Personal Days Read Free

now she’ll take that Jackrub.
    Lots of tension in this room,
says Jack II, cracking his knuckles.
    The Original Jack
    We call him Jack II because there was a Jack before him, now known as the Original Jack. He was let go during the Firings a year ago and no one’s stayed in touch. This nickname-after-the-fact makes us think of him as a whimsical chap, always ready with a wisecrack or droll observation. Actually he was on the dull side and could be a total asshole.
    People drop off the radar once they leave the office. Week after week, you form these intense bonds without quite realizing it. All that time together adds up: muttering at the fax machine, making coffee runs. The elevator rides. The bitching about the speed of the elevator. The endlessly reprised joke, as it hits every floor:
Making local stops.
    You see co-workers more than you see your so-called friends, even more than you see your significant others, your spouses if you have them. None of us do at the moment, though there are reports that Jenny’s on the verge.
    Lizzie has a hunch that Crease was once married.
He has that I Was Married look,
she says.
The blank stare.
    We know each other well but only to a point.
    Instant folklore
    Laars looks gaunt these days, his floppy hair hanging limp around his temples. More and more he lies for a spell on the pungent but very comfortable maroon sofa he inherited from Jason.
I just need to close my eyes.
He confesses to spending his evenings nursing Scotch before his computer at home, Googling himself until the wee hours. There’s a person out there who shares the same name, incredibly enough. Person or persons. He’s found himself in Appalachian hiking e-gazettes, antique typewriter societies, and University of Alaska alumni newsletters.
I must destroy them,
he says.
    Worse is when he Googles former girlfriends, high school crushes, drunken flings from his semester abroad. There are more of all of these than you would imagine—indeed, than
he
imagined.
    He’s good-looking but not
that
good-looking,
says Pru. Lizzie thinks he gets a lot of mileage out of the floppy hair.
    Laars’s innumerable past dalliances trouble him and he publicly declares a vow of chastity. We could be imagining things but for a second Lizzie’s eyes droop with sadness as he says this.
    Alas, Laars is powerless to stop the hunt for figures from his past. He tries to devise searches that will sniff out maiden names and the like. But some people are gone for good, they have vanished, and the string of words he puts into the engine returns the most hilariously useless links: midwestern college soccer squads, science fair runners-up, family trees dipping into the eighteenth century.
    He does this all day at work now, too, in between complaining about the pencil sharpener and complaining about the air-conditioning. He’s found out a lot about his cousin’s ex-girlfriend from Spain. No doubt he’s Googled everyone in the office, uncovering secrets nestled in the thirty-fifth screen of results.
    Jack II says that when you feel a tingling in your fingers, it means someone’s Googling you. We take to this bit of instant folklore immediately.
    Friendship
    Jonah’s e-mail sign-off used to read
Sincerely,
then
Sincerely Yours,
then
Cheers.
He disapproves of Lizzie’s
Best,
let alone Jenny’s
Warm best.
He says it’s important to set the right tone with your tagline. For a while he used
Thank you in advance for your cooperation.
Lately every e-mail ends:
Your friend, Jonah.
    What if you’re not their friend?
asks Pru.

< 3 >
    The Californians!
    Our company was once its own thing, founded long ago by men with mustaches. After several decades it wound up, to its surprise, as the easternmost arm of an Omaha-based octopus. The tentacles eventually detached, or strangled each other, a few of them joining forces, most dying out altogether.
    Over time the name shrunk and mutated, changes captured in reams of old letterhead in the closet by Jonah’s