When one of our mailboys was fired for stealing toner out of the supply room, management decided that the office would be that much more efficient if his position was eliminated altogether. One of the janitors, with a little training, could run the mail as part of his daily routine.

I cherish my drives home from work. My shift begins at noon and ends around eight at night. I don't hurry. I go below the speed limit. I drive an SUV that I will never take off-road. I bought it for its space and its sun roof, which I use to look up at the moon. Moon roof.

The next day, the day after the mailboy got fired, Will and I meet at the water cooler. Apparently, Will tells me, one of the maintenance guys got caught huffing furniture polish in the supply room that morning, and after the subsequent immediate firing management didn't see any reason to rehire for the position. One of the copy boys would pick up the slack. After the gossip had run its course Will and I resumed staring at each other, unblinking (when "eyeball-to-eyeball" stops being a clever phrase meaning "to be close"). We stare until one of us collapses onto the industrial carpet, clawing at his face and screaming like a madman who just saw the last little spot of his sanity blotted out; thickly covered like too much paint across a white wall. I'm thinking this must have been a game between us, or a joke at one point.

When two accountants (one male, one female) were walked-in on screwing (each other) in the supply room, both jobs were terminated. Two copywriters, or maybe just one, would fill in.

When I get home at night there is a scorned young woman waiting there for me. She is my girlfriend. Too many of our young women are becoming scorned prior to age thirty, and this cannot be healthy for our country. She asks me (Stacey is her name, I think)-- Stacey asks me if I had just been cheating on her. Just now. I explained that I had gone to work, you know, and that I went to work in order to buy food and pay rent, and that this would be something I'd have to do fairly regularly. Right, yeah, but had I been cheating on her while I was at work? I sighed, and once again plodded over to the couch and its austere setup of pillows, sheets, blankets, night table, television, radio, fan, and mini-fridge.

Good and bad news. Bad news first. Will was fired for leering at the boss' daughter. I feel a bit guilty because I taught Will most of what he knows about leering. Or maybe he taught me. I have his job now. I also still have the job I was hired for.

My company's banners for Most Efficient Corporation of the Year Award arrived at around nine in the a.m. I only know this because I received it and stocked it myself, along with forty-three other boxes. I inherited this job from one of our warehouse laborers, who had quit and gone to work for the shipping company.

I put the banners on top of a pile of pie charts in the corner of the office, which has come to look larger and larger each day with the out-trickle of employees. The pie charts sat on top of unfinished expense reports, which in turn rested atop fifty or so obscure documents which could have been anything. The banners, which I was going to hang up just as soon as I got done with the aforementioned reports, produced a cloud of brownish dust when dropped into place. My shift began seventeen hours ago, and I sort of stare down into the cloud with slackened jaw as all those little particles adhere to shirt, pants, hands, and the lids of closed eyes.

Around a month ago the office reached its current roster of five employees. There were thirty-four of us here before that first mailboy. Anywhere you look you can find mountains of unfinished reports, lights flickering or already dead above the hallways, giving the impression of some abandoned underground industrial thoroughfare. The grave of a coal mine. Linda, One of the Five, breezes past my desk and I see that dust has settled in the creases of her forehead. We walk around this place in a trance at all hours of the day and night, passing but never really seeing each other. The managers don't come in anymore. I don't blame them. The office is a funeral where the recently departed walk around and collate data and make copy after copy after copy after copy.

I get home around 4am and Jonesy is up watching a movie. He offers me a beer and I don't hear him. I don't think I've ever heard him.

That first night I began to work extra hours, I came home to find that Jonesy had shacked up with my girlfriend (Cindy?). All of my things from the bedroom were piled in a corner next to the sofa. Only a couple of boxes and a scented candle, really, so the dramatic effect was unfortunately lost. Two weeks later, Jonesy is on my sofa, and my things are piled under an old Army cot of mine, next to the computer desk. I explain, in the precious minutes I have before work, my theories on scorned young women in the United States, and Jonesy readily agrees with them.

These times at home, when I sleep, are really just a three-hour lunch break. The company has gone out of its way to comply with all State and Federal labor laws. For this it has received another award.

Tonight I'm headed back after a solid two hours on the cot. These days my eyes really only open halfway. The driver's seat is a capsule inside my SUV, an alien object enclosing me and propelling my body forty-five miles an hour over the asphalt. I don't really know the way to work anymore. My hands do. Something primordial and knowing in my hands. I can lean this chair back and look up at the moon if I want to. And I do.

It's full. Every cloud is on the other side of the earth and stars flood the sky. See the moon? It glows pale. Even with eyes damaged just from being open twenty hours a day, I can see every shadow in every crater. The Sea of Tranquility never deserved its name so much; it is a bed, and my eyes slowly
begin
to
close.

Headlights are a gentle avalanche over everything else. I can no longer find the city, and don't want to. Light pollution is fading, fading, fading, gone.

In the borderlands between being awake and asleep, I'm looking at my hands on the steering wheel. I'm having one of those dreams where you know you're dreaming, so I'm not afraid when my hands begin to turn the wheel very slightly. I'm dreaming that I'm on the interstate straightaway that takes me to work and I'm watching my hands turn the wheel more and more. I don't want to wake up just yet. I'd rather see what's going to happen.

The SUV is gone. I'm floating in space in a sitting position, yellow lines flying directly beneath me, and I'm watching my hands turn the wheel. I want to help. I am doing this. I make my hands turn until they are at 12 and 6. The moon glows pale. Bury me in the Sea of Tranquility. The stars are my blanket, and I'm wondering if the earth ever really existed. My edges blur. I've ceased knowing what I know.

I'm still watching my hands when something appears above them (the SUV has returned). Through the windshield. My headlights flow across and over the railing on the side of the road. A soft impact. The SUV hangs in space a long time, just enough for me to look at my hands, at 12 and 6, before I black out.

My eyes open, not dreaming, and I'm at the 70th floor of the office building. I'm covered in sweat (the elevators had long ago been shut off to save electricity). There's a copy of Fortune magazine affixed to the wall beside the grimy glass doors. The two CEO's of my company (well, their company) stare out from the color, smiling. Dental work the price of a small yacht. Pink ties. Smiling, and I notice a small blur in the corner of the photograph, as the photographer had mercifully clicked the shutter before CEO #1 could complete his thumbs-up. The headline reads Men of the Year. They'd saved millions in labor and other expenses.

I'm walking through the one rusted-open office door and it will be dawn in twenty minutes. Past all the desks the windows are open, curtains flapping in the altitude. A phone rings miles away and I let my briefcase fall to the floor as if on cue.

Answering machine: We just wanted to call congratulate you because our success is your success made it happen what a team were wondering if maybe you could work a little more overtime

Whatever is left on the machine dissipates in my eardrums, is left for the desks and flickering lights to deal with. I leave it.

My four colleagues are sitting out on the ledge. Wind whips hair. There is a bag under each sleep-deprived eye, and I don't even ask. I take my place next to Linda.

My SUV billows smoke on the distant off-ramp, police and fire engine lights swirling in the purple-dark morning. I don't look for more than a few seconds.

And it's right then that the sun peeks its crown over the steel pyre of the skyline. His rays run over and through the clouds like fingers, searching. In a few minutes they heat from paleness to golden brown. He continues to rise and his fingers graze and penetrate the top of our building (ours now) and his fingers fall on my face. Golden fingers on my lips chin nose hair my open eyes. I breathe in a freezing cloud. Exhale, and my world is brighter, brighter, brighter, gone.