Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

asked.
    “But I hate myself even more,” he continued, unbuttoning his oxford, “for hating her. Can you even imagine what she’s been through?”
    “Carl,” Marilynn said, “what are you doing?”
    “The abduction,” he continued obliviously, “then the waiting, the terrible waiting.”
    “
What
are you doing?” she cried.
    “Then finding the body. Imagine finding the body, Marilynn.”
    He was naked to his waist by then. He had removed the oxford and flung his undershirt over his head. “I don’t want to go into work today,” he announced, turning to his wife. He was breathing up and down with his paunch exposed, a hair-brushed hillock of pale, glowing belly. When Benny recounted all this to us, he said Carl had told him later he hoped Lynn Mason would walk by right then and see that unattractive feature and walk him Spanish for the sake of aesthetics. “Put your clothes on!” cried Marilynn.
    “I don’t want to be the person that hates Janine Gorjanc,” he said. “If I go inside I will be that person because I will smell her. I don’t want to have to smell her. If I smell her I will hate her and I don’t want to be that person. You have to take me home.”
    “Have you gone
completely
out of your mind?” she asked as she watched him yank off his tennis shoes, unzip his jeans and pull them down to his ankles.
    He sat up in the front seat in nothing but his underwear. “I’m wearied,” he said, turning to her. “That’s what it is, Marilynn. I’m really very wearied. If you make me go inside, I’m going inside like this.”
    “That,” she bellowed, “no —” She shook her head and laughed. “That is no threat
to me,
Carl.”
    “I’m so wearied,” he repeated.
    “Carl, put your clothes on,” she said, “and go inside, and by this afternoon, I will have made you an appointment to see a very good psychiatrist.”
    “I’m not putting my clothes on until you take me home,” he said.
    “Carl,” she cried, “I have to be in surgery in ten minutes! I can’t take you home!”
    “Don’t make me get out,” he said. “Please don’t make me get out, Marilynn.”
    “Oh, Jim, just one more thing —”
    We looked up and saw Joe Pope just as he was peeking his head over Jim Jackers’ cube wall a second time. Benny shut up and Jim swirled around and Amber Ludwig started in fright and Marcia Dwyer took the opportunity to grab her Diet Coke and leave, while the few of us who stuck around listened to Joe inform Jim that he had just come back from Lynn Mason’s office. They had been discussing the mock-ups due out later that day, and they had thrown around some ideas about making changes to this and making changes to that, and when we heard
that,
one by one we got up and left because we knew what Joe Pope’s changes were all about — more work. It was always more work with that guy. The last of us overheard Joe saying, “I’m sorry to interrupt, Jim — is it an okay time?” and Jim replied, “Sure, sure, Joe, it’s a fine time. Come in and have a seat.”
    Later that day it spread like wildfire. Joe Pope had received his second promotion.
    He was our new Roger Highnote. He had a unique fashion sense that didn’t exactly fall in line with seasonal approbation and we wondered where he’d picked it up. What magazines was
he
reading? The following year we were all wearing similarly prestressed denims but by that point it hardly mattered. For an entire year he looked like an idiot. “Good-looking?” we said to Genevieve. “Joe Pope?” No, he was seriously one inch too short. He made our lives a living hell. And he was very awkward. But how to explain it? For it wasn’t the same awkwardness we felt with Jim Jackers. In the hallways Jim greeted everyone by saying, “What up, dawg?” a question he had the temerity to ask even Lynn Mason when passing her by. That was confused behavior. We all went to a party once, and Jim carried around his own box of wine. He also referred openly