I followed the flow.

During my initial interview, I had taken notice of only the personnel office and the conference room in which the interview had been conducted. Now I looked carefully around the building’s lobby. Here the impression of sterile newness fostered by the building’s exterior faded somewhat. I could see a worn path on the burgundy carpet, a layer of dust on the plastic palms and ficuses that flanked the door. Even the high rounded desk in front of the security guard exhibited chips and scuffs on its wood finish.

The other men and women walking through the lobby strode purposefully past the guard, nodding at him on their way to the elevator. I wasn’t sure if I should do the same or if I had to check in, so I walked up to the desk.

“Excuse me,” I said.

The guard looked at me and through me, not seeming to notice my presence. He nodded to an overweight man with thick horn-rimmed glasses. “Jerry.”

“Excuse me,” I said again, louder this time.

The guard’s eyes focused on my face. “Yes?”

“I’m a new employee. I just got hired, and I’m not sure where I should — ”

He motioned toward the elevator with his head. “Take the elevator to Personnel. Third floor.”

It was exactly what he had told me last time, when I’d come for the interview, and I was about to say something to that effect, jokingly, but he had already dismissed me in his mind, again looking past me to the other employees entering the lobby.

I thanked him, though he wasn’t listening, and walked back to the elevator.

Two women were already waiting for the elevator, one in her early thirties, one in her mid-forties. They were discussing the younger one’s lack of sexual interest in her husband. “It’s not that I don’t love him,” the woman said. “But I just don’t seem to be able to come with him anymore. I pretend I do — I don’t want to hurt his feelings and give him some kind of confidence problem — but I just don’t feel it. I usually wait until he’s asleep and then do it myself.”