At Aetna in Middletown, Connecticut, they had cake for everyone’s birthday and every day was someone’s birthday. A bigass building in a maze of parking lots and looping drives off Interstate 91. Thousands of employees. Of course it was someone’s birthday. There was a fucking cake shop right outside the cafeteria for the express purpose of selling cakes to people in order to celebrate their coworkers’ birthdays. The manager would go down there, maybe an executive assistant. Order up a chocolate or vanilla cake and pick a color frosting. Personalize it please. Then at some point the work team would gather in one of the very many conference rooms and declare surprise to the birthday boy or girl, here’s your fucking cake, look at this beautiful cake. I can’t believe you got me a cake! Then we’d each get a slice on a wobbly Dixie plate and plastic-fork the mealy sponge and too-sweet vanilla creme into our unhungry gullets, everyone, everyone on the work team, even temps like me. Every single fucking day. Cake. Like it or not. You could not refuse the cake. To say no would be an affront to the celebrated one of course, but even worse to everybody else, all who dutifully choked down a wedge of angel food at ten fifteen in the morning on a Tuesday. It’d be a bigger violation of the place itself, not just this corporation that benevolently made this space within which we may toil and magically deposited funds into our banks on a semimonthly basis but the society, the structure, the institution, America in the fullness of reality and dreams. We were the army of  the nauseated, the reluctantly obese. On the verge of ecstasy and diabetes.

The Enterprise - 66

Alan had made an arrangement with some guy who had a little ad sales business or something, maybe an old friend from a past career. He occupied a desk to the side of our main room, set apart but audible and visible in the spacious loft. You could hear him on the phone, his booming adman’s voice. Sometimes saying fuck. He’d make small talk about the Yankees to me.

Forty-nine Russian miners trapped as water enters mine.

Tom and I went to a new-tech telecom provider in an industrial park in Cranbury, New Jersey. The main artery to the parking lots with its thin, grassy median. Uniform shrubbery surrounding low-lying buildings with names like Building 7 and Building 9. We sat in a series of conference rooms. Met some people. Gave a training. It began to rain and by the time Tom dropped me off at the PATH station in Hoboken it was pouring down hard.

Josh had scored us a deal doing automated customer support for a major cable company. I spent days copy-pasting FAQs from their website into our output code, testing, tweaking. The endeavor had a cold, prosaic quality that I liked. Its essential dreariness made it seem practical, vital even. Everyone needs to reset their password sometimes.

We walked the same gray path to lunch each day, to the nearest outpost of the giant sandwich chain. Past monthly parking lots, service entrances and loading docks, through passages that tunneled under scaffolds.

Through it all I kept working on the Product. It was still wildly popular, the object of hate, scorn, ridicule and come-ons from every adolescent in the country. The raw numbers dictated we couldn’t shut it down. Repeat visits, session length, uniques—all the metrics remained garish. Start-up common wisdom says you can’t ignore such numbers; you must respect them, even if you have no idea how to convert them into money. In desperation Alan decided fuck it, we’ll make it subscription-only. For $9.99 a year, the kids or whoever the fuck it was out there could curse and threaten the Product all they want. Everyone else would get shut out after one free month. I worked closely with Jacques and Julien from out West to button everything up codewise; we’d set a timer per user and shunt them into a death loop if they didn’t cough up the cash by day thirty.

Every day I came in and checked the running total. Ten dollars here, ten dollars there. It was in the low hundreds after a few weeks. Maybe it would turn a corner, reach some kind of tipping point. An avalanche of users suddenly terrified of losing their digital punching bag, or nemesis, or lover. A couple months went by. We totaled just over a grand. The interactions with users who’d just been informed—some after using the Product for years—that they only had one month left for free were brutal, exceptionally abusive. We pulled the plug. One day the Product said nothing more about money or subscriptions and no one was ever locked out again and life went on.

