A good job

By: María Antuña

"Ernesto, he wants to see you in his office," the assistant notified him over the phone. He got up, a bit surprised. What had he done wrong? An instant thought was that he is about to lose yet another job. He knocked on the door... and he came out, always with a smile on his face. "My dear Ernesto, come come…" He patted Ernesto on the back and led him to an elevator, he pressed a button with the letter "B" that he swore he had never seen in all the time he had been working. A drop of sweat waited on Ernesto's forehead, his hands brushed his pants, the door opened. He walked into a long corridor with many doors on both sides. Silence. "Ernesto, I called you because I want to promote you." Ernesto coughed several times as a sign of absolute surprise and that he did not believe what he was hearing. "You have so much potential, I hope you realize it. Come, let me explain what you will do" while he said this, with his hand he took the handle of a black door and slowly opened it, showing a very small room, without lights or windows; in the middle, there was only a wooden chair.

"This will be your new workplace, it's a more modern desk if you prefer to see it." He laughed, cynically, when he said the last. "The plan is that you stay seated at least eight hours a day, in return, your salary will be four times what we currently give you, do you accept?" He finally asked. "Will you, Ernesto?" "Yes, I accept," he said without thinking, greed reigning in his mind.

"Ernesto, don't you want time to think?" He was about to close the door, but Ernesto stopped him. "I don't want to think. I can start right now, if you'll allow me, sir" "Ha! Dearest friend, I have never seen someone so motivated by money as you" He clapped him hard on the back and with a slight push moved him towards the wooden chair.

He had never learned to be alone, this was going to be complicated, he sensed it. However, greed can move mountains... or was it hope?

Without saying anything else, he closed the door and the room went dark. Is this how a blind man feels? Ernesto wondered. He sat down in that chair that to his surprise was not rigid, and then he looked at the nothing.

That night he returned home with only one question on his mind. He told his wife that the job had exhausted him, not physically but mentally. She was already waiting for him with dinner and a smile. Ernesto then looked at the plastic tableware, the cutlery rusted over the years, the kitchen, the furniture, and, in general, he observed a house on the verge of breaking down. His wife's dress was second-handed, she had been wearing the same pairs of shoes for years, she sighed smiling pleasantly at him, and all he said was: "You don't know how well my work went today."

It was the same routine, he arrived in the large waiting room and take that elevator by pressing the "B" button. The black door was now personalized with his name and always, before entering, he turned to see the other doors, some had names and others were empty. When he sat in that chair he tried to keep calm by humming melodies and sometimes singing at the top of his lungs. One day it occurred to him to talk with the nothing as if it was a great friend, he began the conversation shyly, however it became fluid over time.

It came to a point when Ernesto talked to his wife about his “friend” from work, for whom he had even invented a life. One morning when he woke up, he already longed to talk with that "friend." As the days went by, Ernesto began to believe that this person was real, he swore that sometimes he felt someone else's breath in that room.

Ernesto's income grew as his ambition. Every time he asked for more time in that room, he didn't worry, because he had “friends” to talk to inside. So a year passed. One day his boss came in and interrupted his day. "Partner, are you there?" He asked, adjusting his jacket and tie carefully. "Be quiet!" Ernesto touched his temples looking at the floor. "I'm having a conversation with them, can't you see? Hey! You scared them away! Don't go, my friends!" His pupils were dilated, and his gaze was that of a madman. "I know where they went, mate. Come, I'll show you.” The boss took Ernesto's arm and led him out of the room. A group of people extracted him from that place and put him in a windowless van, making him believe that he was still in that room. Outside the offices, more than a dozen vans left the corporate building, all heading for a single, untraceable destination.

The man returned carelessly to his office, picked up the phone to call his assistant. Opening the door, the young woman asked him what he needed. "Put the ad in the newspaper again, we have too many vacancies again."