The Beautiful Bureaucrat: A Novel

by Helen Phillips

  Trishiffany retrieved Edith’s sheet from between Josephine’s fingertips, restored it to its file, picked up all three BOOMHAVENS, re-filed them, returned the box to the shelf.

  Josephine covered her face with her hands.

  “Oh, don’t do that,” Trishiffany said. “The oils on your hands are no good for your skin. By the way, have you ever tried PurePore? It might help you. It can be hard to maintain healthy skin under these circumstances. I’ve developed a daily skin regimen.”

  Trishiffany was a wizard with makeup, but when Josephine looked hard, she could tell that her skin too was struggling, the texture of a breakout rough beneath the layers. The sight filled her with pity, for herself and for Trishiffany, stuck in this place without windows, pushing fatal paper while their skin and eyes degenerated, while they degenerated.

  “Thanks for the tip,” Josephine whispered. “PurePore.”

  “That’s what I’m here for, Jojo doll,” Trishiffany said. “Okay, let’s rock.”

  Yets lock.

  She pivoted on her stilettos and led Josephine down the aisle in the direction of the door.

  * * *

  Back in 9997, Josephine stood beside her desk, eyeing the accumulated files, dizzy. A bead of sweat rolled from her armpit down her torso. She did not dare touch them. Like snakes. Handle with a stick, avoid skin contact at all costs.

  NINETEEN

  On Wednesday morning, Josephine did not get out of bed. She did not put on her underwear, her tights, her skirt, her blouse, her sensible shoes, her cardigan. She did not go the bathroom; she did not brush her teeth.

  She had prepared her lie (a presumed fever, nausea, the beginnings of the flu). She would never tell him the truth about her job; she didn’t want him to be poisoned too.

  But he scarcely seemed to notice her lethargy.

  “Go on without me,” she said from the bed. “I’m not going to work today.”

  “I see that,” he said. He kissed her forehead.

  She awaited his solicitous questions, any expression of concern, but he just stood there pulling on his jacket and looking dimly pleased with himself, like a man headed out for a breakfast of croissants and café au lait with a ravishing mistress.

  “Rest up,” he said with a wave. She couldn’t tell whether the words sounded hollow or if her own ear lent them that emptiness.

  She closed her eyes, trapping her tears, and gave herself permission to float, to imagine café au lait or wine in a plaza in Spain, bright music, people dancing, someone encouraging her to dance. But all she saw when she shut her eyes was her office, three days’ worth of gray files devouring her desk, the bruised pink walls sighing, pressing in toward the humming computer.

  By midmorning her physical state had slipped to match her lie; she felt feverish, queasy, permeated by illness. It took her half an hour to convince herself to stand up, go to the bathroom, drink water. There was a spider in the sink.

  “Hey,” she said to the spider.

  The spider looked up at her.

  “Hi,” the spider said. “Man, you should really go back to bed. You look terrible.”

  “Thanks,” she said, sarcastically or gratefully; even she couldn’t tell.

  She lay in bed. A scrap of sunlight journeyed down the window well and across the butterfly quilt. The bed spun slowly in a circle, clockwise; then it spun slowly counterclockwise. The ceiling began to undulate.

  Undue late.

  Ulna duet.

  Luau dent.

  Dual tune.

  Do la nu.

  Duel aunt.

  Laud tuna nut.

  A dune lute.

  “Please,” Josephine begged. “Silencio!”

  Ice in sol!

  Lice is no!

  Slice eon!

  An enormous black dog stood in a shadow in the park, waiting to attack, silent and beautiful. Panicking, she sprinted away and jumped into a car. She began to drive, even though she had forgotten how to drive. She ran a red, got trapped in an intersection, caused a traffic jam, merged onto a superhighway, one of those immense twelve-lane highways of the hinterland. She was going to have an accident but at least she was alone in the car. Then she glanced in the rearview mirror and realized she was driving a bus filled with a hundred billion people.

  “You can quit!” she shrieked at the ceiling.

