“Communitive. Ta-tive? No, it’s communitive.”

“Commutative, the commutative property,” I said. “I think. I mean, what do I know, consider the source.”

“No, communitive,” my co-worker Dan said. “The one that says A+B is the same as B+A.”

“Right, I got it. Because I was working on the thing for Scott, and I know you don’t care which of us gives it to you as long as – “

“Oh I care!” He looked at me with his chin down, eyes lifted up under his brow as if to say, how dare you accuse me of not caring. He was kidding in his caring, and I laughed, and so did he. It was after 7 pm on a Wednesday.

“I get it!” I said, “YOU need the thing WE’RE doing, and you don’t care what order –“

“Commutative?!” He smiled at me and then went back to the serious chin-down face, and picked up the phone.

***

My wife sat across from me, at the table in the still-cold kitchen on Thursday morning. It hadn’t been a bad night, but I was in no hurry to be early for work, which I’d be if I’d got up from the table right then. I had already gotten more coffee.

“I mean it’s fine,” I said. “I don’t mind staying late, and I’m ahead of the work, I just never quite know if I can go, when I’m ready to go.” She was in her work clothes, sweater and skirt and tights and boots, and now seemed a good enough time for talking about work, when we weren’t sick of doing it yet that day. “Bill asked me on Monday if I could work late this week. I said I could, any night except that one. So okay. Tuesday it gets to be around 7 and I say, well, I have to get home for dinner.”

“You did. But I guess you didn’t have to, if you had had to stay…” she said.

“That’s the thing. I wasn’t making an excuse. I just was at a good stopping point. I was ahead of where I had to be. Bill is like, really? I thought you’d be here late all this week? I’m quick enough to say, I can be late, I just planned to be there for dinner tonight are we all set, I mean I’ve left a pile for Dan and Scott (who’s already left), I’ve gotten ahead of where I need to be, I’ll definitely finish my scrape tomorrow.”

“Your scrape?” said my wife.

“Yeah you like that? Sounds so serious, right? All the existing data has to come out of the old system and that’s what I’m doing, scraping it off the pages into spreadsheets, then we’ll make new forms for clients and then move it all into the – anyway. It’s fine, I’m ahead of it, it, really it doesn’t even matter where I am! To Bill, I mean, where I am in the process, he doesn’t know, doesn’t care.”

I have worked for Bill for three months now. He is a salesman and I will be, but I have yet to learn to play my moods like he plays his. At least now I know that’s what he’s doing, when he does it. He is no more upset with me, leaving at 7 after a long day, than a conductor is at the loud and clashy last part of a piece. He’s just giving his cue, moving me toward the exit as I show it’s time to go. He’s bossing it up a little, with his eyebrows and hand and voice. You’re leaving now? I thought you could stay late?

And I hit my notes, mock-protest taps and plucks – dinner! Commute! Wife kids and their needs! I will be back and I’ll finish tomorrow, I’m three-quarters through more than six hundred total. The most urgent ones are all set, not sure what the others need next?

And with that last question I hand off his focus to Dan and Scott (in absentia), whose part is to come in after my bit, and they’re not even ready for what I’ve already done. Allllright, have a good night! Bill says. He means it, I know. He also means a boss’s work is never done, until he runs out of work, or workers, and hey there’s more to do, night after day after night, and we’ll all be back tomorrow.

***

“So that was Tuesday,” my wife said, here in her Thursday work clothes at our table, where I’m in my sweatpants still, looking at my plate and taking big gulps of my coffee now that it’s cold. “Last night you were later than that, but it seemed ok? I mean you seem ok.”

“I am,” I said. I am, and was last night too, at least when I was awake. I stayed later on Wednesday than Tuesday, and finished my data-scraping. I turned my monitor to show Bill as I scrolled through my long blurred list. He was happy to stop what he was doing and look at what I’d done.

He’s always happy to stop what he’s doing, if what he’s doing is the sort of dull desk work I usually do. He takes every chance to get up and talk instead, to give his ideas about what we’re all doing. Should we move this cabinet? That way you don’t have to lean over so much Angela – How’s this? We can put this one on top of here; you won’t have to bend so much – because there’s going to be a lot more nights like this. Alan – when his scraping is done, I want you to work with Alan, Angela. How’s this? When you get to that phase, preparing for the clients everything to be sent out – Alan you can give Angela a hand? Now that your scraping is all set.

“Of course, yeah, whatever we need, when the assembly line gets there that’s where I’ll be.” I notice that I’ve said “assembly line” a few time without his picking it up and repeating it, like he repeats “scraping” and “how’s this?” I’m not surprised. What fun is an assembly line, to Bill? Me, I like the idea of getting lots of material in a row and stamping and banging and kicking it out the door ‘til we’re done. But a boss’s work is never done, while a work-man works from sun to sun – at least a man with kids at home, which this boss doesn’t have, and never has.

Your wife must get tired of you being late, he says cheerfully, when I’m getting ready to leave Wednesday. ’Alan, why are you missing dinner again?’ He says in a wife voice, one not like the wife I have, or that anyone has. ‘You have to stay late ANOTHER night with your cronies?!’

I laugh at this and repeat it, the next morning, to my wife. “As if you’re the only one who wants me home for dinner!” I say. Like it’s a burden to be home for dinner, when I could be with the boss who thinks I’m his crony though I feel like his instrument. And even a good night, in a good week, which this has been don’t get me wrong, can lead to the sort of dreams I had, Wednesday night into Thursday morning:

In the vestibule of the house where I grew up, where there was a toy box that smelled like old crayons, I was sitting on the floor with my toddler daughter and a bottle of vodka. And she drank from it where I gave her some, in a plastic martini glass. I saw no result from any of that, just a commotion from another room as I prepared to be caught. Then I was at some banquet-hall event trying to reach my wife, to explain some other screw-up, but couldn’t get through and was distracted by the people who wanted to use my phone hurry up!

“God that sucks, I’m sorry,” my real wife, at the table, said of my pointlessly punishing dream. I mean I’ll take any guidance I can get from my unconscious, but all that one said is that I’m not doing what I know I am, I am!

***

“Who the fuck are you calling?” I said to Dan.

“My Dad.” He laughed and I asked if he was an engineer.

“A math teacher,” he said, and then, “Hey, Pappy! I just had a question here, my coworker and I were trying to remember…” He explained and listened. I stood in front of his desk. “Commutative,” he said into the phone, and listened to how the math we’d mostly forgotten was supposed to work. Dan listened with his chin down, again, but made no joke, this time. He had dropped his act. He wasn’t demanding anything but a good explanation. He looked happy to feel like a student, taking what was being given, knowledge and corrections with no thought of the source. “Commutative,” he said again. I cheered out loud! Because I was right, and because, for a moment, I got to feel the same way.