Office Girl (20 page)

He gets to his feet and pretends to be a shark, miming the great gray fin with his left hand.

“I am a shark,” he mumbles. “And now I'm eating people.”

“Another murder! We better call in a marine biologist. And an expert shark hunter.” Here she extends her hand, shaking Jack's. “It looks like we caught the shark we were looking for,” Odile explains.

“No,” Jack says, pointing down at the snow-covered subway floor. “There's no body parts inside. This isn't the shark we want.”

“We're going to need a bigger boat!” Odile shouts, out of turn, ending the scene.

She takes Jack's hand and bows and then, grabbing her bicycle, heads off at the next stop on Grand Avenue. Jack follows, and once they're at street level again, he looks at her and says, “What do you think those people on the train were thinking?”

“I don't know.”

“I think I saw a couple people laughing. But I wasn't sure. They could have been frowning now that I think about it.”

“It's okay. I'm used it. It's just like in art school. Everyone there hated what I was doing because it wasn't obvious or bleak, or because it didn't take itself so seriously.”

“Yeah.”

“One time that guy, that one professor, the one from the gallery opening, he looked at this painting I made, and it was of an apple with a mustache lifting weights, and he said,
You're not going to be successful doing this kind of thing,
and I almost spat in his face.”

“It just sounds like he was maybe a bad teacher.”

“But he was the chairperson. Of the whole department. That's pretty much when I decided I was done with art school. There was this idea that if something was good, everybody in the class had to like it. Like it was a popularity contest or something. Like it had to be tragic. I didn't want any part of it. And so I said forget it.”

Odile steps forward and there, a few feet from the entrance down to the Blue Line station, she grabs her silver paint pen and writes

ALPHONSE F. WILL DESTROY YOU, PROFESOR WILLS

misspelling the man's title and then inserting a small
F
above her mistake. Jack nods and they stand together beneath the caustic streetlights, admiring her work.

In bed together, a half hour later, they do not undress. They fall onto the mattress and wrap themselves tightly beneath the cotton blankets and then slip off wordlessly to sleep, Odile's fingertips sticky with the remnants of silver paint from her marker. And in the morning, at the arm's-length of dawn, finding themselves still pressed together, they do it backward, his mouth to the back of her ear, staring at the small television on the nightstand, watching a rerun of
Andy Griffith
, which is actually a program for the masses, but no one complains.

ON WEDNESDAY AT ONE O'CLOCK P.M.

But then the phone rings and Jack is in bed, taking a nap, and Odile is in the shower and so Jack answers the telephone without looking at the caller ID and there is a strange beeping noise for a moment and a couple of clicks and then there is Elise's voice and he knows it is her voice but he cannot believe it.

“Hello?” she keeps saying, and Jack does not what to say, how to answer, and finally he gets the word out, “Hello?” and she says, “Jack?” the way she always used to, a little unsurprised, a little disappointed, and he says, “Hello. Who is it?” even though he already knows who it is, just so she might think he has already forgotten the sound of her voice, and she says his name again, exactly the same way, “Jack?” and he says her name too, “Elise?” sounding more interested than he would like, and she says, “I had to call you. I had a terrible dream about the cat. Is everything all right?” and Jack feels relieved and a little heartbroken at the same time, and he says, “What?” just to make sure he isn't dreaming this nonsense, and she says, “I had a bad dream about Tiny. I wanted to make sure he's okay,” and Jack says, “He's fine. The two of us are great,” and she asks, “Have you been giving him his stool softener?” and Jack reels at the thought: the what? But he says yes anyway and then, “We've decided to change our names. After you left. We've started new identities,” and Elise, the girl he married when he was only twenty-four, fresh out of college, still in love with the possibility of being in love, does not laugh.

“What are you talking about?” she asks, and he says forget it. And then Elise says, “Well, that's it. I was just worried. Otherwise things have been okay. School is really good. It's hard, but the teachers here, the professors … it's really pretty great,” and Jack wonders, from her words, how they could have lasted so long, even made it a year, and he says, “That sounds good,” and she says, “I should probably go. I was just going to leave you a message. This is probably costing me an arm and a leg,” and he says, “Sure, I get it,” and she asks, “Hey, isn't it the middle of the afternoon? What are you doing home from work?” and he says it's a holiday, and she says, “What?” and he says, “Never mind,” and they begin to say goodbye when finally he figures out what he wants to say, and he mutters, “I just want you to know you don't have to worry about me.”

And the phone clicks and buzzes and she says, “What?”

