The Beautiful Bureaucrat (8 page)

ELEVEN

There was a soft knock on the door of Josephine’s office, followed by a hard shove, and in came Trishiffany, wearing a pink ball gown so wide she got stuck in the doorway, but she hardly seemed to notice. She worked a gob of gum on her tongue into an enormous bubble. As the bubble grew, it began to resemble some unidentifiable body part, a kidney or a liver or a uterus, something dark pink and veiny. When the bubble popped, bits of the organ flew back onto Trishiffany’s face and melted down her ball gown. Trishiffany giggled. Something was pushing her from behind, pressing her forward, and when she and her ball gown finally surged into the office, Josephine saw that the force behind Trishiffany was Joseph.

*   *   *

In
the morning, Josephine’s eyes were bloodshot. The drain in the pink bathtub was still malfunctioning, bubbling blackness. She scrubbed her armpits with a washcloth over the sink and gave her face a brief splash. The artificial light accentuated the tense tendons in her neck. She felt scared of herself. Her fingers were unreliable; she lost her grip, dropped her toothbrush. Joseph’s voice mail was still full.

She got dressed for work, drank a glass of water, tried to cool her panic with ten deep breaths—
disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside
—before stepping into what proved to be a brisk, merciful September morning. She stood in the doorway for a moment, looking upward out of the stairwell at all the leaves on the brink of yellow, before spotting the postal notice on the door.

JOSEPHINE NEWBURY. SECOND DELIVERY ATTEMPT FAILED
.

They hadn’t shared this new temporary address with anyone either. The minuscule comfort offered by the brightness of the day vanished.

*   *   *

Back
in the office with the wounded walls, Josephine concluded that there
was
a woman carrying a child, the pair almost entirely obscured by trees and shadows beyond the field of alpine flowers. Unless it was just her imagination. Still, the possibility soothed her. But, despite the columbines, she kept finding herself stuck in a blank stare on Tuesday. She would realize she had gone whole minutes looking at a bruise on the wall above the calendar. She tried to amend this, tried to look at the world with precision, but eventually she had to admit that she couldn’t avoid or control it, couldn’t escape it. Squiggly lines writhed across her vision.

When a headache blossomed outward from deep within her skull, she scurried to the bathroom. She attempted to evade her own blank stare in the mirror by focusing on the intricate pattern of capillaries in her eyes, miniature red wires going in one side of her iris and coming out the other. She pitied her eyes as though they were delicate, abused animals that didn’t belong to her. Her skin was taking on the same sallow pinkish color as the walls of her office. She counted five zits risen on her forehead.

The bathroom door opened; Josephine froze, as though she’d been caught.

“Jojo doll!” Today her suit was orange with yellow piping. “Hangin’ in there?”

“Hi,” Josephine whispered, darting past Trishiffany and out the door. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to talk to Trishiffany; today of all days she wanted to talk to her, to talk to someone, anyone, to say out loud, I am so sad, to rattle off a list of suspicions.
You frequently desire the company of others.
But just the sight of her—her friendly question, her bright clothing—uncapped a roar of fear inside Josephine’s head, as though all her defenses would disintegrate at the slightest indication of a kind listener.
You’ve found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others.
It had never occurred to her that something aside from death might separate her from Joseph.

She spent the rest of the day working as diligently as a robot. A dutiful, mechanical heart.

The door of The Person with Bad Breath’s office was always closed, but today, as Josephine was leaving at five, it happened to be propped open. Through the crack, she glimpsed her boss talking on the telephone, feet propped up on the metal desk, argyled ankles precisely crossed.

“HS129285656855,” The Person with Bad Breath was saying in a bored, irritable voice. “One—Two—Nine—Two—Eight—Five—Six—Five—
Six—Eight—Five—Five.
”

Overwhelmed by dread, Josephine rushed faster than usual to exit the building.

