Kat Fink

Avi

Avi stood over her coworker, Deb, as the news station blared from the woman’s desktop screen. Deb had an obsession with cacti, and her desk was swarming with both real and plastic varieties of the plant. Avi tucked in her shoulders to escape skewering herself on the particularly imposing cactus tucked into the corner of Deb’s cubicle while also trying to avoid the eyes of the swaying plastic one that was clipped onto Deb’s monitor. It danced in its pink pot and stared her down with far too much intensity; the blue eyes were lined with massive eyelashes that flickered in the sun, which streamed in through the wall of windows just a few cubicles down. 

Avi liked Deb despite of her strange cactus passion. She was decades older, rattled on about things Avi had never heard of but found fascinating, and she was tough. Tough enough that Deb was the only one who had insisted on having a desktop that was hard-wired into the internet at work. The rest of the staff, twenty-somethings like Avi, wanted the convenience and moveability of a laptop. Deb had told their boss that she didn’t need to move her computer because there was no way in hell she would ever take work home. Avi didn’t really know how Deb still managed to have a job after that, especially with a boss like theirs who had, at the start of the news broadcast, taken the opportunity to turn off the WiFi feeding their laptops. Deb was the only one still receiving a signal as her hardline was connected to Hank’s personal router. We were all waiting for the moment that he would finally get frustrated enough to drag himself out of his office and yank her cord out himself. If his secretary had been in today, he would have called her on the shrill intercom he’d drilled into her desk to make her do it. Yes, it was Hank’s extreme laziness tinged with a fear of the almighty Deb that was keeping this one source of news streaming to the office. A voice rang out from above.

“I don’t care if there’s a nuclear bomb about to drop on this building, you all need to get back to work. I’ve already sent two of you home on suspension with no pay for not getting off your phones, you think the punishment’s going to be any lighter for hovering around that computer?” Hank shouted from the landing of the stairs that led up to his office. He perched up there every day like an eagle staring down a working horde of hares. He said it was to monitor our progress, but most the girls knew it was so he could stare down our shirts.  

Speak of the devil and Hank will appear, Avi thought to herself. She ignored him and continued watching the broadcast with a huddle of other coworkers. Some shifted awkwardly as if they might make a break for their desks now that daddy was home, but they settled back in when they remembered that the people on the screen were telling us that we were all dying.  

“Deb!” Hank raised his voice, “You need to turn off your monitor right now.” He started to make his way down the stairs, stomping heavily over Deb’s Ethernet cord without seeming to notice that the root of his problem was literally at his feet. Ah, so it wasn’t laziness holding him from taking the signal, just idiocy.

Deb rolled her eyes and turned the volume up on the speaker effectively drowning out Hank’s growing warnings that he growled out from the staircase. 

“I don’t know how you managed to block the monitoring software on your computer, which I can already fire you for, but if you don’t turn off that computer, you’ll be removed forcibly and without severance.”

“Great, I’ll let them know about you sticking your hand up people’s skirts while they escort me out. Hopefully, they’ll have enough sense to give you the boot, too.”

Multiple audible gasps resounded through the huddle. Glenn, Deb’s tall and gangly cubicle neighbor, rested a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. Avi couldn’t tell if it was in solidarity or warning. Maybe, he was just saying his goodbyes before Hank threw her out one of the windows. 

Hank had made it down the stairs and was dancing his way around our abandoned rolling chairs. He was tall, like Glenn, but where Glenn had a boyish charm, Hank was almost vulgarly middle-aged. Everything he wore was too tight, he had a fading hairline that he was unsuccessfully covering with a comeover, his skin was excessively spray-tanned, and he had a paunch belly which he was currently squeezing between two standing desks as he tried to get to us. A red tinge broke out on his stubbled face either from exertion, anger, or embarrassment. Avi’s guess was all of the above. He came to stand across from us, shoving Glenn’s chair across the room. 

“Deb, turn off the computer.”

At this point, the broadcast was over. We’d heard what we needed to hear. Gleaned the information we needed to know. Deb pressed play and let the video run again. She leaned back, crossed her arms, and stared up at Hank. 

“Why?” She asked with an air of politeness that had the same effect as a person dangling a string through the bars of a cage to trap a stubborn cat. Hank, who must not have heard it in her voice, jumped at the string.

“You are here to make money for this company and its clients. You are not here to watch television and loiter around the office.” He scanned his eyes across our huddle as if making a mental list of each and every person he was going to reprimand. 

