The Beautiful Bureaucrat (17 page)

The basement.

If her job took place on an upper floor of “Z,” couldn’t the reverse job take place in the basement of “A”?

She hurried down the basement hallway, which was like all the other hallways but for its lower ceilings and eerie warmth. It resembled a nightmare but it was not a nightmare; here she was, trying every doorknob, finding each one locked.

Only he had stood on street corners beside her and their piled detritus. Only their two minds in the entire universe contained this same specific set of images: a particular pattern of shadow on the ceiling above a bed, a particular loop of highway ramp circled just as a song about a circle began to play on the radio. Tens of thousands of conversations and jokes. Without him she was just a lonely brain hurtling through space, laughing quietly to itself.

Hush-a-bye baby
, she mouthed. To the beast, yes, but more to herself. The beast had been quiet for a while, perhaps resting. It was just as well, though, that the beast didn’t hear
when the bough breaks, the cradle will drop.

She was shocked when the twentieth or so doorknob gave way beneath her fingers. She pushed, and the door swung open.

A baby-faced bureaucrat sat on an ergonomic chair in a bright white office. He eyed her scornfully; she felt again that old anxiety of the DMV.

“I’m from the ninth floor of ‘Z,’” she announced. “I’ve been sent by my superior to check in on an employee who works in this department.”

The bureaucrat raised his wilted eyebrows but didn’t speak.

“Can you direct me to—” she said.

“Superior who?” the bureaucrat interrupted.

She cursed herself for not knowing the name of The Person with Bad Breath.

“Ninth floor of ‘
Z
,’” she emphasized, attempting to match the bureaucrat’s irritability with her own, but even she could hear how juvenile her voice sounded. “It’s a rather urgent matter.”

“Sorry,” the bureaucrat said unapologetically. “I’m not permitted to release any information without clearance.”

“Where’s your superior?”

“Preparing for a meeting.” He motioned with a shoulder toward the inner office, where a colossal bureaucrat could be seen staring at a large computer screen. The screensaver’s yellow sphere was morphing into a purple cube.

“May I ask him one quick question?”

“Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works.” It was hard to believe that this person had a home, a bed, a history; that he existed outside the confines of this office.

“Is there anyone else to whom I can speak?” she said, aiming for disarming formality.

“I’m afraid not.”

“Might you please direct me to the office of Mr. Joseph Jones?”

“Around here we identify folks by their HS numbers,” the bureaucrat said, though she could have sworn that the briefest recognition passed over his features.

It took her a second to remember.

“I’ve got his HS number!” she said.

She unzipped her bag, her fingers slippery. The bureaucrat watched as she fumbled to pull the file out.

“You have the file,” the bureaucrat observed, mildly impressed.

“HS89805273179,” she read.

“Well, considering you have the file…” The bureaucrat gave in with a defeated sigh, placing his fingers on the keyboard. “What division?”

“He works in the Department of Birth,” she said.

“Oh,” the bureaucrat said, removing his fingers, relieved. “I’m afraid I can’t help you, then. You’re in the wrong department.”

Puzzled, she regarded the bureaucrat’s face, a face so bored it verged on tragic. Had she misunderstood everything?

Joseph’s file was open in her hands. She focused on the second row. G1, G2, G3. The word popped into her head.

“I mean Genesis,” she corrected, corking her exclamation mark. “The Department of Genesis.”

“What’s the HS number again?” the bureaucrat said indifferently, returning his fingers to the keyboard.

“HS89805273179.” That number: the number meaning his eyebrow, his toe.

The bureaucrat seemed to relish her agitation as he clicked away on his mouse for several long minutes.

“Sorry,” he said, still unapologetic, and for a bizarre millisecond she thought he was informing her that Joseph was already dead. “System’s been slow all day.”

She kept waiting. Every moment moving Joseph closer to whatever it was that would kill him. Something was happening in her stomach, a tornado of queasiness.

“HS89805273179,” the bureaucrat said at last. “He works here.”

“Where?” Josephine demanded, triumphant.

