from behind her gray wall as he passed.

Robert Chandler grunted in her direction and half raised his hand.

He reached the intersection and turned left. Shit, Bob thought. He was heading down the row right past him. Maybe I just ignore him. I can pretend I’m in the middle of something, working too hard to lose focus. But Bob panicked, like he always did.

“Good morning, Robert!” Bob blurted.

Robert repeated the grunt he’d given Tracie and kept walking. Thank God, Bob thought.

Robert suddenly stopped. He looked up, paused, and sighed. He turned around and walked two steps back to Bob’s cubicle. Sweat trickled along Bob’s hairline.

“Bob, good job on the quarterly accounts summary last week.” Robert said halfheartedly.

“Thanks, Robert.” Bob faked a smile. SSSShhhhhiiiiiiiittttttttt!!! He thought.

For the next four and a half minutes Bob stared at his cubicle wall—the time it took for his screensaver to pop up with the photo of his cats, Chewie and Mr. Darcy, hiding in the background of the Apollo 11 landing. Bob was proud of his work on that photo. This was the third time in the past month that Robert had been nice to him. After the second time, he’d left the office early, parked his car at a strip center a mile from home, and eaten a bag of jelly beans, occasional tear adding a salty twist.

You see, Robert was a jerk. Everyone assumed he’d been born that way. It was nature, not nurture. It was just too ingrained in his personality for anyone to imagine he emerged into this world any differently. In three years as department manager, Bob had seen Robert be nice to exactly four people, all of whom he fired within two months of his first compliment. Becca was fired and deported. Robert had a hand in sending her back to Canada, most likely, everyone agreed, because H.R. concluded her non-compete wasn’t enforceable.

To most, being fired would be a blessing if it meant getting away from Robert, but Bob suffered from Stockholm syndrome. One of Robert’s first actions when he took over as department manager was to tell Robert McKowski, in front of the entire staff, that he could no longer go by Robert. “You’re a screw up, McKowski. I can’t have management confusing you for me.” It was true. Bob was a notorious screw up. Twice he had confused the company’s payables with its receivables, wiring money to its biggest debtors.

“So we’re calling you Bob from now on.” Robert announced as though he was bestowing a royal title.

“What about Rob?” Bob asked.

“You’re not a Rob, Bob.”

Unsure what else to say, Bob simply replied “Thank you.” Within a week, Mrs. McKowski was crying “Oh Bob 2.0!” late at night——a moniker he gave himself to rebrand the episode as a personal metamorphosis, a clean start.

The Bob formerly known as Robert had been happy his first six years at the company. Jessica was running the department then. Everyone had been happy, everyone except Robert Chandler, her ambitious direct report. When Jessica welcomed her first child, Robert made his move. The coup centered around a rumor that Jessica faked her pregnancy so she could sneak a generous two and a half week paid vacation. “Jessica told me last year that she and her husband didn’t even want kids,” Robert had been heard saying. The tropical paradise painted on the nursery walls and her allergic reaction to the face moisturizer from the hospital only validated Robert’s theory once the baby photos started circulating. Plus, everyone agreed the baby was too handsome to share any genes with Jessica’s husband.

After the transition, everyone settled in and learned to stay out of Robert’s way. Trepidation became a way of life as Robert oversaw his industrious subjects. Bob worked hard, if not well.

Recently, however, most of Bob’s days were spent trying to figure out just what he had done to piss Robert off so badly that Robert was now being nice to him.

“Meg, have you noticed anything different about Robert lately?” Bob asked.

“Seems like the same asshole to me,” Meg replied.

“Robert seems a little friendly lately. Have you noticed that, Darrell?” Bob searched.

“I saw him dog cuss a jelly donut yesterday for being cherry, not strawberry. So no, I haven’t noticed.” Darrell responded.

As each day ground on, Bob kept coming back to the only thing he could imagine had pissed Robert off. There was only one answer.

Outsiders didn’t view Bob as a creative mastermind, but that’s because it was a question of familiarity—his wife told him he was “so smart” at least twice a year. Bob knew that once his masterpiece was unveiled to the world, it would only be a matter of time until the name Bob McKowski’s name was mentioned with the same reverence as Lin Manuel Miranda or Andrew Lloyd Webber. Perhaps even more so because those men had catapulted to fame via the celebrated dramatic arts. Bob, meanwhile, would be lifting up an entire discipline with him. No one gave much respect to ventriloquism.

Bob’s coworkers didn’t have a clue what he did in his free time. Many assumed it was a question they didn’t want answered. So when imitation Playbills started showing up in each of their cubicles with opening night invitations tucked inside, only Josh, Terrance, and Liz agreed to go. “I’m going to need a three hour happy hour beforehand,” they all agreed.

