Tom is ripping a very small woodgrain vaporizer of some unfortunate natural oil blend and Jane is talking about Berlin all-nighters at those clubs that don’t admit black people. Kelly is brushing a conference room table with a newspaper. An in-house publication, its cover concerning the Philippines satellite office. Tom and Kate speak in hushed tones at the other end of the room. It had not been a good meeting, it seems.
"I have no idea what's going on," Mark says. "Really. You can fire me or whatever but it's true."
Kelly laughed, convincingly light. "If you did know they'd have to pay you more money."
"They just talk fucking circles all day about crap."
"What does Flexfort do?"
"You don't even know?"
"I’m asking you."
Mark was not comfortable at work like this immediately. It took months of slow confidence building and a million random emails regarding things he did not understand. It required 10 hours of podcasts every single day until he felt sick. It took his mom moving out, leaving him a half-empty outer borough condo with plaster walls built with sideways studs. It took accepting a thing he could not change, which was needing to work, and to change his shit attitude a tiny tiny tiny bit. It took meeting a girl, again, for real this time. He'd met girls before.
Mark was an office manager. Sort of. He'd arrived at this job conventionally. You could say. He knew what happened at his job, like what the business was. He absolutely did, though he felt the less you know the better.
Mark liked the Punisher, a lot, but in a normal way. The Punisher lived in a world where you learned stuff and you did something about it. Mark was inspired by this. And the rocket-propelled grenade launchers, gratuitous racist violence, and warmed-over War on Terror commentary, that helped.
Ron from I.T. wandered about the floor before he spotted, sticking out of Mark's tote bag, Ennis and Dillon's Welcome Back, Frank, the post-Marvel Knights, pre-Max adolescent horseshit from Ireland's dumbest liberal.
"Well, I like it," Mark said, after a beat. "It is sorta dumb, I guess."
"I wouldn't show it to your girlfriend, haha."
And then he was gone, hate in the wind. And Mark was irritated, maddened, almost. Why would you say that? It's not fucking Preacher. That's for morons. There's no deranged contempt for the X-Men, and the Clint Eastwood chasing terrorists bit hasn't started yet.
The only thing that matters is that Frank is never a fed. Sure, he works with Fury or even for Fury but he's not a fed. Nick Fury's always about to get fired, anyway.
"Ultimate Nick Fury is cooler than Max Fury." Mark sensed Ron over his shoulder before he'd said anything. "Sure, man," he replies, not looking up. "Do you want a Hot Pocket? I have Hot Pockets."