“Here,” the bureaucrat said.

“I mean, where’s his office?”

“I can’t release that information without clearance from a superior.”

“What?” She was fierce. “We already did this! I have his file, don’t I?”

“Rules is rules,” he said, offering up a fraction of a shrug.

“Tell me where he is.” She slapped the bureaucrat’s desk. “It’s an emergency.”

“
Your poor planning is not my emergency
,” the bureaucrat quoted. This time his shrug was even subtler. “Look, I won’t call security on you,” he added magnanimously.

“Security?” she thundered.

But those seven words had used up all his stores of generosity. “Or maybe…” he said, reaching toward the phone on his desk.

THIRTY-THREE

Back out in the hallway, she felt the weight of the entire building above her, as dense and impenetrable as the core of the planet. It pressed down on her, deflating her: just a pair of frightened, bloodshot eyes roving amid the remains of a skin-colored balloon.

Maintain your focus.

Locate 041-74-3400.

“Okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay,” she muttered.

His name a synonym for file.

Correction: his name a synonym for
life
, that’s what she’d meant.

Her mind unsteady.

Her gut unsteady, that’s what she meant.

Then the footsteps. Not the
tap-tap-tap-tap-tap
of bureaucrat shoes. These were sneaker footsteps. Sneaky footsteps. The footsteps of someone wearing a sweatshirt.

Merciful: a door bearing a picture of a woman in a triangular dress.

*   *   *

The
slipping figure on the yellow
CAUTION! WET FLOOR
sign in the restroom looked like someone preparing for sex or for birth, its androgynous legs flung open with abandon; abandon, the untamable urge, she was kneeling, clinging, heaving herself into a toilet, the tornado whirling her apart, molecules and despair.

The seven minutes she spent trying to pull herself back together passed in hazy, slow-motion desperation. Each minute potentially fatal for him. She cooled her cheek on the toilet seat as she shrank before all the different weapons that could be used against her—the ever-growing headache, the overwhelming pattern of the tile.

“There, there, child,” someone said, the voice far huskier than Trishiffany’s.

“Trishiffany?” she begged.

Something new had started to happen inside her, waves moving in a different direction. She swirled herself around, diarrhea, swirled herself back down, vomit. She held on to the toilet like it was Joseph, there was something so wrong with her, she was going to die, she could smell the animal stink of it, the shame. But it wasn’t her file she’d found, was it, and she remembered about the beast, how beasts make their mothers do all sorts of repulsive things early on, and there was a flicker of joy, and she became less scared, and the cloak embraced her back.

By the time she was done in the stall, the nice stranger had fled. Had there been a nice stranger?

When she emerged again into the relentless hallway, it wasn’t easy to walk straight, but the complete emptiness of her gut provided a certain courage, the kind of courage that enabled her not to care about the smell emanating from her mouth as she walked from door to door, jerking madly on every knob, knocking hard like the police when the knob didn’t give.

But no one ever came to open any door, and she kept going and going until at long last a doorknob responded to her touch, and she entered a small office with sickly pinkish walls, and said the name of the dark-haired man sitting at the desk beside a stack of gray files.

THIRTY-FOUR

His back was to the door, his desk flush with the opposite wall. He turned slowly to face her.

Joseph: the one who spoke her best language.

But it wasn’t Joseph.

The eyes were a different color, the chin a different shape, the demeanor more delicate.

“Oh,” she said, “sorry.”

The bureaucrat nodded, his face neutral. His fingers lingered on the keyboard of his typewriter even as he looked at her. She pretended, briefly, that he was Joseph; that this was the one who mattered, the one whose file she was brave enough to steal.

“I’m looking for Joseph Jones,” she whispered. It was so hushed in there; even her breathing was an intrusion.

The bureaucrat gazed and waited.

She pulled the file out of her bag.

“HS89805273179,” she clarified.

The bureaucrat nodded a second time, his eyes on the file. After an apologetic glance at his typewriter, he stood up. He took the three steps across the office toward her, opened the door, and gestured for her to pass through first.

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.”