That Five Percent

That Five Percent

  A short story published by Heather Douglass

  Copyright 2013 Heather Douglass

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  THAT FIVE PERCENT

  New girl, new girl. It always adds a unique layer to the atmosphere in an office when someone arrives for their first working day. What with Hyde’s crimson aura, the blue fug over Belljar, the steamy shades of ochre from the creative boys and my own trailing cloud of silver, we couldn’t wait to see what color Miss. Jones would contribute.

  But I had my first doubts from the moment she appeared at my door.

  “Mr. Hatter?” she asked.

  “The same,” I replied, and tipped my lampshade.

  “I’m Miss Jones. I reported to Security as your letter asked,” she said, “but I couldn’t get anyone to speak to me.”

  In my peripheral vision, I saw Belljar roll his eyes at Hyde. To set them the right example I clasped my hands and said, “No, Miss Jones, they won’t. They won’t respond at all. They shouldn’t even be interested.”

  “Oh,” she said. "It’s just that I got worried, and kept ringing the bell for attention.”

  A small shock, the kind you feel when a visiting foreigner breaches a minor point of etiquette, zapped me under the ribs. But I winked at Miss Jones five times with each eye so as not to make her uncomfortable.

  “Never mind,” I said, “you’ll soon get used to them. Now, let me introduce you to everyone.”

  I took her to see the creative boys first. They were huddled round the saliva cooler and I thought it gave a friendly impression.

  “Bedlam, Crowthorne, King George,” I interrupted them. "I want you to meet our new team member, Miss Jones.”

  “Please,” she said, “call me Anne.”

  There was a buzzy, hot-faced silence. Crowthorne had just taken a swallow from his paper cup and all but spat it out. The others stared at me as if to ask, ‘can we say that at work?’

  I had to set the example. “Yes,” I said, “Anne. Say hello to Anne, Bedlam.”

  “Hello, hello,” he replied, blushing.

  “Hello Anne,” I pressed him.

  But it embarrassed him so much he could only manage ‘Unn’. Hyde and Belljar devised their own mispronunciations. I was not happy but decided that only time and familiarity could deal with the problem. Smiling, I showed Anne where she would sit and left her with Hyde to order any stationery she needed.

  But she was waiting in my office when I arrived the next day.

  “Miss Jones?” I spoke through my pinched nose to show my concern. This made her mouth squirm.

  “It’s about my workspace,” she said.

  “What about it?”

  “Shouldn’t I have a desk?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Desk,” she repeated.

  “Is it too small?”

  “It’s a fridge.”

  I must admit I frowned. Terrible abandonment of my unbreakable demeanor, but it wasn’t easy to believe that what she said was actually what she said.

  “Belljar did feel I ought to get you the larger model,” I said. “You know, with the white drawers on the bottom and the little racks on top for all your filing.”

  “Mr. Hatter,” she said, “my desk is a fridge freezer with the door removed.”

  Well there it was. Now what is a manager to do?

  “Miss Jones,…” I began.

  “Anne.”

  “Anne,” I said after swallowing, “your desk is a desk. We ordered it from a desk catalogue.”

  “It’s a fridge!”

  And so it went on. At thirty-four hundred hours we had to agree to disagree, because she was due for a training session with King George. Then I went to have a quiet word with Belljar, to suggest that we ring our supplier and ask for the larger model with white drawers.

  I found Hyde with her aura dragging round her ankles. She overheard my suggestion.

  “Won’t make any difference,” she muttered.

  “Has she ever worked in an office before?” Belljar wanted to know.

  “Has she ever worked?” Hyde pressed.

  “Why?” I asked.

  Hyde pulled out the stationery catalogue. “She didn’t want anything. I’d say, ‘what about this’ and ‘what about that’ but she’d just shake her head.”

  “You must have decided on something,” I said.

  “She let Hyde order bedding plants,” Belljar said, “because she said she was fed up.”

  “Keeps pouring her drinks out the window too,” Hyde complained. “I mean, I don’t have to save her the trip to the cooler, if that’s her attitude.”

  “All right,” I said, tucking my hands into my armpits and flapping my elbows. “Maybe she’s less experienced than her resume would indicate. Order what you feel she needs, Hyde, and I’ll deal with any problems.”

  All seemed well until mid-afternoon, when King George pushed a note under my door. It read, ‘She can’t do math’. The rest of the paper was filled with sketches of apples, segmented circles and nonsensical number sequences: 2, 4, 6, 8 or 7, 14, 21, 28. Three-digit figures were stacked like blocks with a line separating the final one from the others. Utter gobbledy-gook.

  Tipping point reached. Thankfully, my partner Yeller ran her own employment agency. I could pick her brains while I picked someone else's over dinner.

