Kyle Winkler
The man received a memo. It said to attend the meeting at three. He showed up at three. The meeting was over.
“The meeting was at two,” his friend said. “I can't believe you missed it. Big stuff is going on. Huge stuff.”
“Can you fill me in?” the man asked.
“No can do,” the friend said. “Too complicated. I'll write it down and send you a memo.”
The office was clearing for the day when he got his friend's memo. It said to join everyone at the local for a beer. He'd explain the meeting in detail there.
When he arrived, the patrons’ faces were under dim light and fuzzy.
His friend was at a table with co-workers.
“You made it,” he said. “Good, now listen. The first thing I have to say is that anyone who missed the meeting at three has been downgraded in status—”
No sooner had the friend said this than a square blocked out his head.
The man tried to rub his eyes. He dodged his head around to see past it. It was no use.
The black square covered his friend’s face, making it impossible to see or hear him. The man was shut out.
The man turned to his co-workers for help, but their faces were covered with black squares too.
In a panic, he fled home. Hoping it was the effects of stress, he convinced himself it was stress.
Stress made his cousin bet on horses for no reason. Stress made an ex-girlfriend eat bits of plastic.
But there, on television, people in soap operas with blocked out faces.
Exhausted, he collapsed into bed.
The next day at work was pathetic. Everyone’s faces, blocked. Had he been the only one to miss the meeting? Did others see him this way as well? How long would it last?
He needed to find the memo's writer. Maybe it was done on purpose. Maybe it was to get back at him for office malfeasance.
Had he slighted anyone? Never. The man kept to himself. Oh. Maybe that was why. Maybe whoever sent it thought he was self-righteous, better than thou.
The man was the saltiest depths of the earth. He’d once nursed a sick pigeon to health.
Status. His friend had said, Downgraded in status. But what status? Was that new? Surely it was. There’d been no status before. Unless, that is, he was already so low on the status pole that he wasn’t even aware there was such a thing as status. For f.'s sake.
This reasoning, in turn, allowed him no time for work.
He continued to not get fired.
Once, he came in nude. Nothing happened.
Years, months.
One morning, the man was staring at the wall when a red square on the body of a woman went by with a printed skirt. Lilies. The woman passed again. The man followed her. She kept a hand in front of her, holding something. She skated corners and evaded him, till he snagged her blouse and spun her around.
Indeed hers was red instead of black. But this square was made of board pasted to a stick, and she held it up to her face.
There were two pinholes for her eyes.
The man mustered his senses to follow through the pinholes.
He reached a hand out. It brushed the board.
“Careful,” the woman said.
“I missed the meeting,” the man said. He began to cry.
“I know,” the woman said. “That’s all over now. The downgrading of statuses ended soon after it was started. Didn’t you get the memo? Here.”
She handed him another red board pasted to a stick. “Put this over your face. Pretend you're one of them.”
He did and saw faces. On his knees now. Above, the woman’s face: kind, plain, and exotic.
The man knew it was a place too distant to reach.