Office Girl (13 page)

AND AT EIGHT A.M.

He wakes up with a crick in his neck and the girl, Odile, is still sleeping pretty soundly and so he climbs out of the bed and finds a black magic marker on her bureau and writes his phone number on the lower part of her narrow back. Her nose twitches a little as he does it but otherwise she doesn't even seem to notice.
Now she can call me or not call me
, Jack reasons, dragging his bicycle out into the snow.
This way it isn't up to me at all
.

And there, outside her apartment, is a yellow sparrow barking in a gray tree limb, and he records five seconds of that.

AND AS HE RIDES.

He decides the next time he's alone with her he will put his tongue in her ear. Or something.

Really?

Maybe. Because he's got to try. Because she is too interesting, too beautiful not to even do anything.

And he doesn't want to go home and go to sleep. Because he knows he won't, he knows he can't. So he rides around, taking out his tape recorder, capturing the noise of different kinds of light.

A STREETLAMP.

A HEADLIGHT.

A NEON SIGN.

Each of them different.

And then he gets some coffee and rides to the Lincoln Park Zoo and runs around recording the sounds of different animals, the lemurs, the gibbons, the birds. And what he really wants is the sound of a tiger. But it's just lying there on top of some fake rocks, sniffing at the snow. And so he waits. He leans against the metal railing for about a half hour or so and finally, when the zookeeper opens the gate and throws in a dripping red hunk of meat, the tiger lets out a loud roar, the kind of roar from a jungle movie. It's perfect. And Jack gets it on tape. It's probably only three or four seconds long but that's okay. And then he is unlocking his bicycle and riding home and then it's starting to snow again. And wow. It's really coming down again, like a cartoon, like it's the idea of snow, like it's not even the real thing. Everything is white and soft and dazzling. And Jack, in front of his apartment building, can't help but stop and record as much of it as he can. Because it's a marvel, an explosion, a cyclone of white and silver flakes.

OPENING HIS APARTMENT DOOR.

Jack apologizes to the gray cat, who he has decided he will rename, though he hasn't come up with an interesting one just yet, and so he feeds it and then goes about the business of dating and labeling the minicassettes he has just made. When he is finished, he stands beside the narrow card table on which the answering machine sits, sees there are no new messages, and then, feeling more lonely than he'd like to admit, he presses the play button. He hears Elise's voice, the confident lilt as she announces, “
Hi, we're not in right now …”

We, us, we,
he thinks, as he watches the small tape unwind itself. It's been almost a month now and he hasn't changed the answering machine message. Not because he hasn't wanted to, but because he knows he can't. So he presses play once more, notices the way Elise says, “Hi,” like she is just meeting you for the first time, and then he stares down at the device, thinking about taping over the message, realizing then that it is one of the few recordings he still has of Elise's voice.
No,
he thinks
. Give it another week and then I'll do it.

A few moments later the phone rings and Jack is so sure it's Elise calling that he doesn't wait for the machine to pick up. He holds the phone against his ear, almost forgetting to say hello.

“Jack?” It's a man's voice, his stepfather's voice, David.

“David?”

“How are you, kiddo? I wanted to check in and see if you got your tooth fixed.”

“Not yet. I need to make a follow-up appointment.”

“Did you go and see Ray?”

“I did. But he wasn't in.”

“Do you want me to call him for you?”

“No, no, I've just been busy with other things.”

“I was hoping you and I could go get some lunch sometime.”

“Sure,” Jack says, scratching his arm. When was the last time he saw his stepfather? Six months ago? A year ago? He can't even begin to remember.

“How's this week look?” David asks.

“Okay. Whenever you want.”

“I'd like to talk to you about a couple things. How about this Friday?”

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine. Just a few things I need to talk over with you.”

“Okay.”

“So how's this Friday at Gene and Georgetti's?”

“Okay. Are you sure everything's okay?”

“Everything's terrific. I'll see you then. Don't be late.”

“Okay.”

And Jack hangs up the phone and sits and wonders what could be so bad that his stepfather wants to see him.

