He worked in a giant room like you see in old movies about newspaper offices, no cubicles or anything. Just desks. Volkman sometimes tried to order sandwiches to his desk with this instruction: “Second floor in the big office, fifth row from the window, four desks up, the one with the coffee stain on the floor. If you ask for ‘Volkman,’ no one will know where I am. Extra tip if you bring it to the desk.” But the sandwich guy always called him from the lobby and he had to come pick up the sandwich, forked over the big tip anyway.
He worked in an old building spread out over a few acres, three stories and lots of additions loosely connected by staircases of one and two steps here and five or six steps there. Volkman usually tried to take a walk when he needed to use the bathroom. There were five bathrooms in total in the building.
The second floor bathroom was close to his office, so he didn’t even try.
He peaked into the bathroom on the other side of the floor, one of the stalls was occupied. Volkman swept off down the hall for the first floor.
One of the bathrooms on the first floor was close to the lobby, so people from the street were always using it. The other had a long line of stalls, but the floor in the handicap stall seemed a little wet. Grumbling, he huffed it up the stairs to the third floor.
The third floor bathroom was preferred, but some kid from marketing had recently started using it, and he must have told his buddies, because it was always busier than Volkman ever remembered. But today: blessedly empty.
There were only two stalls: the handicap and the regular. Volkman closed the door to the handicap stall with a certain relish, sliding the lock into place, removing his sport jacket to hang on the hook. A little while later, he heard the door open and tensed. Someone walked into the room whistling, scuffed over to the urinal, but then turned. Volkman had the sense he was looking under the stall.
“Oh for Christ’s sake!” the man cried out, then it sounded like he walked back to the urinal. “You’re a piece of shit, you know that?”
Volkman wondered for a moment if the man was talking on the phone, surely—
“Using the handicap stall? You piece of shit. Where’s your wheelchair, asshole? It’s people like you that fucking ruin it. Only one stall in here a handicap guy could use and you’re squatting in it. You’re a real piece of shit, man.”
Volkman had sudden impulse to scream at the man that he had… polio, or something that didn’t require a wheelchair. But he had a response planned: he would simply say that when he came in here the other stall was taken! That’s why the third floor was ideal: plausible deniability.
“Listen you dick,” he heard himself shouting. No, this isn’t how he wanted to start at all. “I work… I work in an open-concept nightmare of an office for ten hours a day and then I go home to a shitty roommate and a tiny room next to a train track and sometimes when I’m at work I just want a goddamn 6x6 box with walls and a door that locks so I can catch my breath for five fucking minutes is that okay with you, you prick!?”
The man zipped up his fly, scuffed back to the stall, and Volkman got the sense he was looking under the stall again.
“Getting a look at your shoes, asshole,” the man outside sneered. “So I can identify you. See you around, asshole. But you won’t see me.”
He left without washing his hands.