Nothing that mattered, and somehow everything that did.
We talked about small things.
Charles always had a small notebook in his shirt pocket, worn soft at the corners. After lunch, before he stood up to head back to his cart, he'd take it out and write something down.
Quick. A line or two.
I assumed it was a grocery list, or maintenance notes, or something equally unremarkable.
I never asked.
That's the part I think about now. I never once asked what he was writing.
He'd take it out and write something down.
***
The jokes started slowly, the way most cruelty does.
"Lunch with your boyfriend again?" someone said one afternoon, grinning like it was the funniest thing they'd thought of all week.
I laughed because that's what you do.
"Charles is better company than you," I said, and went back to my sandwich.
But it didn't stop there.
It became a thing.
The jokes started slowly.
People would glance toward our table and smirk.
Someone left a fake "reserved" sign on Charles's chair once as a joke.
Someone else asked me, with mock concern, if I was worried about my "career trajectory" sitting with the janitor every day, like proximity to him might rub off and get me promoted to mop duty.
I laughed off every single one of those comments.
Someone left a fake "reserved" sign on Charles's chair.
But laughing something off and not feeling it are two different things, and most nights I drove home turning them over, wondering if I had really become the office joke.
Charles never seemed to notice, or if he did, he never let it touch him.
One day, after a particularly loud round of comments from a table near us, I asked him:
"Doesn't it bother you? What they say?"
He took a slow sip of his coffee before answering.
Charles never seemed to notice.
"People are loudest when they don't understand what quiet is worth."
***
I didn't fully understand what he meant.
Not then.
The years moved the way years do when you're not paying attention to them.
I got promoted.
Charles bought a cupcake from the gas station down the street and slid it across the table that afternoon. No card. No fuss.
I got promoted.
He just set it down like it was nothing.
"You don't have to do that, Charles." I said.
"I know. I wanted to."