I was at work texting with a friend back home and he let it be known our other friend’s in a bad way. He has some kind of complication related to his Lyme disease medication, a neuropathy, a numbness in the arms and legs. The cure is worse than the disease. And plus his dad is dying. I got in a group chat with some others, what’s going on? It was unclear to me whether he was waiting to take steroids that would cure him or getting off of steroids that would kill him. There was talk of a special diet and botanicals. He may be in the hands of hippie witch doctors, I don’t know. I sighed and returned to my workflow dashboard.

The Enterprise - 64

I normally took the 1 or the 9 from Penn Station but they weren’t running so I took the C. When I walked by the 1-9 station on Canal the entrance was yellow-taped and surrounded by emergency vehicles and personnel: cops, firemen, EMTs, walkie-talkies babbling in static. An empty stretcher sat on the sidewalk. At work our new office manager, Caitlyn, instant messaged me to ask if I’d been on the train with the poison scare. She sent me an article about it. Evidently a passenger had reported a substance under the seats resembling wet sugar.

I was out with Steve, going from one bar to another, when Leeane called. She sounded like she’d been crying. She said she was in bed reading. We talked about getting together sometime and she said she’d been way busy with class. 

“And thing is, I’m sort of seeing someone now.”

“Oh OK.”

"I'm not sure how it's working out. He has a six-year-old girl."

She said this and that, she was ambivalent, he was always spending time with his kid. And plus she had drawing class all summer and it was a bitch. I said we could get together and just hang out sometime.

"That would be cool. I want the opinion of a third party," she said. She sniffled.

"Are you OK?"

"Yeah, just you know, a heavy day."

"Nothing really bad heavy?"

"No no. Not at all. Just my drawing class is so hard. And it occurred to me: I'm going to have to be dealing with this all my life."

My brother emailed me to inform me in solemn and oddly formal terms that our grandmother had died. He described the event as “no doubt a blessing,” she having declined the way grandmothers do. I thought of Doctor Robertson, her shrink for many decades, the primary relationship in her life since the premature death of her husband. What they talked about nobody knew. Now nobody would. Nothing ever seemed to change in her psyche—her passive aggression, her neediness, her state of denial. Yet with her kids grown up and gone her treatment at his hands became her life’s work. Her masterpiece. His too, maybe. An invisible legacy. Wonder how he took the news.

When the power went out I thought this is it, they got us again. But deeper this time, not in office buildings but in the place where electrons move through copper wire. We got beers and hung out on the fire escape to watch the sun go down into a rosy haze. I called my mom in Paris. It wasn’t terrorism, she laughed. Just a fuckup somewhere that blacked out the Eastern Seaboard.

The Enterprise - 62

Leanne was an art student at Pratt. We met up in a studio where she was working on a massive project, a maze of undulating wood and PVC. She explained how the boards were softened and shaped, a thing that seemed impossible to me. Her sculpture was beautiful and utterly impractical. It was unclear to me how it might be displayed, let alone consumed. I ran my fingers along the smooth, curved plywood. Later we went to her dorm on Dekalb and drank and ordered out and watched an Italian art film on VHS set in a desolate industrial hellscape.

Every day at about five o’clock cars would line up along Canal to leave Manhattan through the Holland Tunnel. The drivers honked and cursed along the way. If it started to sound crazy we’d get up and peer out the window. I saw an enraged man leave his car with something in his hand and stride with purpose.

“What’s he got? What’s he holding?” I said.

“I don’t know. Something that fits nicely in his fist,” said Tom.

The man hurled the object at the car ahead of him. It made a dull sound against the rear windshield and disintegrated pitiably into foamy little fragments that fell into the street.

“It’s a muffin,” I declared. “It’s a blueberry muffin.”

Sooner or later the traffic cops appeared with bullhorns, bellowing commands like “You! Pull over!” Once I heard the squawking voice say, “I don’t care.” The honks went quiet after that.

Sitting in the office, obsessively refreshing the workstream. Empty, empty, empty. Trying to waste time. The same old, bank balances, stock quotes, tired pointless shit. Even the news God forbid. And now this. Walking up and down the hallways, the tight-lipped smile at those you don’t know, the hey and knowing look to those you do. I go to the fridge in the kitchen area and take a Diet Pepsi from the rows upon rows of them. Like in a corner store you have to reach in back for the cold ones. Downstairs right by the door workmen are jackhammering, little chips of sidewalk fly past the flimsy safety tape to sully the pants and skirts of passersby.

