Heaven Is Small (24 page)

Username: gsmall.
Password: ******

“I am in complete control.”

One hand spread across her throat and collarbone as Lillian eased down into her chair and clicked the hard-drive icon. She opened the folder labelled
My Docs
, where she discovered an open-mouthed hole of a headline:
0 files
.

22

Across the cubicles Gordon’s co-workers were singing the refrain of Chloe Gold. With each use the name’s currency seemed to diminish, for
Chloe Gold
had become — seeing as Gordon had no name, was simply
unknown
— a substitute for Gordon’s own. It was January fifth, and Heaven was ringing in the New Year with gossip, passed from station to station via e-mail and swift whisper. Ivy Wolfe from the Internet Division had already forwarded Gordon 251 Google Alerts pertaining to the scandal.

Did you hear? It originated in our branch. . . . Over the holidays! Already three members of the sales force have been terminated. . . . I heard it was five. . . . They’re conducting a company-wide search. . . . We’re all under review. . . . Have you read it? . . . I read it. I didn’t think much of it . . . I just started. . . . I’m reading it now. . . . It’s good. It’s gorgeous. It’s glorious, godly, gothic, gives me goose pimples. . . . Are you kidding? We don’t need that guff, it’s a gaffe! . . . Can’t knock Gold, though, good God.

Amid the gushing hysteria Gordon dropped a petunia petal of an envelope into the outbox beside Bentley’s podium, which was still draped with tinsel. Beneath the miniature sketchy
To
he’d printed the name
C. Small
on the envelope
.

“Something for Mom?” Bentley queried. “Using company postage?”

“A bit belated.” It was the truth.

Bentley eyed him sternly, tsked and tutted, but that was all.

Gordon watched as James Ames arrived, slung the outbox over his shoulder, and with typical slackness didn’t bother collecting from Design that day. Ames hoisted the mail into the elevator, where he set the box down on top of his cart without emptying it. The doors slid shut and Gordon turned to Bentley and nodded before he wound his way back through the cubicles. Gordon imagined the box riding down to the basement, his pink no. 2 envelope lying on top, the first paragraph showing through its underside in the bunched lines of his childlike penmanship before the fold of the Heaven stationery obscured the rest from view:

Dear Chloe,

I know you will recognize this as my handwriting. I cannot tell you how I managed to reach you, but please believe what I have to tell you. At one point I blamed you for the disintegration of our marriage, but after writing our story, I cannot. You are the beneficiary of my very limited estate, and there is one thing of value I bequeathed to you, which may now come in handy — my literary rights. . . .

23

Lillian’s feet found their way around her office without assistance from her eyes. She twisted her door handle and greeted the figure on her threshold with a raised hand but did not raise her lids. A purplish paperback was making its way around the office in front of her face. She nimbly avoided the bank of misplaced, disconnected computers, and parked herself and the open book behind her desk even as she licked her index finger and turned to the next page. “Listen to this,” she said. “‘We could have been the same person, given the level of hatred that existed between us, if only it hadn’t been one-sided. It was that alone, I think, that defined us as two.’ Isn’t that profound?”

“Cliché, I thought,” Small, G., replied. “Bitter treacle. But what do I know?”

It was only then that Lillian looked up from
Darling Deception
and saw who stood before her. She nodded vaguely and flipped another page.

“You called me up?” came his impertinent voice.

Lillian closed the lavender love story and placed it on the desk in front of her. “Yes.”

She looked down at the single page on her desk: the smeared photocopy that had been faxed to department heads, then recirculated. The man in the green suit let his gaze fall upon it as well.

Lillian reached across the desk and shuttled the page to his side. “I’ve never seen what all the fuss was about, personally. . . .”

Small, G., arched his eyebrows.

“With Chloe Gold,” she added.

“I don’t know. Perhaps she is better than I previously gave her credit for,” the green-suited slump offered.

“Oh, but you would say that —
now
,” Lillian spat. Small, G., was too smug for his own good. It brought the pain back, rising in her esophagus, especially when she thought of the pleasure she had been receiving mere minutes earlier, reading his gilt-covered concoction. “The problem is that your novel has burst out and is running loose out there in the world.” She laughed, but even to her ears it was a cold, sober laugh. There it was. She had acknowledged him as the author, explicitly, without innuendo.
Darling Deception
lay on the dustless surface between them. “You don’t know what it’s done to me, Gordon.”

