I quit. The phone company couldn't submarine, backwater, or drown me. I swam out of the whirlpool. I didn't have to sweat global markets, ravenous competitors, shrinking market share, or younger workers hot for my job. I didn't have to keep my ear to ground, finger in the wind, or nose to the grindstone. What I said didn't have to matter. What was said about me didn't matter either. I wouldn't have to be reprimanded for refusing to cross a picket line when the union went on strike. I didn't have to attend compulsory attitude training classes to gear myself for success. I didn't have to calculate years until retirement. I didn't have to act politically correct. I didn't have to stay upbeat or downwind. Corrupt officers arranging kickbacks meant nothing to me. I didn't have to worry about losing my job in buyouts or downsizing. I'd banished the chief reason for hating my job, fear. Unfortunately I had to do that by getting another job.

I gave two weeks notice.

My immediate supervisor at the phone company had already flown away to an job interview in a new corporate office somewhere in St. Louis. His young, female marketing assistant took the helm of our little web site group. She wrote press releases, arranged publicity shots for advertising broadsides, attended State hearings on the industry and the Internet, and created special announcements for the World Wide Web. She campaigned at trade shows with her posters, pamphlets, and effusive patter. For all occasions, she dressed in frilly, thin rayon, V-necked blouses or dresses that favored her Rubenesque charms and black underwear. She gave weekly pep talks about the grand things telecommunication companies did for children, especially poor school children yearning to surf the net. She posted a picture of our great and glorious CEO enfolding two beneficiaries under his arms, a little black girl and an asian boy. Demonstrating the personal affection he felt for them, the article underneath pleaded, Oh, why wouldn't the State of California spend more money so the beneficent phone company could plug these tiny minds to the Internet? What is money for, if not our children?

She treated me to a lunch in the company cafeteria. That was my good-bye gift. It meant, "Thank you for the years of service, which I have no knowledge of since I've only been your supervisor for two months, but I'm sure you were great at whatever you did. You were wonderful to work with. Have a turkey sandwich."

We picked up plastic trays from the rails next to the cash register. I followed her through the lunch room, along rows between tables. She picked a spot away from other people, next to the giant windows. "Listen," she asked in a whisper. "What do you think's really going to happen, to our project I mean."

"I think you're toast. That's why I'm out of here."

"That's what I thought," she lamented. She scooped up a bite of salad and suspended it on her fork, limp-wristed, propping her elbow on the table. She didn't eat. We both looked out the window at swans coasting across a huge, private lake outside. Its waters circulated through the building to remove heat, then provided a tropical bath, even in winter, for flocks of migratory birds and captive swans. The swans sailed the lake like a choreographed mafia.

"They're not real," I said.

"What?"

"The swans, the lake, the lawns. It's all an illusion to make you think money is real."

"What do you mean?" She didn't really care what I meant.

"Beyond those hills, on the other side, the infant mortality rate is worse than Bangladesh." Oakland was on the other side.

"Well," she smiled, changing the subject. "We all have our problems. You know, I just don't know what else I would do." She lost her official smile.

"What do you mean?" I said. "I thought you were a publicist or something. You can write ad copy. All that advertising stuff. You shouldn't have any problem finding a job inside or outside the company."

"It's not that. Of course I can find a job. Who wouldn't want somebody as vivacious, energetic, and intelligent as me?" she said, not taking her eyes off the swans. With a deft movement of her left biceps, she adjusted her bra. Then she swallowed a forkful of greens and faced me. She resumed something of her managerial cheeriness, ladled with teddy bear charm. She leaned, aiming her neckline, and said, "It's just that I love working in education. I feel that what I do for the phone company fulfills that dream."

"Yes," I said, gratified for the presence of a formica tabletop between us. "You should certainly be allowed to keep dreaming."

She narrowed her eyes a little and stabbed her salad. For another five or ten minutes, we sat without exchanging a word. She ate a few bites. One of the swans lunged at a mallard which paddled too close. The duck thrashed and flapped in retreat. The educator stared at the lake. I couldn't eat. Noticing that I'd stopped, she turned, seized both sides of her cafeteria tray, and announced in a tour guide voice, "Well, I hope you enjoyed your lunch. About finished?"

"Yes," I said. "Finished."

I had to train another worker to take over some of my maintenance responsibilities. She was a pleasant woman named Lat Lee, originally from Cambodia. Her job was shaky because some senior manager was considering whether to cancel the project her group had worked on for four years. She wanted to make sure she could jump to another internal organization if her project folded. She raised two children by herself. Her husband had dropped dead of a heart attack caused by overwork and suppressed rage when he was only thirty. She made sure her tasks were completed without error.

During the next ten work days I showed Lat my computer system arrangements, typical reports, backups, all the maintenance routines. I gave her the documents I'd created describing the web site installation and the superuser passwords.

I returned a computer loaned to me for working at home. I unloaded it from my car onto a borrowed cart and wheeled it into the building. As I clattered along the hallway near my desk, someone who knew me teased, "Bringing back your telecommute machine? Why?" Someone else, hidden in the beehive of cubicles called out, "Just for show. What else did he keep?" The State Public Utilities Commission had already asked why the company couldn't account for one billion dollars worth of lost inventory.