We were already at a loss — tired and scared and confused — when they grabbed Harrison by the collar, sharp enough we could hear the seams of his shirt rip, and then stood him up and then shot him in the head. They did this and we wilted, the bunch of us, like lilies in high heat. Some of us screamed or sobbed, but the rest of us looked on in silent shock.
Then they shuffled us out of the conference room, where they’d been holding us, and into a smaller office — Laura’s — which made Laura feel better at first, to be in a familiar setting, until one of us reminded her that she’d probably die there, and while a lot of us used to joke about how we spent so much of our time at work we’d probably die at our desks, too, none of us — Laura least of all — liked how this joke was playing out in real life.
All of us were frightened at this point but a lot of us were confused, too. A lot of us still thought that we were nothing more than agents for an exclusive travel concern catering to the ultra-rich and famous and didn’t know that our jobs, our physical bodies, even, were a cover for what really went on here, went on downstairs, nearly a mile below us. When we split into two factions — those who wanted to devise a plan of escape or attack and those of us willing to wait until they let us go or shot us like they shot Harrison, whichever came first — we were also split, though not all of us realized it, by what we knew and what we didn’t know. Those of us who knew the truth about our jobs, about the travel agency and the real agency below us, were willing to wait. Maybe we didn’t know exactly what was in store for us, but we had a good general idea, and for us, knowing what we were up against, there seemed to be little else to do but to wait. While one half of us were thinking about our families, our friends, and what we were going to do when we got out of there, the other half were wondering how long it would be, really, before they shot us all or simply piped some noxious gas into Laura’s office through the vent.
Were thinking, in other words, only of ourselves, and how long we had to be ourselves.
Still. We didn’t do anything to stop those of us who wanted to escape. In fact, we decided, why not just tell them the truth? We would have wanted to know, right, that the men we were fighting against were part of some dark, evil force bent on the total destruction of the planet and all its innocent peoples, that if we were going to die, we were going to die for something important, something bigger than us. Sure, we had been sworn to secrecy, but we decided in the end, What’s the harm?
What’s the harm in telling them? What’s the harm in planning our escape?
We’ll probably be shot anyway. Might as well be shot for planning a foolhardy and imperfect escape as for anything else, right?
We made an announcement. Those who knew, who maybe were still uncertain about the rightness of what we were doing, shuffled uncomfortably, refused to make eye contact. The others, well, they laughed, they clapped their hands together like we’d just made a funny joke, said, “You’re funny. Why didn’t I know how funny you are?” And that was that. Maybe they believed us, maybe they thought we were keeping things light, keeping spirits up. Regardless, we got to work.
We ransacked Laura’s desk and cabinets and collected three boxes of paper clips; a number of dull pencils; two staplers; a gauzy blue-colored rock Laura used as a paperweight; two pair of scissors, one of which we noticed she had stolen from Larry in accounting; and a key-ring pepper-spray canister.
We considered the paper clips and made a joke about chewing gum and MacGyver, but then we were stumped.
Someone picked up the pepper spray and tapped the nozzle, which must have broken after so many years bouncing around inside Laura’s desk, and a wide expanse of pepper water spat out in all directions, and for a moment, we were coughing and wheezing, our eyes were red and blurred by tears, and we swore at whoever used the goddamn pepper spray, but the swearing, our anger, didn’t last. We were too spent to shout or swear or rail for too long.
Too spent from our morning commutes and the drudgery of booking yearly world tours for snarky, overprivileged douchebags who owned yachts big enough to contain every one of the possessions we’d crammed into our shitty apartments in Queens. Too spent from the pain in our lower backs and the false promise of lumbar support, from the soreness in our hands, the carpal tunnel syndrome that made it impossible to open mayonnaise jars, and from, finally, this. This last worst insult. Not just the men in black with their guns and their shoving and pushing, the bullet through Harrison’s skull, the strong urge to piss ourselves, the sore dryness of our throats, the drips of sweat running down our backs to pool at the waistbands of our underwear, the meager tools for our escape, the small chance that we’d make it out of this alive. Too spent from not just all of this but now the pepper spray, too, which had left us winded and undone, and all discussion of escape fell away as we sat in a huddle, gasping and rubbing our eyes.
They had taken away our cell phones, our watches, too, and shot the crap out of Laura’s computer, and for an excruciating eternity, none of us knew what time it was. Then Milo remembered his pedometer, which was surreptitiously clipped to the inside of his belt, and which doubled as a watch. What was more surprising than the fact that Milo’s pedometer was overlooked was that Milo, a truly fat fuck, had a pedometer at all, the poor thing clipped inside his pants — who knew he could have fit anything inside his pants? — and he was proud of it, we could tell, even though we made him explain what it was a couple of times and why he had it. We asked him, What time is it? and Milo looked at the pedometer and then he shook it and he pressed a couple of buttons and we figured he’d never really used the thing, figured it had been giving him false readings this whole time because he hadn’t set it up, had just clipped it to himself and figured that was that, but then he let out this deep, heavy sigh.
It’s five till, Milo said, and, groaning, we demanded, Five till what, asshole? and he sighed again and said, Ten, and we were dumbfounded.
Hours had passed, we had thought. Many, many hours must have passed. We knew this, were certain of this. Our stomachs growled because we’d missed not just lunch but that break in the middle of the afternoon that we all looked forward to when we sent Jenny across the street to pick up some coffees and bags of chips. It had to have been late afternoon, at least. We were sleepy and worn out because the day was coming to a close, and we’d been thinking to ourselves, What will our families think, what will our friends around the city think when we don’t show up at home, at that great little bar in Red Hook, at our dinner date; we had been thinking, When will demands be made, what will the nightly news cover about us, when will our loved ones receive the phone calls asking for the interesting details of our lives, for recent photos?
But no. It had only been forty-five minutes and already we’d grown restless and irritable, and it would be hours and hours still before anyone missed us, before anyone even noticed we were gone.
Holly suggested we play a game, to pass the time better. The rest of us ignored her or made faces behind her back. We considered the idea of escape again, and with nothing better to do, no recourse, no e-mail or Internet or smartphones to pass the time with, with only each other and nothing much in common — how many more times would we have to listen to Carl go on about the square-dancing class he’d started taking in Bushwick, really? — even those of us who had been against planning an escape were on board now, and with the earnest resolve of the truly desperate.
William took charge because he was that guy, the guy who took charge but to whom no one paid the slightest attention.