Office Girl (7 page)

“It's not like I'm not going to be back here at some point. My parents still live here and everything.”

“Okay,” he says, and then looks around the apartment once more. “You know, we were married for less than a year. Your mom was right: we were way too young.”

“Yeah. Somehow it seems a lot longer than a year.”

“It does. So do you still have your keys?”

And she nods to the small card table where she has left them.

“Okay. Then here we go,” he says, and switches off the lamp. And then, in the near dark, it's like neither of them exists.

IN THE SNOW-COVERED CAR WHICH IS A HATCHBACK.

And the same car he had back in art school. The tape player spits out a song by Guided by Voices and as soon as it comes on, she switches it off. It's from a tape she made him and they both know it. So they watch the snow come down in silence and let the beat of the loosened heater belt be their parting song.

 

 

 

 

OVER THE NEPTUNE.

The snow piles neatly along the airport's windows though her flight has not been canceled. Below their waists are two pairs of nervous knees and two pairs of uncertain shoes: there are her silver and white heels, and his gray-looking loafers. Neither of the shoes' owners will look the other in the eye and so this is all they see.

“You don't have to do this.”

“Yes, I do.”

“We could maybe try …”

“No. Not anymore,” and here she points the toe of her shoes away from him.

“But why don't we—”

“Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” she says.

And then they both laugh nervously.

“But why? Why Germany?”

“It's the only place I can do this. You know that. Okay. I'll call you when I land.”

The boarding call warbles its garbled message over the intercom.

“It could be different,” he says. “You don't have to leave.”

“No, it can't. And yes, I do.”

“Please,” he says, looking around. “Don't go. Please. Let's not do this. Let's stay married.”

And she begins laughing and he isn't and then she sees he isn't and then she feels embarrassed for the both of them.

“This sucks. This is bullshit,” he says.

“Auf Wiedersehen,” she says, and he can see her feet disappearing into an aimless-looking line of sneakers and dress shoes and comfortable slippers.

(THEN THERE IS THE SOUND OF AN AIRPLANE TAKING OFF.)

And he records it with the small silver tape recorder, hoping it is hers, knowing it isn't.

THEN THERE ARE OTHER SOUNDS AND OTHER TAPES.

And he tries to record them all.

(There is the sound of an alarm clock. It's ringing somewhere. Somewhere. There it is. Ten seconds of that.)

(It isn't even his alarm, he realizes, hearing it. It's hers, which she forgot to pack.)

(There is the sound of her empty gray pillow, of the empty side of the bed, which is like the sound of a gallows. Twenty seconds of that.)

(And a sigh he makes that is like nothing he has ever heard come out of a human being's body. Which he does not bother to get on tape.)

(And there are his bottles of Lexapro and Wellbutrin, which he has not taken in days now. Four seconds of each of these pill bottles sitting beside the sink, unused.)

(And the song that's playing on the alarm clock right now is Hall & Oates. And he records some of that. Why? Why not? And then he holds the tape recorder up to his mouth and says, “This is the sound of Monday, February 2. You've been gone twelve days.” And then he says, “I'm better off on my own. Really. Seriously.” And then he sets the tape recorder back in his lap. And then it's time to get ready for work. But two weeks have gone by and he hasn't been to work and now he probably doesn't have a job anymore. And this is when he stops sleeping normal hours. And he doesn't return anyone's phone calls, not his friend Birdie's or his other friend Eric's. And so he begins riding around the city all night long, looking for interesting sounds to record.)

TAPES.

But it's getting late and he's been riding his bicycle around for a while now: it's kind of awkward to watch but that's okay. In the unplowed street, he almost falls off the bicycle twice. This city, it's a random clash of single noises, and he tries to record them all, steering the ten-speed with his right hand, holding the tape recorder out with his left.

A couple holding hands, splashing in a puddle together. Five seconds of that.

The elevated train roaring by sounds like a kid whose teeth are all being pulled out at the same time. Ten seconds of that.

Someone sneezing into a pink handkerchief.

A car skidding in the snow.

There's a poodle barking at its own reflection in an icy window. Five seconds of that. And he looks down at his calculator watch and sees it's five to ten and he decides he will ride around until the sun comes up so he doesn't have to try to sleep by himself again.

BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT HE'S BEEN DOING.

Ever since he graduated art school four years ago: recording sounds, almost any kind, the noises, the exclamations, the abstract music of the nervous city. There are minicassettes, more than four hundred of them, in shoe boxes rising like modern buildings all around the apartment, from the front door to the bedroom closet to the bathroom. All these tapes, all these shoe boxes, are probably part of the reason why Elise decided to leave. He knows this now and does not blame her in the slightest. Because it's just one other unending project that keeps getting bigger and bigger. And he doesn't know why he can't just get rid of them all. Because there's just something about the tapes that he loves, something he can't explain. For example, in the shoe box marked
CRYING
, there are five or six tapes of nothing but the noise of people sobbing in public. And each of them are incredibly lovely in their own way. Another box is
GIRLS ON SUBWAY
, and mostly these are just tapes of girls, pretty ones, reading books or folding their legs, or dreamily staring out the windows of the train, or even snoring. And there are other boxes:
BAD WEATHER, CRIME, HAPPINESS, FAMILY, NEWS, DEATH, MYSTERY,
and
BIRDS,
each of them filled with tapes that are stark or strange or sublime. And it's a whole world, a self-portrait of his life built through single moments of sound.

