I want us to have good times and big things.

Everything seemed to have gone wonderfully for them.

BIG THINGS BY CHARLES KERLIN 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 69

Neil’s desk was a big thing. He asked his secretary to email Jim in building and grounds: “Tell him I want a new desk. A smaller one, more modern but not one with chrome legs or anything like that.” 

The desk he sat behind was very large and old and stained a deep walnut. He had had it moved from his old office at the beginning of the school year, Neil’s first as Vice President for Business Affairs. But now he didn’t feel comfortable behind it. He felt cut off from his visitors. He banged his knees when he stood to shake hands. He even had trouble hearing, sometimes, if his secretary was typing in the outer office, laughing with the other secretaries over coffee. 

He walked around the desk, bumping his knee on the chair and then the other one on the desk. He felt shaky and tired and he decided to go home early. 

That night he told Nancy about it at dinner, but perhaps because of their new wide-screen television with surround sound, or because she was distracted by her own work, she didn’t seem to pay much attention. Later, in bed he turned to her, reached for her, in fact, to tell her again, but she was asleep.

He forgot about it the next day, although he signed the requisition for a new desk that his secretary had prepared for Jim, then he got busy with a distributor of hot dogs the food service manager was having trouble with, and later in the day with a faculty member from the Sociology Department who wanted to unionize anyone and everyone who worked at the university.

He forgot about it for a week, until the day Howard stopped him as he was coming in to work and asked him into his office. 

The first thing he noticed was that Howard had a new desk, a giant desk of laminated woods, with rich Italian mosaic tiles in a green and gray abstract pattern around the edges.

Howard, who was slighter built than Neil, and only a few years older, seated himself behind the desk and waved Neil to the couch at its side. “How do you like the desk?” he asked, shining an imaginary dull spot with his right elbow. 

“It’s beautiful, I guess,” Neil said, a bit stunned by its size. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” 

“Well I understand you’ve put in a request for a new desk,” Howard said. “I got this one for you. And the office is yours too.”