And he repeats it. “I just want you to know you don't have to worry about me. I'm getting along okay. Things are actually pretty great,” and she sounds a little surprised and says, “Well, that's good. I'm glad to hear it,” and then he says, “But you shouldn't just call here and ask about the cat,” and she says, “What?” and he says, “You can't just call here and ask about the cat like everything's okay. Like this is all normal,” and there is a pause where he can hear the distracting hum of the international telephone line and she says, “I should really probably get going,” and he says, “I've been thinking a lot and it's not that anyone did anything wrong. We just didn't know what we wanted. We weren't the people we were supposed to be yet,” and she laughs and says, “Have you been watching daytime talk shows?” and he says, “No.” And then he says, “I just hope you're happy in your future life,” and she says, “What?” and he says, “I want to wish you the best in your future life,” and she does not laugh this time but asks, “Are you sure you're okay?” and he can hear the faucet being turned off, the shower no longer running, and he says, “I'm doing great,” and she says, “Okay, I really have to go,” and they make their goodbyes, and after he has hung the phone up, he knows, somewhere deep inside, he will not be talking to Elise again.

Odile emerges from the bathroom, freshly scrubbed and dew-wet, and the heat from the bathroom has made all of the windows in the adjoining bedroom filmy with condensation. And she pauses and writes something on the closest window with the tip of her right finger:

I AM OKAY.

YOU'RE OKAY.

And then there is a general shuffling of limbs as the two of them fall back into bed. And later they lie on the couch watching French movies until it's time to go to work. And even there, separated by the silver-green glow of the fluorescent lights, the bombastic, unrepentant dullness of the instrumental office music, and the odd angles of the carpeted cubicles, it's clear that what's happening between them is that, actually, well, they're probably both falling in love.

AFTER WORK ON WEDNESDAY.

Odile says, “I have another idea. Let's make a dirty magazine.” And they ride to her apartment and she grabs her old Polaroid camera and Jack asks, “What's that for?” and she winks at him and off they go on another odyssey, this time Odile taking a snapshot of Jack's ear as they wait at a red stoplight.

Jack asks, “What's this about?” and at the corner of Augusta, she unzips her jacket and lifts her blouse up and points the camera at her chest, and what develops is a close-up of her nubbly black brassiere, and she shoves that picture into her pocket with the others, and then two blocks after that, she lifts her dress and takes a picture of her upper thighs, and there is the filmy white, triangular composition of her underwear, and then she hands him the camera and says, “Now, your turn,” and Jack asks, “What am I supposed to do?” and she says, “Everybody's forgotten how to be shocked by the weirdness of the human body,” and Jack says, “What are you talking about?” and she says, “Just take a picture,” and he says, “Fine,” and opens his mouth and pushes the rectangular button, and the camera flashes, and he places the picture of his tonsils inside his jacket pocket and still they're riding, Odile in front, Jack behind, trying to hold the camera and pedal at the same time, and at the streetlight a block away, they stop, and Odile takes the camera back and then grabs the front of Jack's pants and forces it into his underwear and she snaps a picture and Jack says, “Come on, nobody wants to see that,” and Odile laughs and what comes through is an unnatural portrait of his genitalia and Odile shakes the film, waiting for the streetlight to turn green, and then she says, “You could never tell it's you. You know? It's actually pretty impersonal. I wonder why people get so hung up on it. It's actually pretty inconsequential—sex, I mean,” and Jack shrugs his shoulders and they ride off again and he watches her as she wedges the photo into her pocket, but it sticks out like a white flag.

“Now what?” Jack asks, and Odile glances over her shoulder and only laughs. At the next stoplight she grabs Jack by his ear and forces her tongue in his mouth and then takes a picture of that. And then a block later she sticks her cold hands down his pants again, and takes a picture of that, her fingers wrapped around his testicles. The camera becomes their accomplice until the film runs out and then they ride over to the twenty-fourhour corporate copy shop where Odile's roommate works, but she is not on duty tonight, and so they place the Polaroids on the glassy surface of the copy machine and begin to assemble a small zine, page after page, eight pictures in all, the final picture being the one of Odile kissing Jack, and they only make ten copies and on the cover of the booklet Odile writes,
ALPHONSE F. IS IN LOVE,
and they leave these ten booklets in odd places all over the neighborhood, placing them under windshield wipers of parked cars, in mailboxes, in the gaps of metal fences. And as they ride on Jack begins to think this:
As a boy, all I ever wanted was this: a life dedicated to art; every idea, every breath an artistic gesture
.
And here is this girl before me, blowing on her hands to keep warm. And why am I so worried it's not going to last?
But he mentions none of this to Odile and then they return to his apartment once again, faces frozen from the cold, laughing at each other's runny noses in the teasing way they do. And then again and again they're kissing.