Sushi for One? by Camy Tang Page A

with the admin all day — she’d have to ask someone else about real estate agent recommendations.
    She passed two of her coworkers — privately she called them the Gossip Twins, GT1 and GT2 — huddled as usual in a cubicle furthest from the managers’ offices.
    “Did you hear that she got called in yesterday?” GT1 always thought her voice didn’t carry, but Lex could hear her two cubicles away.
    “I heard she got reprimanded for rubber-stamping the documentation.” Smug and superior, GT2’s softer-pitched voice still rang audibly.
    “Was she too lazy to check it?”
    “She got distracted when her boyfriend called.”
    Both Gossip Twins were young and sociable. For a flickering moment, Lex considered asking them about a good place to meet guys, but . . . She walked past their giggling session.
    Lex arrived at her cubicle and found a large note scrawled on her yellow sticky pad: See me. – Everett.
    What now? Lex had finished her CAD work yesterday — ahead of schedule, thank you very much — so what could Everett complain about now?
    “What do you need a new chair for?” Everett dispensed with any greeting as soon as Lex appeared at his office door.
    “My back is giving me problems, so I need an ergonomic one.”
    Like, duh.
    “Your chair is fine. It’s not broken, is it?” His bald pate had begun to glisten and blush. Great. Temper tantrum ahead.
    “Well, the back adjustment screw is stripped — ”
    “Then get maintenance to fix it. You don’t need a whole new chair.” Everett tossed the purchase order onto his haphazard desk, where it disappeared in the sea of other white papers.
    “Mark looked at it, and he says — ”
    “Who the heck is Mark?” Everett’s violent head-rearing dislodged a few combed-over wisps.
    “Mark is our head of maintenance.”
    “Oh.” Everett harrumphed. “So, what’d he say?”
    “He said to get a new chair.”
    “Why can’t he drive down to Office Depot and pick up a chair?”
    “We went last week, but none of them fit. My desk is too high and my legs are too short.”
    “So you need this $250 chair?”
    “It was the cheapest ergonomic we could find.”
    “You don’t need a special erko — ergic — nomic chair.”
    “My old chair is causing my lower back to hurt.”
    “Nonsense! It’s all that volleyball you do.”
    That did it. An ume -red haze dropped over Lex’s eyes. “I played for years before coming to work for this company and never had back problems until I got that computer chair at my desk.”
    “Delayed reaction injury. The answer’s no.” Everett somehow found the purchase order from his desk — or maybe he didn’t, but he thought he picked up the right paper — and crumpled it up.
    Lex considered screaming “Avalanche!” and flinging the layer of papers over the edge of his desk. Or maybe she could dump him out of his posh leather chair like a dump truck and run off with it to her cubicle. Or maybe she could yank out his computer cables and hold them ransom until he gave in.
    Lex’s teeth ground against each other. She whirled and exited the Chamber of Torture.
    She almost collided with someone rushing past. “Oops, sorry, Anna . . . What’s wrong?”
    Anna dashed at her eyes, and her blotchy face scrunched up even more. Her nose turned neon.
    “Oh, no. Is it your manager again?”
    “Yesterday we were working together so well . . . laughing and joking. This morning, she yelled and threw her flowerpot at me. She said I did shoddy work.”
    Lex rolled her eyes as she walked down the hall with Anna back to the cubicles. The more distance from her manager’s office, the better.
    Lex walked close to a sniffling Anna but balked at putting an arm around her shoulders. She wasn’t as uncomfortable touching women as men, but she still didn’t like the physical contact.
    The tears gushed from Anna’s swollen eyes. “I just don’t get her.
    She’s so moody whenever I talk with her, I never know if she’s going to smile or