Recycling

Building security walked Denise out through the lobby at eleven fifteen, past the same gray chairs where she had once told me to reapply next quarter.

None of the candidates said a word. A few of them looked at me, then at the trash can by the door, and looked away again, working something out for themselves that nobody needed explained.

Lillian caught Tyler by phone before he reached the parking garage. I didn't hear her side of the call, only the flat, unbothered way she said "there is no position" before she hung up and slid her phone back into her jacket.

"The board wants to talk to you this afternoon," she told me. "Not about today. About taking this over properly, as compliance lead for the division, starting Monday."

"I already have a Monday," I said.

"You'll have two now."

I asked her the question I had been sitting on since the glass room. "How many other departments look like this one?"

"That's what you're going to find out," Lillian said. "Quietly, this time. No trash cans."

I thought about that for a moment, and decided I could live with quietly. Loud had never actually been the plan. Loud was just what Denise had needed it to look like, right up until the timestamp said otherwise.

Owen was still standing near the desk when I passed it, his laminated badge finally straightened, his hands quiet for the first time all day. "I should have said something sooner," he said. "About the badge."

"You said it when it mattered," I told him. "That's the part people usually get wrong."

I stopped by the trash can on my way to the door. My original resume was still in there, folded once, a little damp at one corner from the coffee cup that had landed on top of it. I picked it up, walked it three steps to the recycling bin beside the elevator, and dropped it in.

It wasn't proof of anything anymore. It didn't need to be.