The Autobiography of Benjamin Abbott - Chapter 12: The Confrontation
Previous Chapter: Chapter Eleven (The Clowns)
I drove to the Landmark building in my windowless car at 8:30 am on Monday. The stereo had been stripped out of it over the weekend. And my coffeemaker, which I had been ferrying to work and back so I could have a lunch of oatmeal while filing at my desk, had also been taken. Besides those two missing items nothing else had been done to my car. I took this as success. It’s the one good thing about having a shitty car, you can leave it unlocked, you can leave it windowless, you can put a sign on it that says ‘help yourself’ and except for a few missing baubles inside no one is going to bother it. Even car thieves have standards.
I was there before anyone else and went straight into the men’s bathroom and started cleaning straight away. I figured I would let the clowns vent for the first half hour or so before showing my face. By the time I was done in both bathrooms they would hopefully all be busy with their first mail runs, so I could sneak into my usual sorting spot and then quickly sort and deliver and do all of the mail things I needed to do to keep my job.
And I found that by carefully timing my different tasks (the bathroom cleaning, the filing, the mail), I could avoid the casual sadism of the crowd of clowns, and soon I was so busy that I didn’t have time to be afraid of my coworkers, or of Humphrey and his next move, or even to feel sorry for myself. I had a job(s) to do damnit, and I was going to do them. I even enjoyed delivering the mail in my new uniform. It gave the mundane chore a sense of theatricality and I especially enjoyed walking in the spacious clown shoes, they were springy like a new pair of Nikes and I couldn’t help but to laugh a little each time I stepped and they made that clown shoe mousy squeak. It was like a pratfall in a bad comedy you know is coming but can’t help to chuckle at every time.
I escaped Monday night and Tuesday morning unscathed. The clowns didn’t have the patience to wait for the extra hour I stayed cleaning the bathrooms nor did they want to show up a half an hour early either. I could do this. It wasn’t ideal, but it was manageable (like most jobs). I had found a new equilibrium and was sailing towards late Tuesday afternoon when Richard showed up at my desk again. He had a sort of hangdog look about him. It was time for another memo.
The semi-circle was reformed with Richard in the middle. “Because Benjamin Abbott has been unable to maintain appropriate sanitary conditions in the mailroom bathrooms, both the men’s and women’s bathrooms on the second floor will now be closed and all mailroom employees will have to use the facilities that are now provided outside.”
Steve looked out the window down to the courtyard. “What is that? A porta-pottie?”
Yes, it was a porta-pottie. Two of them to be exact. Richard kept reading.
“If a mailroom employee is caught using a bathroom other than those that Landmark has gone to great expense to provide for them outside they will be terminated with extreme prejudice. This new policy will be in place until the mailroom employees, specifically Benjamin Abbott, can prove they are trustworthy enough to enjoy the luxury of indoor plumbing.” I cowered beneath the glare of the clowns, the semi-circle closing in on me. This was not going to be good.
Amazingly, I made it through the rest of Tuesday without getting the shit kicked out of me, but the clowns were prepared and waiting for me on Wednesday morning. It didn’t matter that I was there a half hour early because there were no bathrooms for me to hide in (they were gated shut). I was held captive by Paul and Steve and a couple of others behind the folders of my desk until 9:05 when everyone had finally arrived. Richard was taped to the wall with packaging tape so he couldn’t intervene and then the seething clowns dragged me down the stairwell to the first floor and out to the courtyard where the porta-potties now stood sentinel-like amidst the urban foliage that Landmark employees on the east side of the building could gaze down at wistfully while dreaming about a peaceful rural life.
I was dropped in front of porta-pottie number 1, a closed circle formed around me, the clowns were going to teach me a lesson in front of the object of our shared humiliation. Once again, I stayed curled up tightly in a ball. I had a firm hold on the end of one of the bike racks in the courtyard, just in case one of the clowns got the bright idea to drag me into a porta-pottie and do God knows what to me in there. But they didn’t need to drag me inside one of those portable bathrooms to get their satisfaction. They were happy enough to get in their kicks and punches on me as I lay on the grey concrete of the Landmark building courtyard.
