The Cubicle Next Door Read Online Free Page A

morning to exert the required level of self-control. To call the flight suit a uniform is a misnomer. Uniform implies that a person needs to exhibit some sort of grooming in order to wear it. Flight suits are the military equivalent of sweat suits. They never have to be ironed, never have to be starched. You could hypothetically just roll out of bed, hop into one, and zip it up. They look like something a garbage collector would wear. An olive green coverall garment with elastic at the back of the waist meant to protect whatever is worn underneath. In fact, pilots call the suits “bags.”
    And they are in every sense of the word.
    When Joe said he was wearing his purse, he wasn’t kidding. There are pockets of assorted sizes running up and down the suit. Pockets on the arms, on the chest, on the legs. People hide their hats in there. Pens, pencils, wallets.
    “I hate to tell you this, Joe, but it’s summer. You might want to change purses. I’m thinking white. Then you could moonlight as a hazardous waste collector.”
    He sent a half smile in my direction before he rounded the cubicle wall into his office. I heard the paper bag thunk down onto his desk.
    “I know you’re not opening that bag anywhere near the computer.”
    “Yours or mine?”
    You know, it’s pretty disgusting to have to clean a keyboard. If people ever bothered to do it themselves, then I could almost guarantee they’d never eat hunched over their computer again.
    If you really want to gross yourself out, take a computer mouse, the old kind with a tracking ball, open up the bottom and tap the ball into your hand. Yeah. That’s what I’m talking about.
    “Hey, your good luck wish worked. I found a house.”
    “Where?”
    “Manitou Springs.”
    Luck or misfortune? Whatever it was, he had chosen my town to live in: Manitou Springs. With a population of 4500, we were practically neighbors.
    “You can’t live in Manitou Springs!” In thinking about Joe, not that I had done it very often, I had pegged him as a Gleneagle or Black Forest kind of guy. Gleneagle, one of the more prestigious and pricey neighborhoods north of Colorado Springs, seemed just his style. I would have guessed he’d have bought into one of the proliferating townhome projects that kept sliding down the hill, ever-closer to the interstate.
    I heard his fingers pause on his keyboard. They began typing again. “Why not?”
    Because it’s my town! “Because.”
    “You’re not my mother, so ‘because I said so’ is not an acceptable answer.”
    “You’re not the type.”
    “What? I’m not tall, dark, and handsome? No, wait. I am.”
    “Manitou is eclectic. Artsy. It’s a very tight-knit community.” And I don’t want to have to worry I’ll run into you every time I turn a corner.
    “Then I’ll just have to put on my beret and set up an easel in Memorial Park. Think I should buy a pipe too?”
    “Not that kind of artsy. Hippie artsy.”
    I heard his chair wheels cross the plastic floor mat and then squeak across the carpet. Joe stuck his head around the wall. “You’re talking tie-dye and Birkenstocks, not smoking jackets and Pavarotti?”
    “Exactly. People who enjoy coffin races and public pajama parties and host festivals for professional bubble blowers. You don’t want to hang out with people like that.”
    “Maybe I do…and maybe I don’t. But I have to do something with myself for the next two years until I can get back on flight status. And the house needs a lot of work. Don’t worry. I won’t crash your little party.”
    Don’t worry? “But there’s all the New Age people, and crystal shops, and metaphysical bookstores. You don’t seem like you’re into that sort of thing.”
    He looked at me, the twinkle absent from his eyes. “Listen, if I have to be here, then at least I can try to have some fun. Besides, in Manitou, I can stroll through the middle of town, which from my place I can actually walk to, and get a latte, buy a dulcimer, or