Rabbit’s Review Is Interrupted by an Air Strike
It was the day for annual performance reviews, and Rabbit was sitting in Badger’s office.
“You’re being a little tricky, Mr. Rabbit,” Badger told him.
“Oh… what do you mean?” asked Rabbit, immediately regretting the ‘oh’, and knowing he was in some degree of trouble by the way Badger had addressed him as mister. He tried to sit up straight and focus, which only served to make him look confused and terrified.
“I think you know exactly what I mean,” replied Mr. Badger. The mid-morning light from his single window was flat and grey, and the sky outside looked entirely unwholesome, like the opening scene of some disaster movie. Four storeys below sat the parking lot, and its rows and rows of dull, wet cars. “You’ve been playing these little tricks,” Badger continued. “For example, the message on your answering machine is a series of clicks followed by static. The auto-reply on your email is the beginning of an out-of-the-office response — alright, fine — but then it trails off into a series of random Japanese characters, with a winking emoji at the end. Your jacket is always on the back of your chair, your computer is always on, and your lunch is perpetually half-eaten in front of your keyboard. But you, Mr. Rabbit, are never there. Shall I go on?”
Rabbit’s little eyes were getting smaller and smaller. If only he could winnow them down to dots, just two dots in his swimming little head, then he would truly be inscrutable.
Badger continued. “You haven’t done any work in months. You don’t attend any meetings. Indeed, somehow you’ve avoided being on any project teams at all, and there isn’t a single open docket with your name on it.”
Rabbit shifted in his chair. Badger’s office grew smaller and smaller around him. He could feel the closed door at his back, trapping him in. Rabbit hated to be trapped, which in a way was really what this was all about.
“And then there are the little things,” Badger continued. “These crazy little things. Was it you who filled the backroom paper shredder full of potato chips? Was it you who replaced the contents of the paper towel dispensers in the washrooms with folded sheets of romantic poetry? Was it you who replaced the business cards at the front desk with quotations from Marcus Aurelius? Was it you who removed the numbers off the microwave? Was it you who filled the answering machine, for twenty nights running, with sounds of trains and whistles and ghostly moaning voices? Don’t answer, Mr. Rabbit, it doesn’t matter, we’ve arrived at this place all the same.”
Rabbit cleared his throat and leaned forward with his best expression of earnestness. “That’s exactly how I feel, Mr. Badger. Exactly. The past is a border, you see. And on this side of that border is a business, the business of this office, and if capitalism says anything about itself, anything at all, it is the idea of dispensing with borders, and turning from the past, with its chains of history, and moving forward, rounding the corner, embracing the new. Business is, not to put too fine a point on it, the business of the new, the business of what’s ahead. I sit before you as a project, Mr. Badger. I am a project in transit. Indeed, I was built for little else but movement. And I want to move beyond the past, Mr. Badger. Here, today, I want to move forward with you. I want to talk about the future, Mr. Badger. What can we do, together, you and I, to promote my success within this great enterprise, this business that we find ourselves bound together in, and that we are both so obviously committed to.” And with that Rabbit tilted to the side, ever so slightly, his tiny eyes twinkling. That all sounded rather good, he thought, and belched softly.
Badger sighed. “You’ve been drunk for two years running,” he said. “You’re half in the bag right now. At 10:30 on a Monday morning, no less. You vomited in the potted snake plant in the hall on the way in here. Now clear out your…”
And then the air raid sirens went off, the overhead lights began their panicked flashing, and the office door automatically clicked and opened, as if by magic, as if some kind of tomb. In a single convulsive twitch Rabbit bolted from the room, moving with alacrity and great speed, down the hall, through reception, down the stairs and out into the open air, tearing across the parking lot, leaping three cars at a time.
“Goddamn it,” Badger muttered, as he stood watching out the window at the little bounding figure disappearing into the distance. And then the walls compacted and swelled and burst all around him, changing their shape to better accommodate Mr. Death, and all Badger ever heard was a whoosh, forever.
