The Beautiful Bureaucrat: A Novel

by Helen Phillips

  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 c
ocktail across from a woman who always remembered Kleenex in her purse.

  Trishiffany blinked, then winked. “Let me know if you ever need a free hug,” she said. “I’m all about the free hug, you know? The other day I saw a guy on the subway holding a sign that said FREE HUG, and I was all about that.”

  At that, Josephine (introverted, wary, reserved) retreated into herself, denied herself. She barely knew a thing about Trishiffany, after all.

  “Thanks for the offer,” she said politely. “I’ll let you know, if/when.”

  For the first time since Josephine had met her, Trishiffany looked uncomfortable—maybe that was even a slight blush beneath her blush.

  “So, do you—have a boyfriend or anything?” Josephine attempted, wanting to change the subject, extend an olive branch. She’d gotten so rusty at friendship since they left the hinterland, where she had a handful of girlfriends, all of whom were far more talkative and confessional than she’d ever felt comfortable being with them.

  It was easy to imagine Trishiffany in a kitchen, baking something full of butter and sugar for a man who found her delightful. It was easy to picture her someday soon soothing an infant with those huge breasts.

  “No,” Trishiffany said flatly, all the bubbles in her voice popped.

  An awful misstep. To make a nice person like Trishiffany feel bad about having nobody. She really was a nice person, never mind certain irritating traits. Josephine hesitated, unsure whether or not she should apologize.

  “I’m all about living vicariously!” Trishiffany rebounded. “Don’t worry about me, Jojo doll. I’ve got everything I need, you know? One does what one has to do for oneself. Enjoy those cookies, okay?”

  “You’re too kind,” Josephine said. She meant it so much that she choked up on the “k.”

  “Least I can do,” Trishiffany said with a final wink.

  * * *

  Nobody.

  No body.

  Oneself.

  One’s elf.

  “Hello?” Josephine said into the solitude of her office. It felt as though someone had spoken. She looked at the Database. She looked at the files. She looked at the injured walls.

  Eel ho.

  She couldn’t cap the laugh that popped out of her. Immediately afterward she felt like a crazy lady.

  Crazy lazy.

  Hazy dazy.

  “Hello?” she said again.

  Eel ho.

  * * *

  At 4:57 p.m., The Person with Bad Breath opened the door and deposited a box of gray files on Josephine’s desk.

  “Fifty-six for immediate processing,” The Person with Bad Breath announced. The breath mint tried and failed. The face seemed even more undefined than usual.

  Josephine wished she were brave enough to say that it was a Friday, that she absolutely had to leave in three minutes. Instead, she nodded mildly and pulled the first file out of the box. Wasn’t there a fairy tale about a girl with a spindle and a room of infinite straw?

  In order to make her task somewhat less unbearable, she imagined the people represented by the files, pictured them in various states of animation—a pair of eyes squinting, a hand selecting fruit in a grocery store, a body passing through a doorway. She entertained herself with the fantasy of meeting them—at, say, a bar with wooden walls, tin ceilings, bottles of glowing bronze liquids. She envisioned them rising up from behind the bars of the Database, stepping into her life, shaking her hand, ordering their drinks of choice, getting a little tipsy, slinging their arms over her shoulders, bestowing damp kisses upon her forehead, thanking her for her service.

  Yet that fantasy could only last so long; eventually, exhausted, she gave in to the relentlessness of typing 09272013 fifty-six times, didn’t even search for coincidences, let the letters be nothing more than letters, the numbers nothing more than numbers. FASAD/FADIL/MURR … FISHBEIN/SAMUEL/BLAKE … HOLGATE/CATHERINE/JOAN … KAPLOWITZ/MICHAEL/EPHRON … LAZAN-VINCENT/PAULINA/RENEE … MCGOWAIN/THERESE/RAINE … MCMURPHY/SHANNON/SIOBHAN … MURCER/JONATHAN/KEITH … PANIAGUA/YASMIN/JADE … PRINCE/JOSHUA/DAVID … SCANDURA/DAVID/SCOTT … SCHMIDT/DIANE/HOPE … SHAFIQ/IMRAN/SEAN … SMITH/LYNETTE/ARLENE … TOUSSAINT/PAOLO/IVES … TROILER/JENNIFER/BROWN … YAU/TZER/SUNG … ZILBERMAN/EZRA/TODD …

  THIRTEEN

  On Sunday morning her eyes were still bloodshot, stained from the week. Her stomach awoke her, angry with emptiness. It was easier now than it used to be to disentangle herself from the heat of his sleep, abandon him in the bed. All these years she’d disliked that moment each morning when he or she first got out of bed, leaving the other; today she almost relished it, separating her body from his.

  Lick our.

  Lick or rich.

  It was licorice she wanted, licorice she needed: licorice black enough to turn her insides green.

  Not even the dirty bar of blue soap in the bathroom or the baby cockroach meandering down the counter could dull her desire. She brushed her teeth, drank a glass of water, noticed a stain on the low ceiling.