  TWENTY

  On Thursday, she commuted with Joseph as usual, in her typical tame skirt and cardigan, pretending today was a day like any other. After a morning spent sitting in her chair, ignoring the avalanche of gray files on her desk, not daring to move, barely daring to blink, she finally stood up just after noon, exited the room, and marched down the hall to the office where her interview had taken place.

  “Come in.” The voice as dry as ever.

  Much to Josephine’s surprise, the desk was covered with a white tablecloth and set for an elaborate luncheon for two, each of the four courses guarded beneath its individual metal dome. A carafe of water, a stainless-steel coffeepot, cloth napkins, multiple spoons and forks, a pair of salt and pepper shakers, a pitcher of cream, a basket of rolls.

  The smell of the bad breath filled the room, worse than ever; Josephine half-expected to spot a small dead creature on her boss’s tongue.

  “Pardon me,” Josephine murmured, relieved that she had an excuse not to enter. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I can come back later.”

  “Please sit, Ms. Newbury.” There was still that vagueness to the face, the skin chameleoning into the gray walls until the mouth seemed almost to float unmoored in the air. The right hand gestured toward the second place setting, then grasped the carafe and filled both water glasses.

  Josephine blushed, hesitating in the doorway.

  “The table is set for you, Ms. Newbury,” The Person with Bad Breath said with a smile either kind or grim, impossible to decipher. “I have been awaiting you.”

  Alarmed but obedient, Josephine closed the door behind her and sat down.

  “Please, enjoy your soup.” The Person with Bad Breath removed the twin metal domes over their soup bowls.

  It was a green soup, split pea perhaps; Josephine’s fingers were weak on the handle of the spoon. She tried and failed to focus on her sizable hunger rather than on the smell emanating from her companion, now worsened by its partnership with the flat overcooked odor of the soup.

  “I would like to take this opportunity to thank you,” The Person with Bad Breath said, spreading butter on a roll, “for your service.”

  Sir vice.

  Josephine lifted her second dome, focused on the limp cucumbers and pale tomatoes of the salad, her eyes craving any sight other than those arid lips. She took refuge in draining her water, looking at her lunch companion through the shield of the bottom of the glass.

  “Have I ever told you, Ms. Newbury,” The Person with Bad Breath continued jovially, “about my pets?”

  Spy pest.

  As it turned out, The Person with Bad Breath owned two cats, sisters, thirteen years old, but with very different personalities. Wasn’t it funny that Lucky was charming while Charm was a misanthrope. Josephine couldn’t help but picture the cats as faceless, their little fangs floating.

  The cat monologue carried them through the main course—an overly creamy fettuccine Alfredo of which Josephine ate three bites—and delivered them at last to the sticky, sickly cherry pie.

  “I could eat this pie forever,” The Person with Bad Breath declared, and then, with a wave of the fork toward Josephine’s untouched dessert, “Mind if I assist you with that?”

  Josephine shook her head no, and her boss devoured her pie.

  “I quit,” Josephine said.

  “Did I ever tell you about Lucky and the pumpkin pie?” The Person with Bad Breath untwisted the top of the saltshaker and took a swallow of salt.

  Josephine stared.

  In the same casual manner, still rambling about Lucky and Charm, The Person with Bad Breath untwisted the top of the peppe
r shaker and gulped some down; licked all the pats of butter off their foil wrappers; drank the remainder of the cream straight from the pitcher.

  “And that,” The Person with Bad Breath concluded, “is why I had to attach an air freshener to Charm’s collar. You can’t quit.”

  “This is a free country, isn’t it?” Josephine said with a flare of rage.

  “True.” The Person with Bad Breath picked up the dome with which Josephine had covered her fettuccine Alfredo when she set it aside. “But you are someone who has yet to use herself to her full capacity.”

  Josephine was paralyzed, unable to respond.

  The lips twisted up into a mysterious, parched smile. The fingers twirled a fork deep into the pasta.

  “Go ahead. Leave now if you must,” The Person with Bad Breath said. “Take Friday off; we will see you back here next week.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  “Let’s get going,” Joseph said as he came through the door of the cellar after work on Friday.

  She was sitting slouched at the kitchen table, clinging to a mug of tea, as she had been when he left for work—“I need some extra time to get ready today,” she’d lied, “just leave without me, it’s fine.”