The Black Cat was full thanks to its famed Tuesday night happy hour and stiff drinks, which made for a volatile packed audience. By the time Bob took the stage two hours into open mic night, three people had been booed off stage crying. Bob crossed the stage in an ill-fitting pinstripe suit with greased back hair and perched a three foot wooden doll on his lap. The crowd hushed. The doll looked like a business man about to jump out of his office window.

No one had thought to adapt a ventriloquist show out of Glengarry Glen Ross, and that alone was proof to Bob of its brilliance. Only a dramatic savant could see the potential. From the start, Bob fed off his puppet’s emotional decline. Bob was playing the infamous Blake, berating the puppet mercilessly. Spit hit the couple at the front table as Bob screamed about the puppet’s manhood and its inability to close real estate sales in south Florida. Bob wasn’t a profane person, but this was for the art. He hadn’t felt this liberated since his performance twelve years ago of a Jurassic Park adaptation, ventriloquized from the sick triceratops’s perspective.

In the crowd, Terrance and Liz were dumbfounded. The sight of quiet, amiable, short sleeve button down Bob with greased black hair screaming at a downtrodden wooden salesman about sleeping with his wooden puppet wife was beyond comprehension. The whole audience was transfixed in a mixed state of incredulity and hilarity. Fifty-seven minutes in, Josh awoke off the table just long enough to puke on Liz’s shoes. As she and Terrance carried him out of the lounge, she realized she hadn’t been so relieved by the smell of vomit since college Friday mornings.

Bob had taken artistic liberties with the storyline, climaxing with the puppet taking revenge by pouring a pot of coffee on Blake’s head. Bob fell to his knees screaming as the lights dimmed. The inebriated audience didn’t know what they’d just seen, but they were rowdy enough to whistle and cheer. It was the greatest night of Bob’s year. The next day at the office, his three coworkers would tell him they loved the show.

Jump forward a few weeks, and Robert was suddenly telling Bob to “Break a leg out there today” as they exited the elevator together. A couple weeks after that, Robert topped off Bob’s coffee cup when they crossed paths in the breakroom. Could it be a signal to Bob that Robert knew about his show? What if Josh, Liz, or even Terrance had never seen Glengarry Glen Ross before? Might they have mistaken the whole show as a commentary on their own work environment? Might they have confused Bob’s performance with a caricature of Robert Chandler?

Bob couldn’t shake the idea that Robert had heard about the show and taken it as a personal insult, and the thought metastasized in his mind. It was the only explanation that made sense. Bob invited his coworkers to the world premiere of his masterpiece wherein he plays a deranged, sociopathic boss, and within a few weeks, his own deranged, sociopathic boss is telling him to “break a leg” and filling up his coffee cup. Bob fell into a state of perpetual panic.

The weekend after Robert made his third nice gesture, Bob decided he needed a strategy to get back in Robert’s good graces. Bob barely slept that weekend and didn’t set foot outside of his house from Friday evening until Monday morning. What developed during those two fluorescent-lit days was a plan that only Bob could have imagined. And in Bob’s mind, that only he could execute. Its brilliance was only overshadowed by its daring, he thought.

The next week, Bob was on high alert to avoid Robert around the office until their scheduled meeting. Thursday morning Bob stepped onto the parking garage elevator with a black duffle bag over his shoulder. Everyone on the elevator stared at the bag. No one said a word. The whole morning the office kept note of the nearest exits. Francene texted herself: “To anyone reading this, it was Bob McKowski.”

At 10:58 a.m., Bob stood up from his desk, slung the black bag over his shoulder, and walked towards Robert’s door. The office fell silent. He paused outside Robert’s door, took a noticeable deep breath, and knocked twice.

“Come in.”

Bob opened the door and disappeared into Robert’s office.

Robert didn’t know why Bob had requested the meeting, and he assumed he’d be handing in his resignation. But immediately he noticed Bob’s demeanor was too somber for someone about to walk out the door.

“Good morning, Robert,” Bob said. As Bob gently lowered the duffle bag to the floor, Robert could make out something rigid about a meter long inside the bag. Robert’s hand slowly drifted to his keyboard while his eyes stayed trained on Bob. He typed a message to his secretary—“Call the police”—but didn’t hit send.

“How are you, Bob? Are you having a good day?”

Bob cringed at Robert’s inexplicable politeness. “I’m doing ok, Robert.” Bob replied. “Not great, but ok.”

“How’s the family? You have kids?”

“My wife is swell. We don’t have any kids.” Bob said. “Thanks for asking.”

“You know, Bob, I can’t help but think about how hard you’ve been working lately. Have you considered taking some time off? Maybe a little vacation for you and the Mrs.?” Robert was fumbling for any smalltalk to delay whatever was coming, but he was out of practice, and it sounded stilted.

