The Beautiful Bureaucrat: A Novel

by Helen Phillips

  “And the bathtub is pink,” he announced from the bathroom.

  She felt bad that he felt bad for not knowing that “garden” was a code word for “basement” in housing ads here.

  “I’ll take a bath,” she said, trying to be okay with things. But when she went to draw water, black gunk bubbled up from the drain. She gagged and ran to him in the kitchen.

  “It’s just a baby,” he said.

  She was confused for a moment, until she noticed a small cockroach plodding toward the fridge.

  “I just want to feel immaculate for a few minutes a day,” she said.

  * * *

  Walking outside in the sun made Josephine feel immaculate. Peppermint ice cream and sleeping for eight hours and not having to touch any gray files and giving dollar bills to subway violinists and drinking big glasses of water and buying a 50% off wall calendar of nature scenes from the hinterland. Joseph did what he could, though the weekend was often overcast. And though he had always been a fidgeter, though his fidgeting had been a decade-long irritant to Josephine, it had escalated to a terrific new level.

  “What’s wrong with you, 041-74-3400?” she finally said on Sunday afternoon as he fiddled simultaneously with the table leg, the saltshaker, and a spoon.

  “I’m scared,” he confessed.

  Sympathy flooded her. She seized the saltshaker and the spoon. She knew with sudden, cool certainty that he would never again abandon her; that she would never again sit through a night alone wondering where he was. At least not until he died.

  “Join the club,” she said.

  “Loin the lub,” he replied.

  NINE

  On Monday morning, she tacked the new calendar—color photographs of fields of wildflowers—to the wall beside her desk. It hid some of the smudges. She’d resisted looking ahead to the next month’s image, so now she could spend the rest of this month in a state of minor anticipation.

  But for now, Monday: One’s entire mind had to report for duty, for cross-checking.

  Names swelled and ebbed beneath her fingertips. She began to forget they represented flesh and blood. Instead, it became a kind of game, the search for funny names, names that sounded as if children had made them up, any scrap of entertainment amid the endless and endlessly average names: IDA ABAGABA, TIMOTHY BONEBREAK, SADIE ELBOW. She still got a little thrill from noticing the coincidences—eighteen “F” surnames in a row, three with the middle name Eve, a SARAH JANE followed immediately by a SARAH JEAN.

  Bolstered by the relative peace of the weekend, she discovered a pocket of cheerfulness inside herself, a newfound gratitude for her situation. Joseph was back and well; here she sat at this desk like the captain of a tiny ship; she knew what to do and how to do it; she was well hydrated. Tonight, after completing her allotted tasks in a methodical fashion, she would go home to him. The money was mounting in their little bank account, which had hovered right around zero for so many months. This was a life; it was a life; it was her life. These tranquilizing thoughts carried her through the day until midafternoon, when she glanced up to find The Person with Bad Breath standing quietly in her doorway. She tried to hide her startled shiver.

  “Oh dear,” The Person with Bad Breath said, pointing a grayish finger at the calendar. “You mustn’t hang anything on the walls. Otherwise the painters might get discouraged when they come.”

  “Okay,” Josephine said.

  The Person with Bad Breath waited.

  Josephine yanked the tack out of the wall. The calendar fell to the floor. Bending to pick it up, she saw old strands of hair and clumps of dust beneath her desk, decades’ worth of mustiness.

  “Thatta girl,” The Person with Bad Breath said, but in that arid mouth, the colloquialism sounded wrong.

  “Wasn’t the work order for the walls put in eight years ago?” Josephine muttered when the door was mostly shut. She spent half a minute hoping she hadn’t been heard, and the next half minute hoping she had.

  She kicked at the stubborn bottom drawer of her desk, tugged it open, and slid the offending calendar in. She was about to slam the drawer shut when she paused, retrieved the calendar, reopened it to the correct month: a sloping alpine hillside covered in yellow and purple flowers. As foreign to her now in this room as a picture of another planet in another galaxy. She stroked the gleaming page. She narrowed her eyes at it, tried to see into the forest beyond the meadow; was there a woman, a woman carrying a child on her back, standing among the shadows of the pine trees? The glare of the fluorescent light on the glossy page obscured the image, and her eyes were weak from hours of work.

  She clutched the tack, pierced the wall, hung the calendar right back up where it had been.

  * * *

  It lightened her step, that minuscule act of defiance, on her walk from the subway back to the so-called garden apartment that night. She passed a take-out Chinese restaurant, stopped to look through the big window at the illuminated menu, contemplated the oddly appealing possibility of oversweet sesame chicken, felt somewhat hopeful.

  But then she noticed a man in jeans and a gray sweatshirt standing inside the restaurant—his skin ill against the pale green walls—staring hard at her. There was an eerie focus in his eyes, as if he’d singled her out. Or he could have just been gazing vacantly out the window.

  Unnerved, Josephine hurried onward. As soon as she began to walk away, the man in the gray sweatshirt headed briskly toward the door of the restaurant. She sped up, running the final blocks, unwilling to look back to confirm that he was following her, worried that a backward glance might provoke him. Only once she had reached the dubious safety of the dark stairwell did she dare a glance. The sidewalk behind her was empty.

  She smiled a thin, scornful smile at her nervous little self. Still, it was a relief to stumble down the cellar steps, to throw her bag on the rickety chair and call out for Joseph.

  He wasn’t there. She almost enjoyed her slight buzz of impatience, of doubt; when he arrived, any moment now, she wouldn’t take him for granted; “041-74-3400!” she’d say.

  His phone went straight to voice mail. His voice mailbox was full. She had just hung up when a text message dinged. She seized her phone, but the text was from her mother: Apples in season went to orchard today you should be here. Pie!