  “Oh,” she said, buttering her earlobe as I described Miss Jones, “tell me about it.”

  “You’ve dealt with this?”

  “Touch wood, not recently. You know, it’s a shame because these types are ninety-five percent normal.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But it’s that five percent. And the sufferers don't realize.”

  “Can they be cured?”

  Yeller speared peas with her hatpin. “I went to a seminar last month," she said. "And they had three different experts debating. They couldn't even agree there was a problem.”

  “Like M.E.?” I said.

  “Just like M.E. One doctor will say she has an illness. Another will say she's creating her own reality as a way to protect herself from stress.”

  How sad, I thought. But I didn’t get much time to think after that. I left for Amsterdam next morning, spent four days appraising toenail curlers and visiting a specialist who would remove hair from my head and transplant it on my back.

  When I returned to the office the scene shocked me. Sheer chaos--every desk had been replaced with an oak veneered fridge on legs. The old desks had gone, save one which stood on its narrow side by the saliva cooler. It felt cold and bottles of gaudy liquid sat on the racks. The bedding plants, clumped together, spewed from troughs that hung (I am not kidding) outside the windows.

  There was not a warm body in sight and my office was locked. As I was twisting the knob I saw a note slip under the door and I retrieved it. It said, 'We need an emergency meeting.'

  “You know where to meet me,” I shouted, and went to the gents. When everyone had gathered in the disabled cubicle—Belljar sat in the sink, Bedlam, Crowthorne and King George against the support rail and Hyde straddling the toilet seat ready to take minutes on the wall--I asked the dreaded question.

  “What happened?”

  “She lost it,” Crowthorne said.

  “Miss Jones made all that mess?”

  “Tried to stop her,” Hyde pleaded. "But she got worked up and was stronger than any of us.”

  “Had to gang up on her,” Belljar said. “Sorry, Mr. Hatter.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Locked in the boardroom.”

  “Drilled a peephole so we could see in and Bedlam feeds her spaghetti through it,” Hyde sai
d.

  “She’s got the executive washroom,” Belljar pleaded.

  “All right,” I said, “everyone stay calm.” I called an adjournment while I went to the boardroom. Through the hole I could see she’d worn a rut in the astroturf from pacing back and forth between our goalposts.

  “Miss. Jones?” I called. "It’s Mr. Hatter.”

  She stopped.

  “Is there a problem?” I asked, nonchalantly as possible.

  “A desk,” she whimpered. "All I want is a desk.”

  “Now you have a desk, Miss Jones. Belljar ordered a lovely big one; I think they call it a Whirlpool. It has white drawers in the bottom and--,”

  “No!” she screamed, “desk! I want a desk! A desk!!”

  I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. “Miss Jones,” I tried, but she screamed louder. I returned to the gents.

  “See?” Hyde said.

  “Yes,” I said. “She’s gone completely--what’s the politically correct term these days?”

  “Isn’t one,” Crowthorne replied. “Only rude words.”

  “Yes, well, we won’t be using those,” I said firmly. “All of you should return to the front office and start clearing up as best you can. I’ll deal with the rest.”

  I got on the phone to Yeller to ask what she did in these situations. She gave me the number of an organization with a long list of initials for its name, and spoke to a man called Fullmoon. He listened to my story and made a great deal of knowing noises. When I finished he put me on hold a minute, then returned and said, “I can do thirty-five hundred hours.”

  “Do?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Don’t worry, it's an experienced crew. No noise. They shouldn’t cause your people any distress.”

  “Well,” I said, feeling unsure. But on what basis could I argue?

  They came and took her away. And they were quiet. For my part, I stayed out of their way. I helped Belljar move all the oak veneered fridges to a corner near the main doors. I sent everyone home early, then returned to my office to try and catch up on the work that had accumulated while I was away.

  But I couldn’t concentrate. I kept thinking about that five percent.

  Sanity rests on such small things, trivia like what is a ‘proper’ name or what is a desk. I found myself tipping back my chair to examine my Frigidaire. There really was no reason why we couldn’t use Miss Jones' fridges as if they were desks. They did have flat surfaces and a bit of storage underneath. There was no reason we couldn’t burn candles at one end so the other could stand on a surface, no reason why paperback books needed to be spring loaded when they weren’t hard to open in the first place.

  I had to stop myself. Maybe that’s how mental dislocation starts. All I can say is the sun set and I hadn’t even noticed. I opened my wire mesh briefcase and packed away my papers, taking care not to crowd the cat. I put on my lampshade, locked my door and turned off the lights. When I got in my car and switched on the radio they were playing my favorite pots and pans. The music turned my aura silver again, and made me grateful.