Chapter 12: Nobody Knows Him

On Monday morning, my badge would not open the door.

I stood in the freight office lobby at 7:45 with the card in my hand, and the light stayed red.

I tried it three times.

The guard behind the desk looked up from his phone.

"Can I help you, sir?"

I knew that guard.

He had been on that desk for six years.

He had given me a bag of tomatoes from his garden every August.

"It's Ethan," I said. "Kramer. Operations."

"Don't think so, sir."

"You know me."

"I'm sorry, do we know each other?"

He said it politely.

He meant it.

I felt the floor tilt a little under my shoes.

*Record flagged: Kramer, E. Status: unanchored.*

I read the system's line and my pulse hammered.

*Thirty days remain on the account. Local presence will fade.*

Travis had not waited for the first of December.

Or the system had never been fixed to the first at all.

I tried to walk past the desk, and the guard stood up.

"Sir, I'll have to ask you to wait over there."

"I work on the fourth floor."

"Who's your supervisor?"

"I am the supervisor."

He tapped his keyboard.

"I don't have a Kramer in the directory."

A little line formed behind me.

The dispatchers came in at eight, one by one, with coffee in their hands.

I knew every one of them.

I knew their kids' names and which one liked her tea scalding.

None of them looked at me.

One of the drivers, a big man I had once lent my parking spot to, walked straight toward the spot where I was standing, and I stepped aside.

"Excuse me," he said, to the air.

The lobby began to fill.

I stood in the middle of it, unseen, with my own name vanishing out of three hundred heads.

I tried my bank card in the lobby ATM, just to see.

*Account closed. No such customer.*

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