The Floater
by Kevin Fisher

Justin believes he can do all of our jobs better than we can, so he rarely hires anyone at our tiny tech company. Sara and I are the only employees. Everyone else, like Sylvia, is a temp. Sylvia floats, doing admin jobs for all of us. She has lasted more weeks than most, but some people want her gone. Sylvia doesn’t lie, steal, or come in late or lit. She isn’t even bad at her job, but she enjoys her little mistakes a bit too much. She enjoys the rushing around, the raised voices, and the brutal honesty of an office post-mortem. She really just enjoys apologizing. She moves from cubicle to cubicle quietly apologizing, and for those too busy to hear a verbal mea culpa, she leaves a beautiful cursive note in a cheerful pastel Sharpie.

Sylvia learns any detail about you, like that you have children from a failed marriage, an ailing incontinent dog, an erratic exercise and diet regimen, or, in my case, food allergies, and she will pepper you with questions across the shared airspace of our office. One day, when I cannot breathe after eating a grain salad Sylvia ordered for me, she learns I am allergic to walnuts. After this she checks my lunch each day. At our front door, before a clearly impatient delivery person, she methodically unwraps and examines my lunch order. She pokes around with a fork before giving her approval. She often finds walnuts. Sometimes, strangely, in a cheddar cheese sandwich or a green smoothie. I assume she puts walnuts in my food for the pure drama of finding them but don’t know how she does it, so I keep this to myself.

Justin has a terrifying dog, Vulcan, which he brings to the office because, he says, “it relaxes me to order someone to heel.” Sylvia, of course, asks him Vulcan questions. How’s she liking the warm weather? Or how does she like living in his apartment on the fortieth floor? And Sylvia brings in dog treats. Bones. Very large bones. So large Justin brings them to a butcher to have them identified.

Sylvia’s cubicle has a picture of a cat she’s rescued that needs a home. She asks me if I’m allergic to cats since I am allergic to nuts. “No,” I tell her quickly. I am allergic to cats, but I don’t want anything else put in my lunch.

People want Sylvia gone. A decision comes after Sylvia brings in banana bread for us and leaves it at a meeting. After she leaves we eat the bread. It’s delicious but Sara says Sylvia’s behavior is “inappropriate domesticity.”

We are a small company, and we don’t have an HR person to fire people. Justin usually does it. He likes to. Justin thinks himself a hard man because he sends back food at restaurants. I tell Justin I’ll do it. I think it will be easier for her. Justin will just toy with her. He tells us he never gets telephone solicitations. He says a few of them called him and the word got around and he’s on their no-call list. At his last company Justin locked people out when they downsized. People would come to work, their keycards wouldn’t work, and the receptionist was told to pretend not to know them. I volunteer to Justin to “let her go,” I say like she’s the mouse I found in the staff kitchen I’m taking to a park for a better life among her own.

Justin says I won’t be able to. It is true that a few times I let people go, and they missed the point altogether. I gave them a talk, and they went back to their desk, not understanding they had been let go. They had to be re-fired by Justin. I do wonder if I can do it. When I go to the natural history museum, I know the dinosaur I am. I am the chubby leaf-eater, not the tall ones with rows of teeth.

“You wanted to see me?” Sylvia stands, swaying, in the middle of my cubicle opening the next morning. She is not prone to the elegant peering around the corner of a cubicle to ask a question. Sylvia always blocks an entrance.

“Just finishing up something,” I say as Sylvia sits in the chair across the desk from me. “Sit down,” I say before looking up. Sensing she was premature, she stands halfway up and then sits down again.

“Delicious banana bread,” I say.

Her face instantly relaxes, thinking, I assume, Oh, cool, this is about the banana bread. “Have you thought about the cccaaattt?” she asks with a purr.

“Yes. But later,” I shoot back, alert that she will ever try to draw me from my purpose.

I decide to try something ambitious. Can I let her go and help her find her way too? Was she aware of how she was seen? I say, “Sylvia? Let me give you some career advice.”

“Career advice?” Sylvia understands this is not good. She swallows visibly.

“You make people nervous.”

She blinks. I see this idea confuses her. “I make people…nervous?”

“You’re too friendly for our office. But maybe you’d do well with the public.”

“The public?” she repeats. “You mean like strangers?”

“Yes.” I nod. “You would do very well with strangers.” I wish someone had done this for me, I think. Told me my truth.

She says immediately, “Can you help me be less friendly?”

I am ready for this. “That wouldn’t be you. We’d know you were pretending.” I pause to let her take that in, and then, “I’m sorry. We have to let you go.” I’d bought a small, portable set of scented paper tissues, despite their larger per-unit price, for just this purpose. I pull them out as she processes.

