Chapter 1: Pestilence Walks the Land

I had my brain deeply buried in some financial analysis when a rapping behind my head startled me. I flinched sharply, my office chair lurching against my cubicle’s desk. When I’m deep in my research I become oblivious to the environment around me. Apparently, a woman had come up behind me, and when I was completely unresponsive, not perceiving her presence, the rapping became necessary.

She said, “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought it would be more alarming if you heard a voice just speaking out of thin air. It’s just, well, it’s so empty up here now. Since everybody left here weeks ago, I’m not comfortable with the situation, the lack of people in what used to be such a busy office. It’s actually feeling a little spooky for me. All these weeks we have been working at opposite ends of this room, and just today I noticed you. I’ve been coming up here on the east side’s elevators every day thinking I was alone.”

I was being interrupted by a masked woman I’d never met but wearing one of our corporate badges: “Sallie‌‌ Macron, Process Analyst” over a very ordinary navy suit. My badge read “L. Andrew Franklin, Private Investment Research Adviser” and both badges displayed the crimson logo of our employer, Pelle Marco Bank.

I lifted my head above the cubicle and glanced around the room. I thought I was the only soul on the 22nd floor of the PMB tower in downtown San Francisco. The office had been vacant for two months now, when the usual 40+ coworkers on our floor had fled due to COVID. Sallie, I gathered, had also been coming in, so there were two of us working on site.

Pulling on my own mask: “I was just surprised, no harm. Why didn’t you stay home with the rest of the staff?”

I could tell she was nervous, judging from her voice and posture. From the empty surroundings? From thinking she was disturbing me? “Oh, wait, I don’t need to know, never mind,” I said, not wanting to disturb her more.

Internally, I was hopeful; having human company in this emptiness would be great. The ranks of vacated cubicles were disconcerting. The cubicles were three-sided with five-foot tall walls. A desk fastened across the three walls, holding them upright, with a smaller bookshelf fastened similarly above. The inhabitants sat facing the desk and shelf, the side walls on their left and right and their backs to the open un-walled side of the cube. There was nothing in my eyeline except gray fabric-covered walls, my computer display, the usual desk detritus, and a photo of my daughter.

By design, then, cubicle life was isolating. While working my back was to a narrow aisle, with matching cubicles in the same orientation to my left and my right.

I did my best to give her my most winning and reassuring smile. “I’m happy you came by, I was just too deep in my spreadsheet to notice you were standing there behind me.” I gestured to the vacant cubicle across the aisle from mine. “Ms. Macron, please come work here. We could both use the companionship, I am sure.”

“Only if you call me Sallie. Thank you, I’ll be back with my things.”

I wasn’t above wheeling out to watch her walk away from me. All the way down the aisle. Sallie was my age, I think, late thirties. Curvy, for sure. Very nice. Her conservative suit wasn’t very revealing. But, at this point in my isolated life, any hint of femaleness caught my full attention. And she was way past just a hint, at least viewed from behind. A man can dream, can’t he?