Stuck On Aware
by Adam Carter
Everybody else in the office was able to hide their true thoughts and feelings behind their faces, like normal people. We had all learned at that early age not to let on exactly what we were thinking because who knew how Mom and Dad would react if we admitted we knew they were Santa Claus. And so, by the time we reached thirty, it became staple. I’m not sure if Byron had never learned this obvious trick or if his mask had somehow gotten ripped down during all the battles – either way there was nothing for him to hide behind.
To get to the position Byron held at Destiny you’d think he would’ve learned to phony it up enough to make others comfortable when we were in his office. I’d known the guy longer than anyone else because he was somehow related to me and spoke to my mother on the phone occasionally, but that didn’t mean he was any more at ease around me than the others. I mean, a conversation with Byron was like talking to a half-anesthetized patient in the middle of laser-eye-surgery.
Earlier this week he called me into his office to ostensibly discuss new software for the ROV project. I don’t suppose there are too many offices in the world where your coworkers snicker like middle-schoolers when you get called to the boss’s, but they’re pretty cavalier about it here, and no one’s gotten fired from this place or even been demoted in the two years since Byron took over. We might say we were spoiled if it weren’t for the extreme discomfort we felt during meetings with Byron or dinners with Byron or conference calls when Byron was two thousand miles away. I guess if Byron were gone, like we often spoke of with hope to each other, overall, the balance wouldn’t change much.
As I walked in his office, he was sitting to the side of his desk and had one hand over his eyes, very common. The other hand was trying to decide if it should tap the mahogany desktop or stay hidden underneath.
“What’s up?” I asked.
He gestured for me to sit. I did.
“Here,” he said opening his mini fridge next to his desk. “Have a soda.” He pulled out a Diet Sprite and thrust it in front of me, as if it were my drink of choice. “Here.”
I took it and held it unopened on my lap. “Thank you.”
“Yep.”
The story went that he’d inherited the job from his uncle (who I guess also must’ve been somehow related to me) and apparently he worked so hard at every other aspect of his job that it made him an overall success, enough to keep us going strong. Honestly, there is a little bit of relief in seeing someone as insecure as Byron in the office world – gives me hope, seeing that not everyone is made of metal, and some self-assurance as well, seeing as I’m not such a weirdy. And when it came down to it, we really didn’t have to be around him that much.
It didn’t look like he was going to start the conversation – he was twisting his neck every way and his face was going from pleased to wrenched in no time – so I went ahead with it: “I was thinking, Byron, that since it takes so long to master these Remote Operating Vehicles and since most operators of these ROVs are, you know, veteran video game players, that maybe we should stick with the software we already…have.”
Even I was surprised to see his chest bulging forward leaving his neck and shoulders behind and his eyes climbing out of their sockets. I know now what was going on, but at the time it was a little scary. He was looking enigmatic, which was not a word I usually associated with him. He was normally so anxious that I could only see him as being transparent, unable to hide the fear that all of us carry, and, so, decidedly unenigmatic, simply lost in truth, with no way to lie like everyone else. This time he had me thrown, though, so I went on:
“Because, Byron, our software is, you know…already geared towards that, uh…video game playing group, and I think…I think…”
I had to stop talking because I couldn’t concentrate on the English language with him behaving the way he was. I swear to God I thought he was trying to masturbate with no hands right in front of me.
Quickly, he stopped moving and rested his forearms on top of his paper desk calendar. “Perry,” he said suddenly focused, eyes down, “I have to ask you something.”
I stalled for a moment, trying to size it up. “Okay.”
Then he made eye contact with me for the first time and said, “The others – our coworkers – I know they think I’m rude. Well, crap, I know they think I’m an asshole. I know it.” He was static as his desk, linked to it, an outgrowth. He rubbed his fingers to his thumbs and went on. “I just, uh…sometimes you want someone to know that you know something, right? It’s important to feel understood, right? How’s your mom?”
“My mom? She’s fine.”
“Good. Do you ever bowl?”
“What’s that?”
“Do like to go bowling?” he asked. “My wife and I go bowling every Saturday. I was wondering if you wanted to come sometime. It’s not a league or anything.”
“Oh,” I said, watching his fingers they play The Thumb. When I looked up to his face, he was still in front of it, showing me honest despair and promise and some other emotions I couldn’t label. “Sure. Sounds like a good time.”
“Cool. Awesome. You can tell the others that if they want to come this Saturday, my wife and I will be at Briscott Lanes at 7:40. If we get there any earlier or later, we’re stuck battling for lanes with seniors and motor heads.”
“Okay.”
“And it’s best to eat beforehand because the bar’s menu is weak with mostly fried foods, and I know everyone here is on a diet, except Lucy in Certification. And don’t park on the east side of the lot because teenagers always block the exit.”
“Okay. Great,” I said.
It took a while for me to realize that the Sprite had numbed my lap. I was too into Bryon’s talk, something that had only come in small bytes before, even to me, a relative. This was by far the most he’d said to me. I was beginning to understand from his logistical sense of bowling how he’d kept Destiny on the rise despite other “inadequacies”.
He was nodding a lot and trying to retreat into a shell that wasn’t there, so I took the Sprite, stood up, and said, “That sounds fun, Byron. That’s it, then?”
“Yep.”
And just as quick as he’d changed before, the guy became a mess trying figure to out how to behave with a human in his office. It was like he was a laser that didn’t know where to focus. Or, more likely, could not focus anywhere other than on me and my thoughts. I’d heard about that before, where someone gets stuck on you and can’t stop thinking of you, or, more accurately, being aware of you. When they try to focus elsewhere, so as to not make you uncomfortable, the result is someone like Byron, someone lost. God, it was easy to see now. I rested the soda on top of the doorknob and said, “Byron, no one – not a single one of them…us – thinks you are an asshole. No one ever thought that.”
That surprised him. He could not hold back his smile, so he covered his mouth with his left hand, but his eyes were still smiling, so he covered them with his right. From behind his new mask, I heard him laugh.