Something About His Pants

Marcus was attempting to dart past the break room door when someone called his name. Any other time he'd have gone in and sat down, but he was on his way to do something about his pants.

A few minutes earlier, he'd discovered that one of his cheap roller ball pens had exploded in his front pocket. He had just finished running the second virus scan (and removal) this week for Baxter Lambsgrove, the CFO, who spent the entire time yakking on the phone like Marcus wasn't even there, first about granite countertops with his wife (whom he repeatedly called "Babe") and then with someone named Mort about why a person should never hire a Chinese gardener. When he was done, Marcus signaled that he was leaving. Lambsgrove lowered the receiver for the first time.

Looks like you sprung a leak, sport!

Rather than go into the break room, Marcus leaned tactically against the doorframe and stuck his head in, keeping the blue ink slick on his thigh out of sight as well as the now-blue fingers that had extracted the drippy pen. He assumed the standard lunchtime bull session was underway and expected to endure some light ribbing from the maintenance guys before continuing on to the locker room to attend to his chinos.

But instead the break room was quiet. Marcus felt an underlying drone in the way they all stared at him. The only person not looking at Marcus was the baleful and generally mute Peruvian that everybody called The Turtle, who stood watching a bowl of something rotate inside the microwave. And it wasn't just the usual bunch from maintenance and operations. Murphy and Gallegos were there but so was Mary Ellen from events and Lena the new accounts receivable person with the crazy buckteeth. And sitting between Murphy and Gallegos was Sally Kellog, Lambsgrove's spinstery admin, who looked like she'd been crying.

Gallegos spoke first.

Hey man, you know how to get into people's email, right?