What Comes Around

Monday, 9:15am. Simone slumped into her cubicle chair with a sigh. Closing her eyes as she lowered her head, Simone rubbed her temples with her fingers.

           Five minutes later, she stood behind two others in the break room waiting for the Keurig machine. There was only one, and there was no way she was going to settle for whatever slop was in the glass pot sitting on a round warming tin straight out of the 1980s.

           It felt like a Hawaiian day. But not because of the weather. No, of course not. It was 25 degrees outside the Bloomingdales building on a Monday in February. It felt like a Hawaiian day so she chose Tully’s Hawaiian Blend. Even t

           As she waited for her coffee to be ready, Simone realized nobody was behind her waiting. She closed her eyes again, trying to will away the headache. She spent all weekend writing her novel and dreaded having to change gears so drastically every single Monday. Coming back to her job as a tax accountant was bad enough, but sometimes the climate here was right out of the same era as that antique coffee maker, complete with the open sexual harassment.

           Simone’s mind drifted to a happier place. The only sound was the gentle purr of the Keurig machine and an air handler blowing warm air from a register in the ceiling. She rubbed the back of her neck with her hand and smiled as the smell wafted to her nose.

           Suddenly, she felt a presence behind her, and her eyes flew open. As she spun around, she saw Ben leering at her. Eyes about halfway up. He wore a creepy grin that almost made her wretch.

           “You need something, Ben?”

           He shook his head and said, “Nah, I’m good. Just enjoying the view.”

           She sneered at him and snatched her cup of coffee. Quickly scurrying back to her cubicle, Simone seethed at his intrusion just as she was starting to be able to deal with the day.

           Simone slammed her mug down on the desk so hard that a few drops of brown splattered the cover page of her TPS report. She didn’t care.

           She reached into her purse and grabbed a thumb drive. Simone always felt apprehensive doing this at work, but it was Monday and Ben had already left her with a bad taste in her mouth. She usually waited until she got some work done, but today she pushed the thumb drive into a USB port and opened the Word document of her novel.

           No worries, she always got her work done on time. Simone had written half of her novel sitting right here at this desk. It was actually kind of thrilling jumping right back into it before even attempting any actual work.

           Staring at the screen with the cursor blinking at the start of a blank paragraph, Simone clicked on “New Blank Document”.

           She changed the font to 20 point bold and wrote, “I wish Ben would throw himself right out a window.”

           Five seconds later, she heard a loud thump followed by a brief wobbly warbling sound. Like a thick piece of glass vibrating.

           Everyone in the immediate area stood up and turned toward the sound. A small crowd gathered around the aisle between the cubicles just down this side of the floor. Ben lay on his back, eyes closed, at the bottom of the window overlooking Michigan Avenue 25 floors down.

           Simone approached Carl’s cubicle and asked, “What the hell happened?”

           Carl looked stunned. He had pushed himself back up against his desk, away from Ben, in horror. He shook his head as his mouth opened and closed a few times.

           Finally, Tamara, who sat across the aisle from Carl, said, “I don’t know what he was thinking. He just got up and got a running start, then jumped right into the window!”

           The group gathered around Ben, waiting for him to regain consciousness. Simone glanced around with a smirk.

           She thought, “Noooo, there’s no way. It’s got to be a coincidence.”

           After a few minutes, Ben regained consciousness and went back to his desk. Shockingly, nobody called HR or the paramedics. Ben insisted he just wanted to go back to work. He was clearly embarrassed.

           Just before noon, Simone opened up the same Word document and wrote, “I wish Ben would steal James’s lunch.”

           James was a bodybuilder and one of the few guys in the office Ben never dared mouth off to. Ben was an arrogant prick, but he knew his limits. He liked to pat James on the shoulder and call him Big Guy.

           Simone entered the break room a few minutes later, just in time to witness the spectacle about to unfold. Ben sat with three others at one of the tables. Two lunches laid out in front of him. A moment later, James sauntered into the room and over to the fridge. He hunted around, moving others’ lunches until he realized his was gone.

           Standing upright, James yelled to the two dozen or so co-workers in the break room, “Ok, who’s got my lunch? It was in a blue cooler. Everyone knows it’s mine.

           Without hesitation, and not knowing why he was doing it, Ben cleared his throat and pointed down at the half-eaten lunch in front of him and said, “Right here, big guy!”

           James stormed over and look incredulously down at the crumbs left from his meal. He grabbed Ben’s collar and bent down.

           He growled into Ben’s ear, “I want to see you after work, big guy. 5pm. Parking lot. Don’t make me come find you.”

           Without waiting for a reply, James stormed out of the room. Everyone stared at Ben, dying to see what would happen next.

           Ben swallowed the last bit of food with an audible gulp, gathered up his garbage, and tossed it into the can as he hurried back to his office.

           Simone’s day was getting better. She thought she might take the long way out of the building that night. Through the parking lot. Might be some excitement!

           As she sat next to three of her friends, Michele shook her head and laughed as she said, “Serves him right. I hope James kicks the living shit out of him. Do you know Ben walked into the ladies room and acted like it was an accident?”

           Cheryl put her hand up and said, “Oh honey, that’s nothing. I was his administrative assistant for three years and if I had a nickel for every time he brushed up on me or accidentally touched my ass, I’d be rich.”

           Janice was quiet for a moment, looking down at her food without a sound. Simone reached across the table and asked, “What is it, Jan?”

           In a quiet voice, without looking up, she said, “I never told anyone this, but two years ago at the Christmas party at Gibson’s, he kept buying me drinks. I thought he was being nice, you know, I just started the previous summer, so I didn’t know him yet. Anyway, I’m not much of a drinker so whenever he wasn’t looking, I would just dump them out or whatever. Turns out, he was purposely trying to get me drunk. He kept telling me he wanted to go to my place, have a good time. He did the same thing to Patty and Yuma. Same party. Patty could barely walk out of the place.”

           Cheryl’s eyes widened, and she said, “Yeah! I remember that night! That son of a bitch!”

           Janice looked up at them now and added, “Yeah, I figured out what he was doing. I brought Patty home, and Ben called me a cock-blocking see-you-next-Tuesday...if you know what I mean.”

           She blushed and looked down again.

           Michele shook her head and said, “And just think of the stories we haven’t heard.”

           Simone headed back to her desk. She opened the Word document again and wrote, “I wish Ben would confess every time he sexually harassed someone at this office to HR.”

           Out of curiosity, Simone stopped by her lunchmates’ desks on her way over to the side of the floor where the HR offices were. Libby, the HR director, had her door closed. They heard weeping coming from the other side of the door.

           It took him almost an hour to recount every time he assaulted or harassed a woman. He wept as he inexplicably detailed every confession to a horrified Libby. She recorded that he even said he had no idea why he was confessing. Needless to say, he was fired.

           The ladies watched as he packed up his things into a cardboard box and headed to the parking garage. His last drive out of the building. But before that, he had one last appointment. With James.