“Sylvia? Are you alright?” I nudge the unopened tissues toward her. I’d thought the hardest about this moment, but in the end, “Are you alright?” was all I had. Her likely responses when I practiced this had been “No” or “What do you think?” and/or hideous wailing and garment-rending.

But instead Sylvia stands, smiles, and says, “Does this mean you don’t want the cat?”

Unprepared for this, I say, “No. No. I might.” I can’t reject her and the cat in the same moment.

She grabs her bag and coat and walks out of the office. That was it. She was gone.

Because no one else does it, I collect her personals from her cubicle that morning. She left papers, a company cup, and a few pictures of cats. I am relieved to find no NRA membership or photos in camouflage gear. I put everything in a box and mail it all to her address from the company directory.

Justin is clearly upset I’d pulled it off. Next day he sulks until a gray, fluffy cat arrives for me in a carrier. My dismay cheers Justin up. I take the cat home, planning to return her to Sylvia in the morning. I down a fist of antihistamines. That night I let the cat out on my tiny balcony to give both of us a break. I get a call in the morning from Blake, a neighbor on the ground floor. Sylvia’s cat fell off the balcony, she tells me, but is still alive and with her at the vet. Blake hisses at me when I meet her at the vet, “New cats are all flight risks. You would be too if someone brought you home in a cage.”

The cat is not well. A woman sits next to me at the vet as I wait with her dog, which is barking nonstop. She smiles at me and says, “I know it’s loud but I can’t tell him to stop.” She continues sotto voce, so I suppose the dog doesn’t hear, “That will only encourage him.”

The vet sends me and the cat to an animal hospital downtown. I sit in the ER with the other humans all waiting solemnly in their own worlds. Maybe it’s not so bad, I think, but they take their time. After two hours a vet comes out to tell me the cat has everything wrong with it that can be wrong. They can operate for many thousands of dollars but with no real likelihood of success. They ask me what I want them to do. I hesitate for a moment out of respect for the cat, even though I know what I will do. In the end I’m the only one leaving without their animal. I’m the only one who left the animal’s name blank when I signed her in. Sylvia’s cat spent the last hours of its life with someone who didn’t want her and who opened a balcony door to her demise. Me.

Sylvia’s personals box comes back to the office a few days later during the bio-break in the middle of a client presentation. Undeliverable after several tries, the box says. I try calling and texting Sylvia but no answer. I call the delivery service to ask what “undeliverable” means. I’m told it means moved, wrong address, or just doesn’t ever answer the door. “Doesn’t ever answer the door” worries me the most. I decide to go see. I leave work as Justin gives me a wild-eyed look and waves me in to the client meeting. “Get. Back. In. Here,” he shouts.

Sylvia’s on a buzzer at the address, so I know “undeliverable” means “doesn’t answer the door.” I tap the buzzer. And then, after a minute, for longer. Finally I hear the door buzz and open but no voice. I enter the hallway and climb the stairs. I knock at her door and wait, listening for signs of movement. I hear nothing but then the sound of the latch. Sylvia opens the door wide with a questioning look. I hold up the box of her personal items. “I brought you your personals.”

“Oh. I don’t need any of that stuff.” She smiles and she stands back to let me come in. I hadn’t planned on coming in, but Sylvia isn’t taking the package. “How’d did you even get here?” she says after I’m in.

“I drove here,” I say.

“You drove here in your car for me?” she says.

“Yes. I guess I did,” I say with a little unintended pride. “I wanted to see how you were.” I look around. I am expecting a sadness. I fear tables littered with empty vodka and prescription bottles. But there’s clear, bright light from her third-floor window, a low table, some beanbag chairs, mats, and a steaming pot of tea.

“How’s our cat?” she asks as she offers me a cup of tea.

I freeze. “Fine,” I say automatically. And why tell her at all? Which, I think, is what Justin would say, or would he say instead, “Dead and you made me waste an evening at the vet”?

“Well, maybe not fine,” I say in a burst of breath. “I let her out on the balcony and she fell.”

She gulps a deep breath but says, “You did what you were capable of,” which is both redemption and more damning than fury.

I fall into one of the beanbags and drink my tea in silence. It is very good tea and I feel better. I decide to get some on my way back to the office. There are so many things I need to feel better about.

I get up to leave and blurt out, “Sylvia, I want you to come back to work.” I think Sylvia can just be another person in the end I failed to let go. I can talk to the others. Maybe my problem was always ambivalence, not incompetence.

She shakes her head no. “I tried,” she says.

I get back to my office after hours. My code doesn’t work. I must be fired too. Justin has locked me out but forgets that I also know how to reset the codes. I sit down at my desk and see a sandwich left on my desk. Only this time I take the walnut out myself.