Yes...this is THE LAST DAY in its entirety. Today. In the marble lobby, Debbie pressed the buttons of the touchtone phone.
"Nicole," she started to cry, "Amanda asked me to leave tomorrow."
"Maybe you should. Don't worry, I'll help you out. I'll help you," Nicole soothed her.
"Amanda, my mind is made up. I'm going to leave today," Debbie said Friday morning.
Amanda looked angry. For the remainder of the morning, she snapped at Debbie, pushing papers toward her and shoving books at her.
"Today is your last day?" Mike said faintly.
Debbie sorted through three floppy diskettes Mary had given her. Each had a sales proposal letter on it. And, each diskette had the wrong title on it. She waded through all these contradictions, until finally, Mary had three printed proposal letters on her desk. The phone had interrupted her continuously and of course, the calls had all been personal calls for Mary. She could hear her on the phone with her best friend, one of them.
"I'm so happy for you!" she said. And so, all of her calls bounced to Debbie's line.
"Why don't you pack? Crystal isn't here," Elyse said. Elsye was not the office maanger anymore, but she took it upon herself to give orders, anyway. Debbie could not bear to tell her so. For months, years, her constant bellowing and barking orders had wore on Debbie's jangled nerves. Now that she had decided to leave, Amanda had mysteriously been able to oust Elyse from her perch of power, suddenly.
Mary stood in front of Debbie's desk. "OK, we need to order these. Do you have any idea why there are no more of these left? And what about this?"
"OK, I'll look in the stockroom. I'm getting a stomach ache," Debbie said breathlessly. She walked angrily away from Mary. When she returned, Mary had a whole new supply of questions and brochures to be ordered.
"What about the Promotion Department? I have always felt that this was their job," Debbie finally asserted.
"Matt is leaving. He doesn't care," Mary said.
You think I do? I'm leaving, too! Debbie wanted to say.
Under a brand new fire of interrogations, Debbie snapped.
"Look," she said. She stood up.
"I can't even do my work. You keep asking me questions..." She walked around her desk. "I'm just trying to do my job. I can't even do my job. You're driving me crazy! Just let me do my job!"
She looked at Mary. Mary looked ready to cry.
"But...we have a temp," Mary said weakly.
Debbie was by the door. "Oh! I'm going to end up in a mental hospital!" she sighed. And with those ominous words in the air, she left.
Outside the fifty story building that shot straight up, all vertical lines, into the sky, she walked on the sidewalk. On this clear morning, she envisioned a small animal, being kicked around on the callous gray sidewalks of Rockefeller Center. An animal that had been kicked around for far too long. She rode the elevator back up to the fortieth floor. In the ladies room, she found Amanda.
"Did you hear...?" she said.
"No, but they told me about it! That's unprofessional!" Amanda's eyes were widened with anger and shock.
Debbie did not think she had ever seen Amanda this mad or surprised. Suddenly, something in Debbie changed. She started to smirk slightly.
"I never said I was professional," she said slyly. She leaned against the bathroom sink.
"I had no one to answer the phones for 20 minutes. I didn't even know you were gone! Lolita had all the phones!"
Debbie looked at Amanda. It was all she could do.
"Amanda, I can't..." she said.
"You should have left when Bruce told you that you could!"
"I wanted to do the right thing," Debbie insisted. All she had wanted to do was the right thing. To quit quietly. Not to make any waves. To get out. To take all the paid vacations that were due her, and to "get out now" - to listen to that ominous voice that she had been "hearing" all summer.
"Debbie, how am I going to pay you? I can't pay you for today..."
"I don't expect to be paid for hours I don't work."
"What about the conference room? Carlotta booked it for the whole day. Where is the temp going to make the information kits? Why is the temp zeroxing all these? They should have been sent to Quick Copy!"
All those months of Amanda's subtle digs and obnoxious one-liners swirled within her. She looked Amanda in the eye.
"I'm tired," Debbie said, "of you and Mary telling me how to do my job." she said this calmly, slowly and matter-of-factly, her blue eyes unflinchingly regarding Amanda.
Amanda's eyes grew huge with rage and astonishment. She opened her mouth and flung her long frizzy hair around her and left the ladies room in horror. For once, the debater was rendered speechless, appalled.
Debbie followed her down the long corridor.
"You never promoted me! You let me suffer! You know, I wanted to leave this place staying friends with yuo, but...I don't know!" she fired away at Amanda.
"Yeah, I don't know." Amanda sneered.
Debbie walked boldly into Mike's office, where he was trying to pry the office keys from her keychain. He looked sadly down at her keychain with the gold lettering that stated, "Keys to Success."
