The Beautiful Bureaucrat: A Novel

by Helen Phillips

  He led her down the hall, farther away from the restroom. He was not old—perhaps even younger than she—but already his shoulders were capitulating to gravity. He stopped in front of a door and knocked politely, perhaps inaudibly.

  They were awaiting a response when she heard the footsteps again, the sneakers. This time they were coming faster, rushing up the hallway. It struck her that she might have led The Man in the Gray Sweatshirt right to Joseph. The sense of doom expanded, exploded through her capillaries. The door handle twisted from the inside.

  She turned back to look at her pursuer as she darted into the office. But the hall was empty aside from Joseph’s doppelgänger, already hastening back to his own life.

  * * *

  The smallest office in the deepest basement. A quiet, apocalyptic place. It felt forgotten, as though the end of the world had already come and gone.

  Joseph stood before her, shocked.

  “You?” he said.

  “You!” she said.

  For the first time, she noticed that his eyes were bloodshot too. Less so than hers, far less than Trishiffany’s, but bloodshot nonetheless. It was unsettling to think she had been blind to such a detail. She examined his forehead, searching for signs of disruption to the skin, but his face was unmarked. Apparently Department “A” was better for one’s skin than Department “Z.”

  “It’s god to see you,” he said. “But how in hell did you find me?”

  “What?” she said.

  “It’s good to see you, but how in hell did you find me?”

  “You said, ‘It’s god to see you,’” she said.

  “Why would I have said that?”

  He laughed. She couldn’t control the jubilation that shot through her. For a few seconds she pretended he wasn’t going to die today. He looked vibrant, striking, tilting toward demon, his dark hair in a sharp peak on his forehead, his smile wry, vital, the monster who would howl at her deathbed.

  “The cloak,” he said, reaching out to touch it.

  “Don’t kiss me,” she said. “My breath reeks.”

  In an alternate universe, she would have required toothpaste, nudity, a bed, a moon in a white sky, seven glass bottles lined up on a windowsill; fortified by all that, it would be easier to tell him what she had to tell him.

  But instead here they were in yet another windowless office.

  At least he was holding her.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said to the stubble on his cheek just as he said, “You’re pregnant,” to her hair.

  The beast remained silent, though, dozing even at this critical moment; she would have liked to hear what it would do with the word “pregnant.”

  “So you already know.” Pleased, he pulled back to observe her face. “Are you happy?”

  “You processed the file?” she said.

  He raised his eyebrows, astonished by her level of understanding.

  “I created the file,” he said, lowering his voice. “That’s what I was doing those nights away from you. It wasn’t easy to locate all the right information.”

  A brave bureaucrat traversing darkened hallways, sneaking into classified rooms, while just a couple of neighborhoods away a mistrustful bureaucrat sat panicking on a stranger’s bed, walked panicking through a stranger’s home, filled up with ungenerous speculation.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, almost too softly for him to hear.

  “There were some hiccups,” he continued. “The file got booted back to me late yesterday. That’s why I had to stay here last night, to figure out what was going on. The form was missing one critical date. But I put the corrected paperwork in Outgoing early this morning. Our blastocyst will become an embryo any second now.”

  Under other circumstances, she would have said something loving to him just then, would have found a way to celebrate, turned her fingers into fireworks: his disappearances magnificently explained, their child’s precious cells dividing and dividing and dividing inside her. But the other thing loomed, pressing down.

  “I work here,” she began.

  “You?” He was incredulous.

  “In ‘Z.’”

  “In ‘Z,’” he repeated, somber. “They swore you to secrecy too, right?”

  “In ‘Z,’” she echoed, trapped in the three letters, unable to forge ahead.

  He cupped her neck with both hands, the way he sometimes did.

  How many minutes remained in their life together?

  She said his name slowly, as though The Man in the Gray Sweatshirt wasn’t waiting on the other side of the door. She pulled his file out of her bag.

  His gaze sharpened as he recognized it.

  “I stole this,” she said.