  “Going?” she said now with her unused voice.

  “You okay?” He looked hard at her.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “No,” he observed. He came over and stood behind her and cupped her neck with both hands. “But at least it’s the weekend. Work okay today?”

  She nodded as though she hadn’t spent all day creeping around the apartment.

  The stranger to whom the garden apartment belonged would return over the weekend, and Joseph had found a third sublet for them—a place that promised to be better than this one, a little bit more per week now that they were doing a little bit okay financially, one neighborhood over and slightly farther from downtown, but still on their train line. He alleged that they had discussed all this quite recently, though she could retrieve no such memory from her blurred brain.

  “Where’s the duffel?” he said, heading down the dim hallway toward the bedroom.

  * * *

  The owner of the third sublet had described it to Joseph as being “beside the bridge”; when the taxi dumped them and their stuff on the sidewalk, they discovered that the bridge was really an entrance ramp onto the highway.

  A new stranger’s door, a new poorly lit hallway, a new set of keys with which to fumble. Inside, they found a room filled with plants, fifty or more plants, ranging from a cactus to a miniature orange tree; plants in pots, plants suspended from the ceiling. The air was damp, sulfuric.

  Joseph plopped down on a stained couch lodged among the plants. A hanging fern dangled above his head like a spiky green hat.

  “Do I look pretty?” he said.

  At other times in their life she would have laughed. He tried to open the window to let in some air, but it jammed after just an inch.

  She turned on the hall light, which burned fiercely for a few seconds before popping into darkness. In the dark, they couldn’t locate any spare bulbs.

  “What did we do to deserve this?” she said.

  “We broke someone’s heirloom plate,” he said.

  She looked over at him, but it was too dark to tell whether he was being funny or serious.

  Late in the night—after they’d bought lightbulbs at a bodega, after he’d managed to say something that forced her to smile, after they’d found a pizza place (“hint of hinterland,” he observed when the pie arrived thick-crusted)—he held her tightly.

  She was feeling kinder, despite the poisonous fragrance of the plants; she was about to murmur “041-74-3400” like a term of endearment.

  “Don’t be a stone,” he said. “You can’t be a stone anymore.”

  Tone y tore.

  Only ore.

  She pulled away from him, confused, offended.

  * * *

  It was a rainy weekend. She appreciated the appropriateness of the weather. They slipped into a kind of mute peace. She kept her mind bland, hardly thought about her office, the gray files piling up toward the ceiling.

  On Sunday night, they went for a walk. The rain had given way to a light mist. They were passing a Catholic church and convent with a FOR LEASE sign when it began to pour again. As they grappled with their shared umbrella, she sensed another couple walking annoyingly close behind them, their shadows overlapping with hers and Joseph’s. That couple was also struggling to make an umbrella cover two.

  In the churchyard, a spotlight glared up at a marble statue of Mary. Above the statue, a single rain-battered tree scattered leaves as fragile as discarded tissues. Beyond the leaves, red stained-glass windows gleamed dully. Josephine imagined nuns with candles, gliding insomniacs, terribly beautiful, terribly silent, pretending the FOR LEASE sign didn’t exist.

  Glancing behind, she realized that the couple following too near to them was in fact them—an illusion born of the conflicting shadows cast by the streetlights. She looked down at the sidewalk and tried to parse the disorderly shadows, but she got distracted by something: shining slimy in the streetlight, a proliferation of drowned worms, enough worms to make one’s gut tremble.

  She decided not to mention the worms. She didn’t want him to have to know about all the worms they couldn’t help but step on, all the remnants in the treads of their shoes.

  TWENTY-TWO

  On Monday morning, Josephine got dressed for work. She stood in the bathroom with Joseph. There was a row of plants on the rim of the bathtub, bamboo and other things. As they brushed their teeth they made bug-eyed faces at each other in the mirror. She was absorbed enough in the face-making that it was a moment before she noticed the pitiful state of her eyes, her skin. She spat.

  She was dressed for work. It seemed that she was going to go to work. It seemed that she was going to sit down at her desk, enter her password into the Database, reach for a file from the hill of files.

