Free The First Bad Man by Miranda July

no—she needs to go. I’ve already put up with this much longer than I should have.” I thought of Michelle, how quickly she’d booted her. It was Jim’s turn now, or Nakako’s.
    “But if the globus—”
    I shook my head. “There’s other ways—surgery—well, no, not surgery, but counseling.”
    “This is counseling.”
    My eyes fell on Ruth-Anne’s mauve fingernails. Polished, but chipped. A receptionist needed nails like those, but a therapist didn’t. In three months she’d get another manicure.
    I DROVE STRAIGHT TO OPEN PALM: it was my in-office day. All the employees looked strange and shifty to me, as if they weren’t wearing any pants under their desks, genitals uncompacted. Was Ruth-Anne pantless behind the receptionist desk when I first met her? It was an icky and unsanitary thought; I swept it away and got to work. Jim and I had a brainstorming session with the web designer on KickIt.com, our youth initiative. Michelle was called over to coordinate the media. Before she sat down she cleared her throat and said, “Jim and Cheryl can take notes alone; they are the best at taking notes—”
    Jim cut her off. “Have a seat, Michelle. That’s just for group work.”
    She blushed. The pseudo-Japanese customs were always tricky for new employees. In 1998 Carl went to Japan for a martial arts conference and was blown away by the culture there. “They give gifts every time they meet someone new, and they’re all perfectly wrapped.”
    He’d handed me something wrapped in a cloth napkin. I was still an intern at the time.
    “Is this a napkin?”
    “They use fabric for wrapping paper there. But I couldn’t find any.”
    I unrolled the napkin and my own wallet fell out.
    “This is my wallet.”
    “I wasn’t really giving you a present—I was just trying to show the culture. The gift would be a set of little sake cups or something. That’s what the head of the conference gave me.”
    “You went into my purse and got this? When did you do that?”
    “When you were in the bathroom, just a few minutes ago.”
    He wrote up a list of guidelines for the office, to make the atmosphere more Japanese. It was hard to know how authentic the list was, since none of the rest of us had been to Japan. Almost two decades later, I am the only one who knows the origin of the office rules, but I never go into it since there are now actual Japanese-American people on the staff (Nakako, and Aya in education and outreach) and I don’t want to offend them.
    If a task requires a group effort—for example, moving a heavy table—it should be begun by one person, and then after a respectful pause a second person can join, with a bowed head, saying, “Jim can move the table alone, he is the best at moving the table, I am joining him even though I’m not much help, because I’m not good at moving the table.” Then, after a moment, a third person can join, first bowing his head and stating, “Jim and Cheryl can move the table alone,” etc. And so on, until there are enough people assembled for the task. It’s one of those things that seems like a drag at first and then becomes second nature, until not doing it feels rude, almost aggressive.
    When the meeting was over I asked Michelle to stay for a moment.
    “I wanted to discuss something.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “About what?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I wanted to ask you about Clee.”
    Her face grayed. “Are Carl and Suzanne mad at me?”
    “Was she mean to you?”
    She looked at her hands.
    “She was. Was she violent? Did she hurt you?” I said, continuing.
    She looked surprised, almost aghast.
    “No, of course not. She just . . .” She was choosing her words carefully. “Her manners were different than I’m used to.”
    “That’s all? That’s why you kicked her out?”
    “Oh, I didn’t kick her out,” she said. “She just left. She said she wanted to live with you.”
    I ENTERED THE HOUSE SILENTLY, even though she was at Ralphs. I had