The Beginning of Everything

by Michelle Read DeGarmo

We’ve been friends for less than a year, and you’ve just quit your job. Well, sort of; you’ve told the executive director to perform an unlikely sexual act upon himself and stormed out.

I follow you, of course, like I will for the next fourteen years.

I know you’ll be at our project. It has walls now, and a floor, and we’re both wearing shoes this time, so things are already looking up. I find you pacing around the skeletal interior walls. You need to rant for awhile so I listen. For what it’s worth, the disagreement spinning out of control wasn’t your fault. We work for a temperamental man whose grandiose ideas aren’t always rational or legal. You pointed out the flaws in his latest shenanigans and it was not well received. He is an asshat. If you want to keep your job, though, you’ll need to apologize.

You pause the tirade to ask me what I think, so I say “are you ready to go?”. For a moment you think I mean are you done complaining, can we leave the building now, and the hurt look on your face shocks me. Your entire body deflates at the realization that I may not be on your side this time. Up to this point I still suspected you were just letting me follow you around because I typed fast and you felt sorry for me. I understand, finally, that this friendship was never about pity.

So I continue, explaining how you should not give our boss the satisfaction of quitting unless you are ready to leave on your own terms, sure of a brilliant and successful future. We aren’t quite there yet, so perhaps an insincere apology will buy you the time to plan what’s next. You smile, thank me for listening, and we leave.

Later, after an apology so sarcastic I still cannot believe it worked, we are downstairs in our little closet office. Sitting beside me you quietly say, “I can’t do this alone” and hand me a coffee stained business plan created on a typewriter in 1979. The cover says, simply, Marvin & Company.

This is the beginning of everything.