Dispatch (28 page)

As they sometimes did, my thoughts turned to the dream of that circus tent in the desert and Christ's rotting body. The nightmare resonated with me, spoke to me, and I could not help feeling that it had some hidden metaphoric meaning. Maybe everything was breaking down, coming apart at the seams, I thought. Maybe there was no logic, no order, no reason for anything, only a chaos of letters and random activity that were spiraling madly out of control.

Virginia stopped by to see how I was doing. That was a surprise. I was just about to start on a series of complaint letters from customers of The Store, when I answered a knock on my office door and there she was.

"I've been wondering about you!" Virginia said enthusiastically as she gave me a sincere but restrained hug. "How are you faring?"

"Fine," I said, not wanting to get bogged down in detail.

She flopped into my chair, looking around the office. She chuckled as she saw all the music posters. "This really is you, isn't it?"

I felt suddenly annoyed. How would she know if this was me or not? She'd met me once for a brief period of time. No one could size me up that quickly. I wasn't
that
predictable or uncomplicated.

But I couldn't stay annoyed long. She was out of the chair and pacing around my small quarters. There was something very disarming about her, and I was suddenly glad she'd come.

"Where do
you
work?" I asked her.

"On the tenth floor. Would you like to see?"

"I'd love to," I admitted.

"All right, then."

I'd never played hooky like this in the middle of the day. As Virginia correctly pointed out in the elevator, I was steeped in a middle-class work ethic, and despite the fact that Henry had made clear I was free to come and go as I pleased, to work when and where I wanted, I showed up each day at my office by rote, I took only traditional coffee and lunch breaks, and if I ever slacked off and left early, I made up for it the next day, punishing myself for my transgression by depriving myself of one of my breaks.

"Loosen up," Virginia told me. "Live a little."

The elevator stopped on the tenth floor. The metal doors slid open. I would not have been surprised to see a series of intricately realized customized work spaces like we had on the fourth floor. I would not have been surprised to see a gigantic Victorian library.

But I
was
surprised by the sight that greeted my eyes.

Cubicles.

Under the harsh glare of fluorescent lights, modular workstations were grouped in configurations of four or six in a square corporate-looking room that was not impossibly large or in defiance of the laws of physics but conformed precisely to the dimensions of the building as it appeared from outside.

Virginia took my arm and strolled casually forward. Nearly all of the people from the party, as well as a dozen or so more, were seated in gray economically designed chairs in front of flat, identically generic desks, writing. Ernest had a typewriter, Leo a series of calligraphy pens, James a PC, but aside from the writing materials and a few personalized decorations, the workstations all looked the same.

Virginia's cubicle contained a messy pile of papers, a photograph of a garden, a red rose in a vase and, incongruously, a "Dilbert" comic strip thumbtacked to the gray fabric modular wall. A Styrofoam cup of watered-down iced tea with a slice of lemon in it had made a ringed stain on the papers.

Everyone seemed fairly happy or at least content—composing correspondence is all it takes to keep Letter Writers satisfied—but their circumstances to me seemed unbearably depressing. I looked at Virginia. "This is your desk?"

"Yes, it is."

"But why aren't you ... why are you ... how come you're working in a place like this?"

"When you're at our level, you don't need all those bells and whistles, a manufactured habitat like some animal in a zoo." Virginia smiled. "
Our level.
Look who I'm talking to!" She gripped my arm tighter. "The truth is, you could work here, too. You don't need some phony 'environment.' Those are for the novices, the hacks, the Letter Writers who require outside stimulation to do their best work. We don't need such superfluous trifles. Neither do you, I'll wager."

I didn't respond. Maybe I didn't need a "habitat," as she'd called it, in order to write effective letters, but I'd much rather work in my fake record store office than in these sterile surroundings.

"You belong here with us," she said, and looked around as though fearful of being overheard. "We have a vacancy, you know."

I didn't answer.

