"Atlas"

It was wilted and I had forgotten my dressing at home. The lettuce was brown and limp, completely bland and devoid of any color but a pale, albinic green. The only place it belonged was the trash, so I tossed it in, container and all, with a weary sigh.
It was Tuesday and it was just like every other Tuesday had been for two years. There was coffee in the morning with a cereal bar. Someone eats all of the bagels in the break room and the coffee is made by Wendy. She and her coffee were a lot alike—bland, weak, and utterly without taste.
I get in at 7:52, sit down behind my cubicle, and enter my pass code into the computer. The thing beeps as it registers and begins counting out my wages. New policies prohibited music and any non-work related “internet play,” but most people still had ear buds stuffed in and various computer games to keep them entertained when no one was looking. People filled their cubicles with pictures of their kids, Koosh accessories, inspiration calendars, and posters with witty sayings like, “You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps.” My cubicle is completely empty. No pictures. No kitsch. No decorative mugs. I’m not well liked here. I don’t chat around the water cooler and I have nothing to say about the latest episode of “Desperate Housewives.” I never go to birthday or holiday office parties and I don’t “do lunch” with the girls. They think I’m unfriendly and I do not care.
I wandered down to the vending machines in the basement, which I like to call the File Graveyard. Rooms full of shelves and filing cabinets. Whole years of work, of life—sitting in a basement by the ladies’ room. I feel at home down here by the products of the office that no one wants to see. I buy a bag of chips and a diet Coke, not letting the irony of my purchase escape me. I never eat in the break room, which is painted a nauseating color of puncture wound dark, dripping red and always filled with noise from the T.V. Usually talk shows with paternity test results and advice for healthy living from an overweight, middle aged man. Eating lunch in my car is a more appealing option for all concerned.
Sometimes, I couldn’t escape. One of them would be in the copy room, working through lunch and there would be no way out without a series of questions about my personal health and relationship status. Today it was Susan, a tall woman with inoffensive blonde hair and big teeth. She was leader of the office book club and also the divorce support club. A real joiner—and a real recruiter. She wanted to save the world, one social club at a time. I saw the bubble of blonde hair and beat a quick retreat, hugging my chemical-laden snack lunch to my chest, but too late.
“Evie! It’s been just ages. Been keeping busy?” Her voice was so loud, its like she was everyone’s personal cheerleader. But, really, I think she just liked hearing herself talk. Saving the world, again.
I stumbled over my words and she jumped on me, like a hyena on a dying, arthritic gazelle,
“Sure must be since I never see you at any of the meetings.” She was talking about the new office weight loss support group she’d been “kind enough” to send me an e-vite to join. There was an accusatory tone to her voice with just a hint of disappointed-mother quality. I froze, caught in the spotlight, her leaning on the Xerox machine. Oh God. I could tell it was coming, she knit her brows. It was the concerned friend chat. The one where she put her arm around me and told me things “for my own good.” Sure enough, I felt her right hand on my right shoulder, squeezing it firmly as she led me out of the copy room and toward the break room,
“Evie, sweetheart, the girls and I are really concerned about you,” she began, pausing when she reached a secluded corner by the supply room and turning me to face her. She was such a fraud and I felt less than human simply allowing her to use me as her good deed of the day.
“My name is actually Evelyn, I don’t go by Evie. And I don’t see what the fuss is about, I’m just fine.” I tried to sound confident, to finally put her in her place, but it was useless. This had as little do with how I felt as it did her actually wanting to help me.
“Let’s not be stuck on trivialities, I’m trying to be a friend,” she soothed, taking the chips from my now limp hands, “Hating yourself isn’t going to teach anyone a lesson. You’re really only hurting yourself. Let me help you,” she lectured, shaking the bag of chips like an insolent child, staring at me all the while. I could tell she wished I were that bag of chips, that she could shake me until I obeyed her. She saw me as the drain of all company morale, the destroyer of all her team building excersizes, the ugly blemish on the face of her otherwise cohesive company.
I could feel the eyes of the people in the break room on me, crawling over my forbidden Diet Coke and out-of-season corduroy dress slacks. Her groupies, her colony, her secretarial worker bees—all staring at us. Someone had pressed a button and they had turned their heads from the T.V. to me, their low-fat frozen dinners steaming in front of them, lip glossed trout pouts slightly agape.
I ran. I dropped the bottle from my slackening hand, shoved Susan into the break room, and took off with all my force. I would never be like them, I chanted in my head as I ran, never. I would never let T.V. self-help and office divas run my life. I refused to let my life revolve around a menial job and media molded prophet margin mantras. I slammed the door to my foreign made sedan. I had become mediocrity. I had stopped existing, stopped thinking. I had plugged in and witnessed my own future, filling my own emptiness with merlot and yoga classes, e-dating and finding my inner movie star.
I breathed deep, the tears sinking back into my eyes and my anger receding. I tore off my name tag, started the car, and tossed it out the window as I sped toward the highway. All of the familiar sights passed by—the gas station, the exits for the suburbs where my high school friends lived, my mom’s house. It was like a penny sliding slowly toward the magnet. The whirlpool effect of suburban life.
I saw the exit for my street and kept driving. It was like pulling away the layers that had been suffocating me for years as I drove on, further away from my apartment and my job, from all of the people who knew only what I had allowed myself to become. I drove until I was nearly out of gas and dawn had begun to hover just over the horizon, like a cup of spilled orange juice on a dark tile floor. It was bliss, this pure exhaustion and sense of unsureness. I was glad I didn’t know where I was going to sleep or what I would eat, glad I had no change of clothes, glad I was finally not using my life to further someone else’s purpose. I felt young and free and as distant from the frame of mind of those automaton women as possible. I didn’t care about skin cancer or fading my hair color, I only cared about escape. It reminded me of days before learning became something to be endured, days when I went to school to have fun and to experience myself. Running down the street in a blue jumper with pink shoes, not caring that it didn’t match or that the rain would loosen the material and make the dress hang funny.
Pulling into the parking lot of a gas station, I peeled off my now sweaty suit jacket and left it on a bench outside by an ashtray. My camisole clung to my damp skin and I smelled of car and musk, of lavender sachet. I felt ruddy and sexy and available, perhaps even scandalous. The man behind the cash register smiled at me and I returned it, dragging my hand across the counter and maintaining the eye contact as long as possible before picking up a road atlas and tossing it on the counter. Today, I would play a game. I handed the man a pen I picked up off the counter,
“Do you want to get out of here?” I unfolded the map. He looked surprised at first and then smiled, looking me up and down. I looked out of place, as did he with his tattooed skin and thick, long, black hair standing behind the counter in a dainty apron with a BP emblem on the front. He took the pen, closed his eyes, and stabbed.