*   *   *

She
stood in the doorway of the cellar apartment and said his name seven times before accepting that he wasn’t there.

She closed the door behind her. Stood perfectly still in the entryway. She had no idea at all what to do with the next minutes of her life. It was best and easiest to stop here, not move another inch. Not think about who to call or what to report. She would have stood there forever, just blinking and breathing, except that soon she became desperate to pee.

She ran down the unlit hall to the bathroom, swearing to herself that as soon as she was done she’d come right back to the entryway, stand there still. She peed in the dark, wiped in the dark, flushed in the dark. On her way back to her post, she spotted something in the bedroom: a long black shape on the bed.

She thought it was an intruder before she thought it could be him.

Naked, and sleeping on his side, as he always did.

Her life had become so odd.

She shrugged off her cardigan, stepped out of her shoes. She lay down on the butterfly quilt behind him and cupped his body with hers, as she always did. A few minutes of stillness.

Sometime soon, sometime very soon, she would let go of him, would wake him up to demand explanations, pretending she’d never held him at all.

When she lifted her arm off him in preparation for the fight, he grabbed her wrist. She gasped, startled—he had seemed so dead asleep.

“Don’t go,” he said, pivoting around to grab her other wrist.

“Ha,” she said coldly.

He sat up, her wrists still locked in his fingers. His skin looked strange, evil, gleaming nude in the pale alley light that snuck down the window well.

She was having trouble recognizing him. He seemed euphoric, rich with energy, almost superhuman.

“Are you a demon?” she said.

“Demon demeanor,” he said. “Demoner.”

He dropped her wrists and went for the buttons on her blouse. She slapped his hands hard, as hard as she could; it felt good.

“Demean or?” she spat.

“Nice,” he said, reaching once more for her buttons. “More, please.”

She obliged with another slap.

“Take your clothes off,” he commanded like a rapist. “It’s important.”

“You sound like a rapist,” she said.

He laughed like a rapist. “You were the one who wanted it last time.”

“I wouldn’t have sex with you now for—” she failed.

“For what?” He was abuzz, brimming over, unable to cap his vitality.

“A million dollars!” she raged, clichéd. “All the tea in China!”

“But you have to,” he said, jubilant. His hands firm again on her wrists. He was naked and she was dressed but they both knew who was really naked and who was really dressed.

She couldn’t understand anything anymore. What was happening to him? Was their life together almost over?
Some of your aspirations are unrealistic.
He was touching her hand. Maniacally stroking the lines of her palm. It reminded her of something. She pulled her hand away. She curled herself around herself.

“Everything is good,” he said.

She wished to make herself into a perfect sphere, no handles for him to grip.

“If you understood you’d understand,” he said. “Take off your clothes.”

She made a sound of protest.

“Think of it as make-up sex,” he suggested.

“What about the fight?” she said to her knees.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “and I’m not sorry.”

He grabbed her, the ball of her, and peeled her arms from her legs.

She was fierce; she clung to herself; he laughed as though it was a game; maybe it was a game; she swatted at him, she twisted her spine, she pretended to be air but always he got hold of a limb.

She gave up. Lay flat on her back on the butterfly quilt. He trailed his lips down her chin, down her neck, all the way down. That infuriating mix of wrath and desire.

Later, she was above him, eyes shut, pressing her hands against the dust-thickened window, taking those long deep insane light-headed breaths that come just before, and then, as it hit, she opened her eyes with a scream of joy—there on the other side of the dim window was a man, a trespasser, his splayed fingers an echo of her splayed fingers, his oily face lengthened in an expression of ecstasy, his eyes brilliant gray and wide open. Her scream of joy veered into a scream of horror; her eyes snapped shut for safety.

Joseph rose up from beneath her, puzzled, normal, saying the right comforting things, asking the right concerned questions.

When she opened her eyes again, the window was empty, the maniac vanished. She pulled Joseph back down so they were both low on the bed, hidden. Mistaking her urgency for desire, he pushed himself into her again, and who was she to deny the heft of it, the absoluteness of his presence, the seam ripping beneath them.