His stuttering self took over, and Lillian knew that her casual use of his name was part of the reason why. “I — I thought you liked it. Just a minute ago —”

“Don’t be so self-conscious. I do. I love it. I adore it. I am your devoted fan.” She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she said, “But it’s caused a shit storm. That’s right, you heard me — a shit storm. I can say that now. I’ve got Dave David down in Production cursing full hurricanes these days, words and combinations we haven’t heard in Heaven since the ’60s. Complaints are coming in faster than you can type —” In case he doubted her, she snatched a dictionary-thick file from the drawer and held it high.

Hefting up another folder in her other hand, she added, “Of course, there’s also some fan mail for our ‘author,’ Allison Sharpe. But do you know how much we’ve had to pay out to the
real
Allison Sharpe? She’ll be ‘Gwendolyn Small’ henceforth. But the woman wasn’t happy, and her new contract is costing Heaven a pretty penny.”

Lillian plunged on without pause. “We’ve got reports from Head Office that Chloe Gold has been attempting to contact you via a medium. Yes, a $300-per-hour psychic. Contrary to what you might think, we
do
monitor attempts at incoming messages. You never know when one might break through. Apparently you’re in a ‘better place’ now,” she harrumphed.

“And Georgianne Bitz has ceased going to her car at night or even making a pretense at work.” Lillian snatched at a stack of messages that sat impaled on a spike beside the telephone. Without disengaging the papers from their murderer, she waved the contraption in Small, G.’s face like a fencer. “Nearly everyone you’ve come into contact with is beginning to doubt our entire system. Editorial is in complete upheaval. Do you know what that does to me? You won’t believe this, but I am feeling physical pain. I know, it’s not possible. It’s hysterical. It’s utterly illogical. But suddenly I am feeling in
every fibre of my being —
”

She waved her hand frantically. “Stupid phrase, culled from decades of working here, strike that, nix, delete —” With her arm Lillian looped an editor’s symbol in the air, an invisible diagonal line with a pig’s tail. “However, you must understand that you, Mr. Small, have started something unheard of. You’ve set us all on a destructive path. A path of indecision. We’re becoming un-Heavenly, do you understand?”

Small, G., blinked. The green worm. How could he just sit there blinking?

Lillian thrust her face directly into his and blinked back at him, an exaggerated mockery of his action. “It’s not even about us. So we can feel.
Whatever!
” Lillian stalked around her office. “It’s about business. If books with unhappy endings start to sell — Holy fudge,” she said out of habit. “We’ll be out of jobs. Do you know where we’ll go if we wind up out of work?”

Small, G., shook his head.

“Neither do I. But that’s exactly what we’re up against. In less than one week’s time, your book, your little
Darling
” — she seized it, waved it in the air, and flung it down in front of him — “has become a buzz book. Now, that’s not to say that it’s good, although . . .” she amended, grabbing her copy and swiftly finding a folded corner. She displayed the page for Small, G., to see. “. . . I do rather envy this passage. But” — the fondness fell from her voice — “regardless of its merits, it has picked up incredible steam in terms of its sales and the discussions it is creating. This is horribly embarrassing for the company. Nothing like this has ever happened. I mean, there have been minor revolts, a pulled fire alarm now and again, the occasional haunting, problem cases, transfers, talk of unions, but this . . . this is public. Thankfully I’m in HR, not PR. As you can imagine, down there on Sixty-Seven they are scrambling right now, absolutely scrambling to come up with explanations that will please the press. It’s a scandal book. It will make millions, Gord,” she concluded abruptly. She found to her surprise that the faster she talked, the more she could feel. Tears were streaking her cheeks.

“So . . . you’re on my side?” he squeaked hopefully.

