Since the surface of his desk was meticulously bare, Charleston opened the desk’s upper-middle drawer. In this drawer, there was one single, dull-tipped and heavily chewed-upon pencil nearly three-quarters of which had already been shaven away. Charleston took this pencil and placed it atop his desk. Charleston then opened the drawer on the left side of his desk. It was, however, entirely empty. As were the other two desk drawers. This brought about Charleston’s first dissenting thought—which was a long time coming after the absurdly unhelpful training session.

  If it is so important that I write down my questions, asked Charleston to himself and bitterly, then why have you not provided me with ample material provisions to carry out my duties?

  This would be question number two, if Charleston could find some paper upon which to record his questions. Charleston stood and looked out over the large, empty room. But the room was as barren as his desk. In fact, there was not even a trash can from which Charleston might take trash upon which to write.

  Charleston could not very well go ask Mr. Twytharp for some paper. And Charleston did not dare knock upon Mr. Twytharp’s door to ask for Timothy Spall. This led to another question…

  How do I contact Timothy Spall?

  This would be question number three, if…

  Then Charleston got an idea. He pulled out his wallet and rummaged, eventually discovering a dry cleaning receipt that he smoothed out on his desk. Upon the receipt’s blank back and with the pencil nub he had found, Charleston wrote…

  (1) Might I bring with me reading material to peruse/read while supervising the cogs?

  (2) Why don’t I have any paper? Should I furnish my own? And, a corollary question, how important are my questions to the company?

  (3) How do I contact Timothy Spall? If something does go wrong with the cogs and all?

  Charleston then took the receipt and the pencil and placed them in the top right corner of his desk. He looked at his watch. He had been at work for less than two hours. And in that time, he had done veritably nothing. He was angry that it was not later in the day. Charleston had never before known himself to be such an angry man.

  When lunchtime finally came, and it did not come quickly or easily, Charleston thought of a fourth question—or a fifth, if you consider the corollary question in question two to be an additional question in its own right. And that fourth, or fifth, question was this…

  (4) Who watches the cogs while I am at lunch? And, again, a corollary question, if no one watches the cogs while I’m at lunch, then how important could it really be that the cogs are watched at all?

  Charleston recorded this question. Then he put his receipt and his pencil in his upper-middle desk drawer, where he figured they would be safe.

  Charleston took the elevator down to the second floor, where the Thundercom cafeteria was located. As he stepped from the elevator, he came upon Helena Birnbaum, who had just stepped off of one of the other elevators herself.

  “Hello, Mr. Sutterfeld. And congratulations,” said Helena.

  Still ruminating upon his fourth or fifth question, Charleston aimed to enlist Helena’s help by asking, “Who is watching the front desk while you’re at lunch?”

  Had Charleston asked Helena this question three days ago, she would have read nothing subversive into the query. But Charleston was now the CEO of Thundercom Corporation. So Helena, in response to Charleston’s circumstantially insensitive query, grew extremely nervous and acutely aware of what she suddenly saw as a profoundly foolish and unprofessional choice on her behalf.

  Conceding her own guilt, Helena responded to Charleston’s query with a small, defeated…

  “No one.”

  Charleston was delighted with this response. For, if the receptionist for the entire company could leave her desk unattended, then indubitably the cogs, themselves clearly comparatively nonessential if not downright superfluous, could go unattended as well. After all, it was her job to greet and direct all incoming queries into an enormous multinational corporation. This task was colossal. Charleston’s job was tiny. Charleston’s job all took place entirely from one chair and with absolutely no contact with the outside world.

  “Excellent,” replied Charleston, elated by Helena’s response. “Thank you,” he offered as well. In hindsight, Charleston would see how this entire conversation might well be misinterpreted. But for now, he felt nothing but tremendous affirmation.

  Blushing, Helena boarded the elevator and hurried back to her desk. Although she was hungry, she feared hunger far less than losing her job, which now seemed somewhat inevitable inasmuch as she had been all-but-outrightly branded inessential, and this by the CEO of the company.

  I suppose, thought Helena Birnbaum, I should have been nicer to Mr. Sutterfeld when I had the chance. From now on, I will call him Charleston. It’s more personable. And it’ll make it more difficult for him to fire me if he sees me as a person, and a personable person at that.

  Charleston purchased a salad for lunch.

  He noticed Curtis Ames sitting off by himself and decided to join him.

  “Hello, Curtis” said Charleston as he set his salad down and was seated.

  “Hello, Mr. Sutterfeld,” replied Curtis Ames.

  Charleston had never before noticed Curtis using his surname, so Charleston just took it to be a joke. In truth, however, the presence of the CEO at his lunch table made Curtis suddenly quite nervous. The two ate in silence for a long moment before Charleston finally asked, “Do you feel that your job at Thundercom is essential?”