One giant red shoe after another giant red shoe aimed for my face, my stomach, my back. A few of the clowns had figured out that if they kicked side footed soccer-style instead of straight on there would be less cushion from the floppy shoes and they could make better contact with my bones. I think the women kicked harder than the men, they had better technique and more controlled motion of foot. I blame this on the R.A.D. classes that were held earlier in the month. I cursed those classes as I received harder and harder blows, some of the women moving on to efficient jabs and punches to my head.
The quick movement of red blurring under the hot morning sun, I looked up to the top floor and Humphrey’s office. I’m sure he was looking down at this display, staring out his window, blue light and smoky haze and everything. He was probably smoking a cigar and holding a glass of scotch and enjoying a wide brim smile, satisfied that he had finally taught me my lesson. After a dozen minutes or so, I’m sure he clapped his hands together and turned away from the window victorious ready to move on to the day’s business.
The clowns didn’t move on though, they were still kicking and punching me putting into action the wisdom of the crowd. Loud shots from a Brooklyn accent finally broke up the scene. Richard had somehow untaped himself from the wall and was now verbally wrangling the clowns back inside, saving me. I let go of the bike rack, blood dripping from somewhere on my face. My body was like a banana that had been left to rot, every movement revealed another unexpected area of pain. There was no Debi to dab at my wounds this time. (Her cubicle was on the north side, so she was probably unaware of the attack.) Richard stayed by the doorway, last clown ushered inside and gave me a look of pity, although I think what he really wanted to say was, “dumb schmuck, you should have quit when you had the chance.”
This pumped my adrenaline. First Humphrey, then Debi and now Richard were telling me what to do. They were all telling me to quit. No fucking way.
Slowly, I stood, testing my left leg first. My right leg next. I was back on my own two feet standing under the beautiful sun amidst the fertile green corporate geraniums. I wasn’t beaten. I wasn’t even close to being beaten. They could kick me over and over and over and over and over again and I would get up every time.
Like Steve McQueen in a Steve McQueen movie I marched for the door. And up the stairs. And into the mailroom to take my cart. And back out again with the cart to do my morning mail run (with unsorted mail.).
Two black eyes, a river of blood running from my nose down the frills of my clownshirt, my hair a mess, my bottom lip swollen, I went up the elevator. I skipped Debi’s floor because I didn’t want her to see me in the condition I was in. In fact, I skipped all of the floors and went up as far as I could to 177, the top floor of my mail run. Who knows? Maybe I would get lucky.
And you know what? I did get lucky. As I was whistling and delivering the mail on 177, Humphrey came down with 2 of the gang of 5 to go to the conference room. Thinking quickly, I took a detour from my usual route and caught up to them.
“Good morning, Dave,” I said as I walked by, nodding to the VPs, and then going back to whistling and bouncing my way down the hallway enjoying my morning mail run, feeling better than I had felt in ages.
Squeak, tweet, squeak, tweet. I delivered mail to the office on the other side of the conference room. Humphrey was still watching me, I could feel his eyes on the back of my dirt-soaked uniform. I blew my nose, a little blood dripping to the carpet and then went on to the next office.
Squeak, tweet, squeak, tweet, squeak, tweet, squeak, tweet. I turned back to Humphrey when I reached the next office to give him one last smile. This may have been what set him off. A Vesuvian eruption poured forth from Humphrey as the 2 VPs physically restrained him. “That’s it. You’re fired!”
“Don’t you think I should finish my mail run first?”
Pyroclastic flow streamed from Humphrey’s mouth, “get out of here. I want you gone. Gone!” His face was purplish, even his hair started to lose its luster.
“Security! Security! Get this man out of here. I don’t ever want to see him again. He’s fired! You’re fired! Do you hear me Abbott, fired!”
The same two security guards from the previous week showed up to escort me out of the building once again. As I was being dragged to the elevators at a 35 degree incline I passed Humphrey, his 2 VPs still holding him back, and looked up into his deep velvet face and said calmly, “you’re never getting that screenplay.”
“Yes, I will.” He broke loose from the VPs and was coming after me.
“No, you won’t.”
“Yes, I will.” The elevator doors were closing now.
“No, you won’t.”
“Yes, I will.”
We locked eyes. “Over my dead body.”
The elevator doors shut, separating us.
And that’s when things started to get weird.