Chapter 36 — Lunch Is Provided

The idea came to Focus Man while he was eating a sandwich at his desk. He had bought it on the way to work and forgotten about it until nearly two, by which time the bread had acquired the texture of something that had spent the morning waiting for better circumstances. Outside his door, someone was warming food in the small kitchen. He heard the microwave stop, start again, and stop once more.

In the early days of the company, they had sometimes eaten together on Fridays. Someone would suggest a place, several people would object to the cost or the distance, and eventually they would bring food back and spread it across the conference table. The lunches rarely began on time. They could last considerably longer than intended, particularly when a conversation about work wandered into something nobody had known about the person sitting beside them.

He couldn't remember when they had stopped.

That afternoon he found Ellen in the kitchen, rinsing a mug.

“We ought to have lunch together Friday.”

“We often have lunch Friday.”

“I mean everybody.”

She turned off the water. “Here?”

“I could bring the food.”

“What food?”

He hadn't got that far. Beyond the kitchen door, Tom was standing at the copier, watching a sheet emerge with the guarded attention of a man who had been disappointed before.

“Something hot,” Tom said.

“Thank you,” Focus Man replied. “That narrows it down.”

Ellen dried her hands. “If you're doing it, tell people today. Otherwise half of them will bring lunch and the other half will go out.”

He wrote a notice and put it beside the coffee machine.

FRIDAY LUNCH — NOON. FOOD PROVIDED.

By the following morning, someone had added: BY WHOM?

He wrote his name beneath it.

Later that day, a second question appeared: SHOULD WE BRING LUNCH?

He suspected Tom but couldn't prove it.

At home, Claire suggested ordering sandwiches. They were easy to carry, required little preparation, and could be eaten even if someone had to take a telephone call halfway through.

“We have sandwiches all the time.”

“What were you thinking?”

“Baked potatoes. People can put whatever they want on them.”

Claire considered this. “That could work.”

He heard the approval and missed the qualification.

He bought large potatoes, cheese, sour cream, butter, green onions, and several other things he thought people might want. The potatoes looked impressive lined up on the kitchen counter Thursday evening. Claire picked one up and weighed it in her hand.

“How many people are you feeding?”

“Fourteen. Possibly fifteen.”

“With these, possibly thirty.”

He explained that lunch was the main meal for some people. Claire set the potato down and asked how he intended to cook them. The question annoyed him slightly because he had already worked that out. There was a microwave at the office, and he had baked potatoes in a microwave before.

“How many at once?” she asked.

“I'll start early.”

She looked along the row on the counter.

“Very early.”

On Friday morning he carried two bags into the office and put them in the kitchen. Ellen arrived while he was arranging the toppings in the refrigerator. She looked at the potatoes, then at the microwave.

“You're cooking them here?”

“Yes.”

She opened her mouth, seemed to reconsider, and went to put her things away.

He began just after ten. There were only so many potatoes he could fit inside at once, but he had allowed nearly two hours. He washed the first batch, pierced the skins, and arranged them on the turntable. While they cooked, he returned to his desk to answer a question. The telephone rang before he finished. By the time he got back to the kitchen, the microwave had been waiting for him for several minutes.

He tested a potato with a fork. The fork went in a short distance and stopped.

He put them back.

The next time he checked, the outside yielded readily, but the middle remained determined. He turned them over, restarted the microwave, and stood watching them rotate. A colleague came in to make coffee and asked what time lunch would be.

“Noon.”

The colleague looked at the uncooked potatoes beside the sink.

“All right.”

At a quarter to twelve, Focus Man had six potatoes he considered reasonably edible, four undergoing treatment, and five waiting their turn. He moved the cooked ones into a bowl and covered them with a towel. He had begun to perspire.

Tom appeared in the doorway.

“Something smells good.”

“Lunch.”

Tom lifted a corner of the towel. “Part of lunch.”

“They'll all be ready shortly.”

“How shortly?”

Focus Man checked the microwave display. It offered no useful answer.

Ellen came in carrying paper plates. She surveyed the counter, the bowl, and the remaining potatoes.

“I thought you started at ten.”

“I did.”

“And these?”

“Those are next.”

She put down the plates. For a moment nobody spoke. Then the microwave finished with a series of cheerful beeps that Focus Man felt it had not earned.

At noon, people began arriving in the conference room. They brought mugs, moved chairs, and asked whether they could help. Focus Man carried in the toppings, which made a generous display. There were bowls of cheese and green onions, butter, sour cream, and enough other food to suggest that the potatoes themselves would be arriving in considerable numbers.

He brought in the first six.

People looked at the bowl.

“There are more coming,” he said.

Tom counted the people already seated. “Are we sharing?”

“We can start with these.”

