Once again, this is what I'm doing. And this week's exercise is The Execution:
I pretty much failed at this exercise. I went way too long. And though it was supposed to have consisted mostly of dialogue, I stayed in the narrator's head most of the time. But in failing at the exercise, I kind of stumbled on something that intrigued me and which I might continue down the road. So in that way, maybe it was a success. Earlier this week I listened to a This American Life episode which had this piece about NYC School's "Rubber Rooms," and suddenly I knew the larger context of the story and I had to go with it. And so the story wound up becoming more about that than the actual execution. Anyway, it's too late for a do-over ... (If you have time, download the TAL podcast. It's good.)


Fat Larry leaned over and said in his low, Brooklyn-tinged voice, "Meet us in the other corner, Jack." He wrapped his meaty knuckles on my desk as he said it.

I didn't look up from my book. But I nodded.

If breathing through your nostrils and using your eyes to see things around you were two things you didn't do on a regular basis, then Fat Larry wasn't too bad a guy to be around. He had a dry sense of humor I could appreciate. He had introduced himself to me as "Fat Larry," and I thought there was something profound in that. But the problem with Fat Larry was that it always seemed like he'd been mowing the lawn or something. Like, yesterday. And he still hadn't showered. He was just tremendously ... unkempt. He didn't actually talk that much, unless he had something to say. And that something was usually a joke. But the thing he had just uttered was no joke. It sounded ominous.

"Be there in a sec Fat Larry ... let me just finish this paragraph ..."

This was my thirty-second week in the Rubber Room. It was loud, as usual, but my desk in the back corner, which I had recently acquired, was one of the more quiet places to sit. It was against the far wall and there was nobody on my left or in back of me. To my right was a balding math teacher named Bill. He had coffee breath that I can only describe as "evil" and when you were confronted head-on with its sickening darkness, it left you feeling cold and scared. Luckily, he mostly kept to himself and didn't say much. The woman in front of me knitted all day. She kept a photo of her dog on her desk. Occasionally, she would begin crying loudly and uncontrollably. But these outbursts only occurred once or twice a week and were relatively short and easy to ignore. The florescent light above me was constant and didn't flicker at all. And my desk/chair combo was of the newer style that had the cushion in the seat, not the all-plastic variety I had sat in for so many months.

When you're in the Rubber Room, it's the little things that matter. Your seat. Your immediate neighbors. The light above you. These were small things outside of the Rubber Room. But inside, these things were of vast importance. This seat I was in, for instance, had been Tony's. Tony had sat in the seat for nearly two years, drawing his salary from the City of New York while doing crosswords from The Times. Most people didn't mess with Tony. And so he kept his seat. But one day Tony didn't show up to the Rubber Room. Maybe he had finally been fired. Maybe he had died. Whatever. It didn't matter to any of us still in the Room. What mattered was Tony's seat. And there were four of us in the room who wanted it and who had the seniority to take it: Me, Jerry, Greta, and Fat Larry. The first day Tony didn't show, nobody sat in the seat. But on the second day, I went ahead and claimed it. Because I knew if I didn't, one of the other three would. And in this world, you don't wait to be given anything. You take.

The Rubber Room is the place where New York City teachers go to be "re-assigned." Usually because they've done something wrong or they have a "personality conflict" with somebody they shouldn't. And instead of getting fired, they get sent to one of the Rubber Rooms in the Education building, so the school system can figure out what to do with them. And the proper way to do it.

Actually, only those of us who are sent here call it the "Rubber Room." The school administrators call it the "Re-assignment Center." The thing about the name "Re-Assignment Center" though, is that most people who get sent here never actually get re-assigned. Instead, the person's job becomes ... to simply come here. Every day. Indefinitely. You still get a salary, paid for by New York's tax-payers. But nobody comes to talk to you. Nobody re-assigns you. You're just forgotten. And so you begin to carry out your days by reading, or playing cards, or talking to the others. For six or seven hours a day. Every day.