  “Why would you do that?” he demanded.

  She couldn’t say it. She opened the file. Her finger, the same finger with which she had stroked him in all sorts of places, the same finger with which she had pointed to hundreds of thousands of other things. But now, here on this page, pointing, complicit with D10082013.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The Man in the Gray Sweatshirt was not beside the door when they exited the office. They ran down the interminable hallway that continued from the basement of “A” to the basement of “Z.” She reached for Joseph’s hand. He did not reach back. There was a force field of solitude around him. He ran a foot ahead of her, sometimes seeming like a stranger, sometimes like her twin. He refused to look at her. She wanted to know what it was that he didn’t want her to see: panic, selfishness, loneliness. Humble nervous pitiful human hope. She was thirstier than ever. The beast was mute. May the beast feel only a warm dark slosh. The file flapped, slapped her wrist. She tried to say something but her lips were quivering, unreliable. The straight unbroken line of empty hallway. Gravity sucked on their soles, pulled on their lungs. Behind them, someone pointed an invisible gun at Joseph’s back.

  B

  C

  D

  E

  F

  G

  H

  I

  J

  K

  L

  M

  N

  O

  P

  Q

  R

  S

  T

  U

  V

  W

  X

  Y

  Z

  Through the EMERGENCY EXIT door, up the infinite stairwell, he always two steps ahead, never looking back.

  * * *

  And now: an EMERGENCY EXIT door opening from the stairwell onto the tenth and top floor of “Z.” Don’t make a peep. Stop breathing so hard. The hum of fluorescence. Monotonous doors sealed against intrusion.

  But what’s this. Hold my hand, finally. A door dead center in the hallway, propped open with a wooden wedge, eerily inviting. And here: The words we were seeking. Minuscule font beneath old tape.

  THIRTY-SIX

  “Welcome to Processing Errors,” Trishiffany said with a wink. “We’ve been waiting for ages. We thought you’d never get here, Jojo dolls!”

  She sat behind the metal desk, her suit halfway between red and pink. Beside her, The Person with Bad Breath serenely tapped a pencil on the lone gray file on the desk.

  The office was similar to Joseph’s, to Josephine’s: small and windowless. But behind the desk, there were two doors. And this office, unlike theirs, felt eminently placid. These walls, Josephine observed, free of smudges and fingerprints.

  “Perfect,” The Person with Bad Breath said. “She has his file.”

  “Just as we expected,” Trishiffany said.

  “Lock the door!” Josephine commanded Joseph, who stood a step behind her.

  “No need,” The Person with Bad Breath said as Joseph turned to twist the lock.

  “Paranoid much, Jojo doll?” Trishiffany smiled.

  “We were followed all the way here by your assassin,” Josephine said.

  Trishiffany giggled. “Our assassin?”

  “The Man in the Gray Sweats
hirt. He’s been following me for weeks.”

  “I have a gray sweatshirt,” Joseph said.

  “Every man is the man in the gray sweatshirt,” The Person with Bad Breath intoned.

  The words emerged from a gust of breath so noxious that Josephine worried about the beast’s well-being; surely there was something harmful in such an exhalation.

  “I’m not feeling great,” Joseph said, eyeing the file on the desk.

  “Take a seat.” The Person with Bad Breath indicated a pair of plastic chairs.

  “He’s dying!” Josephine cried out.

  “Not exactly,” Trishiffany said.

  “What is that?” Joseph said, pointing at the file on the desk but unable to look.

  “It’s what you think it is,” Trishiffany said tenderly.

  “What is it?” Josephine demanded, but the cool, dreadful certainty was already propelling her.

  She seized the file a millisecond before Trishiffany’s manicured hand could prevent her. She backed up toward Joseph, looking ferociously at the bureaucrats, ready to hiss if either of them interfered. But Trishiffany and The Person with Bad Breath remained tranquil as she opened the file.

  It contained a single sheet of paper. She was having a hard time looking at it, yet she couldn’t stop.

