Office Girl (12 page)

“Do you miss Minneapolis?”

“Who me? No way. I mean I do. Not the people. But the place. When I was in high school, we used to get drunk and roam around the Skyway. That's in St. Paul.”

“What's that?”

“The Skyway. It's like this thing. This thing that connects all the buildings downtown because it's so cold. You can get around without going outside. The Replacements have a song about it.”

“I don't think I ever heard it.”

“Oh. Well. That's basically the only thing I miss. The Skyway. That and my parents. And my grandma.”

“Oh.”

“Yep.”

And she nods, looking down at the red polyvinyl photo album again.

“Hold on a second,” he says, and digs into the pockets of his gray parka. He finds the silver tape recorder in the left pocket, checks to be sure there's a tape in it, and then points it at her.

Odile looks down at the silver recorder and frowns. “What's that?”

“It's for this project I'm working on. Do you mind me asking you a few questions? Imagine you're a television star and I'm a television reporter.”

“What project?”

“Just this thing. All you have to do is be yourself and just answer the questions.”

“Okay,” she says, rolling her eyes a little.

“Okay, the girl from the office,” he announces directly into the recorder. “Okay. First name and age.”

“What?”

“Um, your name, and then your age.”

“Okay,” she says, leaning forward. “Odile, twenty-three.”

“Okay. Shoe size?”

“Seven and a half.”

“What famous person would you be and why?”

“I really don't like famous people.”

“Try again.”

“Okay. Superman's girlfriend.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Okay,” he says. “Do you have any distinguishing features?”

“I have an overbite. And my shoulders are kind of narrow.”

“Okay. What crime have you committed recently?”

She pauses and then says, “I slept with a married man.”

And Jack looks down at the tape recorder, making a surprised expression, eyebrows tilting up. “Really?”

“Really,” she says. “I'm not proud of it. But it just keeps happening.”

“Okay,” he says, feeling his heart sink a little. “Okay. Well. Here's a tough one: Do you think I have a big forehead?” he asks. “Or is it perfectly proportioned?”

“What?”

“My forehead. Is it too big? Or is it just large enough to be called handsome?”

“No. It's okay.”

“It wouldn't prevent you from going out with me?”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Duh,” she says.

“Okay. So what do you think of telephone sales?”

“I've done it before. For a couple years. I don't mind it. But I've actually been thinking about moving to Greenpoint, in Brooklyn. I have a friend out there and she said I could stay for a while, until I get my own place. Our lease is up at the end of the month and my roommate is a little nuts and so I'm thinking about going to New York. I just don't know. It's so big and I don't want to get swallowed up.”

“Oh,” he says, feeling his heart sink again. He switches off the tape recorder and stares down at it, then shoves it back into his coat. “Well, I've never been to New York, but I hear it's for assholes.”

“It's not.”

“Well, that's what I heard. Cool people don't live there anymore. They all live here. In Chicago.”

“Yeah, right,” she says, smiling larger than he has seen her smiling before, a dimple peeking out along her left cheek.

And here he smiles, seeing her smile, and pushes his glasses up against the bridge of his nose and says, “I was thinking. Do you mind me asking how you spell your name? Because I don't think I've ever heard it before.”

“Odile. O-d-i-l-e. It's my grandmother's name. Which is maybe why I like her so much. We're kind of like twins.”

“It's a really great name.”

“Really? I don't know. My brothers, all of them have these really boring names. And for some reason, because I was the only girl, my mom decided to get creative. So … I dunno. I used to hate it. I used to get teased about it all the time in grade school.”

“Yeah.”

“I tried to get my parents to change it. They told me I could if I wanted. So I started signing my name on my papers at school as Jennifer. And sometimes Kelly.”

“So they let you change it?”

“Yeah, I dunno, they were really weird like that. They once took us all to the Empire State Building because one of my brothers was doing a history project about it.”

“That's really nice.”

“I like them okay.”

