I returned to the office, feeling better about the way things had gone down. Susan was still away from her desk, so I was fortunate enough to avoid another tirade about break times. I allowed myself a private smile as I strolled towards my cubicle, but the satisfaction was short lived.
“There he is!”
I looked up to see fucking Jeremy at my desk, face dark with fury.
“You fuck!” he screamed at me.
I was caught off guard by his anger, unsure of exactly what it was I’d done to elicit such a direct visit from my call centre nemesis. Rebecca had a fearful expression as she tried in vain to calm him down. Jeremy wasn’t having any of it, though.
“Why did you do it, Jake? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I winced, wracking my memory, delicate as it was at present, for any particular incident that stood out amongst the rest.
My feud with Jeremy had existed for nearly a year, almost as long as he’d been working for Advantage. What had started as relatively good-natured practical jokes had quickly escalated into significantly less good-natured stunts. I had probably started it, if I’m honest, after some verbal sparring which culminated in me sabotaging his office chair so that it remained permanently in the lowest and most reclined position. He’d spent the rest of the week looking like an infant at the grown-up table, and in retrospect this had probably fertilised the soil for what would be a bountiful harvest of mutual hatred.
He had retaliated by sneaking onto my work computer while I was out to lunch and replacing the desktop wallpaper with pornography. Predictably, things had gotten out of hand from there. My tactical response had been to carefully cultivate a bounty of wheatgrass in his keyboard during his holiday leave. It must have left an impression, because I’d come to my desk some days later where to my horror, reaching into my desk drawer for a stapler, I instead found several live cane toads, causing general uproar within the office.
The ensuing feud got progressively less controlled, and infinitely more amusing. Jeremy found himself questioned with regards to the overseas calls to several disreputable Hong Kong sex lines made from his phone. I discovered fliers casually scattered around the office lengthily detailing a falsified criminal history with my name added to it. I rigged a length of Chinese firecrackers to ignite when he opened his drawer; we’d both been given an official warning after the fire brigade had left the premises. For a while after that things had cooled, until one Monday I’d arrived to find every item in my cubicle individually wrapped in newspaper. Attempting to show my endless support and acceptance of his life choices I’d organised a ‘Happy Sex Change’ party for him in the lunchroom. I’m pretty sure everybody enjoyed that immensely, with the possible exception of the man/woman of honour.
The latest in his long line of retaliatory actions had come in the form of Jeremy scrawling my name and phone number in, as far as I could gather, the restrooms of pretty much every disreputable joint in town. The phone calls I’d been receiving since then had been far too informative with regards to deviate acts I’d never even known existed. I’d yet to conduct my sweet revenge, however, so I couldn’t quite figure out what had gotten his panties in such a burning knot.
He stood, fists shaking with rage, glaring at me expectantly. The blank look I returned certainly wasn’t calming him down any.
“What did you do to my car?!” he screamed, spittle foaming at the edges of his mouth.
“Your car?” I asked aloud.
“You heard me. My car got fucked up last night, and I know you had something to do with it!”
“That grey thing with the pink racing stripes? Dude, I don’t think I could do anything worse to it than what you did with the paint job. That car is the gayest thing I’ve ever seen, and that includes all the man-on-man websites and magazines I signed you up to a few months back.”
“That car is my pride and joy, you arsehole!”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t be too open about that being the case if I were you.”
“And last night somebody threw a brick through the windshield and pissed all over it! I know it was you, who else would it be?”
Fragmented memories from the night before came to me. “Well, looking like it does, anybody could have taken offense to it,” I countered, missing a beat slightly. “Frankly I’m amazed it hadn’t happened sooner.”
But it was too late, he’d seen the recognition flash in my eyes and that was all the evidence he needed. In one swift movement he’d picked up a hole punch from my desk and hurled it in my direction. I ducked, the hunk of plastic and metal just missing my head and breaking open against another cubicle wall, pieces of paper flying every which way like confetti.
“Woah, Jesus man, calm down!” I yelped as the girls in the office shouted in alarm. Rebecca jumped up from her desk and ran out of the way.
And that was it. With a roar of pure hatred Jeremy charged towards me, fists bunched, tackling me to the ground.
I’ve never been what you would call an experienced fighter. Of the handful of altercations I’ve found myself in the middle of, I’ve won exactly zero. One of them, a high school brawl that erupted at a party between my circle of friends and the surfer clique, could have been arguably been considered a draw but this is probably more due to the fact I’d steered more or less clear of it, shrugging at one of the surfers who apparently had the same plan of attack as myself. So it’s pretty safe to say that I was in no way prepared for Jeremy’s flurry of punches as we collapsed hard onto the ground.
“What the fuck?” I managed to wheeze as Jeremy’s weight took the wind out of me. A fist lashed out and connected with my left cheek, the thud reverberating painfully through my already hangover-addled brain. I felt the heat spread through my face as I desperately attempted to shield my face from any more punishment.
“Don’t ever touch my fucking car again, you son of a bitch!”
As Jeremy pulled himself into a better position to launch his fist bombs from I took advantage of the momentary reprieve to grasp the phone book within arm’s reach and clouted him across the side of his melon, sending him sprawling across the floor. I was dimly aware of the girls in the office screeching in panic, but the pounding coming from inside my own head was drowning everything out but the rage growing behind my own eyes. Grasping my phone book in both hands like a boulder I struggled to my feet, ready to deliver some blows of my own. I wanted to destroy him.
Large masculine hands grabbed me by the arms and spun me around, and I was more than a little surprised to discover that those gorilla mittens belonged to Susan. The cold steel in those sunken eyes drained the fight out of me almost instantly. Her lips parted in a gap-toothed sneer as she addressed the both of us, her eyes never leaving mine for an instant.
“You two idiots. This is the last straw. Both of you, pack your shit and go home now! Consider yourselves suspended.”
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