Office Girl

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published by Akashic Books

©2012 by Joe Meno

Photography, including cover photo: Todd Baxter

Illustration and cover design: Cody Hudson

eISBN: 978-1-61775-120-2

Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-075-5

Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-076-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011960947

All rights reserved

First printing

Excerpts of this book were first published in
Annalemma, Verbicide, The2ndHand,
and the
Chicagoan.

Akashic Books

PO Box 1456

New York, NY 10009

[email protected]

www.akashicbooks.com

Art does not tolerate Reason.

—Albert Camus

No human heart changes half as fast as a city's face.

—Charles Baudelaire

Our central idea is the construction of situations, that is to say, the concrete construction of momentary ambiences of life and their transformation into a superior passional quality.

—Guy Debord

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

Title Page

 

Copyright Page

 

Begin Reading Office Girl

 

Acknowledgements

 

Bonus Joe Meno Materials

 

Hairstyles of the Damned Excerpt

 

About the Author

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ANYWAY IT'S SNOWING.

But then there is the absolute bullshit of it! The amazing gall of some people! Who does he even think he is?
Odile Neff, art-school dropout, age twenty-three, rides her green bicycle along the snowy streets of the city that evening at five p.m., arguing with herself. She is wearing one gray sock and one black sock and her faint-pink underwear, hidden beneath her long gray skirt, is dirty. It is January 1999, one year before the world as everyone knows it is about to end. Communism, like God, is already dead.

Having just finished an eight-hour shift conducting telephone surveys for an international research company—
How many members in your family? What sort of hair spray do you use? How often do you use your hair spray? Have you noticed any dermatological irritations, including but not limited to eczema, carbuncles, warts, or various skin cancers, in connection with the frequent use of your hair spray? Has your hair spray ever interfered with the quality of your life?—
she is now riding home and swearing to herself about something she is having a difficult time understanding, and about the person who has become the cause of all her grief. Her green hood is up, completely covering her small white ears, green scarf bound around her chin, the hem of her gray skirt blowing as she pedals along. It's only the second week of January but the winter has already become a verifiable pain in the neck. She wears her pink mittens which have become unknotted, the pale pink penumbras of her fingernails peeking out. And with these mittens she holds the cold plastic of the bicycle's handles, cursing to herself again and again
.

“Asshole!” she shouts out loud. “Why won't you talk to me? Why not just talk to me and be honest about everything?”

She never thought she would be so stupid, and yet, here she is. Her fancy pearlescent shoes, bought for twelve bucks at the thrift store, keep slipping off the pedals, making her even more frustrated. The gray sky, the waxy unending weather, the caliginous buildings rising up in humorless planes of speckled silver glass, all of it makes her feel so small, so tiny. The snow continues its liberated march in considerable flakes, falling all around in achromatic sheets of bleary chalk. Also, there is his gray sock, Paul's gray sock, sitting in the left pocket of her parka, which she has been carrying around for the last few days.

Why am I so stupid?
she asks herself again
. Why do I keep wanting to be with him?

Her face is an abject expression of disgust, mouth twisted to the side in a frown, narrow eyebrows raised.