May Season Studio Archives

by Gintare O.

preceding files:

Onboarding / 01 / The Smell
Onboarding / 02 / The Invitation
Onboarding / 03 / Parking Lot
Onboarding / 04 / Frank
Onboarding / 05 / The Catalog

She did nothing.

That was what the email had told her to do. No action required. She interpreted this in the most literal way she could. She did not go back to Frank’s queue. She did not open the flagged descriptions again. She did not look up the SKU she had copied into her notebook. The SKU sat on its own page, circled, and she turned past it every time she opened the notebook.

She did her own queue. She did the Q4 imports. She corrected two of Karen’s questions about title casing. She helped Dale onboard, which involved walking him through Ledger and explaining what the flags meant. Dale learned quickly. Dale asked the right questions. Dale was, if she was being honest with herself, better at the job in his second week than Frank had been in his tenth year, which she noticed and refused to attach any meaning to.

She let the days go by.

She let a Friday go by. She stayed home. Nothing came.

She let another Friday go by. She stayed home. Nothing came.

The card was in the notebook. The date on it changed each time. She did not check the date. She did not need to check the date. She could feel the notebook in her bag on the passenger seat while she drove and she could feel it not calling for her attention, which was worse in a way than when it had been.

She was doing what she had been told. She was, therefore, being left alone.

She had been left alone before. She had had four years of it. She was, she recognized, being told that if she went back to being the person she had been for four years, everything would return to how it had been.

She wanted very much for this to be true.

The Friday on the card came again.

She went to work. She did her queue. She left at 5:00 exactly, which she had started doing since the email, because leaving at 4:58 felt like it invited another chime. She got in her car. She drove home. She did not stop anywhere. She did not check her phone until she was in her apartment with the door locked.

Nothing came.

She sat on the couch. She did not turn on the television. She ate a bowl of cereal for dinner because she had not felt like cooking. She was aware, at 6:00 PM, of the fact that she was aware of the time. She sat with the awareness. At 6:11 nothing buzzed. At 6:15 nothing buzzed. At 6:30 she made herself a cup of tea and read a book.

She went to bed at 10:00.

She had done what the email said. She had gone nowhere. She had received nothing.

She slept the whole night.

Saturday she did errands.

It was one of those October Saturdays that looked like a color chart of leaves. She wore a jacket. She had a list.

She stopped at the grocery store first. She bought produce. She bought coffee. She bought a bottle of wine to have on hand in case she wanted one, which she had not for a while but she was replacing the one she had abandoned the Friday of the invitation. Groceries were a rhythm. She was choosing rhythms deliberately.

She stopped at the coffee shop on her way home. It was on the corner near her apartment. She did not need to stop there. She did it because she was constructing a normal Saturday and a normal Saturday for her included a coffee shop.

She got in line.

The person ahead of her turned around.

“Genny.”

It was Monika.

Monika had been on the same team back in Genny’s earlier years, before Genny moved to Karen’s team and before Monika got the promotion that had led to the pilot office overseas. She had come back for good a few months ago, in a new role Monika had never quite named. Genny had run into her twice since the return, both times in the lobby, both times briefly. Monika was that kind of person. She would talk if you saw her. She did not seek you out.

Monika looked well. She had a shorter haircut. She was wearing a coat Genny recognized from a store she could not afford. She had a small leather bag Genny also recognized from a store she could not afford. She looked like a person who had, at some point in her time away, discovered a specific amount of money.

“Hi,” Genny said.

“Coffee?”

“Yeah. Killing time before the rest of the errands.”

“Same. I do everything Saturday morning.”

“Where are you living now.”

“About a mile up. Bought a condo. Move-in was in August.”

“Nice.”

“How’s Karen.”

“Karen.”

Monika smiled at this, briefly, because that was the correct response to any statement of Karen’s name.

The line moved. They shuffled forward. Monika ordered. She paid. She turned back to Genny while the barista started her drink.

“How was Friday.”

Genny felt her whole body go still.

