Donut
Not the first time Leonard Jordan had stepped off the elevator onto the wrong floor. It was the same girl who punched the third-floor button two times last week, and each time he followed her halfway down the hall before he noticed he wasn’t on the fourth floor. Leonard and the girl, whoever she was, were always early to work.
As he trailed behind her in the fluorescent hallway this morning, he noticed the slight turning of her head, causing a lock of her black hair to fall over her shoulder. She quickened her pace.
It was then that Leonard realized he was on the wrong floor again. Also, he had scared this young employee. Officially an office creep now. He wondered if he should have shouted an apology in her direction but that would have enhanced his creepiness. The truth wasn’t believable. He was barely thinking at all this morning, and he certainly wasn’t looking to score a girl half his age. Maybe she was younger than half his age. He hadn’t behaved in a predatory manner when he was her age, either. Leonard’s wife would tell anyone who asked—she had to make all the first moves. Otherwise, he would have been single today.
Leonard was hungry as he turned around in the hallway. The smell of fresh donuts drifted into the hallway from A&L Insurance, where the door was usually closed. There hadn’t been much time for breakfast this morning. He had been leaning into the refrigerator when he heard his grandson’s first cries of the day. Not wanting to be a part of the morning screaming, Leonard had grabbed a banana and his keys.
The door was open, and there they were in plain view. An open box of a full dozen. He reached in and enjoyed the feeling of his fingers sinking into the sticky glaze. This wasn’t like him. He had never taken food uninvited before. Once touched, however, he had to take it. Germs.
Might as well eat it. As the elevator door closed, he devoured it in three bites. Maybe he would return later and admit his theft. Chances were, no one would notice. Who counted donuts?
Even with his detour, he was first in the office. It would be up to him again to unlock everything and he would be safe and alone in his office before anyone else arrived. The time always passed too quickly. Soon he heard Frank shuffling across the carpet to the back offices.
“It’s Monday,” Frank said, leaning into Leonard’s office. He said the same thing every Monday as if Monday were a disease to be suffered.
“Better than Wednesday.” It was Leonard’s standard response. He wasn’t sure what it meant and doubted he could defend it if challenged. Truth was, Mondays didn’t bother him since his son and grandson moved into his house. Leonard had looked forward to becoming an empty-nester and it only lasted a glorious thirty months. Now, both he and his wife appreciated having jobs to escape to.
“Hey, there’s already trouble brewing,” Frank said. Usually, he said “shit stirring”, but a memo had circulated last week asking workers to clean up their language.
Leonard didn’t ask.
Frank answered anyway. “Downstairs. They’re looking for a donut thief.”
“What?”
“Can you believe it? Josh, the receptionist, brought in donuts for a big meeting this morning for exactly twelve people. He’s downstairs screaming about what kind of asshole steals a donut.” Frank grimaced at his forbidden word. “I mean ‘butthole’. Is that a better word?”
Leonard could still taste the evidence. If a donut breathalyzer existed, he would be charged and convicted in minutes. As Frank chuckled his way to his office, Leonard looked in his wallet. Enough cash to buy more donuts. The bakery was less than a block away. He would buy three boxes and surprise his colleagues, too.
He was stopped by the phone. His wife, Penny.
“Could you hear it?” she asked.
“Why do you call my work number?”
“You don’t answer your cell! Did you hear the noise?”
It was true. He rarely answered the phone in his pocket. “I heard it. I have no idea what it is.” He had brought his wife’s car to work today after she complained of an occasional noise she couldn’t explain or duplicate. “It’s like something is speeding up and then sputtering and then stopping altogether.”
“I know! That’s what I’ve been telling you.”
“We’ll have it looked at. I’m on my way out unless you have something else.”
“You’ll like this,” she said. “Brett’s taking Isaiah to the other grandparents tonight.”
Leonard smiled. The day was looking better. “We should do something.”
“Thai?”
“And a movie. Let’s go to the movies!” Giddiness overtook him for a moment. He and Penny had been to dinners and movies in the past few months, but not without Brett and Isaiah, which made the food bland and the movie juvenile.
“What’s on?”
“I don’t even care. Just pick something rated R.”
She laughed. “You read my mind. Something violent and raunchy.”
He stood for a moment appreciating the optimism the rest of the day promised, forgetting the donuts for a moment. His wallet in his hand reminded him of what he planned to do. He would deliver them himself, apologize to Josh and whoever else was upset, and the rest of the day he would anticipate a night alone with his wife. He couldn’t remember the last time they hadn’t been given babysitting duty when they had planned to go out.
“Back in a sec,” he said as he passed Frank’s office, waving to the receptionist as returned to the elevator. He stood at the back, arms crossed, remembering the first time Penny confessed she wanted their house back, that she had already raised a child and didn’t want to raise her grandson, and that she was sick of animation as entertainment. She was sure she had sexual dreams about Aladdin, and that couldn’t have been normal. It was only after her admission that he felt safe to agree with her. After whispered confessions in their bed some nights, they would remind themselves that they loved their son and grandson. Just not in their house.
