Office at Night (6 page)

“They’re shutting us down, my dear,” he says. “Someone was brought down trying to pilfer from us this morning.”

“Who got shot and who shot him?” she says.

He raises an eyebrow and asks for his documents.

“I’m going to need a new job,” she says.

“Stay with me, my dear, stay with me,” he says, again asking for the documents.

She tells him that whatever he does next, she’ll need a raise. He has his eye on the documents, but knows better than to try to take them by force.

“Agreed, yes, a raise.”

“A good one, something real.”

“Yes, all right, a good one.”

She hands over the documents. He takes them, then leans over and kisses her, chastely, on the cheek.

“You have just saved my life, my dear,” he says.

“A real raise, and never call me ‘my dear’ again,” she says.

They part ways, and a moment later a car pulls up beside her. The man driving it is the one who came out of the river with her. She climbs in beside him and he eases away from the curb. He drives slowly and carefully. He reminds her that she will have to help him. She says she knows this. He hands her a pair of spectacles and she puts them on. He looks over at her three times, then says, “Nah, no way.”

“So I’ll just go as I am?” she says, taking them off, folding them closed, and handing them back to him.

“Just as you are,” he says.

Which is where the story ends. Or the part of the story
that I have. The part I know about. The only thing I can add to it is that her name is Hester Chan, and the boss’s name is Abraham Chelikowsky. Yeah: them. I don’t know the name of the guy who climbed out of the river with her and took her for a ride in his car. I don’t know what she was supposed to help him with. I don’t know if she did, in fact, help him. I do know this was five or six years ago.

O
f course he keeps me hidden in the drawer. Of course he has forgotten that he keeps me here. Chelikowsky has circumstantial dementia. That may or may not be true. What do I know? I am wedged now at the back of the drawer, behind three legal pads and a peppermint stick. Which is to say it is dark but smells good. I was not well cleaned the last time he used me, so there is a powdery pool of blue that grows ever more slightly each time he shoves something else into the drawer and I am banged up against the back. I feel nothing of course, but that doesn’t mean I’m not aware. Doesn’t mean that I don’t know, that I don’t remember. It is one thing not to feel. It is another thing not to remember. Abraham doesn’t remember. That much is undeniable. Once he used me every day. I lived in a hopeful coffee can with other brushes, some fatter, some finer. All of them are gone. I know he has purchased new ones and now paints again, but that is not what I am discussing here. After his last rejection, back in those old days, he threw them out the window and they hit a passerby
who came straight upstairs and demanded a dollar for his trouble. A dollar or it was the police. Abraham gave him a dollar, and handing over one of only four dollars sobered him up, and he didn’t chuck me out the window. Instead he took me up and dipped me in a lovely, fat blotch of blue, then dropped me onto the floor and cried.

Abraham cried with great energy and at great length in those days. This was far from here. Several blocks away at least. A small studio. More closet than studio. A closet with a big window. He slept curled in one small corner and painted in the other. For himself at first, with no success of course, then for others. He had one or two drips and drabs of success with these others, then someone better, even much better, than him at forging Impressionist landscapes and Dutch Master portraits came along and that was it: no more work. There was nothing I could do to help. What could I have done? The servant serves the master and the master was fucked. And now he has forgotten me. He has forgotten that he worked, even just briefly, for the man who has been writing to him, Mr. Stetly, the man whom he once threatened to kill for having refused him. For having given him work and then for
having rejected him. Some of what Abraham did with me wasn’t bad.

Stetly said as much himself. But there is saying these things and there is handing over money. Maybe it’s willful dementia we’re discussing. Maybe Chelikowsky doesn’t remember because he doesn’t want to remember. I’m glad blue was my last color. Blue is deeper than black. It is deeper than anything. There is a strange curve to the earth. It comes off the earth’s surface, howls through the hallways, rearranges all the rooms, and goes skidding off into the sky.

W
here did the light go? And where were you when it went, Abraham? Did the light go out in you? Did you eat the light off the wall?

I
live in the top drawer of the file cabinet, and Hester Chan takes me out every so often to listen to her favorite program,
The Housewives Protective League.
She turns me on at a low volume, sets me down on the windowsill, leans over me as if to protect me, and sets her chin in her hands. She imagines a different scene. Poor Hester. She loves housekeeping—she just wants to stay home. Does she imagine the danger? No. She senses the danger. My gentle tones calm her. She is so beautiful—the way she leans her strong, slender frame over me as she listens, shoulders drooping from longing, listening to product endorsements. How her heart leaps during the panel discussion on sweeping (“A Clean Sweep for a New Broom”), and how she blushes when Abraham returns to the desk, how she gently picks me up in her shy, capable hands, turns me off, puts me away. Abraham watches, but never says anything—never suggests she just keep me on her desk, like she used to do before Marge arrived. At least I’m still set to 880 AM—at least some things never change.

I
n the dark night, Mr C. takes the radio out of its drawer—he has to reach around Marge in order to do it—then he sits down at the desk and puts it on the windowsill, tucked in the corner to get good reception, just like he knows Hester does every morning when he steps out to get his second cup of coffee from the diner. He turns the knob roughly, to a live broadcast from the Algonquin Room. It’s late and the music is pretty. The jokes are fantastic. There is something melancholy, something nostalgic or about to be gone, about the whole program. Standing at the the file cabinet, Marge watches him listen. He’s pretending to study some pages, close to the desk. Does the lamp know what he’s thinking? It’s so close to his head. He looks miserable, angry, troubled; he looks haunted, insane. So fucking lonely. Marge leans against the cabinet. Her makeup is very intense. She paints on her eyes every morning with brushes that cost a month’s salary, and of course she buys only the very best pigment—her face is her most visible canvas. Her face is dark, optimistic. Marge has no idea what
her incredible face is actually worth. Who can quantify that? She smoothes her hair, then her skirt. Her expression hardens? Softens? Is she older or younger, or is she the same as she was from the beginning? Mr. C. stares down at his papers. He tries to picture her there. He wants to paint her, but there’s no way he’ll ever try that again. His life is basically over. She’s in the room with him, but he can’t bring himself to look at her, can’t admit what he has done—oh, he hasn’t done it yet, but still, he can’t admit what he is doing, or will do, with her, in the office at night. Marge leans on the drawer. Shirley Marge Quinn. Why
did
she drop her first name? When
is
she going to wrench herself from the cabinet? It is like she’s been welded onto it—it cuts into her soft, welcoming frame. When is she going to—when is she going to touch him?

“W
ait, what?” says the Frame.

“It’s romance, we’re in romance now,” says the Canvas.

“Where’s the guy with the gun? Where’s Hester’s brother?” says the Pigment.

“Isn’t anyone going to come in and throw Chelikowsky out the window?” says the Frame.

“We’re in romance?” says the Canvas.

“Romance,” says the Pigment.

“Ain’t it all strange?”

“Yes.”

“So strange.”