CHAPTER TWO
ON THE second day, Arthur tried to ignore the man in the cubicle across the hall. Instead, at twelve thirty he rolled his shoulders back, put on a smile which he'd been told was nice, and made his way to the lunch room. There was a large cafeteria in the basement, but agents who didn't want to risk government chicken salad congregated in the lunch room of their particular floor.
His plan was to wait until most of the tables had at least one person sitting at each, which would force him to introduce himself to someone and ask to share a table. He knew it would be painful, but he wanted to work on a floor that had real plants instead of plastic ones. Of course, the really hard bit was that in this job you didn't talk about anything personal. You didn't ask someone if they were married or had kids. Opening conversation topics were limited to local sports teams and recent, but not too recent, movie releases. And Arthur still hadn't managed to see the newest Marvel offering.
Most of the tables were half to completely full. He spotted a six seat one that had three seats free. He could sit in the middle of the three without elbowing anyone. He walked up, attempting to show confidence but not arrogance. "Anyone sitting here?"
The three guys looked up at him. One gestured to the middle seat. "Thanks." He sat quickly, having left his jacket in his cube. "Arthur," he offered.
"Jack," the guy in the middle replied but didn't offer his hand.
Arthur nodded. The guys hadn't been talking when he arrived so he couldn't add to a conversation. He went to open his mouth to say something but the words caught in his throat. None of them looked at him, focused instead on their own lunches. He gave an internal sigh while mentally kicking himself and did the same. One looked at him for an extra second when he pulled chopsticks and Gỏi cuốn rolls out of his lunchbox, but again, nothing was said.
ARTHUR TOOK deep calming breaths in his cubicle. It had been two weeks and the conversations had not gotten easier. He had managed to make a few minutes of small talk about the weather, a couple of sports teams, and the most recent Marvel movie which he'd finally managed to see. There were only a few lunch room regulars he hadn't introduced himself to yet, including the guy across the hall who always wore the exact same suit, got tea at the exact same time each day, as well as lunch, arrived and left on a clockwork schedule, and whom Arthur had never seen utter a single word to anyone.
A particularly tricky request had dropped into his inbox that morning and made him later than usual when he stepped into the lunch room. It was Monday, which was always the most crowded. There were only two seats free. One across from the man in the dark grey suit and the other across from a blond woman with a pageboy bob, he hadn't met yet.
"Hi, could I-"
"Lesbian." The woman didn't even look up from her yogurt.
"What?"
"You've spent the last two weeks flashing a charming smile and looking over everyone here. Lesbian, you don't stand a chance, so don't bother."
Arthur blinked at her. He was pretty sure he'd never been called charming by anyone ever and it never remotely occurred to him that what he was doing might be coming across as anything other than awkwardly friendly. He blinked a few more times then took a deep breath and held out his hand.
"Hi, Arthur Drams, level two analyst, trying, badly apparently, to make friends because I'm really tired of getting promoted sideways because my own supervisors forget I exist."
The woman looked him up and down, then briefly shook his hand.
"Carol. Sit."
Arthur sat and, for the first time since he got to the fifth floor, felt relaxed.
"How long have you been level two?" She asked
"Four years on three different floors."
"Ouch."
"My last supervisor told me he had to look up my picture to figure out who'd submitted the promotion paperwork. He told me I should try to be more social."
Carol winced. "Hate to tell you, but it's coming across less social and more... creepy. But you're also obviously uncomfortable enough to make other people feel uncomfortable."
Arthur put his face in his hand. "Fuck my life," he muttered.
Carol gave a small snort of laughter. He sighed and opened up his lunch box.
"And for a white guy, your lunches are almost exclusively Vietnamese food. Nothing wrong with that, but it's noticeable."
"I semi grew up in a Vietnamese restaurant kitchen. It's what I know how to cook best. It's complicated."
"Looks good though."
He looked at her single yogurt and held out half his bánh mì sandwich.
She smiled "Don't mind if I do."
THE NEXT day Arthur got to the lunchroom early and looked for Carol. She wasn't there and everyone else was looking away. He sat by himself. It was a horrible rehashing of high school, but he hoped that he would come across less weird. Or at least less creepy weird. Hopefully, Carol would tell other people that the new guy wasn't creepy, just really unused to being social.
A few days later Carol was in the lunch room again and let him sit with her. She seemed to take lunch at random times on random days, but it was nice to have someone actually willing to talk to him, even if it was only for a half hour a couple times a week.
He'd been on the fifth floor a little over a month when there was a lull in the conversation. "Okay, what's up with the guy who's always in the dark gray suit?" It had been niggling at him since day one.
Carol didn't look over her shoulder like most people would. "You mean the Alien?"
Arthur didn't answer. He couldn't help but be aware of the dark suited man who sat across from him. His habits were clockwork. 8:05 at his desk, 10:00 a.m. cup of tea, 12:30 lunch, 3:00 p.m. cup of tea, 5:30 leave.
"Our best guess is that he crashed at Roswell and, after poking and prodding, they couldn't decide what to do with him so they gave him a human face and sent him here. He eats exactly one apple at the same time every day and is always reading books no one would read for fun. Three years, I've seen him talk to exactly no one."
