A Small Cardboard Box
A series of interconnected short stories from my 2018 collection "Degrees of Separation"
A Small Cardboard Box
(November 1984)
“Come on in, Junior.”
The speaker was smartly dressed, his suit and tie - grey and blue, and coordinated with the feint check in the suit cloth - spoke of his station and seniority. Although far from being a follower of fashion or a devotee of a ‘chic’ label, Brian knew that subtle touches made all the difference when it came to appearance. If the quality and ‘look’ of his working attire was just a cut above everyone else’s, then that was by design. It demonstrated he was one of the top managers in the firm and that he had earned his relatively plush office. Unless he was suddenly upstaged - which he so rarely was these days - none of his staff were able to match him sartorially.
Strangely perhaps, Brian didn’t regard his approach to his corporate persona as being competitive in any way. In his eyes it was a philosophy not based on a single ounce of one-upmanship, but rather driven by a need to look the part, of being able to demonstrate his fit to the role. It was about self-esteem. If he felt good and confident, that gave him a couple of points head start over just about everyone else.
Harvey Patisson was no exception. As physical specimens go, one might be excused for drawing parallels between the two men. Both were obviously on a downward trajectory from their heyday, though Brian had edged into his forties slightly more gracefully than the other and, if pushed, could still hold his own in a relatively competitive game of tennis. Brian was vaguely aware that Harvey - or ‘Junior’ as he liked to call him, having spotted his full name on his application forms four years previously - had been sporty in his youth. If you squinted your eyes as you stared back in time, it was just possible to see how he might once have looked. Now, sitting in the chair across from Brian’s desk, the only image readily conjured was that of a man struggling to keep his head above water; a man in a tired suit.
The sobriquet ‘Junior’ had hung around for far too long, but it was only when his father died that Harvey could legitimately drop it. Any notion of him being ‘junior’ in the physical sense quickly disappeared too. Soon after he turned thirteen he underwent a growth spurt which saw him leapfrog both his mother and then his elder brother all within the space of about eighteen months. He tried to lose the suffix then, but given there was still a senior ‘Harvey’ in the family, he had little option but to metaphorically sit and suffer. His father’s death just before he turned twenty proved a blessed relief - and not just from the perspective of his name.
Luckily his other nickname - ‘Little H’ - had been consigned to the dusty backroom of family mythology long before then. As soon as he passed five foot six or thereabouts and was starting to encroach on the eye-levels of the other two male members of his clan, everyone recognised that this particular childhood familiar now bordered on the insulting, and so they let it fade away.
In any event, the younger Harvey proved anything but little. His height grew in proportion to his overall mass, and even at fourteen he carried his 140 lb. frame lightly. You couldn’t call him fat, partly because he wasn’t, and partly because doing so would have potentially ignited the fiery temper he had inherited from his father. Harvey had been surprisingly lithe, quick too; there were murmurings of him trying out for the school football team at Linebacker, one if not two years ahead of the norm. Coach Davis thought he had ‘it’. There were - for a while - rumours about a scholarship to some Ivy League establishment. His star-struck friends even whispered “NFL” from time to time. Harvey pretended not to listen, but the words stuck.
As it transpired, the name and temper were not the only things Harvey had inherited from his father. One might choose to be kind and call it ‘bad luck’ or karma, but the fact of the matter was that Harvey the younger also proved to be something of a failure. His father had - at least in his early days - been optimistic, prone to indulging a habit of fashioning impractical dreams and then trying to hold fast to them. But as time wore on and the dreams failed to materialise, usurped by the monotonous inconvenience of every day life, their evaporation changed who Harvey Senior was. The stars were similarly aligned for his second son.
Having had the possibility lodged in his head (admittedly by others at first), Harvey’s stellar football career dissolved into nothingness like a mirage. There were a combination of factors: an ankle injury suffered when playing basketball, a slowing down of his upward growth, and a consequential problem in maintaining control over his weight - which unfortunately did not seem inclined to modify its pace in concert with his height. The college Linebacker trial failed to materialise as it became clear that these unexpected physical changes meant he could never be fit enough. The coach talked of ‘power to weight ratios’ as the ‘it’ got up and walked out. When this reality dawned on him, Harvey realised he had no back-up plan. At best, he was an average student; and the fact that he had pinned his hopes (consciously or not) on one day becoming an NFL millionaire, only succeeded in giving him permission to take his eye off the educational ball. Not only was he not going to get a scholarship for football, he might struggle to get one for anything else.
Timing was everything, of course. Even as he tried to knuckle down and make the best of a deteriorating situation, Jim was flying the family nest, away to college, away from North Carolina and up to Indiana. Harvey was left behind with his mother and younger sister. Although he tried as hard as he could, playing the role of the family’s male domestic lead just didn’t suit. If his mother saw too many echoes of his father in him, she refrained from saying so.
His current job suited him better than a number he’d previously had. It was not too taxing, not too repetitive, and he was not too bad at it. He liked the company well enough, and got along okay with his co-workers. Even his boss was a straight enough guy, and they had - more than once - found themselves the last men standing in a bar after a work’s night out. Things had become a little rocky in the recent past, however. There had been a widely touted view that the LA Olympics would give the whole country a boost and that businesses which had been recently suffering - especially from overseas competition - would see a healthy rebound. Some businesses may have bounced, but Harvey’s company was not one of them. And now Brian - his boss’s boss - wanted to see him.
But then he wanted to see everyone. Surely that was a good thing? At least that’s what Harvey and his cohorts had tried to convince themselves. People were scared of layoffs. Harvey had been there before, being given a small cardboard box and told to clear his desk. It was brutal and clinical. As he looked across at Brian, he had no way of telling where the conversation was going.
Of course other guys would have known, guys in sharper suits perhaps. Brian set out by giving a quick précis of the company’s position. If he had a script, he didn’t need to refer to it - after all, he’d already used it over ten times that day. The rumours were correct in the sense that business wasn’t great; they weren’t however accurate in terms of the depths of the problems they were facing. Harvey heard phrases like ‘structural weakness’ and tried to translate them into something he could understand. From way back came the notion of an offensive line with a sub-standard guard. That would be a structural weakness. It might mean the QB was vulnerable. If you had a flaw like that he knew it would have to be addressed.
“Which brings us to your department, Harvey.” The switch from nickname to proper name was ominous. “Once we’ve made the changes we need to in Sales and Marketing - and we’re making those changes today - we just won’t need such a big team where you are. We don’t want to, but we’re going to have to let a few of you go.”
Harvey suddenly noticed Brian was using ‘we’ all the time, simultaneously distancing himself from what was going on. Only a guy in a good suit and tie would know how to do that.
“I’ve already seen John and Rick, so they know.”
“They’re going?”
Brian nodded. “Good guys, both. It’s a bummer, Harvey, but what can we do?”
Harvey liked Rick. Occasionally he was one of the last men standing too - though not today. He remembered the weekend they had driven over to Philadelphia to catch a Phillies’ game. That had been a good weekend. They had been two behind in the ninth before the leadoff’s homer and then the winning double right at the end when they were two and out.
“And I’m afraid,” Brian’s words brought Harvey back; back from the baseball game, back from Philadelphia, and back into Brian’s office, “that brings us to you, Harvey…”
For links on where to buy Degrees of Separation, click here.