Later, he takes a seat on the floor, and the cat, who he has now decided to call Jacques, takes a seat beside him. Together they listen to the new cassette tapes, Jack rewinding the one of Odile from the previous night, studying the soft timbre of her words, the raspy tremor of her unfamiliar voice. He rewinds it a few times, surprised by her weird answers, as Jacques the cat purrs softly in his lap.

NEITHER ODILE NOR JACK KNOW WHERE TO LOOK THAT NIGHT.

Anonymous-seeming stares which wander past the water cooler to the soft hazy spot at the back of the office girl's neck as she stops to sip a paper cup of water, and then crushes the paper cup in her hand, and then his glance moves down to her bare knees, then to the hem of her soft, fluttering gray skirt as she walks back and everyone—meaning Gomez and the other two operators and maybe even the nighttime cleaning ladies—has to notice him staring. It's weird for everybody that Wednesday night. Because Jack and Odile don't know where to look when they pass each other coming out of the break room or when, leaning back in their office chairs, they happen to have a moment of eye contact. Because ideas have begun to make themselves known. Ideas concerning inappropriate, unprofessional, and imagined actions between members of the telephone sales department who were previously thought to be only work-related acquaintances, and near strangers at that.

Until finally, standing before the vending machine, in the quiet disarrangement of the break room, Odile leans over and whispers in Jack's ear, “Do you know where I can get a bunch of cheap balloons?”

“What for?”

“It's for this thing I'm working on.”

“What thing?”

“This thing.”

“I guess. There's this one place on Chicago Avenue. It's a party store. You can probably get a bunch there for cheap. Why, what's it for?”

“It's for this project I'm thinking of doing.”

“I could help. When are you going to do it?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I'm not doing anything tomorrow.”

“Okay,” she says, smiling, though not looking at him. He sees her soft reflection in the plastic window of the vending machine and then looks away quick.

Before she turns to head back to her desk, Jack pipes up: “I wrote my phone number on your back.”

“What?”

“I wrote my phone number on your back.”

“You did? Why would you do that?”

“I don't know. I thought it'd be funny.”

“I didn't see it. And then I took a shower.”

“I kinda thought you might not. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Yeah.”

“Yep, but it really wasn't,” he says, looking down at his feet.

“If you wanted to give me your number, why didn't you just give it to me?”

“I don't know. I didn't want you to get the wrong idea.”

“What idea?”

“I don't know. I just thought … I don't know. I wanted you to have it. I mean, I like hanging out with you. But I didn't want you to think I was a weirdo or something.”

Finally, Odile turns and faces him and says, “Too late for that,” and then winks at him and heads back to her desk. And he stands there and thinks he can still smell her powder deodorant, the oddly attractive oil of her hair, lingering there like some phantom castle.

AN ACT OF ART TERRORISM.

At nine-thirty a.m. that Thursday morning they meet up outside the party store on Chicago Avenue and Odile buys fifty silver mylar balloons for only ten bucks and Jack asks, “So what's the big idea?” and Odile asks, “Are you in?” and he says, “Sure, why not?” and Odile holds the silver balloons as they ride downtown to a small office building with large rectangular windows, and then they lock their bicycles up out front.

“Where are we going?” Jack asks, and Odile just winks and they walk in through the revolving glass door, and the balloons get stuck at first, and then they make it past, and Odile flashes a small ID card of some kind and the overweight guard looks up at her suspiciously, and she says, “They're for someone's birthday,” and he nods, his jowls shaking, going back to his mangled newspaper, and Jack follows closely behind, and Odile whispers, “I used to work here, doing telephone surveys. I really hated it,” and Jack shrugs and they stand before a bank of elevators and Odile presses the up button, and together they silently wait, and when one of the elevators arrives, and the mechanical doors stagger apart, the two of them step inside, forcing the balloons to fit.

“Okay,” Odile says, and from her bag she removes two cloth ski masks: a black one and a red one.

Jack stares at them and shrugs.

“Which one do you want?” she asks.

“What are they for?”

“To be anonymous.”

“I'll take the red one, I guess,” and he reaches out for it, removing his glasses, putting the ski mask over his face. It is a little too tight and he can feel it digging into the back of his head. Also, it's hard to see or breathe through the narrow holes. And so he puts his eyeglasses back on over the mask and imagines how ridiculous he must look.