  Charleston’s question was, again, derivative of his own insecurities, but was, again, taken by the interrogated party to be a query insinuating the general tenuousness of said party’s particular position with the company. And while Curtis and Charleston were friends, Curtis did not dare presume that their friendship superseded the tenets of business. Further, Curtis could not help but interpret Charleston’s question as an extension of their friendship and, as such, a forewarning of an imminent doom transpiring in the chiaroscuro world of business.

  Charleston, concluded Curtis, is warning me that my job is anything but secure.

  “Okay, then,” replied Curtis, to knowingly inform his friend that the message had been clearly received.

  Charleston had no idea, however, how this was a suitable response to the question posed. Unless Curtis meant to say that he felt moderately invaluable. But to quantify essentiality is to enumerate that which is, by definition, innumerable.

  Perhaps, reasoned Charleston, he did not hear my question.

  “Do you feel your job here is essential?” Charleston repeated, enunciating.

  This was far more serious than Curtis had initially thought. In fact, it seemed that Charleston was all-but-outrightly telling him that his job was lost. He felt grateful for a friend who would stick his neck out like this. It was rare. Especially when a man has so much to lose, so far to fall.

  “I will begin looking right after lunch,” explained Curtis Ames.

  Charleston, again, had not a clue as to what this could possibly mean. He was starting to worry that Curtis Ames was unwell. To be polite, however, Charleston simply said, “Okay.”

  The two then ate the rest of their lunches in silence: Curtis Ames considering future employment options and avenues in his mind, and Charleston piecing together the various odd fragments of his day.

  It just so happened that Curtis Ames had left his newspaper in his car, which was odd inasmuch as Curtis Ames never left his newspaper in his car; rather, he always brought it up to his desk. Furthermore, Curtis Ames never read his paper at work because he was always busy working. Just in case, though, his day grew slow or lax, which it never did, Curtis Ames brought his paper from his front lawn and placed it on the floor beside his desk. And today, of all days, the one day that he needed to read the paper (specifically, the classifieds section), was the one day upon which the paper was not on the floor beside his desk.

  He considered, for a moment, not getting the paper. But he had told Charleston he would start looking for jobs right after lunch. And if he waited until after work to start looking, then Curtis Ames would not have done what he had said he would do for his friend who was sticking his neck out for Curtis’ sake. So Curtis, although he had work to do, went down to his car and retrieved his newspaper, which was warm, as the car was hot with trapped afternoon heat.

  Newspaper in hand, Curtis Ames rushed back into the Thundercom building. As he did, however, he came upon an unusual sight: the typically cheery and warm Helena Birnbaum was slouched over and crying. She normally had perfect posture that thrust out her moderate but well-shaped bosom. In passing, Curtis Ames often admired Helena Birnbaum’s pronounced bosom and the trendy, but respectable blouses she wore atop it. Curtis Ames had always wanted to talk to Helena Birnbaum, but he had never had the chance…

  “Are you all right?” asked Curtis, his heart fluttering with nervousness.

  “Oh, yes. I’m fine,” replied Helena without looking up.

  “Because you look troubled,” said Curtis.

  “I’m crying,” explained Helena.

  “Exactly. That’s what I’m saying.”

  “Well, I’ll be fine. I’m just…I’ve some things on my mind is all.”

  Helena wiped her nose with a tissue.

  “What is on your mind?” queried Curtis.

  And with this, for the first time during the span of their first ever conversation, Helena looked up, her face wet with trails of former tears.

  It was silent for a moment.

  “Well, Mr…” Helena began and stopped.

  “Curtis,” offered Curtis.

  “Well, Mr. Curtis, I…”

  “Oh, no. It’s just Curtis. Curtis Ames. Extension 2282.”

  “Well, Mr. Ames…”

  “Please, call me Curtis.”

  “I’ve reason to believe I’m going to be fired,” explained Helena plaintively.

  “Me, too,” blurted Curtis, excitedly.

  “Oh, you’re just saying that.”

  “No. Really. I just had lunch with the new CEO, and…”

  “Charleston?”

  “Mr. Sutterfeld. Yes. And he just…insinuated…” explained Curtis, “that my job might be insecure.”

  “Me, too,” demanded Helena.

  “Oh, you’re just saying that,” insisted Curtis.

  “He told me that, too, but in a roundabout way.”

  “I’m looking for jobs,” explained Curtis, lifting the newspaper from his hip to the space in front of Helena.

  “Is it that serious, do you think?” replied Helena.

  “I don’t know, but I figure…better safe…’”

  As they spoke, Curtis could not help but observe how pleasant and pretty Helena Birnbaum’s features were. She had always caught his eye, but he had never really had the chance to see her features in service of communicating her ideas. It made Helena seem somehow even prettier than she used to seem.

  “What did he say to you?” asked Curtis Ames.

  “Charleston?”

  “You call him by his first name?”

  “I’m starting now,” replied Helena. “It’s more personable.”

  “It certainly is that,” figured Curtis.

  “And I just figure…better to be personable than…well…not.”

  Helena Birnbaum was not sure what, exactly, she meant by this.

