Monday morning I'm back at work and Kyra Desai is immediately proven right: Strange things are happening.

At nine thirty I'm closing my office door behind me when I hit Annette Howard, who's following me into the room, smack in the face. Annette Howard is a category reviewer. Self Help/Personal Development/Spiritual Growth. All I've ever noticed about her before is her purse, a mid-size fake Kelly bag she carries with her everywhere, even to run across the room to the printer. My office is opposite the room where the twelve category reviewers work and sometimes I watch them. It's usually even less interesting than my own job. She waves away my apologies and inquiries about her nose. I sit at my desk and she sits down in the uncomfortable armless chair across.

"I want your job," she says.

"Excuse me?"

She smiles as she speaks, a spokesmodel smile with a row of caps. The accent is definitely southern. Annette is blond and pretty, maybe twenty-five, and it's becoming abundantly clear to me that she's insane. "Well, I've been thinking about, you know, my career, and about Intelligentsia, and I think the next logical step is for me to have your job. But they wouldn't have to fire you," she rushes to add. "They could have two spotlight reviewers. But they might have to, you know, let you go."

I don't say anything and so she continues. "I wanted to let you know ahead of time because of the mental illness. Your father was crazy. Everyone knows that. So you must be a little touched, too. I know what it's like. My grandmother had schizophrenia. She died in an asylum. That's where I get it from."

A hot anger is rising up inside me. "What on earth are you getting at?"

"You see. There it goes. You're getting paranoid. You're inappropriately angry. You're reading insults into a neutral statement. Believe me, I know."

"I am not mentally ill, Annette."

"Not yet," she says cheerfully. Her cell phone rings and she reaches into her purse to answer it.

"Hello?" she says into the phone. "Oh my God. I know. I know." Her voice trails off and she turns toward me. "Excuse me. I have to take this call. Privately." She looks at me and waits.

When I was fifteen I would have fought Annette, and I probably would have won (rage trumps muscle, but insanity sometimes trumps rage). Now I'm twenty-nine, I'm good, and so I get up from my desk and walk to my boss's office. Empty. I walk around to his boss's office. Empty. The floor is laid out in an oval shape, with offices in the middle and on the edges. A hallway runs around the oval, like a race track. The management has tried hard to make the Intelligentsia offices look dusty and literary, with cartoons from The New Yorker and snippets of irony from Harper's Index and news items from GV stuck on the walls with yellowing cellophane tape. Stacks of book reviews and piles of books line the halls though there's plenty of space in the storage rooms. I walk around the race track looking for someone, anyone I know, silently chanting shanaishwaraya, and come back empty-handed. Most of the senior staff and management has taken off today, the day after Christmas. Back in my office Annette is off the phone, sitting in the uncomfortable chair with a little smile on her face.

"It's okay," she says, smiling. "You can come back in now."

"Thanks. So, what was it you wanted, Annette?"

"I want your job. It'll be great if they can make a new position, and we can work together, but if not I'll take your job. I thought with you having mental illness and all, being so unstable, I should warn you ahead of time. I didn't want you to take it personally. I didn't want you to freak out." She makes a crazy-person face - eyes wide, mouth stretched open, tongue lolling out - and then she laughs.

"Thanks, Annette. That's nice of you."

"No problem. See ya."