Lillian circled the desk. She could feel flames practically leaping from her fingers as she rapped them upon the wood, and from her eyes as she assessed him. “I’m most certainly
not
, as you put it, ‘on your side.’ Have you got a rubber-band ball for a brain? Autograph this —” she commanded him, thrusting her copy of
Darling Deception
into his hands and providing him a purple felt-tip pen. “We thought, we expected, when it first came to our attention, that this title would be an embarrassment, that it would ruin our reputation with romantics the world over, that it would bring the company down a notch — more than a notch. But it’s a cruel, cruel thing, Mr. Small. It’s just the opposite. There are reviews. A popular author gets behind it. It’s touted as a discovery. Suddenly its faults, the things that would normally go against it, such as its melancholic nature, its self-conscious format, become
desirable
. If this book is a success — and it already is — it puts all of us in peril. The market is now open to other books like it, and if we don’t produce them, one of our competitors will. In 1955 our readers wanted front-porch romances tied up in apron strings, with only the odd allusion to the bedroom. Now, apparently, they want apocalypse in their love stories: qu-queer content,” she stuttered, “irreconcilable differences, divorce, depression, stalking,
SSRI
s.

“If I don’t report you to Head Office, immediately, as the author of this volume” — Lillian slapped shut the cover of the copy Small had guiltily signed — “this branch will be shut down and we will all be cast into an unemployable void. All of us, your precious Chandler Goods, Georgianne Bitz, Dave David, Ivy Wolfe, Erika Workman, Jill Fast, Fleur Janisse, Titus Bentley, Jonathan Manos — employees 1 through 10,775,
me, you
. So I am not on your side. I am simply here, trying to hold all the ends together.”

“So do you —”

Lillian didn’t look up from her face-cupped hands.

“Do you still like my novel?”

“Please . . .” Lillian answered in a voice she had not heard herself use in decades, one she recognized as meek. She brushed her hair back from her face with her fingers. “I can’t love it.” She reeled Gordon’s renegade paperback into her lap with a covetousness that she had never expected to feel. “Not when I absolutely hate you right now. Listen to me, I sound positively seven years old, tossing about words like
hate
. You’d never guess how old I really am. I suppose, under stress, we are all susceptible —”

“What happens?” Small, G., interrupted her.

“Hmm?”

“If you don’t report me?”

“I have your signed confession,” Lillian stated. With a crisp nod she indicated the autographed copy of
Darling Deception
. “‘Gordon Small,’” she read from the title page. “Gordon Small, not Allison Sharpe, has signed my copy.”

“But — but —” Small, G., said. He was stunned, she could see, that even during her outpouring of emotion she had managed to trick him. “What if you don’t?” he finally managed.

“But why wouldn’t I?”

Their eyes met and held.

“There may be things I don’t understand,” the man said softly, “about Heaven, about how the company works, or how it derives profits from —” He waved his hand in front of his face as if something smelled. “Or why profit should even matter at this point. But what if there’s another chance for me?”

When Lillian spoke next, she could feel her office growing smaller, more claustrophobic, the thousand lines in a thousand romance books coming to life from the shelves to pull piano wire around her throat. “You would plunge all of us into
nothingness
for that chance at success? Fame?
Glory?
” She knew that the way she said the words made them sound dirty, uncouth.

The olive-suited man looked up helplessly. “I’m afraid . . .” He cleared his throat in a stalling manner. “. . . I have already.”

Lillian stood up, turned around, her back to him. She braced herself. “You mean this?” When she faced him, the envelope fell, unopened, softly as she had intended, petal-like from her sleeve.
C. Small.

Small, G., received the envelope. He tipped it up on one corner and spun it round, examined it as intently as a man signing a contract. They both looked at it: invitation-sized, unblemished, and most important, without postmark. Small, G., let it drop, placed a palm over his eyes, and ran the hand down his entire face. “Ames?” he snapped, but it was less a question than an acknowledgement of defeat.

“Mr. Ames is now making fifty cents more per hour. You can’t hold it against him. He’s just an essence, after all, who has been coerced into believing he has form. He’s still susceptible to greed, as are most of us. Heaven Corporation is a business. We exploit an opportunity and provide a valuable service in return. Without our guidance, most souls wander. They crave routine, regulation, a system of rewards, socialization. We can provide that. And in exchange, we get a workforce. It’s not as if we don’t offer choice. We own an astounding number of businesses in different fields — from manufacturing to media — and our temp agencies are adept at placing post-body beings in any type of workplace that may be desired. Happy souls, for the most part. And they drive a booming economy!”