Free The Cube People by Christian McPherson

she no longer puts her pen directly on her desk; she puts it on a piece of clean white paper. I guess she just can’t keep the desk clean enough.
    Dan has probably killed more trees than Dutch elm disease. His desk is covered in paper, sedimentary layers of government forms and tabloid magazines. Dan looks up from Entertainment Weekly and catches me staring at his desk. I’m doomed. “Hi Colin, working hard or hardly working?” he asks, laughing.
    I’m not sure how to respond to something so inane and unfunny, so I ask him, just to be polite, “How’s the tooth?” And as soon as the words leave my lips I know, but it’s too late. I’ve dropped something fragile, my sanity. I watch it fall in slow motion, about to shatter into little pieces. Dan opens his mouth.
    â€œOh God Colin, it was horrible. The dentist had to fill two teeth. He said that he’d never seen an infection that bad in twenty years of practice. He told me I was very lucky I didn’t have to lose the teeth. He worked on me for over an hour. And do you know what the kicker was, Colin?”
    â€œNo,” I say, not wanting to answer.
    â€œI was allergic to the antibiotics. I ended up in emergency covered in hives, having trouble breathing. They gave me different stuff, but the Tylenol-3 I was taking gave me terrible constipation and it ripped my hemorrhoids to shreds.”
    I wave my hands in front of my body and say, “No, no, no, too much information.”
    Although Dan laughs at my reaction, it seems to spur him on. “I tell you Colin, I had to see the doctor about my hemorrhoids after because the pain was so great. I had to get a cream with a steroid in it to settle things down. Oh God, the burning and itching was intense I tell you.”
    â€œJesus Dan,” I say, but he keeps going, telling me next about his bad back, his slipped disc. For the next half hour he talks about how he’s going to acupuncture for his crooked foot, and the physiotherapy he had to go through last fall for his rotator cuff.
    â€œI’m a mess, Colin.”
    â€œSounds like it. Look I gotta hop,” I tell him, leaving our quad, not sure of my destination, only of my escape.
    I walk out and see a plumber putting a sign on the men’s washroom door, Out of Order . “Busted pipe, you’ll have to use the handicapped washroom or go to a different floor,” he tells me.
    â€œActually, I’m just walking by.” I do a loop around the floor, walking aimlessly. I think about Sarah. The fertility treatment has been extremely difficult for her. I hope she ovulated after this second round of treatment. I can’t go through a third round of 11 to 22. I walk over to the Sunshine Valley Mall to grab a coffee and give her a call to see how she’s doing. I realize I’ve left my cellphone on my desk, but there is no way I’m going back for it. Of course when I get to the mall, both pay phones are being used. I go get my coffee first. When I get back, the same people are still on the pay phones. The young girl in the Hannah Montana T-shirt seems to be chatting with a girlfriend. Shouldn’t she have a cellphone? I’m one to talk. The business man seems to be dictating instructions to his secretary. They’re both babbling strong.
    Finally after another five minutes, the business guy gets off. Both the phone handle and earpiece are warm. I think of Carla and the prime breeding ground for bacterial growth that I’m holding. I fish for quarters and dial.
    â€œSarah MacDonald.”
    â€œHi, it’s me.”
    â€œWhy aren’t you calling from your desk or the cell?” she asks.
    â€œWalked to the mall, forgot the cell on my desk. I needed a break. The place is driving me nutso. How ya doing, baby?”
    â€œRemember how I was having that weird feeling on Day 25?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œWell I think it could be implantation in the