So Long, Chester Wheeler
Catherine Ryan Hyde
Chapter One:
* * *
The Bad-Neighbor Lottery
The first thing I need to say, and the most important thing you can know, is that for most of the time I was forced to know him I despised Chester Wheeler. And I mean with every fiber of my being. I’m always tempted to say hate, but I feel that’s a line I never want to cross. Nobody wants to harbor hate or feel hateful, and it might even be fair to say that the reason I hated people like Chester is because they made it so easy to hate. Like there I was, trying to live a peaceful life and harbor no ill will for anyone, and then Chester came along and found that little seedling of hate and just pulled it up and out of me until it was laid bare in the light, like the most dominant characteristic of my life. And then people like him, they get to say, “See? You’re every bit as hateful as I am,” while pointing to what they inspired. And he did say that to me on at least one occasion. But I’m getting off to a bad start, running away on a tangent.
I can pinpoint exactly the moment I came to despise Chester. In fairness, he hit me with his attitude on what I can honestly say was the worst day of my life. I don’t suppose he knew that when he opened his big mouth, but I don’t think that makes his rudeness any easier to forgive.
And I should mention that it wasn’t just me. Everybody hated Chester Wheeler. Even his grown children. But there I go with the H-word again, and I’ve been trying to avoid it.
I’ll start more or less at the beginning. Maybe a little before what someone else might see as the beginning. Because it’s impossible to know how deeply Chester hurt and offended me without knowing the details of how he chose the worst moment in the history of my life.
I had a very good job that was just about to get better. Or so I thought.
I was working at a software company as a developer, and I had been promised a raise that would bring me into six-figure territory for the first time in my life. It may not sound all that earth-shattering to someone else, but for a twenty-four-year-old guy, it looked like a lot of money.
I had just picked up the first paycheck that would reflect my new raise.
I decimated the envelope tearing it open, and my eyes landed on the figure. And it hadn’t changed. It was exactly what I’d been getting every two weeks since my first six months at the company.
Then a flash of pink, still inside the envelope, caught my eye.
If somebody had asked me prior to that moment, I would have ventured a guess that pink slips are not actually, literally pink. I would have been wrong.
I just stood there in the hallway for a time with my face burning, thinking nothing. I don’t know if I was purposely trying not to think, or if I was trying and failing.
What might have been several minutes later I marched down the hall to Edward’s office. I think I had it in my head somewhere that this was all a horrible misunderstanding. A case of mistaken identity, maybe. If anyone at the company was unhappy with my work, I think I would have known it.
I knocked on Edward’s door.
I heard a mumbling from the other side—sounding a bit unbalanced and frightened—that suggested I was not to open the door.
“Sorry, no, not now, I’m sorry, I can’t . . .”
I opened the door.
He looked up at me as though I might be the person who would end his life, and this might be the moment I did so.
“Lewis,” he said.
I opened my mouth, but nothing happened. No words came out. But I was standing in his open office doorway with the paycheck and the pink slip crumpled in my hand. It’s not like he didn’t know why I’d come.
“It wasn’t my decision,” he said. “And it wasn’t anything about you or your work. And you’re not the only one. We needed to downsize or else. Or we’d go under. I had to lay off four employees. But I’ll write you a hell of a recommendation, old boy.”
That sounded like a strange thing to call a young person, but it’s not as if that part was important.
“Worst time in the history of everything to find another opening.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
And by the tone of his voice and the look on his face, I knew he truly was. And I knew it was not a misunderstanding. Not a case of mistaken identity. And there was no point getting angry with Edward, because clearly his hands had been tied.
I walked back out into the hallway and more or less collapsed. Not like fainting, exactly. I’m not sure what it was like, exactly, because I didn’t exactly feel myself doing it. I just remember I ended up on my butt on the linoleum floor with my back up against the wall, my head in my hands.
It may seem like an extreme reaction, but there were a few factors I might mention.
First of all, as I’d said to Edward, the job market was horrendous. Unless I wanted to get a job flipping burgers for one-fifth the money. Even then, I’d be duking it out with a bunch of other degree-holding developers for the honor of flipping said burgers.
Second, I was in a promising but fairly new relationship with a man I hoped to be with for the rest of my life, but had so far only been with for ten months. I had been the big earner between the two of us, and now I had to go home and tell him we’d be living on his salary until I could find something new. Which—see dilemma number one—might take time.