  She used to always leave a note, but not anymore. “041-74-3400?” she whispered into the bedroom as she buttoned her sweater.

  Outside, the gray light flattened everything to gray.

  A pair of rats zigzagged across the subway tracks. They looked scared, searching for something down there. They made her tired. He was moved by subway rats. “They’re cute,” he had countered in their early days here, when she complained about the vermin in the subway, the savagery of this city.

  Save age.

  Savant airy.

  “Hello?” she muttered.

  Eel ho.

  The train appeared, pressing a stagnant wind before it, arriving with a series of weary shrieks.

  * * *

  The candy store was closed. It was 7:43 a.m. on a Sunday morning. The store would open in three hours and seventeen minutes. Some of your aspirations are unrealistic. She stood before the window, ravenous. There was an enormous glass jar of black licorice on display. She looked at herself in the jar until she felt as though the licorice were part of her face. Her skin buzzed.

  Eventually she broke her own stare, returned to the world of the sidewalk, the very occasional pedestrians, a man in a gray sweatshirt passing behind her.

  Back on the subway train, an elegant beggar—long white hair, loose dusty suit—listed foods as he limped down the car. “Egg sandwich. Spaghetti. Falafel.” He held out a paper cup and shook it to the rhythm of his words. A string of snot stretched downward from his nose onto his shirt, gracefully holding its slim shape for six inches or more. “Cheddar cheese. Tacos. Toast with grape jam. A chocolate milk shake.”

  He repulsed her, made her hungrier than ever, and she turned, looked out the window into the darkness. The walls of the subway tunnel glistened with some kind of moisture.

  “Skittles! M&M’s! Snickers!” the beggar begged. “Black licorice!”

  She whipped back around to look at him, certain he would be staring at her, into her. But he was already pressing through the interior doors, shuffling into the next car.

  There was a Sunday-morning newspaper abandoned on the seat beside her. Usually she wouldn’t touch a stray item on the subway, but she felt uneasy, desirous of distraction.

  NEWLYWEDS, CHEF, ENGINEER AMONG PLANE CRASH VICTIMS … Late Friday night, just off the coast … Only a limited number of the victims’ names have been released: Marvin Anderson (43), Hilary Bower (35), Jerome Chavez (67), Jillian Coleman (52), Alison Egret (27), Sam Fishbein (31).

  Sam Fishbein.

  Sam Fishbein.

  FISHBEIN/SAMUEL/BLAKE

  At this time, an estimated fifty-six fatalities.

  * * *

  “What happened to your fingers?” he said when she stumbled through the door of the cellar. He was making oatmeal. “You like it with cinnamon, right?”

  She looked down. Her fingers were gray, deadened, and it took her a long moment to realize that the newsprint had rubbed off onto her skin.

  FOUR
TEEN

  Early Monday morning, Josephine scurried down the long hallway, covering her ears with her hands. Only now did she recognize that over the past few weeks she’d grown deaf to the typewriters’ drone, but today she could hear it again, unbearably, the quiet roar of a million cockroaches marching. It was early—but not early enough to beat the typists.

  “What’s wrong with the clock?” he had said from the bed after she rose in the half dark. He was disoriented, dreaming.

  “Don’t worry, don’t worry,” she’d whispered until he put his head back down on the pillow. “I’ve got to go in early today.”

  “Is there a dog?” he murmured from beneath the butterfly quilt.

  Now she darted into the dubious sanctuary of her office, where six high stacks of gray files awaited her, the weekend backlog.

  Perhaps she worked for an airline.

  She sat down. She opened the top file of the first stack. AMATTO/ANNA/MARLENA. She slammed it shut.

  She did not pick up the next file. She did not put her fingers on the keyboard. She stood up. She sat down.

  The Database hummed, hungry.

  She opened and then immediately closed the top file of the second stack (EATHER/HARVEY/JAMES), the fifth stack (PESAVENTO/ARTURO/BENJAMIN).

  What was she going to do. Was she going to sit here all day trembling, opening and closing files, ignoring the Database.

  She reopened PESAVENTO/ARTURO/BENJAMIN. D09302013. Today’s date.

  But if her theory was correct, “D” didn’t stand for “date.”

  For the first time, she scrutinized the second line of the form. She’d seen it before, of course, thousands of times, but always just as a dense blur of typewritten letters and numbers.

  G1(Z)01102003G2(B)01152003G3(E)01252003G4(F)3122003G10052003

  She could see now, through her shame, that they were dates, the numbers lodged between the letters; she was stupid not to have noticed this before.

  Understanding rushed through her, around her, enveloping her, suffocating her. She would prefer not to do this. She did not want to think along these lines. But, working backward, looking at line two (confused, still, by the puzzling letters throughout the row), couldn’t she perhaps guess that all those 2003 dates bore some essential relationship to the D09302013, notwithstanding the “G” where she might have expected a “B”?