Heaven Is Small (16 page)

Into his upturned eye Gordon emptied the last of the bottle of Visine he had thought to bring in his first day. Tomorrow, Gordon knew, a miraculous eighth-inch of clear liquid would appear at the bottom of the container again.

For the first half of
Express Male
, the author had adopted the word
rueful
as her top choice, using it at least eight or nine times and, in one instance, twice in the same paragraph. Abruptly, at page 100, the author had turned on her heel (an act that was, Gordon had long ago noticed, so popular in the genre) and began using the world
whilst
with the same — or even greater — lack of discretion. The text paraded like a poem of
whilst
across the screen until his eyes swam:

Whilst she was turning on her heel, he caught her sash and her robe fell open. Whilst a flame rose in her porcelain cheeks, so her nipples also glowed. He caught her delicate wrist in his hand and reeled her, without protest, to him whilst she blushed.

“Oh,” she murmured silkily whilst he freed more of her ivory shoulders, her taut buds erect between his fingers, feeling his touch with every fibre of her being. Whilst he fondled her, her head lolled dizzily on the column of her throat. She moaned whilst he rubbed. She gasped whilst he suckled. She sang whilst he squeezed.

He apologized enthusiastically whilst bringing their bodies flush.

“Don’t be sorry,” she confessed reassuringly whilst she stripped his shirt over his head.

“Damn and double damn,” he breathed in savage relief whilst she ran her palms over his muscular torso.

Whilst she gazed, he hardened. Whilst he hardened, she gazed. It was as if his whole body had moved up into a higher gear whilst she stroked him lower and lower. A gasp of air escaped her lips whilst he struggled to control his burgeoning passion. She released the thick telltale ridge of flesh from beneath his Parasucos whilst he begged her to think of the consequences. Whilst her busy fingers worked his shaft ever stiffer, he intimately stroked her eager arousal, finding a sensitive place inside her she’d never known existed. He was dangerously aware of her womanscent whilst she bent her head, silky locks falling against his burning flesh. Whilst she licked him, he licked her.

Dance whilst the music still goes on. Get it whilst it’s hot. Get it whilst you can. Whilst you loved me. Whilst you were sleeping. Take me for a little whilst, I’ve got to make you love me, for a little whilst. Whilst the gettin’ was good. Whilst you see a chance take it, find romance, fake it. ’Scuse me whilst I kiss the sky. Whilst my guitar gently weeps. How wonderful life is whilst you’re in the world. Whistle whilst you work.

It was close to five when Bentley appeared outside the cubicle, partway between Proofreading and Design. He beckoned to Gordon, a shifty look on his face. He obviously expected Gordon to come near enough for him to whisper — closer to his bent neck than Gordon would have liked. “What kind of man are you?” Bentley finally rasped. “Can you keep quiet?”

Gordon had known it: Bentley’s secrets were bigger than he was. Holding up innocuous hands, Gordon made no reply, which he had always found the best defence for later when — as was often said in the books of Heaven — “the fit hit the shan.”

Bentley made his insecure tsking — that
ta-ta-ta
sound like fingers drumming on a table — in the back of his throat. He glanced over his hunched shoulder. “Come on,” he said. One flaking finger twitched vaguely as he strode between the two departments, detoured past his own station, and finally headed down the hall beside Chandler’s office. Gordon held his breath and followed in Bentley’s drafty wake.

Bentley swiped them through a doorway requiring an elaborate punch code, which Gordon took care to memorize. Then they found themselves before the only thing Gordon had faced in Heaven that was not white, pink, powder blue, or gold: an immense oak door that had been painted, and repainted, black. Its surface was as thick and cracked as charcoal.

Unlike the rest of Heaven, the file room was accessed not by a code but by an old-fashioned key. Gordon stood very still as Bentley fussed with the lock. As he waited, Gordon silently repeated to himself the punch code he had just watched Bentley finger in. He didn’t know what Bentley was about to show him, but he suspected it was something vital to his understanding of how he had arrived and, possibly, if he would ever leave.