“So did you change it back? Your name?”

“Yeah. I don't know. I guess I realized at some point it didn't matter what my name was. People still thought I was the same person. And anyways, like I said, I really love my grandma, so I got used to it.”

“I never knew any of my grandparents. They were all dead before I was born.”

“That's too bad. My grandma, she used to give me a little glass animal every year for my birthday. You know, those little pink glass animals? I still have them. Most of them are broken but I still have about five or six of them.”

“Which is your favorite?”

Odile pauses here, thinking. She stands up and then crosses over to a small desk and lifts up a tiny pink animal, made entirely of glass. She hands it to him.

Jack stares at it, at the odd angles of its joints and limbs, and asks, “What is it supposed to be?”

“A unicorn.”

“A unicorn? Where's its horn?”

“It's broken off. It broke when I moved here.”

Jack looks down and sees, on the animal's head, a small rough circle where the horn was once attached.

“So why's this one your favorite?”

“I don't know. I like it better now that it's broken. It's kind of down on its luck. It seems more realistic for some reason.”

Jack nods and hands it back to her. Odile sets it down on her desk and then returns to the bed. The two of them sit beside each other on the bed for a long moment, the sound of the radiator in the other room ticking off the seconds of their stilted breaths. Odile hums a little something to herself and then sighs.

“So,” she says.

“So.”

“So.”

“So are you really seeing someone right now? Or did you just say that so I wouldn't try anything?”

Odile nods and then shrugs her shoulders. “I mean, he's not my boyfriend or anything. We're just seeing each other. We never talk unless I call. It's kind of over, I guess.”

“It is?”

“It is. So what about you? You're not seeing anyone?” she asks.

“No, I'm … I'm kind of going through a divorce right now.”

“Kind of?”

“I'm definitely going through a divorce right now.”

“Wow. How old are you?”

“Twenty-five. Almost twenty-six.”

“And you're already divorced?”

“Yep. That's one life goal already crossed off my list. And I feel pretty good about it. Not really. Actually, I feel pretty bad about it.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah.”

“So,” she says, “what happened?”

“I don't know. Maybe we can talk about it some other time. It's kind of complicated.”

“Okay,” she says. “So do you want to see something amazing?”

“Sure,” he answers, smiling at her giddiness.

She leans over and reaches beneath the bed and pulls out an old-looking comic book,
Abstract Adventures in Weirdo World
, and hands it to him. Jack smiles and begins to slowly turn the pulpy pages, taking in the weird geometric shapes, the absurd juxtapositions of body parts and animals.

“What is this?” he asks.

“It's a comic book I found. I got it at a garage sale a couple months ago. It's by this guy Frank Porter who I never heard of.”

“It's pretty psychedelic.”

“Yeah, I think this one is from 1974 or so. I went and looked him up in the library. Apparently, he made all these comics just to amuse himself. Because he couldn't be around people. You can see he was totally into R. Crumb's style. It's so trippy and globular-looking. I think this was like a year or so before he stopped making comics. He was only like twenty-four, twenty-five. And then he just gave it up and became a janitor.”

“Wow.”

“But he drew hundreds of these comics before he stopped making them, and then, after he died, his sister found all of them. I think he ended up hanging himself. I'm pretty sure this is actually kind of valuable now.”

“Hmmm,” Jack says, inspecting a panel of a triangle with arms, lighting what appears to be a joint.

“It's funny. I think about him a lot. Like how old people are when they give up, you know? Like before you just accept that your life is going to be the same as everybody else's. Before you do anything great.”

“I don't know,” Jack says. “I think about that a lot too.” He flips to another page, seeing a pyramid of silver lines, which upon closer inspection reveal a nude female shape. “These are really weird.”

“I know. And nobody knows about him. He's kind of my biggest influence. As an artist, I mean. Him and my dad.”

“Your dad?”