  But she lingered as he put on his coat.

  “You coming?” he said.

  “I need a few more minutes,” she said. “Go ahead without me.”

  He hugged her, but breezily, and was gone. She stood, unmoving. She was going to go to work. She ran to the door, about to yell for him—wait for me, I’m ready. But something caught her eye when she opened the door: THIRD DELIVERY ATTEMPT FAILED.

  Tempt paled.

  Lent ailed.

  She yanked the postal notice off the door, ripped it in half, separating the JOSEPHINE from the NEWBURY. No one knew this latest address.

  * * *

  Walking in the park, Josephine tried to imitate a happy person, a satisfied, relaxed, competent person strolling in a park, but she kept having the sensation of people staring at her. A small girl with a soccer ball. A skinny woman whose black pit bull strained against its leash. The frightening old men who dared fish in the city pond. All staring at her, or so it seemed, with brazen judgment, as though they knew she was not where she was supposed to be. As though someone had instructed them to keep an eye on her.

  Because the Database had abused her eyes, the swans looked to her like big white irascible blurs. A baby sitting on the grass in a red coat was actually a fire hydrant; a spaniel’s face was actually a spaniel’s behind.

  She feared the pit bull chasing its squeaky toy that shrieked like a human when trapped between canine jaws.

  A group of schoolchildren swarmed the paved path; their exhausted teacher pointed them toward the exit. “But we didn’t even get the chance to get lost!” a girl protested.

  Josephine fled the paved path for a dirt trail leading toward the innards of the park. She passed trees tagged with graffiti. Discarded soda cans, used condoms, dirty napkins, ragged spiderwebs, squirrels more anxious than usual.

  She almost stepped on a matted mash of twigs and feathers twisted at bizarre angles, an appalling object, difficult to look at. Only a sicko would gape, attempt to sort it out, weigh in on one
side or the other—a fallen nest or the aftermath of a death?

  She came to yellow police tape boxing in the area between three trees, but the space was empty. No blood, no sign of anything.

  She hadn’t even brought her phone.

  She stood eyeing the police tape until a father carrying his young daughter on his shoulders strolled past. “I can’t even tell what you’re pointing at,” he was saying to her, almost scornfully. “Are you pointing at the trees? What, you want us to go and live in these woods and be savages?”

  Josephine hurried away from the police tape, emerged out of the woods onto a lawn covered in grazing geese. The geese began to stride in her direction, hissing.

  She escaped onto a path lined with cattails.

  Scat tit.

  At ails.

  A row of dead cats all hung up by their tails.

  A man and woman in business attire passed in front of her, talking loudly and walking quickly. The man was saying, “and we’ll live by a lake. We’ll have a boat. A rowboat.” The woman looked tired. There was a stain on her cream-colored blouse. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she kept saying, maybe sarcastically.

  And then, on the way out of the park, a mouse in the middle of the road, practically two-dimensional now, its mouth frozen open in a scream.

  * * *

  She wouldn’t let the geese win. She would be brave; she would go to the grocery store like a normal person. She would buy food. She would cook food. She would talk to him. Tell him everything. They would make a plan. As they always had.

  She walked and walked and eventually came to a grocery store with a filthy yet friendly yellow awning and a tower of pomegranates out front. She didn’t know whether pomegranates should be selected based on firmness or fragrance or hue.

  Poor me granite.

  Pagan remote.

  Page tame no.

  She grabbed three at random, and a few vegetables, a box of spaghetti, a chunk of Parmesan. The cashier’s collar was crooked, the left side jutting upward. Filled with pity, Josephine averted her eyes.

  Back at the sublet by the highway entrance ramp, a number of the plants seemed to be dying. There was a text from her mother: All okay in big bad city? The bed was unmade and the laundry ungathered. Enigmatic odors arose from the trash can. In the kitchen, mice had already replaced the piles of turds Joseph wiped away this morning. She found it impossible to be fastidious nowadays. She filled a glass and watered a few of the limpest plants. Had they been given any watering instructions? Had Joseph said something about that when she wasn’t listening? She felt guilty.