And there is a box, somewhere in one of those piles, which is marked
FAVORITES
, and there are exactly five tapes inside. One is from the intersection near Division Street and Ashland—an old woman singing “Look for the Silver Lining” to a fountain of warbling pigeons, their coos being what he assumes is the birds' way of showing their appreciation.

Another tape is full of nothing but weather reports from the local radio station—the wordy weatherman describing a cloudy day as “
gray cumulus, just like ponies jumping over a fence.
”

One sound, which he has titled
Mystery Sound #20
, is a strange ghostly whistle, which used to come from the bedroom closet every night. And together he and Elise would listen in wonder and laugh.

Another tape is a series of long knock-knock jokes between two young black girls which Jack recorded on the westbound Chicago Avenue bus.

“Knock-knock.”

“Who's there?”

“Banana.”

“Banana who?”

And then there's Jack's favorite tape ever, of all time, which he recorded at the Milwaukee Avenue bus stop, the sound of a young woman in a purple coat talking softly to the young man beside her, and which goes exactly like this: “
I ate a plum today and thought of you.
”

And he does not know why this is his favorite sound of all time, only that there is something so perfect in its briefness, in its sense of longing. It's the way he has been feeling for some time, and in the sound of this other person's words, the plastic cassette tape itself is maybe the most beautiful thing he has left in his life.

And so he will sit on the floor with all these tapes, ignoring the phone, ignoring the gray cat, and play cassette after cassette, searching through the stacks of shoe boxes for the perfect combination of sounds. And he will hold the silver tape player in his hand and hit rewind and then press play and there will be the sound of the pink balloon drifting through the air, the alluring distance of its soft flight, resounding from the single silver speaker. And he will smile and rewind the tape again and then turn, seeking out a white shoe box which once held a pair of beige loafers, and find it shoved in the corner, sixth from the bottom of the stack. Along its lid, the box says
SNOW
. He will lift off the white lid, remove a cassette labeled
Snowstorm 12.29.1998
, and place this new tape inside a second tape player, a rectangular black one, from the 1970s. And he will adjust the volume and then press play on this second recorder. And the sound of the snow—like a pause, like a musical caesura, almost silent—will echo from its small black speakers. And he will play the two tapes together—the sound of the balloon and the noise of the drifting snow—and then decide something is still missing. And he will search among the towers of tapes for one more box—
ELECTRICITY
—and finding it, he will select a third cassette. And this third tape will be placed inside an old answering machine. And then he'll hit play again. And the third tape will fill the air with a hollow buzz, the sound of streetlights vibrating in the morning, and for a moment it will be perfect, the sound of all three tapes playing at the same time, and a city—a city of sound will surround him—and he will be among its quiet avenues and soft-lit boulevards. And the idea is that all these tapes, all these separate noises, are actually a city, a single town he has invented made of nothing but sound.

And it's what he's been working on for almost four years now, this invisible city, built one sound at a time, each noise a different place on an imaginary map, a different spot or intersection or park or corner or window in an imaginary town, where language is unnecessary, where nothing bad ever happens. It is the only part of his life that seems the least bit remarkable, this imaginary city, and nobody knows about it except Elise. And now she's gone. And he doesn't know when it will be done, if ever. And tonight as he's pedaling around, tape recorder in hand, it begins to get cold and so he decides to call his friend Birdie because he's always had a friendly crush on her, and she says hi and asks if he wants to come over and listen to some records and so he momentarily forgets about the imaginary city and says he can be at her apartment in ten minutes. How does that sound? Okay, she says, and off he pedals again.

LISTENING TO RECORDS.

And so he sits on the floor of Birdie's apartment and she is listening to the Talking Heads and she asks how he is doing and her voice sounds concerned and he says okay and he says he doesn't want to talk about Elise or anything and so he takes out his tape recorder and hits record and then asks her: “Have you ever done anything remarkable?”

And she looks at him and then at the tape recorder and says, “What? No. Once, in high school. On the swim team. I won this meet. I was the last—you know—on the relay team, and I usually was the weakest, but this one time, I don't know. It all came together. I never swam that hard in my life. I think I actually pooped a little in my swimsuit if you can believe it. And that was the only time I did anything the least bit exciting.”

And he says, “I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with me. And I think I realized that I'm average, that there's nothing remarkable about me. And I wanted to know if this is something other people think about.”

“Not really. You can ask me another question if you like.”

“Okay. Do you think I'll ever do anything remarkable?”

“I don't know. All signs point toward no right now.”

And then they both laugh sadly.

“Okay,” he says, thinking. “I have all these Christmas presents I bought for Elise. Like three of them. Do you think I should just throw them out?”