The elevator door opened on the third floor, and the girl Leonard had frightened earlier stepped in, noticed him, and stepped out. Something else he would have to clarify. He could manage both problems—the donuts and the offended girl—when he returned with a surplus of pastry. Anyway, it was a relief that he was alone for the ride to the ground floor. He would need to talk to the offended girl with other people around.
It was raining. This was a perk of driving Penny’s car with the handicap tags—handicap parking under a sheltered area of the lot. Once inside the car, he listened again for the strange noise under the hood and rolled down the window to relieve the stuffiness. Two people were huddled under one umbrella, approaching from the outer lot with a bakery box. Someone had beaten him to the replacement donuts.
Leonard debated whether to run his errand now.
“Security will have it taped, right?” a female voice said from the umbrella paid. “We can see who took it.”
This couldn’t be happening. Leonard imagined himself barging into the security office where Taylor would be sitting as usual behind a row of Styrofoam coffee cups, greeting him with her usual wide smile that made her eyes disappear behind her plump cheeks. He could ask to use her bathroom, which he sometimes did if he needed extra privacy. She was generous with her toilet, always granting him and others with the key and another smile that promised discretion. From there, he could launch into small talk while roaming behind the wall of computers and snatch a few SD cards.
But not because of a donut.
While he pondered the consequences if he were captured stealing on video, he noticed the new HR director, Emma, walking to the building under a yellow umbrella. She glanced at him once with a half-wave. She slowed her pace to glance again. Did she already know what he had done? It wasn’t possible.
He thought about taking his phone from his pocket and calling Penny, who would see the humor in this situation. However, she would be arriving at work now. This could wait. It would be a funny story to tell her over their Thai dinner, how his tiny mistake exploded into something unreasonable.
Abandoning the trip to the bakery, he returned to the building. Desks were occupied now, familiar faces with half-hearted greetings. He passed the elevator and opened the security office door.
Taylor sat behind three coffee cups and smiled up from her wall of monitors. “Hey, Leonard! Need the key?”
He couldn’t do it. It was too desperate for something so innocent. “Just saying hello. Have a good day.”
“You, too, Leonard!”
Leonard stood outside the door to the security office picturing his confession upstairs. There seemed no other way to redeem himself. Eventually, everyone would laugh about it, if not today. It might earn him an embarrassing nickname at most. Donut breath. Doughboy. He had been called worse.
“Do you need something?” a voice said from the front desk. Leonard hadn’t met this employee yet. Front desk people never stayed long.
“Just thinking. Have a good day.” He must have appeared strange standing by security deliberating his fate. He turned again to the elevator, hearing it dinging as it descended.
Emma stood at the elevator door. Leonard moved aside to let her pass.
“I was coming down to find you,” she said, stepping back. “Can I see you in my office?”
“Sure.” He wondered if he should confess in the elevator, but it seemed unlikely that something so insignificant would bring her this far. Maybe this had to do with a client. “How are you, Emma?”
“Can’t complain.” She kept her eyes on the door up to the fourth floor.
Leonard regretted he hadn’t taken the time to talk to her since she was hired. With time, it would have happened naturally, and these uncomfortable silences wouldn’t exist.
In Emma’s HR office, Leonard sat in one of the ordinary gray chairs that were scattered throughout the building’s public spaces. “What can I do for you?” he asked.
“Mr. Jordan, I wanted to start with your choice of parking spaces.”
He smiled. “It’s my wife’s car. She has a disability.” Emma said nothing, so Leonard explained further. “She walks with a cane. Eventually, she’ll be in a chair but she’s managing very well right now. Better than I would.”
“I’m sorry your wife has a disability, but I checked your file and there’s no mention of you having one.”
“I don’t.”
“Those spaces are reserved for people who need closer access to the building, Mr. Jordan.”
“Call me Leonard, please. And yes, I’m aware, but there aren’t any disabled employees here and I always park there when I drive her car. It’s not very often.”
“That’s not an acceptable reason.”
He could argue, but she seemed determined to win. Perhaps she was right. If three disabled clients happened to visit today, one of them would have to park several feet away. “I’ll be happy to move the car.”
“And then, I got a complaint about you from an employee at Reidland Associates. She says you’ve been stalking her early in the morning.”
Leonard sighed. He should have called in sick before this ridiculous problem escalated. “I’m not stalking her.”
“You know what this is about?”
“We’ve been arriving at the same time in the morning, and she pushes the third-floor button. I’m on autopilot and I’ve walked out onto the wrong floor with her. It takes me a few seconds to realize what I’ve done and she probably thinks I’m following her. I’m not.”
“You don’t know to wait for the fourth floor?”
“Obviously, I’m not thinking clearly that early in the morning. My mind is a million miles away. I don’t even know who she is.”
“She’s this close to calling the police.” Less than an inch of air showed between Emma measuring fingers.
“Can we ask her to come up? I can talk to her. It’s a misunderstanding.”
“She would be uncomfortable.”
