Absent - Prologue
“Where the hell is Dave?”
The question was shouted at an empty cubicle.
He wanted Dave, and Dave was not at his desk. What the fuck?
Sally, who sat in the cube across from the dependable, quiet, very serious, always present (except today), and kind of cute (if she was ten years younger and not married) Dave Shah, glanced over at the empty cube. Oh shit...she thought, He looks pissed! Her mouth engaged before her brain could dispense some advice.
“I haven’t seen him all day” she piped up.
He whirled on Sally and fixed her with a withering gaze. She looked away.
“All day?” he said, fingering Dave’s name plate, slowly drawing an invisible line under it. The glossy plastic smudged. Sally couldn’t think of anything to say. She knew Dave was working on something for the Boss, but when he tried to explain it to her mind quickly wandered and she found herself thinking about how badly ironed his shirts had gotten lately.
“Well?”, he said, snapping her back to attention, “Where the fuck is he?”
“Uhm, I don’t think he came in today.” she replied meekly. Meek is about the best word to describe Sally. Meek and thin. With cats.
“Didn’t come in today.”
He said the words as if they were new to him, tasting them in his mouth and then spitting them out like a sampling of cheap wine, unconsciously pressing the name plate so hard it started to pop out.
“I think...”, she started, but seeing his face, her small voice grew even smaller and tapered off. She lowered her gaze once more, and started hoping the ground would swallow her up.
“You think?”, he said, staring at her hard.
You could almost see thoughts about Sally crashing around like boulders in his head, bulging out the sides and then pouring gravel into his eyes. He gave her that look for a few seconds more. and then, with his usual ignorance of Sally’s existence (he always called her Joan), Harry Sickle, Senior Director of Planning, stomped back to his office making sure everyone heard him along the way.
“Well. he better be in a fucking coma or show up in the next five minutes or there’ll be hell to pay!”
The door slammed and rattled the windows.
Where the hell was Dave?
posted by mq at
12:19 PM
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