"Charles? Our Charles?"
"I guess so," she told me, already turning back to her screen.
I went to the bathroom and sat in a stall for ten minutes before I could breathe normally again. When I came out, the break room was the same as always.
Loud. Full. Nobody at our table.
The break room was the same as always.
***
The funeral was held on a Saturday at a small chapel across town.
I went alone.
I checked quietly if anyone else from the office was planning to attend.
A few strangers offered the kind of sympathetic head-tilt people give when they want to seem like they care without actually doing anything.
Nobody from my office came.
I went alone.
Eleven years of working in that building, and the man who had given so many people directions, fixed so many jammed printers, and kept that whole place running, was being buried with barely a dozen people in the room.
