Today is my last day at Miller and Associates. Fortunately, it’s everone’s last day. Or else it’d be lonely and I’d feel like a failure. Nope, we all failed together. Which is why, at 6 pm today, with our desks cleared of “personal affects”, we will escape forever.
Hank comes by at 2 pm. Says he has something for us to do. I’ve been staring at a blank computer screen for 5 hours. I’m game.
“We’re going to leave our mark on this place.”
“I’m out,” I say. Hank was caught peeing in an alley once.
“Listen man, we’re going to leave our names here.”
“How?”
“In the bathroom.”
“Didn’t I just say I was out?”
“Come over here.”
I’m not sure why, but I follow him. We step into the men’s room. Billy is there; he has a screwdriver to a urinal divider.
“Hey man,” Billy grunts. He does another turn and the fixture comes off.
“What now?” I want a cigarette. I look at Hank.
“Now we etch our names in.” He takes out a weathered knife.
Our names, it turns out, are too much to etch in. But our initials work. We finish tagging the urinal divider.
“Alright, who gets to keep it?” Billy asks.
“No one.” Hank says. “It goes back up.”
“Why man?”
“Plastic lasts hundreds- no, thousands of years. People will always know we were here. That we existed.”
“But it’s going back up. It’s going to be hidden.”
“But we’ll know it’s there.”