15
Mar

Cube Farming (a short fiction)

The sky is open with not a cloud to be seen. A fresh scent of cut grass wafts over you and your coworkers. All of you stand outside, watching the shovel cut through the fresh soil for the company’s newest building. The air greets your nose again; more words are spoken in honor of the future; then everyone shuffles back into a room with eighteen cubicles. Your boss calls this the cube farm.

Dale volunteers to make the first pot of coffee of the post meridiem. The two of you stand in that narrow opening between a cubicle wall and two file cabinets where the microwave, water cooler, and half-refrigerator wait.

“Excuse me,” you say.

“Hot chocolate?” he says.

“Yeah.”

“I should try cutting the habit,” he says.

“Habit?”

“Caffeine,” he holds up the coffee pot.

You give Dale a strange look and question if habit really infers something illegal. You guess it probably does after work hours.

You turn your back then gingerly slide past him. Your chest touches the cubicle wall as your rump touches his rump; only an infinitesimal segment of your cerebellum feels violated. The greater part seems curious but you dare not let it show. That would be inappropriate and possibly vulgar.

You open the storage cabinet and pull out the box of instant cocoa. Dale reaches over your arm for the green scoop stained with coffee grounds. His forearm touches yours and you feel a slight tingle at the brawny appendage. You wonder how a man’s forearm becomes sinewed with veins like Dale’s. You come up with one of two hypothesis in Dale’s case. The first involves those illegal drugs; the other involves the gym. It takes you five seconds to decide it is probably the former.

“Excuse me,” he says.

You glance at him and see that he’s blushing. You remember when Carlos touched your tush four years ago.

The two of you had been in the kitchen during Super Bowl halftime when his hand swept behind you with a pinch. You thought you had seen a smile etched on the corner of his lips as he left the kitchen. When you told your husband about it that evening, he told you that Carlos was gay. After the divorce, you often thought of your ex-husband with his best friend Carlos.

“Huh!” you say as you stare into the cardboard box of instant cocoa.

“What?”

Dale stands there holding the pot as he looks at you. You start to wonder about his motives since he has yet to put a filter inside the machine.

“There was half a box here two days ago.”

“You could go downstairs.”
“Downstairs?”

“To the vending machine.”

“No,” you say, shaking your head. “I’ll be all right.”

“I could go. I have to deliver—”

“No, I wouldn’t want—”

“Why?”

Dale looks at you with eyes that plead, and for the first time you notice yellow flecks around his irises. You wonder if cocaine dust is yellow but consider that it’s probably white.

“Uh, okay,” you say with a bit of a sigh.

It takes him less than ten minutes. He returns with two packets instead of one. You start to hand him a couple of dollars but he refuses. Then you insist and he takes the money. He smiles when he does, but you do not return the smile because you are concerned over his eager appearance. Eager men have eager hips.

“Thank you,” you say.

“No problem.”

Each cubicle is equipped with a desk and two chairs. The second chair is for the occasional sales representative. Dale takes the chair, but you are not interested in what Dale is trying to sell.

“Was there something else?” you ask.

“Would you like me to make it for you?”

You stand up with a nervous edge to your step. Thoughts about your divorce, your church, and Dale’s prurient enticements begin to overwhelm your composure. You need to hide your equanimity, but its quick dismantlement erupts in the form of a boisterous fart.

You stop to look at Dale, and he looks at you.