Survival never goes out of style

I felt made from old plaster most days, some depressing building rubble poured into a wrinkled suit. I scrawled the words to songs in the margins of inter-office memos, sometimes on ones that weren’t mine. I came across her indignant in front of the coffeemaker, which it must have been her passive-aggressive note that I put the Jawbreaker lyric on.

She said things like what kind of an asshole would and who the hell do I work with that doesn’t and other things about coffee pot politics. She was talking like to her self, mostly, too fast for me to answer anyways, looking at her note taped to the cabinet. I poured myself a cup, the last of it, and walked off.

She followed me, which I was thinking what a fluorescent gray day I was having anyways, so when she started in on me not brewing more I almost had to smile. Her face was so intense, and it was just Maxwell House, you know? She was seething, blood turned her cheeks and throat red, and I thought that here’s one of those moments.

We walked together back into my office, me turned to look at her with her straight ahead and her voice all hard words. I sat down at my desk and took a sip of coffee, which tasted really good right then. She petered out and stood there, dazed, for like four seconds. When I didn’t say anything back she turned and stormed out, slamming the door, and I watched her angry hair flip-flop down the hall through my window, wondering what could have made her so bitter and lovely.