The Entreprise - 60

At night more than ever I sought oblivion. At the time I would have called it freedom. 

Pam had a late-summer roof party and I got wasted and went to McDonald’s and got on the bus back uptown, drifted off and woke up at 120th and Adam Clayton Boulevard. Walking back down in the streetlights and the moonlight was like a dream of old New York. Beautiful buildings seemingly intact, preserved not by renovation but by some benign force. Walls bathed in yellow glow. Street life here and there, people on stoops, on the sidewalk in little groups.

Before long the steam pipes hissed and gurgled to signal the changing of the seasons. Alan said he got a deal on a new office space downtown by the river. We assumed this really meant the end. A skeleton crew to guide the enterprise into a quiet, thrifty failure in a cramped space in a bad part of town. Except it wasn’t a bad part of town when you think about it. The top of Tribeca, on the corner of Greenwich and Canal. In any other city the blocks and blocks of warehouses and secondhand shops would mean you got lost on the wrong side of the tracks. Here it was where movie stars renovated industrial spaces into massive homes. The kind of real estate that rich people buy even though it’s in a weird old building that was configured for button sewing or shoe manufacture. They pay whatever for it, they put up with the raw walls and haphazardly situated columns. The hideously high ceilings. The rich have the alchemical ability to transform these very drawbacks and inconveniences into symbols of status and privilege. Look at my gigantic loft with the renovated period flooring. The floor above us was the home of a jeweler. I recognized the name of my ophthalmologist on the buzzer in the lobby. He occupied the floor below us with his young family. Our space too was vast. Everyone got a desk by a window. There was a kitchen and a separate room with a mattress on the floor should anyone have a need for one reason or another. Andre set to work repairing ethernet cables and setting up the modem. Almost like we had a purpose.

Each morning I walked west down Canal from the station. Through Chinatown, past the watercolor calligraphers, the shops of knockoffs. The street was intimate; a distinct, self-sustaining community. A woman swept dust out of her store and returned the dustpan and broom to a store a few doors down. Businesses on top of each other and you don’t know what to buy or who to buy it from but hang around a while and someone’ll sell you something. Shops with “electronics” and “audio” in their names appeared to have nothing but fake shoes and bags.

Mostly we hung out and went out for long, drinky lunches, the Argentine place down Greenwich or the Ear Bar most of the time, somewhere else if we got bored. If Alan wasn’t around we’d play guitar and sing. Erupt in mad fits of cursing. But it probably wouldn’t have mattered if he was around. One day I made a point to remember this time forever, to realize life would never be the same again, so weird and wonderful. It was hard, maybe impossible, to grasp it in the moment. But there’d come a day I’d look back and know.

The Enterprise - 59

Alan flew out West, the new king consolidating power across the farthest reaches of his realm. He organized a video link to address the entire company with Bill by his side. The images were grainy and the audio cut in and out but the job was done: a show of unity, of authority. He’d extended a bridge loan to cover expenses, he explained. Someone who shall not be named, but didn’t need to be, had, according to Alan, suggested asking us to forgo our pay. Alan intimated that he was arrogant enough to assume we’d all comply. There’s no way I’d ask any of you to do that. The winner writes the story.

Still changes had to be made. The bloodbath swept away my boss Ed and Mr. Fun. Julie, Peter, Steve and Jimmy. David. Anyone in any kind of soft role like marketing—gone. In Sunnyvale the hard skilled were not exempt. Some stayed, some went. Many of these people had qualifications and expertise far beyond my own. That’s what I thought anyway.

I was among the lucky ones.

Alan hired a bright young man named Josh to handle biz dev. He’d been at Goldman Sachs but hated it. Even with the piles of money he hated it. He was that sort of person. Earnest, idealistic. Looking for a purpose. Eager for a challenge. He was exactly the sort of tireless and dedicated worker you’d want if you needed to save your company.

It was rumored that part of his compensation consisted of extraneous office furniture.