  “I know what you mean,” said Curtis Ames. “Just because he’s the CEO…”

  Curtis Ames did not finish this sentence, but Helena understood what he was getting at.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “It’s just politics probably. That’s why he has to seem more removed,” concluded Curtis.

  “Are you going to get a new job?” asked Helena.

  “I’m going to start looking.”

  “Maybe I should, too.”

  Then it was silent. Curtis Ames had missed nearly twenty-seven minutes of work. But he did not seem to mind too much, on account of the impending loss of his job and on account of Helena Birnbaum’s features.

  “I should get back to work,” said Helena.

  “Would you like to go out some time?” replied Curtis.

  Helena blushed.

  Then she acquiesced.

  “Okay, Curtis Ames,” she said.

  By 4:39 p.m., Charleston began having his first little fish-nibble doubts about his ability to perform his duties as CEO of Thundercom Corporations.

  I might not, he thought quietly to himself, be able to do this every day.

  As he thought this thought, a surge of disappointment arose in his heart and in the base of his lungs. A pang perhaps. But quickly atop this pang it occurred to Charleston that today was only his first day as CEO, and that any person on the first day of any given job likely has doubts as to the longevity of his efforts in light of the seeming insurmountability of the task at hand.

  My feelings, Charleston tried to console himself, are likely to be expected.

  So Charleston stayed seated and kept staring forward.

  Between lunch (12:30 p.m.) and leaving (6:30 p.m.) on the first day, Charleston had added only one more question to his list of four (or six, depending on how one viewed it) questions. And that question was this:

  Do you have any suggestions as to how I might do my job more effectively?

  He thought of this question at 5:12 p.m.

  At day’s end, Charleston left his questions in his desk drawer where Timothy Spall might easily find them at his leisure.

  On the evening after his first night of work, Charleston placed a notebook in his briefcase and his briefcase on the floor in front of his front door where he would not forget it in the morning before his second day of work. Charleston had a nice dinner, listened to his radio some, and slept. Then he rose, showered, dressed, ate breakfast, and picked up the briefcase, and consequently the notebook, that he had left on the floor in front of the door where he would not forget it in the morning before his second day of work.

  The walk to work was pleasant. Charleston did, again, wear a suit to work—as his contract had stipulated requisite. As a result, the morning walk was warmer than it had previously been when, as an assistant consultant, he had worn slacks and a dress shirt.

  But, Charleston, ever the optimist, told himself that, in the winter time this will be quite an amenable wardrobe.

  Charleston stopped only to pick up a newspaper, which he had never done before, since his previous job was much more encompassing of his attentions.

  Charleston was not necessarily going to read the paper during work; rather, in lieu of the answer to his first question, Charleston was buying the newspaper merely as a possible source of perusal during his workday.

  The paper cost fifty cents. The novelty of such a fee struck Charleston as lovely and made him smile.

  Fifty cents, thought Charleston, his mind boggled thinking about how many papers must have been sold every day to make such a price point viable.

  The first thing Charleston did once he was at his desk on the second morning of his new job was to transcribe his questions from the dry cleaning receipt to the notebook he had placed in his briefcase the night before. As he removed the receipt from his desk drawer, Charleston was reminded that yesterday’s questions were all still unanswered, prompting yet another question: When will my questions be answered?

  This would be question number six—or eight, depending upon how one views it—just as soon as Charleston got everything else transcribed.

  Before Charleston even began his transcription, however, he realized that certain questions had now become themselves questionable. Like question two and its corollary. Since he now had paper, was this question any longer valid? Would it not seem simply like nitpicking to ask for paper if he already had paper? Although, the import of the logical consequences of the question Charleston still saw as pertinent inasmuch as the ramifications of the question, or questions, depending on how you view it, would serve to elucidate Timothy Spall’s, and possibly Mr. Twytharp’s, perception of the definition of the role that Charleston was to play within the company. But was the elucidation of these ramifications worth the risk of seeming to antagonize his higher-ups on what was only his second day as CEO? Or, more importantly, would such elucidation be considered rude?

  After some consideration, Charleston decided that, in his transcription of the questions, he would move this question from position number two to position number six (after the new question became question five). Thus, while he was going to leave the question intact for now, if he later decided to remove the question, he could do so inconspicuously.

  The transcription took but an uneventful minute, after which Charleston sat back and started his central task of watching the cogs. And although Charleston had indeed done much between leaving work yesterday and returning to work this morning, suddenly it seemed as though nothing at all had happened between this very moment and 4:39 p.m. yesterday, except that yesterday there had been only one hour and fifty-one minutes before Charleston could go home whereas today there remained nearly nine hours and fifty minutes. Moreover, the thought of last night’s evening away from work no longer seemed like such a substantial, utopian reprieve.

  “Dear God,” muttered Charleston, “what’ll I do?”

  But this question, like all the others he had been asking, went unanswered. And suddenly and silently, it was all too much. This suddenness and silence brought about Charleston’s first official act of rebellion.

  Charleston, faced with a serious judgment call in light of the as-yet-unanswered question number one, made the executive decision to begin reading his newspaper.