"Has anyone talked to him?"
Carol looked over her shoulder. "A copy of The History of the Peloponnesian War, Volume 3 is a pretty good Go Away sign in my experience."
Arthur looked over at The Alien. It was a Go Away sign, but it was a very specific type of go away sign; it was the kind that said 'Look at Me Just for A Moment. I'm Weird. If you talk to me you're going to decide I'm weird and not like me so let's just save both of us the public discomfort of you feeling the need to reject me.' He'd used that same trick in high school with copies of The Prince and Art of War. There might have also been some eyeliner involved. He could also remember being desperately lonely and wanting someone else's weirdness to match with his.
FOR ANOTHER month Arthur watched the Gray Suited Man, wondering if their weirdness just might match.
He was late to the lunch room when he had his first chance to find out. It was the first Monday of the month when everyone decided they were going to start packing their own healthy lunches. By Friday, half of them would be getting pizza in the cafeteria.
There was only one seat left in the room.
"Hi, can I sit here?" He was mostly addressing a copy of The History of Foreign Investment in the United States, 1914-1945. The Gray Suited Man raised his head and nodded slightly.
Arthur held out his hand as he sat. "Arthur-"
"Drams. Twenty-Nine, Analyst Level Two. Three illegitimate half-sisters. Bachelors in Social Anthropology, Masters in World Economies. Conversational Spanish, French and Vietnamese, though heavily accented and the French is dated as to be useless to the Agency. Certificate in Portuguese, both European and Brazilian varieties."
Arthur blinked once. The Gray Suited Man was obviously not a fellow level two analyst if he had access to Arthur's personnel file. Then there was the fact that he'd looked it up and memorized the salient points. That was an impressive step in the 'I'm Weird so don't bother acknowledging my existence' game.
"I also enjoy classic Film Noir and have read every Robert Asprin book. Even the bad ones where he was phoning it in."
The Gray Suited Man tipped his head to the side ever so slightly. Arthur didn't break eye contact, his hand still held out. He was being sized up. He wondered if those two bits of volunteered information would end up in his personnel file.
"And you are?"
There was a long five seconds of silence. "Martin Grove." He didn't shake hands, instead went back to his book.
Arthur opened his lunch and smiled with a small victory.
A FIFTH cup of coffee was calling to Arthur when he ran into Carol. Having language certificates in Portuguese, instead of the more currently useful Middle Eastern or Eastern European languages, meant any given week he had either stacks of work or virtually none. Somewhere in Brazil, some shit was going down big enough that some field agents felt the need to send actual information back to the main office. He had been up late writing briefing reports and it would be another late night as well.
"You talked to the Alien?" Carol whispered just outside the small breakroom that held the holy coffee machine.
It took a moment for his brain to process that question. "His name is Martin."
"And?"
"And that's more than a lunch room full of secret agents has bothered to get in several years."
"We're not secret agents. We're data management. If we were secret agents, I'd have a much cooler car and have much hotter women trying to sleep with me."
Arthur couldn't argue with that one. "You could try talking with him yourself."
"Nah. You've already got your foot in that door. And in case you're wondering, that stunt has gotten you noticed."
IT WAS another week before Arthur managed to talk with Martin again. He slid into the seat across from him without asking this time. Martin briefly glanced up from his book, One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities, 1700-2000.
"I read that as an undergrad. Retrospectively, I'm not sure if I entirely agree with it, but I've never encountered a sociology book that wasn't fairly heavily biased one way or another."
"The specificities of the author's bias is in itself a valuable path of analyses."
"That is true. Though at nineteen I was mostly annoyed that I couldn't sell it back at the end of the semester." He opened his lunch box. He'd made himself summer rolls but added in an extra. No one could subsist on tea and a single apple. "Summer roll," he offered.
"No, thank you," Martin replied then went back to his book.
Arthur quietly crowed to himself. Two whole sentences. That was practically a conversation.
He fell into a sort of a rough pattern after that. Sometimes eating with Carol where they would talk about weather, sports, or if the ficus trees were real (she wasn't sure either). Other days he would eat with Martin.
It would often be in silence, but Martin never told him to leave. On 'conversation' days he could get maybe four sentences back and forth (not counting offers of food), on whatever Martin was reading at the time.
On the silent days, Arthur observed. The thing he observed most was just how fast Martin read. He always appeared to be idly flipping through books but he never had the same book twice and the way his eyes flicked led Arthur to believe he was reading every word. One day he watched Martin eat his six apple slices while getting two thirds of the way through The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy.
At that rate, he could understand why people called him The Alien. Arthur wasn't a slow reader, but he couldn't go at that speed. And there was something about the way he read. His eyes would be focused on the text, but he didn't hunch his back or drop his head in the slightest. His posture was perfectly straight without being stiff, more like a dancer than a soldier.
His fingers were long and his hands thin. Arthur would have sworn that pages of a book couldn't be turned gracefully, but Martin managed it. At one, without looking at a watch or clock, he would close his book, throw away the wax paper sandwich bag he carried his apple slices in, on a 'conversation day' possibly give Arthur the slightest of nods, then return to his empty cubicle across from Arthur's.