She had not told Monika about Friday. She had not told anyone about Friday. She had not told anyone about anything since the box had come to her cube. She said, keeping her face level:

“I didn’t go.”

Monika looked at her for a beat.

“Hm. Good.”

She said it kindly. She said it the way you might say it to a friend who had made a decision about not calling someone she should not call. Not congratulatory. Not warning. Just: good.

She took her coffee off the counter.

“See you around.”

She was gone before Genny had ordered.

Genny ordered her coffee. She paid. She got it and did not sit down. She walked out of the shop and around the corner toward her car in the small lot on the side street.

Halfway there she noticed the truck.

It was parked at the far end of the lot, at an angle that suggested it was going to leave soon. It was a plain white delivery truck with no company markings on the side. No lettering. No phone number. No department of transportation number that she could see. It was clean, which delivery trucks generally were not by this time on a Saturday.

She was going to walk past it.

She was not going to walk past it.

She was going to walk past it, then stop, then walk back.

On the rear panel, just above the license plate, was a small emblem. Maybe three inches across. Dark on white. She recognized it without knowing why. It was familiar in the way a name is familiar on a document you have signed once. She had seen it somewhere. She could not immediately place where.

The truck’s engine started.

She kept moving toward her car. She unlocked it. She got in. She set her coffee in the cup holder without drinking it.

The truck pulled out of the lot.

She followed it.

She was not following it in a way she would have been able to justify. She was two cars behind. She was at a reasonable distance. She was going the direction she was going to have gone anyway, for a while. Then she was not.

The truck took the on-ramp to Route 53.

She took the on-ramp to Route 53.

The truck did not exit at the parking lot. It kept going, past the office buildings, past the storage yards, past the stretches of trees. It kept going until Genny recognized where they were going, which was north, along the frontage road, toward the MSS campus.

She let a car get between her and the truck. Then she let another.

At 2:14 PM on a Saturday the truck signaled right and turned onto the MSS campus drive.

Genny did not follow.

She pulled into the forest preserve lot across from the campus entrance and stopped her car. From this angle she could see the truck driving up the campus road, past the visitor sign, toward the back of the building where the loading dock was. She watched it go.

She sat in her car for a long time.

She had not been on the MSS campus on a weekend in four years. She had assumed, without thinking about it, that nothing happened on the campus on weekends. She had assumed the building was empty. She had assumed this the way a person assumes their office is closed when they are not there, which is to say without any evidence.

She did not drive onto the campus. She did not need to. She had seen what she had seen. She had seen a truck with no markings and one small emblem drive onto the MSS campus at 2:14 PM on a Saturday. She had seen the emblem before, and she was going to know where when she wanted to know.

She started her car. She drove back toward her apartment. Her coffee was cold.

She thought about Monika.

She thought about the way Monika had said Hm. Good.

She thought about the fact that Monika had known to ask about Friday.

At home she put the groceries away. She sat at the kitchen counter with the coffee she had bought and had not drunk. She got the notebook out of her bag.

She did not open it. She put it on the counter in front of her and looked at it.

She thought about the emblem.

She thought about walking past the truck and stopping and walking back.

She thought about the fact that the person she had wanted, most, to tell about the last three weeks was a coworker she had barely known back then, whose face had shown up once in an internal newsletter cutting a ribbon at a pilot office overseas, and who had said one word this morning in a coffee shop line that she was going to hear in her sleep tonight.

Good.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

at may season studio, deliveries are scheduled based on operational need. the campus is staffed seven days a week. employees are not required to be aware of this.

written and designed by gintare okrzesik, creator of may season studio. a fictional corporation exploring beauty, bureaucracy, and quiet corruption through narrative design.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Monika has been in the files before. She was better company then.

Begin with:

Professional Development - Genny and Monika across a table, two years earlier

The Standing Order - what arrives at the loading dock, and who is there to receive it

The Annual Review - how the company evaluates the people it has decided about

Part seven arrives next Friday.

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May Season Studio

ONBOARDING / 06 / GOOD