  She sat at the kitchen table. The basement was all shadows and earth smells. At least there were no cockroaches in sight. She crept through the rooms. Even the most innocuous objects had taken on an undeniable malevolence—the rag rug, the plastic trash can, the butterfly quilt. She returned to the kitchen. She drank a glass of water. She felt unwell. She was just transitioning into fury when her phone began to buzz on the table.

  “Where are you?” she demanded.

  The brief reply was a blur of indecipherable noise.

  “Where are you?” she screamed.

  This time the response was a mangled mutter. Maybe a trio of gerunds (doing gluing screwing) or maybe not. Distorted syllables, and then, clear as anything, an exhausted sigh before his voice sank back into the muck of static.

  “I can’t hear you!” She could hear how savage she sounded.

  He launched into a bunch of words but she only caught fragments, blips and fuzz.

  “… sticksorhoe … portentgif … nessandheal … ed … oon…”

  “What?” she shrieked.

  He said something that seemed to end with an exclamation.

  “What?”

  “… so that—” Joseph’s voice emerged loud and perfectly distinct for two words, followed by the total silence of a lost connection.

  TEN

  The Four-Star Diner was packed with its Mondaynight dinner crowd, but even so Hillary hustled over the second Josephine stepped through the doorway. Her orange ponytail was brighter than anything else in that bright place.

  “There you are!” Hillary bellowed. “Right this way, sugarplum.” She put an arm around Josephine and bustled her toward the row of red stools by the counter. She
looked older than Josephine remembered. “What’ll it be? Tuna melt? Grilled cheese? Wait, no, breakfast for dinner—how about waffles? Pancakes? Strawberries, right? Bingo! Lady in need of strawberry pancakes! Listen, I’ll be right back, I’ve got a table of grannies that wants a million things.”

  Hillary delivered the food quickly, with a wink, and Josephine ate quickly, almost rudely, the way Joseph always ate. The instant the pancakes were gone, she once again had that feeling of not knowing what to do with herself; the long fast walk to the diner had been something to do, eating had been something to do, but now the grief was beating the frenzy, the fury. Hillary came by to wipe down the counter.

  “So, tell me,” she said to Josephine as if they were best friends. “Where’d he go?”

  Josephine focused on the saltshaker.

  “Oh honey,” Hillary said. “You look just terrible! I knew it the second you walked in the door. Actually, I knew it the second you kids spent the night here back whenever it was. I told you I’m a psychic, right? Hang around till things quiet down, okay?”

  Josephine rested her forehead against her fingertips, felt the Braille of her rising zits. She drank a few of the mini-creams, flinging them down her throat like shots. The dinner crowd thinned. She watched a large family group clogging the exit, the merry chaos as they located the grandfather’s coat, the baby’s pacifier. Idly, distantly, she wondered if she’d ever typed any of their names into the Database.

  She was still entranced by the baby, who had violent hiccups and messy curls, when someone gripped her hand and flipped it upward on the paper place mat. Josephine twisted around to find Hillary leaning over the counter, already deep in the study of her palm. The smell of cigarettes and Dove soap and syrup. The sleeves of her royal-purple uniform were rolled up, showing off the green snake on her forearm. Her hand was warm, almost hot, and muscular, and enviably dry; Josephine’s palms were always clammy. Though it was awkward, her fingers pinned down this way by a near-stranger, she couldn’t deny that Hillary’s touch felt as good as someone brushing your hair, someone massaging your shoulders.

  “You have a lot of unused capacity that you haven’t turned to your advantage,” Hillary murmured, squinting at the lines. “Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside.”

  Josephine tried to pull her hand away, but Hillary wouldn’t let go.

  “You’re critical of yourself,” she persisted. “At times you have serious doubts about whether you’ve made the right decision or done the right thing.”

  Josephine put her free hand up to her neck, attempted to locate the knot in her throat.

  “You’ve found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others,” Hillary said slowly. “You pride yourself on being an independent thinker. You’re often introverted, wary, and reserved. Still, you frequently desire the company of others. Security is one of your major goals in life, but you become dissatisfied when hemmed in. Some of your aspirations are unrealistic.”

  Hillary stopped, noticing the effect of her words, and pulled a napkin from the metal dispenser, placed it in Josephine’s exposed palm.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, “it’s normal to cry. Everyone does.”

  Josephine felt naked, ashamed, far too understood. She swiped the napkin across her face and stared at the unfair red hair. Was Hillary kind or cruel?

  “I’m just the messenger, sugarplum,” Hillary said. “Are you ready for the good news?”

  Josephine spread her hand out on the countertop again, but Hillary ignored it.

  “Though you have some personality weaknesses, you’re generally able to compensate for them,” she announced.

  Josephine waited. Hillary smiled.

  “That’s all?” Josephine said.

  “That’s plenty,” Hillary said.

  “Where is he? When will he come back? Will we stay married? Will we have kids? How many? How long will I live?”

  “Oh sugarplum,” Hillary chided. “You don’t want to know any of that.”

  “Yes I do!” Josephine was alarmed by the screech in her own voice.

  “Want a refill on that coffee?” Hillary said, standing up straight again and offering Josephine the dazzling, indifferent smile of any great diner waitress. She glided away as though nothing significant had passed between them.

  Josephine left a huge tip, wound her scarf around her neck as many times as possible, and stepped from the pink and yellow glow of the diner out into the night, dead leaves racing down the concrete all around her.

  “Don’t worry so much, sugarplum!” She thought she’d escaped unnoticed, but Hillary tossed out the penny-bright words before the door blew shut. “It’s bad for your skin!”

  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 t
he 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.