“Everything is going to be gone in a month, and your response to this is… what, exactly?” Deb’s tone remained cool and the soft head tilted that accompanyed her questions spoke volumes of befuddlement towards the man she was speaking to. Still oblivious to the trap being set for him, Hank continued to swing blindly at the string she dangled.

“I don’t care what the news report says, you are all to get back to work.”

“To what end?”

Hank stared at her blankly. “You know, Deb, you’re old enough that I thought you’d work here until you died. Turns out, I was right. That ‘end’, as you said, is just coming sooner than you thought. Turn off the broadcast, or I will call security.”

Avi felt like she could hear the cage doors slam around him. Stupid cat-Hank in his stupid cat-trap. Deb had gotten what she wanted from him; what does Hank make of this situation? She now had her answer, and consquently, so did the entire office. Hank had no compassion for the situation, had no intention of stopping himself or the rest of us from being cogs in a machine that had just broken down. Deb stood, but instead of turning off her monitor, she grabbed her jacket and purse. The huddle moved around her, making space for her like she was a drop of water in a puddle of oil. Avi reached out and picked up Deb’s phone, pressing it into the woman’s hand. She met Deb’s eyes and a smile crinkled the edges of Deb’s eyelids.

“Don’t bother. I’ll be damned if I die here.” The comment was meant for Hank, but Deb never took her eyes off Avi. 

She passed through the office like a queen entering a conquered kingdom and pushed both the office doors open as she made her way to the elevators. Her raised hand was all the farewell she cared to give. 

Everyone retook their seats, but no one started typing. Hank looked around at them all, it was clear he was struggling to come up with a solution to the problem at hand. Eventually, his eyes fell on Avi, which made sense, she was still standing at Deb’s desk. 

“Avriel, are you going to be a problem as well?”

Avriel felt a tug at her heart. An invisible thread pulling some deeper part of her through the doors after Deb. It pulled her from the marketing firm where she worked. From the job she hated. Moved her away from this boss who degraded her work all the while hitting on her. It yanked her from this life she’d settled with. The things that she’d allowed to be. Avi reached out a hand and yanked the dancing cactus off of Deb’s monitor. 

“Yes, I think I will be.”

***

Avi was halfway to her apartment when she felt her phone buzz in her back pocket. She wrenched it out of the pocket in her slacks, taking a brief moment to eye that the caller was her roommate. She braced herself for the tears and grief to come when she slid her finger across her screen to accept the call, but physically shrank away from the voice now piercing through her speaker.

“Avi! BABY! You hear the news?”

Avi was taken aback by the cheeriness in Jenn’s voice.

“Did you?” Avi respond. “‘Cause it sounds like you didn’t understand.”

“Oh no, I got it babes. I got it loud and clear. Where are you right now? Are you at work?”

“No, I left.” I quit, Avi amended. Jenn understood her meaning.

“Did you tell that pervert to suck it?”

“No, I just left. Deb basically did, though.”

“Fucking Deb!? The eggs on that old bag. Good for her!”

“He was going to make us keep working.” Avriel was now processing what had just happened. She didn’t have a job. Her boss had just told them all that he’d be happy if they’d worked until they keeled over at their desks. If it weren’t for Deb, she probably would have. 

“Capitalist pig. Doesn’t shock me. So you’re heading home?”

Avi looked around at the crowded street teeming with people on their phones, like her. Many of their faces registered shock, and Avi assumed she probably mirrored their expressions. Most of them were also crying, but Avi found she couldn’t drudge anything up from her emotional well besides humming disorientation. Certainly she wasn’t experiencing anything quite as drastic as the need to wail on a curb while people carefully stepped around you while avoiding eye contact. She looked away from a person who was doing that very thing, and she watched cars wind around each other in an attempt to get home, or to a loved one, or just out of Los Angeles itself. Wherever they’re going, they won’t escape this, she thought. Then she cursed herself for being so morbid. 

“I’m on the corner where you upchucked on Ryan’s shoes.”

“Which time?”

“Umm, last February.”

“Gotcha. So you haven’t passed the liquor store yet?”

“I have not.” Avriel suddenly became distracted by movement in her palm. She flattened out her hand to see that Deb’s cactus had started dancing again. She watched it wiggle and tried to tune into Jenn’s words.

“Can you pick up booze? Like, a lot of booze. And as many edibles as they’ll sell you.”

The cactus worked its way across Avriel’s palm, and she closed her fingers around it, trapping it before it fell. 

“Can I ask why?”

“It’s the end of the world, girl. We’re gonna party.”