Bob was growing increasingly nervous. Clearly, Robert couldn’t wait to fire him. Is this how he does it to people? This is a favor to a hard worker like you; you need a forced vacation. He could feel his face redden and his forehead dampen. “We took a trip to the coast a few months ago. Remember, I was out for about a week?” Bob replied.

“Oh, yeah! I forgot about that. Did you have nice time?” Robert could see the sweat appearing on Bob’s face; he was getting worked up, no doubt. Robert hovered his finger over the enter key.

“Yeah, it was very nice. Listen, Robert.” Bob jerked back to the rehearsed lines. “I think you might have heard some stories about what I do outside of work.”

Robert didn’t begin to want to know what Bob McKowski did outside of work. He glanced down at the black bag on the floor.

Bob continued, “And I’d like to explain and correct the record.” Bob paused for a count of two and then stood up and walked to the bag. He paused over it for another count of two. Bob believed two-second pauses made anything more dramatic. His coworkers assumed he had some condition. Bob leaned down and slowly unzipped the bag.

Robert tipped forward to see inside. All he could make out was the wooden stock of a rifle or a baseball bat or, maybe, a sword sheath. Robert grabbed the pair of scissors in the coffee cup on his desk and clutched it by his right leg. Bob wrestled with the bag for a few second and then stood back up.

Is that a doll? Robert thought. Bob lowered back in his chair and sat the doll on his lap. Robert’s face froze in confused horror.

“Actually, I’m going to let Shelley explain.” Bob announced.

“Your diligent worker Bob, here, is also a master ventriloquist.” Bob said out of the corner of his moving mouth, while the doll’s mouth spasmed open and closed. “Bob’s one of the best ventriloquists in the city.”

Robert’s mouth dropped open, dumbfounded.

“Bob recently premiered a critically acclaimed adaptation of Glengarry Glen Ross. I was the star of his show.” The doll’s mouth was entirely out of sync with the nasally voice Bob was emitting. Its eyes blinked for uncomfortably long stretches. “It received a raucous, standing ovation at the premiere.”

Robert tried to remember the therapist’s instructions: take a deep breath, think of an empty room, imagine a soft warm glow. It had taken four months before Robert’s anger management lessons started to do anything for him. He tried to quit them three times, but his cardiologist was adamant that if he wanted to see fifty he was going to have to quit screaming at people. His wife offered to shoot him before his heart ever gave out as a compromise.

You’ve been nice to this jackass for a month now. The therapist advised him to start with “targeted niceness.” Find someone who doesn’t challenge you, someone who won’t argue with you, and try to be nice to them first. Bob was the most submissive person Robert had ever met, so he had started with him. No screaming and a compliment here and there was all he could muster. Anything more and Robert knew the idiot would lose all initiative.

“The story begins with a group of real estate salesmen sitting in an office . . .” Bob had planned for Shelley to walk Robert through the entire plot so there’d be no chance of a misunderstanding.

Robert quickly fell into a trance staring at Bob and Shelley, observing them both from afar like a scientist looking in on a crazed experiment. As Shelley gave detailed background on each of the characters, Robert stared at the pair while his mind drifted away.

This couldn’t be going any better, Bob thought. Robert is riveted.

After five minutes, Robert’s inbox dinged. He rushed back into consciousness. He furrowed his brow, and his nostrils widened. What the fuck is this idiot doing? In the middle of my goddamn morning. Robert tried to remind himself to pace his breathing, but he just started grinding his teeth instead. His nails dug into the left arm of his desk chair; his knuckles were white around the scissors.

“My wife had an affair with a hot dog vendor.” Shelley had now moved into his own embellished backstory.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS!” Robert shot to his feet and stabbed the scissors into the desktop. “IS THIS A DOLL? DO YOU PLAY WITH FUCKING DOLLS, BOB?”

Bob froze in his chair. “I was trying . . . “

“YOU WERE PLAYING WITH A DOLL! YOU BROUGHT IN A DUFFLE BAG LIKE YOU WERE ABOUT TO BLOW THE FUCKING OFFICE UP! TO PLAY WITH A GODDAMN, SUICIDAL PINOCCHIO!” Three of Robert’s facial veins were visibly twitching.

“GET THE HELL OUT OF MY OFFICE, YOU MORON!”

Bob jumped up and stuffed Shelley back in the bag. Everyone outside of the office breathed a sigh of relief to hear things returning to normal.

“YOU LITERALLY BROUGHT YOUR SADDEST SACK OF SHIT INTO MY OFFICE, BOB! CHRIST!”

Bob snatched the duffle and pulled the door open. Robert slammed it behind him. Bob tried not to look at all of the eyes peaking above the cubicle walls as he walked back to his desk. Robert was still audibly screaming in his now empty office.

Bob sat down at his desk. He grabbed his phone and typed out a message to his wife: “Huge relief honey. I’m back on his good side. My job’s safe.” He smiled at his success as he leaned back in his chair.