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Kara picked up the pace, almost having to break into a run as she hurried to catch up with her boss.
“Wait, so, you don’t want me to prep that whitepaper on the nutrient levels after all?”
“Nope,” he answered without even looking back over his shoulder, “I’d like to use what the interns came up with on that. We need to show management that we’re using the interns, and this will let me have one of them tag along to the briefing next week. Be good experience for her.”
Kara didn’t think he wanted her to catch up with him. She didn’t think he wanted to continue the conversation. Part of her just wanted to let him speed away into the elevator, let him take the generalizations that he’d given to the interns to flesh out and just go off on the wrong-headed tangent they were moving toward. It was clearly what he wanted to do. She wasn’t going to score any points by trying to convince him otherwise.
She tried to think of something that would convince him as they walked quickly toward the elevator. It was after 5:30. The building was practically empty. She had cleared her schedule and worked on nothing but the whitepaper since lunch. She had other deadlines she could have been working toward, but the more she thought about the issue with the nutrient levels, the more she realized that the situation was complex and deserved more than a cursory briefing.
He mashed the down button on the elevator and glanced over at her. He was a smart guy and he knew that she disagreed with how he was handling the issue.
“Look I’m sorry if you did some wheel spinning on this, but I really don’t think management wants us to get too far into the weeds on this one. Keep what you’ve prepared in your back pocket. Maybe we’ll use it at some point in the future. Whatever you’ve done isn’t wasted effort, it just isn’t the direction that we want to go.”
She sucked in a breath. So, okay, he definitely wasn’t going to let her talk to anyone above the level of her most direct clients about this. The highest person in the food chain that she would have any chance of convincing was him. The path of least resistance was definitely to give him a bright, “Okay then, have a great weekend!” and watch him step into the elevator. Instead she squared her shoulders and followed him in.
***
‘Possum didn’t exactly live in the green space behind the environmental agency. He did sleep there sometimes- there were a lot of nice hollows under the trees there where he hardly missed having the sleeping pad that he used to hike with- but he was more careful than a lot of the other free people that were down on their luck. He almost never slept in the same spot twice. He usually was up and moving before the sun. And he stayed up on how the yoked people were living. He scanned the police reports for where sweeps were happening, looking for vagrants.
He joked with other free people when he shared his information with them. It was best to stay somewhat behind these sweeps as opposed to just ahead of them.
Of course, ‘Possum was luckier than most of the free people. He still had a bank account where the feds still deposited his social security disability every month, which was enough for him to pay for his phone and the whole wide internet. His feet and legs were good, so he could still walk all day if he needed to. If he wasn’t holding an “Anything Helps” sign at the intersection of the on-ramp for the interstate, he could walk all the way into the shelter and maybe get a shower and some new socks, and maybe charge his phone. On the days when he did that, he felt like he could probably pass as one of the yoked people.
On one of those easy passing days, he had run into one of the workers from the big government building and startled the heck out of himself by then proceeding to go get lunch with her, eating at one of the picnic tables between the Dairy Queen and the Harley Davidson dealership. She’d been walking over to the Dairy Queen after taking a walk on the trail behind her building when she ran into him. His SSD check had just dropped that day and he was feeling flush. The government building was so big that ‘Possum figured the people who worked in it probably didn’t think that they knew all of the other people that worked in it, so on occasion, he would even walk the trails during the day, figuring he could pass as a worker.
He found it funny that there was a sign posted at the trailhead telling the workers to be careful on the trails because of all the vagrants that were active in the area. ‘Possum figured that little did they know, the vagrants were actually working real hard not to be harassed out of their places by the workers. But ‘Possum had seen on the police blotter where there’d been some car break ins in that big parking lot. So maybe everyone needed to be careful of each other.