  Something caught her eye in the fourth row. Following the M/G, the familiar HS89805242381.

  “My password for the Database?” she said.

  “Yes, but, more significantly, your HS number,” The Person with Bad Breath said.

  “You were the 89,805,242,381st Homo sapiens ever conceived,” Trishiffany said. “And your child was the 129,285,656,702nd.”

  “Do you know how many hours I spent sneaking around here in the middle of the night to find your number,” Joseph muttered to Josephine.

  “One among many transgressions,” Trishiffany said.

  “Trespassing in a superior’s office,” The Person with Bad Breath elaborated. “Opening a confidential filing cabinet. Stealing an unauthorized form. Trespassing in File Storage N. Trespassing in File Storage J. Copying down confidential information. Using a superior’s typewriter to fill in a form with fraudulent information. Typing fraudulent information into the Database. Persisting in doctoring a fraudulent file and placing said file in Outgoing even after deactivation was requested by a superior. Unauthorized presence on site after hours and before hours.”

  “On three separate occasions,” Trishiffany added.

  “What do you expect,” Joseph said, “once someone realizes he can create a life?”

  “Zygote, Blastocyst, Embryo, Fetus!” Josephine comprehended as she scrutinized the second row.

  “Today’s our embryo day,” Joseph said. He put his finger on the 10082013 following the G3(E).

  10082013.

  10082013.

  “But that’s what’s no good,” Trishiffany said. “See how the number sags below the embryo-date line into the paternal-death-date line? The typewritten text must remain entirely within its appointed space.”

  Joseph snatched the file away from Josephine and examined the form.

  “You did a fine job,” The Person with Bad Breath congratulated. “Your work certainly reveals an above-average understanding of the mechanisms. But even the finest counterfeit never made it all the way through.”

  “She conceived, didn’t she?” Joseph protested.

  “You’re diligent, Joey-Jo,” Trishiffany admitted, giving him a sad little smile. “Those must have been some long nights. But things are what they are.”

  “You typed in your own death date,” Josephine whispered in disbelief, pulling the file away from him.

  “I was typing in the blastocyst-to-embryo transfer date,” he countered. “I was fixing the error that got the file sent back to me yesterday. The first time around I didn’t realize I had to include that date.”

  “Oh, no, Joey-Jo. The file got sent back to you because the system had already identified the falsification,” Trishiffany said. “You should have deactivated the file, as per your instructions. Sweetly into the ether, so to speak.”

  “Instead, you triggered your own death processing,” The Person with Bad Breath said.

  “Typewriters are tricky,” Trishiffany soothed. “Though they do have certain advantages in a system like ours.”

  “Typewriters are tricky and now he’s going to die?” Josephine raged.

  “Well, at this particular instant, both facts seem to be true,” The Person with Bad Breath said. “Your blastocyst is becoming an embryo on 10082013, and Joseph David Jones is dying on 10082013.”

  Josephine grabbed Joseph’s right hand, clamping his finger bones in her grip.

  “But not for long,” Trishiffany said lightly. “We’ll get everything corrected straightaway. Make it all line up.”

  “A bit of extra paperwork,” The Person with Bad Breath said.

  “An annoyance, to be sure,” Trishiffany continued. “A touch of heartache. But all shall be well and all shall be well and all shall be well. Why don’t you hand over those files, Jojo doll.”

  Josephine shook her head. The fluorescence illuminated every flaw in each bureaucrat’s skin. She could feel it gleaming over the constellation of zits on her forehead. The whole world smelled like The Person with Bad Breath.

  “It’s just paperwork now,” Trishiffany said. “Just a matter of sending one file through Processing Errors and deactivating the other.”

  Josephine’s throat released a knotted snarl. Trishiffany didn’t acknowledge the sound, the primal disagreement; she briskly clapped her hands.

  “Come now, Jojo doll!”

  “Why are you doing this to us?” Josephine tried to yell, but the words came out limp, her voice feeble.