TWELVE

Every morning the Database awaited her like a living thing, luminous and familiar, alongside stacks of gray files. It was wise to put bureaucrats in windowless offices; had there been a window, September might have taunted her with its high and mighty goldenness. As it was, she and the files were headed into the murky depths of Friday. Her blank stare frequently resurfaced, positively vengeful, separating her from the world with its indifferent glaze. The files mocked her, their voices whispery as paper cuts. She worked coldly, like someone who had never loved—there was ice inside her, notwithstanding the past two days, during which Joseph had made her hot chocolate with five spices each night, delivered in a large mug along with whipped cream and a series of reassurances, received with a roll of her bloodshot eyes.

At noon she sat at her desk, in the clawed pinkish cube that had become her life, eating a cheese-and-mustard sandwich. The sandwich was soggy, falling apart, virtually inedible, yet she never let things go to waste. The lonesomeness of the bureaucrat’s lunch.

But then there was Trishiffany, appearing almost magically in her bubble-gum suit, slamming the door shut behind her, placing a plate of cookies covered in pink plastic wrap on Josephine’s desk.

“For me?” Josephine said shyly, like a starlet winning an award.

“Anything for you, Jojo doll!” Trishiffany said. “Hey, I’m your best friend here, aren’t I?”

There was, of course, little to no competition (Josephine remembered with slight yearning the three busy lookalike bureaucrats who had [mis]directed her to the vending machine). Still, that didn’t take away from the extreme tenderness she suddenly discovered in herself toward Trishiffany, who was busily unwrapping the plastic and pushing the plate toward her.

“Kitchen-sink cookies,” Trishiffany proclaimed. “Sounds disgusting, right? But I’ve always been so torn about chocolate chips versus butterscotch chips, but here you don’t even have to choose! Walnuts
and
peanuts! Oatmeal
and
cornflakes! Raisins
and
dried cherries! Not to mention the shredded coconut. Sometimes we just need our freedom, you know?”

The cookies were fat and dense and golden. Trishiffany watched her pick one up.

“So?” Trishiffany demanded before her victim had finished the first bite.

Josephine had something to say but she hesitated to say it.

“So?”
Trishiffany repeated.

“This is the food I’ve always wanted to eat,” she confessed.

“Of course!” Trishiffany purred. “Of course it is, Jojo doll.”

Josephine finished the cookie and began another. But Trishiffany wasn’t eating.

“What, making me eat alone?” Josephine said.

“Oh … my girlish figure.” Trishiffany looked down at the pink lines of her hips.

“What about
my
girlish figure?” she retorted, picking up a third cookie, and then paused, wondering if the cookies might be poisoned.

“Well I haven’t been through what you’ve been through lately,” Trishiffany said. “You’ve earned a cookie or seven.”

“What I’ve been through lately?” Josephine repeated slowly, alarmed. She hadn’t said a word to anyone about anything. Yet at the same time it felt so pleasant to hear someone express compassion for her situation. But then she conjectured, with a jolt, that Trishiffany could be the other woman. “What have I been through lately?” she said, guarded, testing the waters.

“Oh Jojo doll!” Trishiffany said. “You’re so cute! You don’t need to be so suspicious all the time, you know?”

Josephine looked directly into Trishiffany’s bloodshot eyes. Her own tired eyes recognized themselves in her coworker’s.
You tend to be worrisome and insecure inside
. She dismissed her ludicrous hunch.

“I know,” Josephine admitted. She bit into the third cookie. The cork was loosening—she wanted to talk to Trishiffany—about her bad skin, her unreliable eyes, her vanishing husband, the man in the Chinese restaurant, the vagabond in her orgasm. She wanted to be held by someone kind. She wanted to cry into a cocktail across from a woman who always remembered Kleenex in her purse.