The New Year's Job

I spent New Year’s Eve in the cold outside The Offices. Waiting for signs of life on the fifth floor. Watching the dark windows expecting them to light up any minute.

The Offices calendar indicated no party, event or even room reservations for the holiday — I logged into the portal to check repeatedly, even on days I had no intention of going there — but I wasn’t taking any chances; I didn’t want to encounter any of my so-called “co-workers”. Not tonight.

I just want to work.

Nobody was stopping me from going up there, but I kept waiting in the backseat of my broken-down car anyway with a cracked window to keep my view from fogging up, listening for approaching footsteps.

This corner of town was dead.

I shouldn’t have been surprised; it was always dead in the dark hours in this crapped-out city’s financial district with its boarded up banks, which was why I got away with leaving my car parked there day after night after night after day. Even showing signs that someone might be living out of it. The passenger seat heaped with clothes on top of a bulging cardboard box all with my unrolled sleeping bag draped over the headrest. Everything combined to make a bulky cloth figure taller than myself. For some reason I thought tonight would be different, though. I imagined drunken revelers making their way down to this end of town, lost or looking for a shadowy doorway to piss in, but I’d seen no one. Not before midnight. Not in the hour since.

Come to think of it, I didn’t hear anything, either. No distant voices doing a countdown. No fireworks as the calendar flipped over. Not even the sound of a tv from an apartment overhead since nobody actually lived in this section of town. Except me, of course. In my car.

It seemed right that I should be there in the quiet first hour of the starless new year. It seemed like I belonged here, like the place needed me. Like somebody should call this street home at night after all of the suits and vaping coders abandoned it by the five o’clock hour. And this year I guess that person would be me.

Unless someone at The Offices spotted me and ratted me out. I was only paying for a virtual office: a mailing address where the money could be sent if I ever managed to be taken seriously. Me with the closed bank accounts. Me with the expired driver’s license.

My place at The Offices was invisible except to just walk in, pick up my non-existent mail, and walk back out. Maybe avail myself of the facilities — soft two-ply toilet paper, a quick fill of my bottle from their filtered faucet -- if nobody was sniffing up the air around me through a raised eyebrow hose. But I was thinking about upgrading to a floating cubicle. Thinking about how I’d use some of my virtual money for that whenever it materialized at my virtual address. Imagining being able to enter The Offices any time — day, night, or weekend — completely legit. Unlike now, sneaking in under cover of darkness using the keycode everybody was emailed, no matter how low-tier their membership. One six digit number they changed monthly allowed me to bask in the old building’s uncontrolled heat left on all night. Just for a couple of hours now and then when nobody else was occupying the space pretending to work when they just wanted to get away from their wives or kids. When I thought about it that way it only seemed right someone should see to it that all that nighttime heat wasn’t squandered. It seemed good my car ran out of gas so close to someplace that needed me.

But of course the co-workers wouldn’t see it that way. Not the ones who paid for their reserved desks. So I sat there watching the building, wary of one of them bringing a drunk new year party date here for a quickie on the big boardroom table coming from a crowded party without private flat surfaces. Didn’t seem likely at this point now, though. A whole hour after midnight.

And me with a bonafide job to do on the first day of the new year. As soon as possible. Tonight the heat would just be a bonus because I’d really be busy. For a few minutes, anyway.

*****

Getting out of the car made the most noise I’d heard since I left the old man diner at ten to head down here. A shocking noise slamming the door: so much louder than my shoes on the three miles of sidewalk between the diner and here.

I could have crossed the street and entered the building at a leisurely pace, but I jogged it. Eager to get into the dim doorway, out of the leftover Christmas lights wreathed around ornamental street lamps. It wasn’t that I was afraid of someone seeing me — at this point I was certain I was alone — but that I had a job to do. A sense of purpose.

And more than a sense of purpose: I felt drawn.

I felt drawn up the four flights of stairs. Drawn up by an energizing source. I thought it was the excitement of the new year, starting it out with a real job, but that didn’t make sense; I’d always hated New Year’s. Maybe I’d always hated work, too.

I strode up dark stairs to the heavy double-doors on the fifth floor. I didn’t need to turn on a light to punch in the six numbers ordinarily but on this night I didn’t even get the chance: a completely new entry system and protocol had been installed since the last time I checked in to use the toilet two nights prior.

I never got an email from The Offices informing us of any new entry requirements. Maybe this is new security to keep me — me, specifically — out.

I was about to turn around and go, head back to the diner or just sleep in the car, when I heard the voice.

“PLEASE reset your password.”

The commandment was issued with clarity by an assertive artificial woman’s voice while a three by five crystal screen illuminated by degrees until bright enough for me to read the same message there:

PLEASE RESET YOUR PASSWORD

Her voice was patient. More like an invitation than a command. An invitation especially for me.

I knew exactly what to punch in.