Ellen took a knife and cut one in half. Steam rose from it. The center was cooked, though perhaps not as thoroughly as Focus Man would have wished.

“We'll cut them,” she said. “Everybody can have some while the others finish.”

This seemed sensible until the next potato resisted the knife strongly enough to require her full attention.

Tom watched. “That one might still be in development.”

Focus Man took it back to the kitchen.

By twelve-fifteen, several people were eating half a potato, others were eating toppings, and one had discovered a box of crackers. A young woman from the office put cheese and green onions on a cracker and pronounced it good. Someone else followed her example. The butter softened. The sour cream passed around the table.

Focus Man stood at the microwave with the rejected potato and tried to work out how a meal composed principally of one ingredient had become so complicated.

Ellen joined him.

“We need something people can eat.”

“They can eat the potatoes.”

“Eventually.”

He looked at her, then at the turntable.

“I may have underestimated the cooking time.”

“Yes.”

“By quite a bit.”

“Yes.”

She was smiling now, which made it easier to admit the rest.

“Claire suggested sandwiches.”

“Claire sounds well.”

They went back to the conference room, where Tom was explaining that the potatoes were being released in stages to prevent unnecessary strain on the system. Focus Man ignored him and asked what people wanted on pizza.

The answer came promptly and from several directions. A few minutes later Ellen had placed the order, two people had offered to collect it, and the lunch had become a gathering around food that might or might not arrive before the afternoon was over.

Focus Man sat down. He had meant to eat with everyone, but until then he had done very little beyond transporting hot objects between rooms. Someone passed him a plate with half a potato on it. He added butter and cheese and found that he was hungry enough not to resent the meal.

Conversation moved around him. Tom told a story about a camping stove that had fallen apart while he was preparing breakfast. Ellen described a cake she had once made for her daughter’s birthday, which had required enough structural support that her husband suggested filing for a permit. Others joined in. There were failed dinners, mistaken ingredients, a turkey remembered with lingering hostility.

Focus Man listened, occasionally defending the principle of his lunch.

“The idea was sound.”

“The ingredients were sound,” Ellen said. “Some of them still are.”

When the pizzas arrived, the two people carrying them received applause. They set the boxes between the bowls of toppings, and everyone moved things to make room. Someone opened the conference-room door wider. The microwave continued its work down the hall.

For the first time that day, Focus Man stopped keeping track of the time.

He learned that one of the quieter people in the office had spent a summer cooking in a restaurant. When he asked why she hadn't offered advice, she reminded him that he had announced lunch was provided.

“I assumed you had a plan.”

“So did I.”

She laughed and took another slice.

They stayed until the food was mostly gone. Several people helped clear the table. Tom carried the remaining potatoes into the conference room, perfectly cooked and arriving at an hour when nobody particularly wanted them.

Focus Man looked at the bowl.

“They're ready.”

“We should announce it,” Tom said.

Ellen divided them among people willing to take them home. She sent Focus Man away with three, along with enough toppings to feed him and Claire for the weekend. Someone folded the original lunch notice and placed it in the bag.

By midafternoon, the conference room was back in order. Focus Man returned to his desk and opened the work he had left that morning. A proposal was waiting for another revision. The customer they had hoped to hear from had still not called. He read through a page, made a note in the margin, and found himself listening for voices outside his door. He could hear two people talking about the camping stove.

Before going home, he stopped in the kitchen. Tom had left a small note on the microwave.

POTATOES MUST BE SUBMITTED TWO BUSINESS DAYS IN ADVANCE.

Focus Man took it down carefully and put it in his bag.

Claire was setting the table when he came in. She looked at the containers he placed on the counter.

“How was lunch?”

He considered the question.

“Popular.”

“What did you serve?”

“Pizza.”

She looked at the potatoes.

He told her the story while they made dinner. By the time he reached the applause for the returning pizza carriers, she had put down the knife she was using and was laughing too hard to continue. He showed her the note from the microwave.

“That seems reasonable,” she said.

“It depends on the size.”

“Of the potato?”

“And the microwave.”

She handed him the plates to carry.

At the table, he told her about Ellen’s birthday cake and the colleague who had worked in a restaurant. Claire listened, asking questions about people she had met only briefly.

“You enjoyed yourself,” she said.

“After twelve-thirty.”

“You haven't come home with a story like that for a while.”

He looked at her across the table. She was smiling, waiting to hear whether there was more, and he began to tell her how Tom had carried in the final potatoes. Halfway through, he remembered the proposal waiting on his desk, with the same questions written in its margins as the week before. He set that aside and finished the story.

After dinner, Claire put the leftover potatoes in the refrigerator. Focus Man found the folded lunch notice in the bottom of the bag. Beneath his name, someone had added a final line.

NEXT FRIDAY?

He stood at the counter reading it, then smoothed the paper and left it beside his keys.