The code already felt snug in his mind, more like a colour than a combination; all he had to do to recollect it was to envision its brightness, and its name would follow. Gordon had found that remembering the things that happened here was much easier than remembering the far past, and wondered if this was part of the reason his co-workers were so reluctant to call up their life stories and talk of their neighbourhoods, partners, or children, bantering instead about brands and pop songs, which held a glorious newness. The company’s own web site was replete with sponsored iTunes ads and promotions, and the gym’s television fed them with information about fresh wars that were so very much like old wars whose details the employees barely recollected. Gordon pursed his lips and recalled the code one more time for safekeeping.

Bentley smiled over his shoulder, his grin no longer seeming hostile to Gordon, but sexual and conspiratorial. The steel handle turned beneath his reedy fingers. “Not a word,” he cautioned. “It would mean our jobs.”

How much Bentley’s job meant to him Gordon wasn’t sure. Even if he didn’t comprehend his own lack of heartbeat, it was clear that Bentley knew, if not as much as Gordon, a great deal about Heaven.

The black door swung open. The smell of sawdust and autumn leaves greeted them, along with a library silence. The fusty room was little more than a narrow corridor tucked in behind Chandler’s office. But unlike those environs filled with tremulous sunlight, the file room ended without so much as a window.

Bentley reached inside and fumbled for a switch. The fluorescents were naked and hung much lower than they did elsewhere in the building. They came on, snapping and sputtering inside their tubes, which were a moonlike blue-white. Gordon saw that the hall carpet stopped just inside the doorway without so much as a piece of trim on the threshold. Beyond the ragged edge, a checkerboard of tiles in rose and white rubbed faded shoulders with one another. On either side of the aisle filing cabinets stood, eight feet tall. At the very end, against a raw concrete wall, sat an old wooden swivel chair, its seat and back marred with streaks of white paint as if someone had attempted to stand upon it while working overhead with a dripping brush. Bentley swept his arm back.
After you
, the gesture said.

Gordon hesitated, then walked down the spine of the skeletal room.

Behind him a tired drawer screeched open. Gordon whipped around and watched as Bentley’s fingers flicked absently through velvet dust that floated up from the drawer’s fan of pink folders. “They date back to 1965. Every employee we’ve had here in Editorial, and not just resumés either. Heaven is very comprehensive.” Bentley raised an eyebrow — a full-grown brown mouse dashing across his forehead.

“Impressive.” Gordon ran his thumb along the line of drawers, leaving a bare black stripe where he passed. He stopped at one marked
Ga–Go
.

“It’s not, actually,” Bentley continued. “The company was founded in 1955 with the rise of the housewife, the notion of the idle partner behind the picket fence, the boom of post–World War II industry —
i.e.,
” he emphasized, “plenty of walk-around-town money. That’s ten years that have gone missing, so there’s no knowing who worked at the original Heaven building or how things were done for that first, important decade that established the company as one of the top publishing houses in the world.”

Gordon had wrenched open the
G
’s and was in the process of crab-walking through the soft edges of folders when Bentley’s words sunk in. “The original Heaven?”

“From what I can tell from the very oldest of the files, it used to be located somewhere to the east of the parkway.” Bentley shrugged his lopsided shoulders. With the movement he struck Gordon suddenly as sheepish, immense with insecurity, an actual ally.

“Who was head of Editorial before Chandler?” From the drawer Gordon pulled a slick, unwrinkled file labelled
Goods
.

“Diamond-Blume, Melanie. Before her, O’Donnell, Tess. And before that, Schneider, Seth. And . . . let’s see . . . a Miss Rebecca Noble.” Bentley closed the
B
drawer he had opened, which likely bore his own file, and strode past Gordon, liberating the
N
’s and producing Miss 1965’s file almost immediately, in spite of its crumbling edges. Bentley’s skull-like face flushed. “It’s . . . it’s
my
system,” he admitted, stammering just a little, his embarrassment coupled with pride. “Believe me, if I had been here in ’65 everything would be filed properly, nothing ever would have been incomplete, but . . .” His black eyes burned with regret. “I started in ’66. The building was still brand new, yet everything was in chaos. I don’t know who was in charge in that intervening year. But some things” — his voice dropped — “some things could not be recovered.”