I wound up in the Rubber Room because one of my students walked in on me and another teacher fucking in my classroom. The teacher was Miss Carter. We weren't particularly fond of one another, Miss Carter and I. She'd leave rotten apples on my desk and I'd "re-assign" them to her car. But, man Miss Carter looked delicious in a black dress, which is what she'd been wearing that day. And one afternoon she came to see me about something and before I knew what was happening, she was up against the black board and my pants were down around my ankles and her skirt up around her waist and the door was closed but—bloody hell—not locked, and my hand, searching for something to help keep me balanced and upright, found a tray full of chalk dust instead, and the white powder wound up all over Miss Carter's chest, and well ... this was certainly no way for a young girl, nine years old, to see sex happening for the first time. And she would probably go on the rest of her life with this being her first impression of that thing and all the sex education classes in the world wouldn't get it out of her head, and who knew the layers of psychological damage that Miss Carter and I had inflicted on her that day. The student left the room and ten minutes later I was visited by Principal Evans. Miss Carter and I got "re-assigned" to separate Rubber Rooms. And that was thirty-two weeks ago. My wife still thinks I drive my car to a classroom every day to teach third graders how to read and write. She doesn't know I park my car at the New York City Board of Education building. That the only reading I'm a part of is my own. And that teaching is no longer part of the equation at all.

I wasn't exactly sure why the school hadn't fired us. Maybe they didn't want a scandal to erupt. Headlines ... Teachers Caught Having Sex in Classroom. Schools are deathly terrified of bad press. They probably struck some kind of deal with the parent of the girl who walked in on us.

I got up from my chair and walked over to the other corner to meet Fat Larry and the others. It was louder here, which sort of made it easier to talk without really being overheard. But it also meant you had to get close to each other. And Fat Larry's lawnmower smell washed over me.

Greta, who had been in the Rubber Room for just over a year, who always tried to talk to me about food, was clicking nervously on a pen. She had been a gym teacher in Queens. She landed in the Rubber Room after she called an eight-year old boy a pussy. I think the exact phrase she used was "fucking pussy." Either way, seemed like a terrible choice of words, but who was I to judge? Jerry was sucking on his teeth, which he was apt to do, and which drove me crazy. Jerry was probably the most normal of any of us there. And he liked to portray that about himself. He wore suits. And he maintained that he really shouldn't be in the Rubber Room at all. That he was a victim. And he told us he had a lawyer working on things and that they would be coming to get him any day. All Jerry had done to get himself in the Rubber Room was flunk a student. But that student had very influential parents.

"I'm just going to tell you straight, Jack," said Fat Larry. "Susan needs to go."

"Susan?"

They all three nodded.

I turned my head to where Susan stood now, talking to several others, one hand occupied with a cup of coffee, and the other fluttering and gesticulating wildly like a bird. Susan Lee was by far the loudest member of the Rubber Room. She was from Arkansas and had a loud shrill voice. She smacked her gum a lot and butted into people's conversations and told them what they should do with their lives. She also had tough skin, so there was no convincing her to shut up. She just didn't care. It was like she had to talk or she would explode.

I looked back at this weird trio that had pulled me aside. "Go?" I asked.

"Go," said Greta.

"We're going to kill her," said Jerry. There was a lilt in his voice when he said it, like he was stifling a laugh and it kind of creeped me out.

I waited for the punch line. But it never came. Jerry sucked on his teeth. Greta clicked and clicked.

"What are you talking about?"

"Sometimes you're a little thick, Jack," said Fat Larry. He wrapped his knuckles on my head.

"It's no longer acceptable, Jack." This was Jerry again, speaking with this weird rational tone, like he was trying to explain the concept of gravity or something. "This behavior. We will go crazy. She needs to die."

"Are you kidding me?"

"We're not joking," said Greta. "Susan will die. And here's the deal, Jack: You're going to be the one to kill her. Because we know what brought you to the Rubber Room. And we know that if you don't kill Susan, we're going to tell your wife all about it."

"You want me ..." I lowered my voice. "You want me to kill Susan?"

"Jesus, Jack. I thought you were quicker than this." said Fat Larry.

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