15. You Betta Work B!^&$
You Betta Work B!^ he was at that awkward height where jump versus duck was often a quandary and in this case, he chose to stoop in his dark indigo overalls and black hoodie, the front pocket stuffed with a rolled-up measuring tape and a carpenter’s pencil forgotten from his ongoing tinkering with his backyard Ark.
He remembered them both now as they poked into his ribs as he emerged from under the police tape.
His hair was braided back from his face and tied with a black shoelace that was a desperate man’s up-cycling masquerading as couture.
“Looks like the rapture came for the drywall and office furniture,” Ronald muttered, scuffing his sneaker against a scorched tile. “Left us behind with that fake fern. That thing will survive the end times, talk about resilience.”
“Also left WWJD with the deductible,” Rebekkah said without humour, “supposing there’s a valid insurance policy in place.”
Carrington approached slowly and wore a sharp black suit with a wafer-thin lapel, a crisp white shirt buttoned to the throat and choked by a c-clasp cameo, possibly of themselves, hand carved in shell.
A black silk scarf with tiny embroidered white doves trailed behind them in one hand, fluttering gently in the breeze.
Their nails were painted a solemn, glossy navy.
The heels of their stilettos clicked delicately on the crumbling tiles as they approached the bereaved cluster of their coworkers.
Overall, the look whispered grief, while it shouted editorial.
“I feel so…” Carrington glanced around the pitiful place with a sigh, “underdressed. I should have worn the veil.”
“You wore the veil to the staff meeting where we found out we weren’t getting a new coffee machine,” Ronald reminded them.
“That was also a death,” Carrington replied primly, “of my hope for proper espresso.”
Suwarna brought up the rear, her heels stabbing into the ash like tiny, furious punctuation marks.
She had on her Serious Meeting suit: charcoal skirt with matching blazer, soft cream blouse, and a hand-span wide belt and buckle that meant business.
Over it all she’d draped a long wool coat in a deep and dignified cabernet sauvignon, and her hair was scraped into a high and tight pony clip that bounced and announced her arrival from afar.
In one arm she clutched a clipboard, because even in the smouldering ruins of her workplace, flashes of inspiration, accusation, or findings helpful for an investigation might emerge and she was ready to studiously take note.
“Everyone, watch where you step!” Suwarna ordered. “No open-toed shoes, no bare ankles. If you trip and impale yourself on rebar, I swear to your God I will make you fill out your own incident report.”
“We don’t even work here anymore, do we?” Ronald pointed out and asked because he wasn’t sure where they stood in terms of employment. “So… would a slip and fall here be an incident? Or just bad life choices?”
They stood together for a moment in a loose line, shoulder to shoulder, like they were waiting for their cue to go on stage, and the stage manager was somewhere off in the wings fumbling with a lighting cue or a stage hand.
The first thing they noticed was the smell: under the acrid smoke and charred wood was the sweet, unmistakable scent of movie-theatre popcorn.
“This was the lobby,” Carrington said softly, pointing at a collapsed section of the interior wall. Only a scrap of wallpaper remained to surrender its identity, bubbled and peeling–a tiny cluster of lambs now smeared with soot that had barely escaped their flock’s shish kebab fate.
Ronald toed at a chunk of melted plastic that might once have been part of the mixing board. “The control room was just through there,” he said. “That was my favourite place. All the sliders and buttons and little blinking lights, like a spaceship built just for us.”
Rebekkah turned in place, arms folded tight across her chest as if hugging herself.
“Studio B was back there,” she said, chin jerking toward a blackened doorway.
“Where we did the first Trinity Radio hour. And where I heard my voice in the headphones and thought, ‘Oh. There I am. That’s me. And this is what I’m supposed to be doing. ’”
“And Emma-Lou’s office,” Suwarna said, pointing up out of habit, then remembered there was no longer an upward to really point to; the second floor and roof were gone.
She lowered her hand, fingers tightening around the clipboard.
“Top floor. Corner office. Well, the other corner office, opposite to mine. The slightly bigger one with the slightly better view, though the window in hers rattled whenever the trains went by.”
“I used to love reading the framed beatitudes in gold lettering here in the lobby,” Japheth added, his voice soft at the edges. “Blessed are the meek, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the ones who bring snacks.”
“Blessed are the ones who sign our pay cheques,” Ronald said.
They all hushed as Emma-Lou’s disappearance poked at their thoughts.
For a moment, the only sound was the wind whispering through the empty window frames, making a lonely, fluted hum, like a choir that had forgotten the words.
“Who wants to go first?” Rebekkah asked finally, forcing brightness into her voice. “Who wants to start the whole ‘share what we’ve lost’ circle time? Okay, I’ll start. I lost the ability to choose a ponytail or braid in the morning. I lost my dignity at an office birthday party.”
“We’ve lost our jobs, right?” Ronald asked again for clarity as no one had confirmed the first time. “That feels worth mentioning.”
“We lost our… community centre,” Carrington added. “Where else can I gossip with elderly women when they call to complain about the radio not being loud enough when they leave their kitchen for the dining room?”
“We lost our status in this town,” Suwarna said, looking around and searching their faces like a clue may still surface that would explain everything.
“Without the station, we don’t have a platform.
Without a platform, we don’t have power.
And without power, I have to stop wearing shoulder pads this aggressive; otherwise, it just looks delusional. ”
“You could see if there’s any openings with the Hamilton Tigercats,” Carrington suggested as any good friend would.
“And we lost Emma-Lou,” Japheth said quietly. “Or… we don’t know if we’ve lost her. She might be…” His voice cracked. “We don’t know.”
They stood in that not-knowing together, shivering in their coats, staring at the black husk of a life that, for a brief stretch of time, had felt like home.
It was a small relief when Ronald broke the silence with, “So, how was your date, Japheth? You’re here. You’re alive. Can we assume it went well?”
“Ronald,” Rebekkah hissed. “I don’t know if now’s the time or place…”
“What?” he protested. “We can grieve and get the tea.”