  Trishiffany released a short sharp laugh. “Nothing malevolent here, dear! We’re all just doing what we have to do.”

  Josephine clung to the files. Joseph rested his head against her head and together they looked down at the blank boxes of their child’s form. And then at Joseph’s form, the chaos following the first four lines, the boxes of letters and numbers and symbols, the dense forest of his paperwork.

  “Let’s get it over with, kiddos.” Trishiffany’s words were flippant but her tone was forlorn.

  That forlornness in her voice caused Josephine to loosen her grip on the files. She stepped forward and placed them on the desk.

  “Atta girl,” Trishiffany said wearily.

  “You should sit down, Ms. Newbury,” The Person with Bad Breath said, as Trishiffany produced a bottle of Wite-Out from her bra and passed it to her coworker.

  The Person with Bad Breath unscrewed the Wite-Out, opened both files, and painted the liquid over the death date on Joseph’s form.

  “Thank you,” Joseph said.

  The Person with Bad Breath glanced up, surprised.

  “Oh, don’t thank me,” The Person with Bad Breath said with a dusty chuckle. “There’s nothing benevolent here either. I’m not doing favors, I’m doing paperwork. Getting all the ducks in a row.”

  Then The Person with Bad Breath held the tiny brush suspended above the child’s form. Trishiffany breathed in, breathed out, licked lipstick off her teeth. The smell of the Wite-Out merged with the smell of the breath. Joseph looked at Josephine, his face burning with hope, and lunged forward to seize the arm of The Person with Bad Breath.

  But the wrist eluded him, the hand fell, the Wite-Out smeared the second row.

  The beast had been silent for so long.

  “Please sit, Jojo doll.”

  Josephine sank into the chair, confronting Trishiffany’s bloodshot eyes with her own. Aside from those godforsaken eyes and that disguised rough skin, Trishiffany was perfectly beautiful. Put her in a purple robe with a hood and she could stand merciful in a churchyard. She came around from behind the desk. Awkwardly, she ran a finger down Josephine’s cheek. Her hand smelled like coconuts and cheap gold jewelry.

  “My goodness,” she marveled, more
to herself than to anyone else, “I could swear your skin’s already improving. And look at those eyes.”

  Deep inside, a fist clenched and unclenched, clenched and unclenched, clenched and unclenched, the weird beat of it interfering with Josephine’s breath. With each clench she released a fragile moan; Trishiffany tensed every time.

  Marriage.

  Miscarriage.

  Miss Carriage.

  But she was only pretending. It was just her own voice in her own head.

  When she opened her eyes, her lap was filling with blood.

  * * *

  The sound grew deep inside her, from the place where she was losing blood, and pressed against all her orifices, shoving itself past her tongue, between her teeth.

  “Steady there, Jojo doll,” Trishiffany murmured. “You’ve got to stop that shrieking.”

  She tried to stop, and eventually she did.

  As soon as Josephine was quiet, Trishiffany took hold of her elbow and motioned for Joseph to do the same on the opposite side.

  Together they limped toward one of the doors behind the desk. The Person with Bad Breath stood up as they passed and frowned at the trail of red on the immaculate gray floor.

  “We’ll take care of the paperwork.” Trishiffany sounded subdued, fatigued, though her hair was as bright and voluminous as ever. She pressed the door open into a bathroom. “You should have everything you need in there.”

  “You’re both fired, of course.” The Person with Bad Breath lifted two fingers to those dry lips and smiled at Josephine, the gentlest of gestures, something somewhere between the sign for “hush” and the motion that precedes blowing a kiss.

  “Go ahead,” Trishiffany commanded, stately on her stilettos as Joseph guided Josephine through the doorway. “Onward and upward, Jojo dolls.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  She sat on the toilet, staring down at the thing that shouldn’t be stared at.

  * * *

  He pried her underwear off from around her ankles and put them in the trash can.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  When he tried to reach behind her to flush, she snarled.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” he said, lifting his hands above his head like a man held up at gunpoint.

  * * *