Sweat by Jimmy Chen

Bronco Sade was fired from OLD NAVY within two hours. He didn't know it was Human Rights Day, or anything about Jonathan Finn. He didn't know what Public Relations meant, only that the people involved were usually attractive, albeit somewhat sweaty looking. Bronco was simply assigned to show up at corporate headquarters by his employment agency.
    The receptionist didn't know who Bronco Sade was, or anything about his agency. When Bronco said he was the new assistant for Jonathan Finn, the receptionist nodded her head as if to say: Ah yes, that situation. She looked with empathy, shit, and led him into the cubicles.
    There where four things on his desk: a phone, a pencil, a pad of paper, and a philodendron. Everything on my desk begins with P, he thought. He sat down and touched the underside of a leaf, then noticed that his pencil was really a pen with a plastic sheath made to look like a pencil. Still P.
    A very tired and worn out woman with faint perfume came over, picked up his phone, pushed a sequence of buttons very fast, brought the phone to her ear, listened, and began cursing. She hung up the phone and looked at Bronco for ten seconds, then picked up the phone again. She handed him the phone and said "one one two two three three pound gets you into voice mail just write down everything don't leave anything out Jon gets here soon he'll be coming for you just be calm seriously we can turn this into a good situation well not exactly."
    The very tired and worn out woman with faint perfume left. Bronco swallowed self-consciously and realized he had no saliva left in his mouth. He slowly entered 112233# and the automated lady on the other side said there were 27 messages. It was 9:11AM.

Jonathan Finn, Director of Public Relations at OLD NAVY woke up knowing it was Human Rights Day. He had marked it on his calendar at the beginning of the year. The only other day he marked was April 15, a day which also agitated him.
    He laid in bed for two minutes, looking at the ceiling's faint roaming of cold orange light cast by the sunrise. He imagined the sun rise over the horizon into the sky, but remembered that was an illusion. The earth was simply curving towards it. The entire human race was simultaneously being thrown towards a flaming ball of cosmic accident at 66600 miles per hour. He got up and looked into the mirror. I'd fuck myself, he thought.
    As he crossed the bridge into the city, Jonathan Finn went over the statement in his head. The theory of comparative advantage posits the mutual benefit of two parties in trade when one has a lower relative cost of producing some good, as long as the production of one good is reduced to produce one more unit of the other good. Knowing this made him feel less agitated. He turned on the car radio and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel to light jazz. I'm smooth, he thought.

Press 7# to save messages in archives, which is what Bronco did, so when the automated lady on the other side said Messages Deleted, Bronco immediately felt a lump in his throat. All 27 messages from every major newspaper in the country asking OLD NAVY for an official public statement regarding their sweatshops, vanished. Bronco peeked his head over the cubicles for facial cues, assuming there was some collective consciousness and hyper cognizance of all things that went on in the vicinity of one another. There wasn't. In an office full of around two hundred people, Bronco was alone. He found the very tired and worn out woman with faint perfume and told her what happened. She looked at him for ten seconds, then smiled.
    When the Director of Public Relations arrived and found out that Bronco had deleted all the messages, he politely asked Bronco to leave his office. He picked up the phone and moments later, the very tired and worn out woman with faint perfume went into his office, shutting the door. When she exited his office, she politely asked Bronco to take his 15 minute break.
    Bronco went outside and bought a Snapple. He walked over to a bench and sat down. A pigeon came by looking for food. He kicked at it, glad he was a human. Bronco ripped the label from the bottle, crumpled it up into a wad, and threw it at the bird. A spark in the eye does not require any sheen. The pigeon looked at it and immediately went towards it, until discovering it was a wad of paper. This made Bronco smile, the sadness of other animals.
    When he got back to his cubicle, there was a little Post-it note stuck to a philodendron leaf: CALL YOUR AGENCY. And so he did. The phone didn't even ring once. Midway, the line snapped up and a nervous lady on the other side told him to please be c-calm.

About the author:
Jimmy Chen's writing has recently appeared in Thieves Jargon, Why Vandalism?, Yankee Pot Roast, Pequin, and Juked. His website, The Embassy of Misguided Zen, can be found at www.jimmychenchen.com