The invitation arrived on Wednesday at ten fourteen, in the same second, for all sixty-two employees of Kvadrat Soft, and I heard it before I saw it. On the ninth floor of a building in Marijin Dvor sixty phones buzzed, on desks, in pockets and in one paper bag of burek. My office is a former storeroom next to the kitchen, and through the open door I watched people look down all at once, then look up and stare at one another over their monitors.
The invitation said: Jahorina, room 214, Hotel Bijela Staza, from Friday at five until Sunday at noon. Organizer Jelena Marić. Attendee Dževad Mašić. In the notes: "Bring a charger. Your slippers are at my place. And this time no phone under the pillow." Below it all, in the recipients field, was what we always saw under the notices about pay and holidays: All Employees.
Jelena ran projects and was the most organized person in the company. Her calendar was colored in five colors, and she had never been late for a meeting. Dževad was the sales director, forty-six years old, with a photo on his desk of his wife Senada and two boys on a sled on Bjelašnica. Since the summer he had been telling everyone that he and Senada were heading for divorce and that he was sleeping at his mother's in Dobrinja. He said it quietly, over coffee, like a man going through a hard time, and people patted him on the shoulder. I had suspected something, because both of them left at half past two on Fridays and both came back on Mondays with the same Jahorina tan, but it was none of my business.
Jelena was in my storeroom before I had time to close the invitation. "Recall it," she said. "Goran, please, recall it." I explained to her, faster than I had ever explained anything to anyone, that recall works only for messages nobody has opened, and the system was already showing that forty-seven people had opened it. She asked how this had even happened. I showed her: instead of her personal calendar she had chosen the shared one, the one with the holidays and paydays, and that one automatically invites everybody. The difference was one click in a drop-down menu.
Dževad came two minutes after her, his face calm, and shut the door behind him. He did not even look at Jelena. He said that I, as the administrator, knew how to delete a message from every mailbox on the server, and that he knew I knew it. "We'll say it was your security drill," he said. "A fake invitation, to see who would click. Everyone will believe it, Goran. People always believe you." Jelena looked at him then, for the first time, as if she were seeing him from some distance away.
Before I could answer anything, the desk phone rang. The director, Mubera Hasić, said only: "Goran, nothing gets deleted in this company without my signature," and hung up. Then the replies started coming in. The first to click was Kemo from support: "Accepted: Jahorina, room 214." After him eleven more people, then a "Maybe" from the accountant, then an acceptance from Mubera's assistant, who swore afterward that it had been an accident. Laughter came from the open-plan office, the ugly kind, the way people laugh when they are glad they are not in someone else's place.
At ten thirty-one a reply to all arrived, from Senada Mašić's private address. It said: "I accept. The kids are asking whether to bring the sleds. Senada." The laughter stopped as if someone had pulled a plug.
That account was mine to shut down. When Senada left the company two years earlier, after her second son, she had asked me to forward the mail from her work address to her private one for a month, until she had informed her clients. The month had lasted two years. In all that time Senada had received everything the rest of us received: pay notices, invitations to cake for other people's birthdays, requests to empty the fridge on Fridays. And the invitation to room 214.
Jelena read the reply standing behind me. Through the glass wall I could see Dževad in his office, a phone at his ear, calling someone who would not pick up. Jelena did not cry. She asked me, quietly, how long Senada had been getting our mail. I told her. "So there is no mother in Dobrinja," she said. "There is," I said, because I did not know what else to say. "The mother exists," she said. "He just doesn't sleep at her place." She went to the kitchen, made coffee, went back to her desk, and did not get up until five.
In the afternoon Dževad sent everyone a short email: "Colleagues, please respect people's privacy. This is a misunderstanding." Within a minute Kemo from support clicked "Accepted," and this time it was certainly no accident. At the same moment Jelena got a message on her phone and showed it to me over the partition, without a word. Dževad had written to her: "It's not what it looks like. I'll explain everything on Friday." She stared at the screen for a long time, as if she were reading the fine print of a contract. "On Friday," she said. "He still thinks we're going."
On Thursday Dževad did not come in. Senada came, at nine, and left at reception the keys to the company car, his access card and the bag with his laptop. Then she knocked on my storeroom door. She was shorter than in the photo and calmer than I had feared. "You're the one who set up my forwarding," she said. I apologized. "Don't," she said. "For two years I knew from your emails that the company holds no Saturday meetings in Tuzla. I knew he was lying. I just didn't know with whom." She asked me to switch off the forwarding while she watched. I switched it off. She said thank you and headed for the elevator. On the way she passed Jelena's desk. Jelena stood up. Neither of them said anything. Senada gave her a short nod, the way you nod to a neighbor you share an elevator with, and left.
On Friday at four forty-five sixty phones buzzed again. A reminder: "Jahorina, room 214, in fifteen minutes." Nobody had deleted the event, not me, not Jelena, not the director, and now it was reminding all of us. Somebody laughed, then went quiet. Mubera came out of her office, said, "It's the weekend, people," and turned off the light in the meeting room, though there was nobody in it. Jelena put on her jacket, picked up her bag and left first, without looking at anyone.
On Monday I found her at the coffee machine. I asked her, because nobody else dared, how the weekend had been. "I went," she said. "The room was paid for and could not be canceled. I slept for twelve hours, and I left my phone at the front desk." She picked up her cup and started toward her desk. "And the slippers?" I asked, and was sorry at once. She stopped. "I left them in the wardrobe in room 214," she said. "Let somebody accept them."