We stopped for a few moments at the cubicles of some of the people I'd met at the party, and chatted casually as though we really were friends who'd run into each other, but soon Virginia began to get visibly anxious, and I sensed that it was time for me to leave. She needed to get back to work. I was still not sure why she had invited me up here, unless it was to tell me about the vacancy, but I didn't feel secure enough to ask. I liked her, but I still didn't entirely trust her, and I wondered if the bureaucrat who had questioned me, the man who'd broken up the party, had put her up to it. I hadn't seen him since that night, yet I had the distinct impression that he was still around, keeping tabs.

Reporting on me to the big boss, the CEO, the Ultimate Letter Writer.

I definitely bought into that aspect of Stan's theory.

Virginia waved good-bye as I got back on the elevator. The doors remained open for an extended moment, and I looked at all of the numbers between the tenth floor and the fourth. What was on them? Who worked there? On impulse, I stretched out my index finger and pressed all of the buttons in order, my pulse accelerating as the numbers lit up. As the doors closed, she was smiling at me, obviously having seen what I'd done, and I took that as tacit approval. Did she have any official standing? Was she even anywhere near the power structure of this place? Probably not. But Virginia had been here a long time, she had to know the ways of this company, and that granted her a certain stature in my book. Her smile gave me the confidence to go through with what I might have chickened out of otherwise.

The elevator sped by the ninth floor, the eighth, the seventh. As it descended past each, the corresponding light blinked off on the panel of buttons, though the elevator itself never slowed and the doors did not open. I pressed the remaining buttons again but the elevator continued on past the sixth floor before finally stopping on the fifth.

The doors slid open.

For some reason, I had not been allowed to visit those other floors, but this one was open to me, and I stepped into what looked like a fantasist's conception of a newspaper office. In the vast open area in the center stood a large anthropomorphic printing press, a massive black octopus-like machine nearly two stories high with gears and levers that formed a smiling face in the middle. From a series of slots near the bottom of the printing press, typed letters extruded into metal trays. All around the giant machine were inset offices with windows that overlooked this central area. Some of the windows were shuttered or covered with mini-blinds, but through others I could see men and women of various ages and nationalities writing intently.

The office to my right, the one closest to me, was dark, its occupant sick or absent for some reason, and I took the opportunity to place my hands on the glass and peek inside. I saw a large old-fashioned oak desk covered with piles of papers, in the middle of which was a keyboard and monitor. On the back wall, barely visible in the gloom, was a poster of what looked like a red pagoda. Stepping back away from the window, I looked at the nameplate mounted on the closed door.

Kyoko Yoshizumi.

My heart began pounding hard in my chest, and my palms were suddenly sweaty.

Kyoko worked here! They had recruited her, too.

But where was she? The office was dark and empty. Maybe she was sick or absent today. Maybe she was on break. Or maybe it was still being prepared for her and she had not yet started working here.

Kyoko was a Letter Writer.

I should have guessed it sooner.

I remembered, as clearly as though I'd seen it yesterday, the photo Kyoko took of herself with her dress and underwear pulled down and bunched around her knees.

It was a strange coincidence that we were both Letter Writers, but the truth was that despite the broken English, I could remember the text of several of her missives even now. And that sympathy piece she'd penned after I'd told her my father died? Sheer genius. I wondered if we had inspired each other, if our brief connection had ignited within each other some sort of nascent spark that had made us into the Letter Writers we were today. If we'd had other pen pals, would we have turned out differently? It seemed almost impossible to believe that the two of us would both be Letter Writers and both end up here. What were the odds?

What had happened to my fifth-grade teacher, Miss Nakamoto? I wondered. Could she be a Letter Writer, too? No, that was too much to expect. Still, how old was she? What did she look like now?

I didn't like thinking about the past. I'd always been that way and still was, preferring to live in the present and not dwell on what had gone before.

But I seemed to be doing a lot of dwelling lately.