“Now what?” Jack asks, and Odile smiles a coy smile and then fits the black mask over her face. She actually does look like some kind of art guerilla. She takes out a silver paint pen from her parka and, on the smooth wood-paneled wall of the elevator, she writes:
ALPHONSE F. WAS HERE.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It's our slogan.”

“Oh.” And then: “Who the heck's Alphonse F.?”

“He was a boy I went to elementary school with. He was this short, kinda dirty-looking kid. He used to get in trouble all the time in art class for drawing naked ladies. But he'd always put his name in the corner of the drawing, just like that.
Alphonse F
. And then he'd try to sell them to other boys in school. I've been thinking we should name our movement after him. Because he was the first great artist I ever met.”

And Jack looks at the silver writing on the wall and sees the bustling silver balloons and sees the black ski mask over Odile's face and decides there's little to do but agree.

Without them pressing any buttons, the elevator begins to ascend and eventually stops at the sixth floor. A matronly woman in a beige dress climbs aboard. She looks at two young people in ski masks, sees all the silver balloons, and then looks down. No one says a word. She climbs out of the elevator on the fourth floor, looking over her shoulder once more, to be sure of what she has seen, and then the mechanical doors close behind her. The two young masked people both begin to laugh. The elevator makes it to the lobby without any other stops. Once in the lobby again, they take their masks off, Odile tugging Jack by the sleeve, the two of them pacing themselves, trying to walk out as unobtrusively as possible.

Back in the cold air, the wintry snow flying before them, Jack squints over at Odile and asks, “So what was that all about?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, like what was the point of that whole thing? With the balloons and masks and everything?”

“There's no point. It's just something to make people think.”

“But what are they supposed to think?”

“It's just something, like a puzzle, for people to think about. It doesn't have some grand meaning or anything. It's just like a moment to be surprised by something. Kind of like a daydream. But something … real.”

And Jack nods and suddenly thinks she is a lot smarter and more interesting than he had thought before. Odile finishes unlocking her bicycle and is pulling her pink mittens back on and she can see him staring at her, wanting to say something else, maybe wanting to kiss her, and so she puts him out of his misery and asks, “So. Do you want to get some pancakes?”

“Sure.”

Because, now, what else is he going to say?

ABOUT THESE PANCAKES.

These pancakes are served at a corner diner on Damen and Chicago, a few blocks away from her apartment. Jack gets blueberry. Odile gets chocolate chip. The pancakes are huge and perfectly circular and come with tiny butter squares. They are eaten in near silence until Jack is caught staring at Odile's pancakes in a weird way and then she finally asks, “What? What is it?”

“Nothing.”

“You don't like chocolate chip pancakes?”

“No.”

“Have you ever tried them?”

“Once.”

“Well, I love them.”

“Yeah. They give me a bad feeling.”

“How come?”

“I don't know,” he says. “It's weird.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he says. “It's a little too personal for pancakes.”

“What's that mean?”

He sighs and says, “My first stepdad, David, he always used to take me and my older sister to dinner. Once a week. It was like our night out with him, and he'd try to get us to go to these fancy places, but all we ever wanted to go to was to the International House of Pancakes. And so he'd take us. But he wouldn't ever let us order chocolate chip pancakes.”

“Why not?”

“I don't know. Some hang-up of his. He's a shrink, and Jewish, so who knows? Maybe they were too unhealthy. Anyways. This one time he takes us out and asks where we want to go, and we say,
International House of Pancakes
, and he takes us and we're sitting there and we ask if we can order chocolate chip pancakes and this time he looks at us and says yes and so we go crazy. And then they come, and they're like covered in whipped cream and there are cherries and it was all made to look like a smiley face. You know, like there were these two smiley faces sitting there and so we started eating them. And then my stepdad looks at us and coughs or something and says,
Your mother and I. We've decided to get a divorce
, and I could feel the chocolate chips get stuck in my throat, and I look over at my sister and she looks over at me, and then we look down at the pancakes and they have those stupid chocolate smiles, and neither of us wants to finish, because we feel so bad, but I kind of feel like this is my only chance, and so we keep shoveling these stupid pancakes into our mouths, but we don't even enjoy them. That's like my one childhood memory. Even then I guess I couldn't finish anything.”