Nevertheless ‘Possum had “done lunch” with that office worker, who went by the name of Kara, and even if she didn’t think of herself as one of the yoked people, he got the impression from talking to her that she could pretty well feel her yoke on the daily. She talked to him a little bit about her “job stress.” The way she figured it, everybody had “job stress” of one type or another. When she told ‘Possum that, he could kinda tell that she’d realized he was a free person, whose “job stress” was very different from hers, indeed. But she hadn’t seemed to look down on him about it. She hadn’t been offended when he didn’t elaborate much about his work.
Today ‘Possum needed some cardboard, so he was back at the trailhead of the government building, trying to figure out if the coast was clear for him to snag a broken down box out of the big recycle box there. He’d done it before, but only in the middle of the night. Today was a Friday, and it was evening, so most of the office workers were gone, but there were still a handful of cars in the big parking lot. Maybe not enough to give him the camouflage of potentially belonging with one of them. He was trying to decide what to do, when he saw Kara come out of the building almost trotting after some guy in a suit.
They got about halfway to the stairs down out of the building and suit guy all of a sudden turned back to Kara and said a few words to her. She’d been talking to him as he walked ahead of her, and she had trouble keeping from running into him as he turned. Kinda seemed like he turned quick like that to shake her up on purpose. ‘Possum couldn’t make out the words they were saying, but whatever the guy told Kara was pretty short and sharp. Her shoulders slumped dejectedly as she took it in, but he saw her manage to conjure a smile to answer the guy as he turned out to the parking lot and then she turned back to the building. Suit-guy pulled out his own phone and started to look for something on it as he kept walking quickly toward a big blue truck.
‘Possum faded back into the trees. He guessed he better wait ‘till after dark for that cardboard piece out of the recycling. But now he was thinking a little bit about next week, too. He had some big nails that he’d collected up in a little cache back in these woods. It might be kinda fun to put some of them close to the tires of that big blue truck one day. . .
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Tonithegreat recently had to get a tire repaired that had damage due to a nail. She hopes that her karma is a little bit better than suit-guy's is in this story. Hope you enjoy the read and remember me when it comes time for the LJ Idol poll to be posted!
“Wait, so, you don’t want me to prep that whitepaper on the nutrient levels after all?”
“Nope,” he answered without even looking back over his shoulder, “I’d like to use what the interns came up with on that. We need to show management that we’re using the interns, and this will let me have one of them tag along to the briefing next week. Be good experience for her.”
Kara didn’t think he wanted her to catch up with him. She didn’t think he wanted to continue the conversation. Part of her just wanted to let him speed away into the elevator, let him take the generalizations that he’d given to the interns to flesh out and just go off on the wrong-headed tangent they were moving toward. It was clearly what he wanted to do. She wasn’t going to score any points by trying to convince him otherwise.
She tried to think of something that would convince him as they walked quickly toward the elevator. It was after 5:30. The building was practically empty. She had cleared her schedule and worked on nothing but the whitepaper since lunch. She had other deadlines she could have been working toward, but the more she thought about the issue with the nutrient levels, the more she realized that the situation was complex and deserved more than a cursory briefing.
He mashed the down button on the elevator and glanced over at her. He was a smart guy and he knew that she disagreed with how he was handling the issue.
“Look I’m sorry if you did some wheel spinning on this, but I really don’t think management wants us to get too far into the weeds on this one. Keep what you’ve prepared in your back pocket. Maybe we’ll use it at some point in the future. Whatever you’ve done isn’t wasted effort, it just isn’t the direction that we want to go.”
She sucked in a breath. So, okay, he definitely wasn’t going to let her talk to anyone above the level of her most direct clients about this. The highest person in the food chain that she would have any chance of convincing was him. The path of least resistance was definitely to give him a bright, “Okay then, have a great weekend!” and watch him step into the elevator. Instead she squared her shoulders and followed him in.
