Hostile encounter evolves into an uneasy peace

Every day in the cafeteria of the building where I work, I see a former colleague from many years ago who I had hoped never to see again.

When we worked together at a magazine, we had reached a point of hostility where we stopped speaking to each other in the office, except in editorial meetings where we could instead address our remarks to a roomful of people.

Otherwise, during the course of the work day, we would remain silent, even, revealingly, when standing at adjacent urinals or simply passing in the hallways or while waiting in the kitchen pantry for our bagel slices to pop up in adjacent toasters.

He quit that magazine suddenly, a couple of years before I moved on, leaving under mysterious circumstances for he was giving up one of the top editorial positions to become a status-less freelance writer and to move to a quiet Berkshire town.

Years later, he resurfaced as a book editor and then, just as he had before, he left that job suddenly, retreating again to the same distant town.

Now, he is once again in a position of authority, editor in chief at another magazine owned by our company. Despite my dislike of him for all those years, I never strayed from the belief that he was a talented writer and editor, so much so that I envied his abilities.

Office friendships gone wrong are more baffling than personal ones. For, within office life, rarely is there an outright argument or a scene of hurled invectives.

Jealousies, unrequited love, owed monies -- the common ingredients of personal breakups are not those of the office. Collegial "breakups" are often more subtle and unreasonable than inappropriately worded e-mail, perhaps, or the need to be loyal to a boss who doesn't like a colleague as much as you do.

It has been so many years since we spent time in the same office that I cannot remember why he might have turned on me, though I can remember some of what he said that was indicative of that change. My partner at the time was having surgery and I wound up having to stay at the hospital for the entire day, though I had thought it would be just for the morning.

When I returned to work the next day, he appeared at the opening of my cubicle and said, "Do you really think that was the right thing to do when we're shipping the next issue of the magazine?" I yelled at him loud enough for employees on the other side of the cubicle walls to hear. Never before had I sworn at a colleague. I also ordered him out of my cubicle. Perhaps I was emboldened to do so because I knew he was not in a position to fire me, though he was capable of lobbying for my dismissal.

And, yet, only months earlier, he had extended regular invitations to visit him at his weekend house, even offering to make me a duplicate key. We traded novels we had read and recounted details from the previous night's episode of "Thirtysomething."

I was not the only person on staff for whom he developed a grudge, which would often fester to the point of his getting the person removed. When a graphic artist was fired on a Friday, he announced to the staff on Monday that he was glad she was gone. "Now, we'll be able to do our job well with her out of the way," he said. It was both an untrue and unkind remark, and one even then, as an unseasoned editor, I knew was an inappropriate one for a high level editor to utter.

Long after we had stopped working together, I used to wonder how I would react if I ran into him again. A law of living in New York is that you must have a plan in mind upon meeting an ex-boss or lover or roommate, for everyone you have ever met in life will one day pass through this town (on a lunch hour, I spotted a sixth-grade classmate from my Illinois junior high and when I reintroduced myself to her, she literally backed to the curb when I, a stranger in her eyes, tried to hand her a business card).

Indeed, one night, more than a decade after we had shared an office life, I was standing in the plaza of Lincoln Center when I saw him approaching me. I quickly tried to summon up the scenarios I had rehearsed for this moment. One role had me turning my back on him as he extended his hand for a shake. Another involved the kind of cutting repartee worthy of an Oscar Wilde drawing room comedy. But when he reached me, we shook hands and complimented each other on how the aging process had been kind to us. We inquired eagerly about our whereabouts and romantic lives, and as he walked toward the Met opera house and I to Avery Fisher Hall, we called to each other over the hiss of the plaza fountain to stay in touch, meet for a lunch.

And now, just as mysteriously as we had once become enemies in our mutual workplace, we now recommend cafeteria salad bar entrees to each other and we compliment each other sartorially, for we are both among the increasingly few editorial people who still wear a coat and tie to work every day. "I can't believe the way people dress now," he recently remarked as we compared the color combinations of our rep ties and scanned the room of fellow employees, more than a few of whom were wearing flip-flops.

When he first started the new job here, he would introduce me to colleagues at his lunch table as his "pen pal," for I had been sending him laudatory postcards via interoffice mail about changes he was making at the magazine.

My real reason for sending the notes, though, was that I feared his rearrival into my daily life and wanted to minimize the chance that he would still be hostile.

Then, I was recently offered the chance to vie for a spot at his magazine, what would be a promotion and a job for which I am perfectly qualified. But I told the recruiter I wasn't interested. "We're not personal friends, but we have," I explained, "what might be called a complicated work history."