Josh had been given a specific task: cold call giant corporations and try to sell the Product as a customer service solution. If there was no money in the curses and insults of twelve-year-olds, maybe there was in online shoppers whose packages were delayed or cable subscribers who’d forgotten their passwords. This made sense to me. The prosaic nature of the proposition, the dreariness of it, stood in contrast to the world-changing dreams of transforming humankind’s relationship to information. This is how money is made, I thought. This is how jobs are kept and retirement accounts funded: by selling enterprise customers on potential reductions to their overhead of tenths, maybe hundredths, of one percent. Not by declaring victory and throwing candy in the air. Of course. Of course it isn’t easy. Of course it isn’t fun. There was cold, grim satisfaction in this new direction. Except for one thing: no one was buying.

The Enterprise - 58

The following morning an office-wide email awaited us in our inboxes. It might have been titled About last night. The moment you saw it there you knew it had to be there. Though a moment ago you had no idea. Of course. There it was. In the workplace context such a disturbance had to be noted, explained, atoned for even. Mommy and Daddy had a fight and the kids had to be reassured, even if with lies. Hindsight helps me note that the author of such an email must be the loser of the fight. The one who’s reassuring himself as much as anybody else. Things were said last night. Unfortunately many of you heard them. We apologize for this. We. We apologize. The loser adopting the first person plural, doing the dirty work of contrition on behalf of both. You could imagine an unspoken understanding, a sort of telepathy arising from the strange intimacy of a bitter and furious dispute: You’re going to send the email, motherfucker. And so he did.

And so who was the loser? Sam. Could you guess?

Alan and I may have disagreements about day-to-day decisions but that’s only because we are both so passionate about the Product and the future of the Enterprise. Blah-blah-blah, said the voice in our heads. You could almost hear it in unison as we all read the same words. Blah-blah-blah. The kids know when they’re being patronized. Rest assured we are on solid ground and exploring opportunities to grow our business. We are on shaky ground. There are no opportunities.

And that was the end of Sam.

The Enterprise - 57

Alan was among those spectral figures who are spoken of in deferential, even fearful tones, who see you as a box in the org chart with a salary below your name though you don’t see them at all, unless you did that one day they left the elevator and you were going in, you’ll never know, but they’re always hovering, watching, paying the bill for the candy, paying the bill for the heat: the VC guys.

For years I’d heard of him like a rumor. Now he was here.

Like a conquering king, he gathered us round the back of the office to declare himself the new CEO. He paced a little back and forth and spoke with a lisp that made him spit a little. In people like me such an impediment would make us tremble with shame and self-loathing; in him it seemed a mark of authority. He introduced himself, saying some of you know me, some of you don’t. He was from the VC firm, he said—SkyClimber.

“You’ve all been pretty patient and I think you’ve put up with a lot, really, honestly I do,” he said. “I think you deserve for some changes to be made.”

Alan delivered a kind of cynic’s motivational speech—one that took into account the absurdity of our industry, the fruitlessness of our efforts to date, the uncertainty of success. Promises remained vague and threats unspoken. But somehow at the end of it we didn’t feel too bad. Maybe even better.

In the days and weeks thereafter things did change. Gradually, without fanfare. I overheard Dennis and Peter chatting at Peter’s desk as I walked by. Dennis seemed shorter to me than usual.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s just, it’s time, you know,” said Dennis.

“Ah, OK,” Peter replied awkwardly.

“Things are just getting. Yeah.”

“OK.”

“You know, too…”

“Yeah, too…”

“Too… too. Too too!” Dennis concluded with a wan smile.

And that was the end of Dennis.

One evening at about six or seven, the office half empty, I sat working on code when shouting erupted from the conference room. Alan and Sam. It was about priorities, the future of the company, big-picture stuff. But they insulted each other venomously. One would assert and the other would protest NO! NO! NO! As though something deeply, personally offensive had been proposed. They went around in circles like this, stepping all over each other with ever louder interjections.

It was still going on when I left.