“She made the accusation. I should have a chance to explain.”
Emma looked unconvinced.
“Ask anyone who knows me. I’m not a predator. I’m happily married, law-abiding, I have no criminal record.”
Emma raised her eyebrows when he said he was law-abiding. She must have taken the handicap parking space personally.
“I’ll move the car. If the nameless girl wants to press charges, I’ll talk to the police. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
Again, Emma stared at him as if he had lied.
“Okay, it was wrong to park where I did. But I am not a stalker. I can see why she was frightened, but she doesn’t know the whole story.”
“I’d like to avoid involving the police but it’s not up to me.”
“We agree on that.”
The phone rang and Emma held up a finger. “Excuse me for a minute.”
Leonard found it difficult to sit still. He controlled himself. He wasn’t guilty of anything. Other than parking in the wrong space and taking the donut, which would have been easier to explain than his appearance as a predator. He comforted himself with the fact that in nine hours, he would be with Penny at the Thai restaurant and all of this would be history. He would tell the story with details, waiting for Penny’s injections of humor. He could find nothing funny about it at the moment.
Emma wasn’t saying anything in her phone conversation. Every few moments, she would say, “okay?” as if she had digested part of the information and was ready for more. Her young face was concerned, but Leonard didn’t want to stare. He had already been creepy today. Instead, he shifted his focus to the wet yellow umbrella that was hanging by the office door along with a beige cardigan that would be damaged by the hook if she continued to let it stretch by its fragile seams.
“I suppose I’ll have to see it,” Emma said to her caller. “I’ll get back with you after I talk to him.” She hung up, folded her arms on the desk, and seemed to struggle for words.
“Would you like for me to move the car now?”
“Now they’re saying there’s video footage of you stealing a donut from A&L Insurance after you followed the Reidland Associates employee down the hall, and before you were seen entering the security office, and standing around the door for five minutes.”
Leonard felt his lungs deflate. Perhaps it was his entire body. “I can explain all of it.”
“This is my third week on this job. I’m not sure of the procedure, but I can safely say that you should go home for the rest of the day while investigations are done and decisions are made. I believe you’ll still be paid for this time unless they decide to terminate you.”
“Should I get a lawyer?” He hadn’t meant to scoff before he said it. Neither did he mean to snicker after he said it. “I’m sorry, but I can’t believe this is happening because of a donut.”
“When I saw you in the parking lot, were you planning to escape all of this?”
“I was planning to go to the bakery and buy more donuts, but someone beat me to it. As I said, I can explain everything.”
“You should go. We’ll keep what we can confidential, but no guarantees on what your victims may say.”
“My victims?”
“You should go. I must also ask that you stay off the third floor. I should probably have Taylor escort you to your car.”
“I don’t need an escort.”
“It’s for your protection as much as theirs.”
Taylor’s usual carefree demeanor changed when she arrived. She was a trained guard, obviously hoping she would never need to show authority in a boring office building such as this. She didn’t speak until they reached the parking lot. “Leonard, you’ll have to stay away from the building today. They’ll call you when they’ve made a decision. Do you understand?”
Leonard nodded, hoping to see the friendly face of the woman who always loaned him the private bathroom key. That woman was hidden behind a stern mask of law enforcement now, thanks to a donut.
The morning was still young and Leonard had wondered when he would find time to take Penny’s car to the dealership. He drove carefully as if he were in a nightmare and the streets could suddenly sink into mud. As he drove down the ordinary highway that he had known all his life, he had to accept that this was real.
He heard himself talking to the receptionist at the dealership, leaving a description of the problem and directions not to take action unless it was still under warranty. He sat with the others, all looking at their phones, the small TV mounted on the back wall, or one of the tattered magazines on the white cube side tables. Leonard leaned his head back against the concrete wall, wondering if he should have a headache after such a bizarre day. He should call Penny, but he didn’t want these strangers overhearing his news.
He could still smell the donut. Was it from his hands? His breath? He opened his eyes and sniffed his hands. His fingers reeked of hand sanitizer. Breathing into his hands, he smelled nothing but the mint he had eaten on the way to the dealership.
The donuts were on the window ledge that opened to the business office. A small tented sign read, “customers only”. He would be allowed to take one of these if he didn’t suddenly hate them. Leonard sighed and closed his eyes, picturing his grandson’s face when he misbehaved. He must have looked the same to Emma when he was chastised in her office.
Leonard opened his eyes to see a man in a mechanic’s overalls with a “TJ” nametag enter the waiting room, survey the room as he crept to the business office window, and pull a donut from the customer-only box. His eyes met with Leonard’s. With the pastry lodged between his lips, TJ brought a finger to his grinning mouth in a silent shush.
• • •
Kimberly Moore is a writer and educator. Her short works are published in Typehouse Literary Magazine, MacroMicroCosm, Fleas on the Dog, Sequoia Speaks, Underland Arcana, and 34 Orchard. She lives in a haunted house where she indulges the whims of cats. For more information, visit kimberlymooreblog.com.