“Yeah, because he works all the time. At first I thought making hotel paintings wasn't cool. But now I think it's pretty great. It's all he does all day. And people actually see what he makes. Even if they are kind of bland. I mean, the other thing is that when I was a kid, my dad had all these art books and everything, lying around, and he would explain them to me. Like Magritte. And Gauguin. I know the reason I want to be an artist is because of my mom and him.”

“That's pretty cool. My father's a shrink. We didn't have any art books lying around when I was a kid. The only cool thing we had growing up was the
DSM
, which lists all the things that can go wrong with your head. That and
The Joy of Sex.
But I don't think either one of my parents ever opened it. They got divorced when I was like five or so. And then she got remarried. To another shrink, this guy David. He's pretty great actually. I kind think of him as my actual father. He's the person I call if, you know, I'm ever in trouble.”

“That's nice you get along with him.”

“Yeah. But then my mom divorced him too, when I was like eight or nine. And then she married some dentist. But we still talk. My first stepdad, David, and me.”

“My parents are so weird. They're still like teenagers around each other. They still like holding hands. They still smoke a lot of dope, though.”

“That's great.”

“Yeah.” And then they both look down at their feet for a few seconds before Odile asks, “So, do you want to see this thing I've been working on?”

“Sure.”

Odile stands up suddenly and snatches a small green pad from her bureau and then hands it to him. “It's this notebook I've been putting all my ideas in. They're more concepts of projects than actual projects. Kind of like Yoko Ono.”

Jack nods and flips through it. There are small pencil sketches, quick drawings, and lists. On one of the lined pages it says,
Dress like a ghost on the bus
. Beneath that it says,
Buy some parakeets and turn them loose in front of a playground,
or,
Act out a scene from a famous movie on the subway,
or,
Create a banner for some nonexistent event,
or,
Put on a puppet show in a hospital emergency waiting room.

“These are really great,” Jack says, smiling.

“Yeah, I dunno. One day I'm going to do them all. Right now I'm just coming up with different ideas. I feel like … people in this city … nothing surprises them anymore. When you live here, there's just too much going on around you, so you don't see any of it. It's hard to get people's attention. Unless it's something bad, like a murder or natural disaster or something. Because nobody in this city is surprised by anything.”

Jack nods and looks away for a moment.

It's late, it's begun to finally feel late. The streetlamps outside the window have started to shine in a way that suggests that the sun is only an hour or so away from coming up. Odile yawns, covering her mouth with the back of her hand in a polite fashion that Jack thinks is really pretty adorable.

“I guess I should get going.”

“You can stay. If you like. I mean, not to fool around. Just to sleep. Like I said, I don't sleep with people unless I know them pretty well.”

Jack thinks about how cold it is outside, of his bicycle, and the snow, and then sees this girl and her narrow but warm bed, and says, “Okay. If you don't mind.”

Odile nods and then pulls off her gray sweater, and she has a soft white T-shirt underneath, which traces the angular shape of her thin frame, and she is unbuttoning her pants but without standing up, which Jack finds pretty fascinating, and then this girl, this person he barely even knows, is in her white underwear, which Jack cannot help but stare at, and she is diving under the blankets, and Jack does not know what to do with himself, and so he unbuttons his shirt and decides to leave his pants on, and he begins to climb under the blankets, and she looks at him and says, “You can take off your pants,” and he nods, and turns around, and wonders what kind of underwear he has on, and he is secretly glad they are boxers, and relatively clean, and he feels an erection beginning to come on, and so he hurries beneath the comforter and sheets, and she turns away from him then, facing the wall, and there is her shoulder, and the shiny strap of her nude-colored bra, and freckle after freckle along her long neck, and he does not know if he should say something or do something else, and so ceases to think, only lies there, and in the absence of thought he listens to the girl breathing, and she turns her head toward him a little and says, “Goodnight,” and they sleep like that together for the first time without really touching each other, but the feeling is enough, at least for now, the inexplicable thrill of someone being beside you in a strange bed, and all that it might mean.