Two
The phone's job was to beep. His job was to answer the damn thing, so when it beeped again, he answered.
"Eco None," he said, "How may I help you?"
"Richie?" asked a raspy voice at the other end.
"No, sorry. There's no Richie here. This is Eco None, personally curating your carbon footprint."
"Isn't this extension 419?"
Eugenio double-checked. Yes, it was.
"Yes, sir, this is Eco None," he replied, "offering a wide variety of responsible-Earth-caretaker services."
"Richie!" the voice repeated. "What happened to Richie? What's your name?"
"This is Alex," Eugenio said, "There's no Richie here. Sorry."
"No, wait!" the voice said, "where's Richie? It's really important.”
"I'm sorry, sir," Eugenio said. "Good day."
He hung up the phone, and looked around at the various name-plates he could see on the tables around him. Not everybody had a name-plate. He didn't, for instance, but it was only his second day. Of course he didn't see a Richie anywhere. No one was permitted to use their real names here. He found it odd but accepted the explanation they gave at the orientation training session that somehow lawyers were involved.
To his immediate right sat a slight, older man of vaguely South Pacific lineage. His name-plate read 'Atta' but Eugenio had heard people call him Dave.
"Dave?" he asked. The older man looked over and raised an eyebrow.
"Is there a Richie here?"
Dave grunted and bobbed his head up and down for several seconds, and appeared to be literally chewing on the words forming in his mouth. Then Eugenio saw him swallow and realized he'd actually been eating something.
"Richie used to be where you are now," Dave pronounced slowly and methodically.
"Oh."
"He was a quiet guy," Dave said, emphasizing the words “quiet”, and turned his attention back to his laptop. Eugenio got the message. Dave would rather he shut the fuck up and leave him alone, like Richie. He'd have to find somebody else to ask about Richie. In the meantime he was counting down to lunch, watching the clock and shaking his head.
There was a sort of cafeteria in the building, on the ground floor, really more like a crowded space with a big ass freezer, a long table and a bunch of microwaves. In the morning they offered unlimited donuts. At lunch you could help yourself to the scant variety of frozen burritos in the freezer, chicken or beef, and of course there was infinite coffee, as much as you could ever hope to guzzle. No wonder I have the shits so bad, Eugenio thought. All this crap! But here he was, twenty miles from the nearest little town where all there was there was a 7-11 which had the same exact fucking burritos and coffee, a nasty looking biker bar and a little diner called Marta's where if you waited in line long enough you might get a greasy platter with home fries. The office park was as close to nowhere as you could possibly get, and it made no sense to waste any time driving to the outskirts of nowhere get a just as lousy lunch. That was just gas money and time off the punch clock. Fuck it, Eugenio told himself. At least it's free.
The phone beeped a few more times featuring a couple of paying customers and another wrong number. This time the wrong number wasn't pleading about Richie or mixed up about the company name. They just wanted to know about "the church in the fields" and whether or not it "burned down good". He didn't know what the fuck they were talking about and he didn't hold on to find out.
"Church in a field," he muttered, just loud enough to draw the attention of the woman to his left, who glanced uneasily at him and then rolled her chair away another foot. “Every problem I got”, he grumbled inside of his head.
At the stroke of noon a bell rang like some kind of fire alarm and half the people in the building abandoned their posts at once and pushed and jostled their way down the crowded narrow staircase to the crummy food room below. Eugenio packed himself in along with the rest of them. Down there an impromptu assembly line formed like an old fashioned fire brigade except instead of passing buckets of water down a line it was warmed-up burritos. One huge guy manned the freezer and another just like him manned the bank of microwaves. It was really their job. The rest of the day they wandered around pushing trash cans on wheels emptying everyone else's trash cans when they weren't mopping the bathroom floors in the middle of the day and making sure there were never any paper towels anywhere. Eugenio wondered whatever happened to the idea of a night shift for janitors. These cleaning guys were always in and around and under foot all day, but at lunch they shined and had the system down. You were going to get your chicken or your beef burrito and a bag of chips and you were going to take whichever combination they gave you when it was your turn at the front of the line, and you were not going to say a word except “thanks”.
Eugenio didn't give a fuck which crappy items came his way. He just wanted to grab it and hustle on out the back door where he could stand in the parking lot and munch on the stuff. He was wolfing it down when he noticed one of his table-neighbors come along. This was a guy with star-shaped glasses who drove an electric car and wore khakis. Everybody called him Glen but Eugenio had no idea what his real name was.
"Hey Glen," he called out between bites, and the man called Glen turned to face him.
"Hey," Eugenio said again, trying to work up some civility.
"What can I do you for?" Glen drawled, and Eugenio did not fail to notice the hostile look the guy was giving him. What, you don't like Mexicans? he wanted to say, but thought better of it. Maybe the guy didn't like anyone.
"I was hoping maybe you could tell me something about Richie."
"Richie?" Glen looked confused.
"The guy who had my desk before me," Eugenio clarified.
"You don't wanna be talking about Richie," Glen scowled, and walked away. Eugenio rolled his eyes. “What the fuck”, he was thinking again.
"You're the guy at the haunted desk," a young woman chuckled as she walked by. He didn't get a good look at her before she disappeared into the parking lot burrito crowd. He thought he noticed blue jeans and a red top but that could have been someone else.
Haunted desk?
What the hell is a haunted desk?
And what the fuck is up with this Richie guy?
Eugenio slammed down the rest of his beef or chicken or whatever it was and decided it was time to check out those handwritten papers he'd pulled out of the drawer.