Though the hallways at work are now quite isolated I had that feeling I sometimes get that someone’s following me, watching me. Not sure if it was true. When that happens I feel a hitch in my step, provoked by a great self-consciousness—akin to hearing the sound of your own voice on a recording. I sound wrong, I walk wrong. It must be obvious to everyone.

There was a man on the snowy roof across Houston Street from where I work this morning. I saw him scampering away from the edge with something in his hand, a rectangular object, like a folded-up newspaper, but not a folded-up newspaper.

Of course I imagined him falling off. It was just a story up, behind a big sign for the bar down below, the bar where we always went for company events. But if he fell surely he’d break a leg, break his neck. I’d gasp in horror and my coworkers would scramble to the window to see. Everyone wants to see someone writhing in pain on the sidewalk for one reason or another.

But he made it across the roof and onto another and into a door and down a roof hatch. To warmth and safety.

Having curious fantasies, daydreams, at work that while I’m focused on my screen someone will walk up from behind me and punch me hard in the back of the head. This act will be outrageous, of course—others will look in horror, will intercede to help me, to confront my attacker. But on a certain level it will also be deserved.

I awoke with a groan from the dreadful dreams I’d had, not nightmares, but dreams about work—a colleague staying at our apartment for some reason. Urgent work that needed to get done, that wasn’t getting done, that couldn’t get done. That I had to do.

I had a flash sitting at work in the middle of the day, I don’t know why. I saw the intersection of two country roads we used to pass a lot when I was a kid. It was a bit far from home, deep in the beautiful, monotonous landscape of Connecticut farmland that stretched all around us. It was about halfway to somewhere we used to go—a bookstore, a restaurant, friends of my parents, I don’t know. I measured our trip there by the two pieces before and after it for some reason. An ordinary, winding little road branching off a bigger, straighter one, in the hazy golden light of an autumn afternoon. There was nothing remarkable about it or the way it made me feel but I remember it like it was a dream.

I like when the project manager reviews the key dates and they’re deep into the future, dates like February 9, or April 27, far away but specific, with benchmarks and deliverables associated. It feels like we have lots of time, but that’s not really it. We’re connected to a point in the future. A time when god knows what will be going on in the world, but there we are, gathered safe and sound again on the MS Project timeline. What it really means is that we believe we’re going to survive.

The Enterprise - 55

In my dream Bill was still in charge of the office out west, all these years later. The place was dilapidated now, the chairs ratty, computer parts and cables disordered everywhere.

But he was still running the Product. And some of the French guys were still around, tweaking the algorithms. Their determination was poignant—heroic, even. Still there was no plan. No viable path to profitability. But there was hope.

And I wanted to help. I wished I could help.

I like the stripes on the water pipes in the stairwell at work. And the fire hoses that say Made in Canada. Sometimes these are the only things I notice in an eight-hour day.

On the way in today the train slowed to a crawl. Through my earbuds I half-heard the usual catchall explanations: train traffic ahead, signal malfunction. Then through the window there was an MTA worker in his hardhat and safety orange vest. He was perched in the dark realm beside the track, on some kind of ledge above the trash and debris, braced against whatever he could find so he wouldn’t fall. Then there was another, then another. Just workers in the tunnel on a Monday morning, getting out the way of the train.

There’s a number 4 scratched in the gray-painted wall at the fourth-floor landing of the stairwell at my work. Someone must have done it with a key.

A crazy woman sat near me on the train home. She was angry, agitated. At someone, I thought, but then it appeared it as at no one at all. I tried to understand her. But there was no sense to what she was saying, just patterns. She looped the same words and phrases over and over again, in slightly different ways: white people, garbage, smell, cemetery, white children, get out, disgusting, white soul, white face.

The Crazy That Is Jennifer

Overheard conversation in the break room this morning, between two women:

“You’re here!”

“It’s not snowing!”

“I know—”

“I just didn’t, you know, I didn’t want to spend another day in my apartment.”

“I know.” She begins to back away and turn around. “So come over when you have something ready—”

“Yeah, I’ve got a call at ten. I’ll come over after and we can discuss—”

“Great.”

“You know. The crazy that is Jennifer.”