2001-11-05 - 2:54 p.m.

I knock at her office door.

�Come in,� my boss says.

�I�ve just got this time sheet,� I say.

�Oh,� she says. �I can take care of that right now.�

I step forward and hand her the photocopied page. The sheet is like the dozens of other time sheets I have handed to her over the past several months. Only next to the question, �Is this assignment complete?� I have checked �Yes� for the first and only time.

Then I back out of the office slowly, not sure if she will sign the paper now or check the sign-in sheet downstairs as she usually does. But as I leave the office, she calls out to me, �Thanks for working with us.�

I step back in and take the sheet from her.

�Well, thank you very much,� I say. �I really enjoyed working here.� Then I mumble awkwardly about how great it was to work on so many different projects.

She says, �Oh, good,� and �Uh huh,� and nods quickly, like she wants to give me her attention but she�s on a deadline.

�Well, maybe I�ll� see you again someday.�

�Okay. Great.�

That�s it. The end of six months of work, my occasionally-rewarding stint at this publishing house. My life as a semi-anonymous temp, sharing hellos and smiles with these people, all the while knowing that I�m just one more person to walk through their revolving door, comes to an end.

It�s been a comfortable, domestic adventure. At worst, tedious; at best, charming. It has felt, at times, like a waking dream. It has been the hum of a refrigerator turning on late at night, the silence shared between two strangers in an elevator, the morning stroll so familiar you don�t notice you�re there. No mountains to climb here; only a series of gently rolling hills, a winding path just amusing enough to keep me always moving forward and peeking around the bend.

I wonder what residue will remain; what feeling will be evoked, when I think back on these days, and what will evaporate in the air. The faces, so familiar now, will blur, as my face blurs to them. But if I recall them all now, get a sense of them here, then perhaps their acquaintance will not have been meaningless.

Pat, the woman who met me at the reception desk that first day, and took four of us into the basement for two weeks of mindless typing, a grandmother with infinite patience and her hair in a bun, who invited her grandchildren to play on the lawn outside as I ate my lunch one day.

Allison, who welcomed me back to the company when they needed me again, shook my hand and took me upstairs to the editorial department a few weeks later. Together we edited reams of calculus equations. An attractive woman with long, dark hair, who patiently corrected my editing, who smiled often and was kind to me. A sympathetic, competent woman, who was single when I arrived and married when I left.

Gail, who handed me a book on information systems to proofread, who listened to NPR in her office, who sometimes struggled to walk due to her fibromyalgia, who often brewed coffee that I drank, who wore long dresses. A rebellious personality who made witty remarks into my ear.

Joe and Ben, two regular guys who left in the summer after a year of service, a couple of friendly slackers who were content to pass the time there until their next adventures, Joe in Alaska teaching American Indians, Ben back to school in North Carolina.

Kathleen, who struggled to be friendly, to be liked, to be a good employer, whose success placed a heavy toll of pressure on her, as she by turns laughed excessively and berated her employees when things went wrong, who threw going away parties and them tried to break them up as soon as possible so we could get back to work.

Scarlett, a temp like me who yearned to find human contact in this humdrum place, a world traveler and fellow writer who was blown about by her husband�s career, who left in frustration after enduring one too many criticisms from the boss. On her last day she told me her husband may be reassigned to Europe; perhaps today she is walking down some cobbled path in Belgium, or perhaps she is still just a mile away at her home in Uptown.

Sam, who would poke his head curiously above the cubicles and look around, as if to say, What�s going on here? Sam and I shared this strange chemistry as we joked about our jobs and lives, with a certain look in our eyes that said, I know there�s something extra to you, you�re subversive like me, we could establish a real friendship in a more hospitable environment. We�d laugh and joke, and then get back to work. Don�t want the boss breathing down our throats.

And Revo, the old black janitor in the flannel shirts, will I remember you? I remember his tired, smiling eyes, as he came into my office to empty the trash � �Hey there, Dave.� Always careful to call you by name, staring off as he offered a word about the weather or the basketball game, determined to bring dignity and communion to our sometimes cold office.

These people could give me faith in humanity. Because they all were good people, wanted to be kind and generous with others, strove to make other people�s lives pleasant, tried to remember to smile and say thank you, and ask how was your weekend was, and not forget the acts that make us human.

But in that time, I have seen people come and go, to North Carolina, to Alaska, to new jobs in Chicago. They are a part of your world one day and gone the next, and all you can do is say good-bye and good luck, and maybe one day we�ll meet again, but you know they never will. They�ll be relegated to the long list of people whose names you can�t quite remember, whose faces sit vaguely in the recesses of your mind.

And now I will become one of them to these people, and they to me, as I say my awkward good-byes � �Maybe I�ll see you one day,� �Send us an E-mail,� �Stop in one day if you�re in the neighborhood� � and walk out the door forever, never to see or hear from them again.

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