Unbidden, a memory of Eric came into my mind. A good memory: last year, in the summer, the two of us walking through Toys "R" Us, him holding my index finger with his tiny hand, chattering away about Thomas the Tank Engine.
It doesn't get any better than this
, I remembered thinking.

Would I ever see him again?

I suddenly felt like crying.

Then the office next to Kyoko's opened, and a man stepped out. He'd obviously been heading for one of those metal trays at the foot of the printing press, intending to pick up copies of the letters he'd written, but he saw me out of the corner of his eye and turned to face me. "Who are you?" he asked. "And what do you want?"

I was just as much of a Letter Writer as he was, and I faced him with confidence. "I'm looking for Kyoko Yoshizumi," I told him.

"She's out today, but she'll be back tomorrow." He eyed me suspiciously.

Kyoko
was
here!

My stomach was filled with butterflies. After all these years, I would finally meet her. The prospect made me nervous, and I thanked the man, then headed back to the elevator the way I'd come. I returned to the fourth floor and immediately holed up in my office. I'd been intending to send a complaint letter to NBC for canceling one of my favorite shows, but I no longer felt like writing today. Instead, I sat there and daydreamed, trying to imagine Kyoko's life between then and now.

I thought of all the floors above me. Were there other people I knew sitting in an office or created environment? A lot of people worked in this building. Many more than were indicated by the cars in the parking lot. Where did they all come from? Where did they all live? How come I never saw them?

I left early, driving straight home, feeling antsy and ill at ease, not at all sure finally that I did want to meet Kyoko. What if she was fat and ugly and mean? Despite the tone and sentiments of her recent letters, what if she blamed me for everything bad that had happened in her life and hated my guts?

I'd sleep on it, I decided.

That night, I was lying in bed when I heard a noise from up on my roof. A ... tapping.

The witch's cane.

I sat up in bed, feeling like a frightened child, trying to resist the impulse to pull the covers over my head and hide. She was up there, walking along the slanted side of the sloping roof. I was scared, but I forced myself to get out of bed and speed down the hallway toward the living room, keeping as quiet as I could.

My plan was to quickly open the front door, run out onto the lawn and confront her. I was wearing nothing but my underwear, but I'd long since given up the fiction that there was anyone in my neighborhood who cared.

Above my head, first on the roof above the hallway, then above the living room, I could hear the witch's cane.

Tap-tap-tap.

She was following my progress.

Since she knew where I was, I no longer had to be quiet, and I made a mad dash for the door, quickly turning the locks and rushing outside.

Surprise, surprise, she wasn't up there. She'd already gone, but she'd left behind what looked like a torn sheet that was attached to the chimney and fluttering in the slight breeze. It was a talisman or fetish of some sort, and when it straightened out for a second I could see what looked like painting or writing on it. Some sort of curse, no doubt, but I wasn't about to go up there in the middle of the night and take it down—who knew where that bitch was hiding?—so I simply gave the yard one last cursory glance, then went back inside, locking the door and double-checking to make sure all of the windows had been shut and latched. I'd go up in the morning and remove it.

But in the morning, it, too, was gone, and when I climbed the ladder to get onto the roof, I saw red runic writing on the shingles above my bedroom that looked like it had been drawn in blood. The hose wouldn't wash it off, and my efforts at scraping it with my shoe were completely useless. I'd have to paint over it, or use sandpaper or something, if I really wanted to make it disappear. Did I think the curse or spell or whatever it was would really work? No. But I resented the fact that that old hag could deface my property at will and get away with it.

"I know what you can do about the witch," Stan told me after I'd explained to him what had happened. "Remember how you said you got rid of her the first time? You wrote a letter to the police about her. Do the same thing again." He leaned forward confidentially. "It's what they want you to do anyway. They're testing you to see if you've still got what it takes."

As crazy as it sounded, I thought he might be right. It certainly couldn't hurt to try. So I wrote to the chief of police and laid out in detail a case of harassment and trespassing against her, describing everything that had happened since I'd first seen her on my front lawn.