“Since ’66, huh? Is it true that a window hasn’t been opened here in thirty years?” Gordon jerked open the
S
drawer and found his own file too easily, the type on it still fresh, the folder edges not yet dogged. He pinched it between thumb and forefinger, tugged it up slightly, then let it fall back. He closed the drawer without removing the folder.

“No.” Bentley laced his fingers together and cracked them before taking them for another lightning whirl through the files. “Because they were pinching pennies, they replaced the windows ten floors at a time over a period of seven years. They started in ’68, so technically” — he beamed — “it’s been thirty-
four
years.”

“Do you know about the employees on other floors?”

An eerie smile split Bentley’s crooked face so that he resembled the Titus whom Gordon had always known.

“You mean HR?”

Gordon allowed himself to nod.

Bentley shook his head but the smile still hung from his nose. “Unfortunately, all of the departments are separate. Design has a separate room tucked in behind the supervisor’s office over there.” Bentley gestured vaguely, pointing back through the black door. “Different key. But I can tell you one thing.” He shut the drawers they had opened and handed the files to Gordon to browse, which he did. “Lily Payne . . .”

“Yes?” The word clicked in Gordon’s throat, like a token falling into a slot.

With its reception, Bentley’s information came out. “. . . has been here
at least
as long as I have.” Bentley pressed his palms together in front of his chest. “You might say she’s —” He stopped himself and closed his eyes, nodding as if coming to terms with the idea of passing on the information. “She has aged remarkably well.”

Gordon realized he had — consciously or subconsciously, he wasn’t sure which — skipped making Georgianne Bitz part of his research. Now he headed toward her cubicle, wondering if the smell of her lunch would meet him halfway there.

Something sat upon Georgianne’s desk, but it was not a tuna-fish sandwich. It was a gold-plated frame. It held the image of the face that covered the mind that had dreamed up the very idea of tuna fish.

The child was a kind of Everychild: a child with Chiclets for teeth, with the thin yellow film across them common to those who gorge on orange drink and animal crackers; sandwiched into a coral-and-red-plaid cowgirl shirt, a shirt her mother had obviously selected for her, and which was probably worn over a white cotton camisole with tiny roses embroidered on the neckline; wearing a lopsided grin as if the photographer had at the last minute said something sort of funny but not really, perhaps creepy-funny, though she wasn’t sure; whose hair had been pinned behind her ears with shiny brown barrettes positioned as accurately upon her head as if a level had been used, yet whose strands were still static at the very ends, near her pointed collar; whose eyes shone like the flashbulb that lit them; whose ears were in need of a Q-tip; whose cheeks were like felt-covered ping-pong balls; who was obviously studying cursive; who had no idea what she wanted to be when she grew up but was certain she would be an amazing success; who nicknamed the other children and felt shamed when they nicknamed her back; who, Gordon imagined, had written
Left
and
Right
in green marker on her palms and was extremely relieved to discover that her hands would not show in the photo, because she believed herself to be just slightly too old for such prompts.

“How old is your daughter, Georgianne?”

“Eight. Why?”

“And how old was she when you started working here?”

Georgianne gave Gordon a doubtful look. “Eight.”

“How long have you been working here, Georgianne?”

Perplexity. “Oh, I don’t know! A while.”

“Eight years, George. You’ve worked at Heaven Books for eight years.” Gordon held up the work records from Bentley’s file room. “In another two years they’ll give you a little gold clock for your desk.”

“That’s not possible.” Georgianne put her hard mouth on and spun away from Gordon, ignoring him and the paper evidence.

He picked up her extension. “Call your daughter.”

“What are you trying to prove?”

Gordon nodded at the phone, his nice-guy face on. Georgianne relented.

“Jolene, honey, just wanted to call and see how you are . . . Sure, sweetheart, a couple of hours.” Georgianne nodded to Gordon across the cord, smiled as if to say,
See? All normal.
“Uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . . Okay, I promise.” She hung up the phone.

“What did she say?”

“Oh, you know, the usual.” Georgianne swept some invisible crumbs off her desktop.