‘Possum didn’t exactly live in the green space behind the environmental agency. He did sleep there sometimes- there were a lot of nice hollows under the trees there where he hardly missed having the sleeping pad that he used to hike with- but he was more careful than a lot of the other free people that were down on their luck. He almost never slept in the same spot twice. He usually was up and moving before the sun. And he stayed up on how the yoked people were living. He scanned the police reports for where sweeps were happening, looking for vagrants.
He joked with other free people when he shared his information with them. It was best to stay somewhat behind these sweeps as opposed to just ahead of them.
Of course, ‘Possum was luckier than most of the free people. He still had a bank account where the feds still deposited his social security disability every month, which was enough for him to pay for his phone and the whole wide internet. His feet and legs were good, so he could still walk all day if he needed to. If he wasn’t holding an “Anything Helps” sign at the intersection of the on-ramp for the interstate, he could walk all the way into the shelter and maybe get a shower and some new socks, and maybe charge his phone. On the days when he did that, he felt like he could probably pass as one of the yoked people.
On one of those easy passing days, he had run into one of the workers from the big government building and startled the heck out of himself by then proceeding to go get lunch with her, eating at one of the picnic tables between the Dairy Queen and the Harley Davidson dealership. She’d been walking over to the Dairy Queen after taking a walk on the trail behind her building when she ran into him. His SSD check had just dropped that day and he was feeling flush. The government building was so big that ‘Possum figured the people who worked in it probably didn’t think that they knew all of the other people that worked in it, so on occasion, he would even walk the trails during the day, figuring he could pass as a worker.
He found it funny that there was a sign posted at the trailhead telling the workers to be careful on the trails because of all the vagrants that were active in the area. ‘Possum figured that little did they know, the vagrants were actually working real hard not to be harassed out of their places by the workers. But ‘Possum had seen on the police blotter where there’d been some car break ins in that big parking lot. So maybe everyone needed to be careful of each other.
Nevertheless ‘Possum had “done lunch” with that office worker, who went by the name of Kara, and even if she didn’t think of herself as one of the yoked people, he got the impression from talking to her that she could pretty well feel her yoke on the daily. She talked to him a little bit about her “job stress.” The way she figured it, everybody had “job stress” of one type or another. When she told ‘Possum that, he could kinda tell that she’d realized he was a free person, whose “job stress” was very different from hers, indeed. But she hadn’t seemed to look down on him about it. She hadn’t been offended when he didn’t elaborate much about his work.
Today ‘Possum needed some cardboard, so he was back at the trailhead of the government building, trying to figure out if the coast was clear for him to snag a broken down box out of the big recycle box there. He’d done it before, but only in the middle of the night. Today was a Friday, and it was evening, so most of the office workers were gone, but there were still a handful of cars in the big parking lot. Maybe not enough to give him the camouflage of potentially belonging with one of them. He was trying to decide what to do, when he saw Kara come out of the building almost trotting after some guy in a suit.
They got about halfway to the stairs down out of the building and suit guy all of a sudden turned back to Kara and said a few words to her. She’d been talking to him as he walked ahead of her, and she had trouble keeping from running into him as he turned. Kinda seemed like he turned quick like that to shake her up on purpose. ‘Possum couldn’t make out the words they were saying, but whatever the guy told Kara was pretty short and sharp. Her shoulders slumped dejectedly as she took it in, but he saw her manage to conjure a smile to answer the guy as he turned out to the parking lot and then she turned back to the building. Suit-guy pulled out his own phone and started to look for something on it as he kept walking quickly toward a big blue truck.
‘Possum faded back into the trees. He guessed he better wait ‘till after dark for that cardboard piece out of the recycling. But now he was thinking a little bit about next week, too. He had some big nails that he’d collected up in a little cache back in these woods. It might be kinda fun to put some of them close to the tires of that big blue truck one day. . .
______________________________________________________________
Tonithegreat recently had to get a tire repaired that had damage due to a nail. She hopes that her karma is a little bit better than suit-guy's is in this story. Hope you enjoy the read and remember me when it comes time for the LJ Idol poll to be posted!
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