Super

Robert Thomas walks through the shiny glass doors of DiBartolo's Costumes Inc., the fifteenth company he will have worked for in the last two years. All of these companies have become more symbols than places now to him, representations of one all-encompassing corporation that seems to run the whole kit and caboodle. This particular place is just a shadow on a wall. Like Plato, he thinks. Or maybe it is more like Heraclites, a river in constant change. Either way, it's bigger than he is. No matter where he has gone in his ingenious guise as a temp, it has been the same, drudging away days in the bowels of office buildings. He has braved many environments in his time. Once, he was even placed in a dark, damp basement swarming with mice and roaches. He arrived each day at 9:00 on the dot, taking his customary seat at a foldout table. As the hours passed, he shooed mice and squashed bugs. Weeks passed, then two months. Toward the end, he stopped shooing and squashing. Instead, he left little pieces of crumbs for both. He came to understand the true meaning of community. Then his term was up, as it always happens, just as he was becoming comfortable with village life.

The receptionist who greets him is pretty and perky. Maybe that's her superpower, to exhibit perk at 8:30 in the morning, leap boredom in a single bound. Beside her desk is a tall, leafy plant, the kind that you can't ever figure out whether it's real or not. Other workers come in. They already work here, so they move right past her without a word to wide-open-spaces offices or boxy compact cubicles. Not even the men look at her. As far as they are concerned, she may as well be the plant. After telling her who he is, she picks up a brightly colored phone to tell the other end that he's arrived—yes, him, the unquestioned hero of the story. She then tells him to take a seat.

As Robert waits, a security guard comes in, a big hulking man with linebacker shoulders and arms like clubs.

"Morning, Liz," he says.

"Oh, hey, you. How was your weekend?"

"Real nice. Went to see my sister and her kids in Jersey. Been a real long time since I seen them last."

"Oh good for you."

"I'll tell you, that little girl of hers gets more adorable every time I see her."

The conversation goes on like this: the receptionist describing her weekend with her fiancé; the security guard telling her about his desire to buy a house; the whole while people in business formal streaming in, saying nothing to either. Finally, the boss calls for him. He's sent up a glistening chrome stairway to the left of the receptionist. As he walks up, he notices soft musical stylings of an unknown origin trickling down from above. He tries to separate the different sounds he hears. There's a horn-like instrument. Also something that resembles wind chimes. He wasn't even aware that wind chimes could be used as a musical instrument.

When he gets to the top of the stairs, a squat little woman with stringy brown hair is waiting for him. Her dress is some strange color that mixes aqua and teal. Unlike the younger girls he has seen at the offices, her shoes are sensible and flat. That's probably why she is the boss—a tough go-getter hell-bent on being taken seriously.

"This way," she says, without a bit of banter.

Robert follows her through gray halls, passing cubicles and closed doors. The further she takes him into this place's belly, the colder it gets. Air conditioning pumps constant cycles of processed air even though summer is still two months away. Such arctic paradises placate computers and copiers, all the bold machinery of business. Robert is prepared, though. He's brought a thick woolly sweater with him. The closer to 5:00 it gets, however, the more the sweater's resistance...