Jamie Wilson
Seattle, Washington
Squirreled away on the second floor with the customer service girls, the collection guys, the loan processors, and other invisible employees, Paul wonders if the fluorescent lights ever stop burning. The lights—hidden behind frosted plastic panels that play hopscotch with gray ceiling tiles—are on when he arrives in the morning, when he leaves in the evening, even when he comes in early or stays late.
A computer printout unfolds across Paul’s desk, and he forces his right index finger to march along one line of woolly, purplish text—date, account number, account code, name, figure—and then another. Soon, though, his eyes flick upwards. Actually, the lights don’t so much burn as glow. Yes, glow. Albeit coolly.
Paul returns to the printout, the text that could almost pass for gibberish, especially now, an hour after lunch. His finger retreats, back to the beginning of a line. The funny thing—the really disturbing thing—is that he can’t remember ever seeing a light switch. Not anywhere in the bank. There are other mysteries, too, like who makes a pot of coffee each morning, always there waiting, no matter the time? Gremlins, maybe. Maybe the bank has gremlins on the payroll. That, at least, would help explain the strangeness of this place, so unlike his old job at Housman’s, where he had an office with a door and windows; where he knew who ordered office supplies, who cleaned the bathroom, who brought in donuts every Monday; where he himself turned out the lights at the end of each day.
“Heya, tiger!”
Paul jumps. It’s Jed, looming in the doorway of Paul’s cube, the sheen of his black suit particularly tacky beneath the fluorescent lights. He shakes a bag of chips and bellows, “Pauly wanna cracker?”
Paul struggles to form a reply, but Jed moves on too quickly. Paul hears Jed, now back in his own cube, repeating his taunt—Pauly wanna cracker?—and then chuckling to himself.
Well, what could Pauly—Paul—have said anyway? He detests all of the collection guys, meaty fellows who make disturbing phone calls, cracking their knuckles before picking up the phone. (Their cubes surround Paul’s, and sometimes he finds himself cowering in his chair.) No, he does not like those guys, and most of all he dislikes Jed. Beefy and black-haired, Jed’s the kind of guy who grimaces when he means to grin. He is also, evidently, the kind of guy who would steal something from a colleague’s desk. He would. He did. A new box of paperclips. Off Paul’s desk. Two weeks ago.
A whisper-thin, bluish figure flies past Paul’s cubicle, pale hand waving. Eileen Biddle. She must be embroiled in a particularly urgent problem; otherwise, she would have stopped to say hello. Eileen is one of the old-timers, a thirty-year veteran of the bank and just about the nicest lady you could ever meet. Paul didn’t tell Eileen about the paperclip incident, but he can imagine what she would have said. “It’s not for us to judge.” Or perhaps, “Be patient. God’s not finished with Jed yet.” Paul’s not much of a churchgoer himself, but he appreciates Eileen’s sensibility, her delicate blend of compassion and righteousness.
His wife, Chrissie, is another story. Paul told her about the paperclip incident the day it happened: how he’d retrieved two boxes of paperclips from the supply closet; how one went missing when he went to the bathroom; how, later, he noticed one unopened box of paperclips on
Jed’s desk. “Why would he do that?” Paul asked Chrissie. “The supply closet’s just down the hall. Did he think I wouldn’t—”
Chrissie smirked. “Wouldn’t what?” Paul stared at her. Helpless. Hopeless. “Take it outside?” Chrissie continued. “Show him who’s boss? Give him what he’s got coming to him?”
She was baiting him, waiting for him to protest that it was just a box of paperclips.
When he didn’t respond, Chrissie shrugged. “Anyway, it’s not like they were really yours. They’re the bank’s, right?”
“It’s still wrong,” Paul retorted. “You don’t just go into someone’s office and take something off his desk.”
“So, he got up to get paperclips and saw an extra box on your desk. You weren’t there, so he took one.” Chrissie yawned. “What’s the big deal? Stranger things have happened.”
Paul dropped it with Chrissie, but the stolen paperclips consumed him for days. There was nothing he could do about it. If he said something to Jed, that would be it. He’d only increase his chances of becoming the butt of jokes, the target of pranks, just like when his friends all grew faster, got bigger, went out for football while Paul switched to track. Look at pretty Pauly, they’d say, in his pretty little track suit. He protested at first, but things only grew worse. His friends stuffed catalogues from Napoleon’s Menswear into his locker and hid ads for boy’s clothing in his backpack. After that, he never argued, never defended himself, never told them track was just as hard, if not harder, than football, never told them how much the coach pushed him, never told them he didn’t mind because it felt so good, running, running until his chest ached, running until his calves burned. Long distance. Alone. It was pure joy. Well, not exactly pure. Always there was the sliver of shame, the uselessness of being a track star in football country. Still, he’d loved
it. He looks up from the computer printout and stares at a gray cubicle wall. Why did he ever stop?
Paul shifts in his chair, slides his elbows onto his desk, and presses his palms against his temples, staring down at the printout. He should start getting up early in the mornings, running again. He really should.
“Hi, Paul.” Mary Lynn Talbot trills her fingernails on the plastic edge of his gray cubicle. “Could you spare just a sec?”
“Sure, sure,” Paul says, sitting up straight and marking a random line on the printout, as if afraid of losing his place.
Mary Lynn takes a seat in the one extra chair in his office and folds her large hands in her lap. Mary Lynn is not the least bit fat, but with her broad shoulders and brazen height—her knobby chin would graze his forehead if he ever dared to stand so close—she feels oppressive to him. Adding to Mary Lynn’s magnitude are her bright red and purple suits; her flashy scarves and chunky gold jewelry; her dark, bluntly cut hair.
“As I’m sure you know,” Mary Lynn says, “your six-month review is coming up.” She pauses and smiles, her cheekbones jutting from her skin like fists. “Now, before we get there, I want to know what you,” she pauses, unclasping and reclasping her large hands, “think about how things are going here.”
Paul nods and starts to clasp his own hands, then stops and grabs his Cross pen instead, tapping it lightly on the desk.
“So tell me, Paul. Are you comfortable with things here, are you still getting your feet wet, where are you at?”
Paul nods again, trying not to get distracted by the bright yellow scarf draped across Mary Lynn’s left shoulder like a penalty flag. “Well, I’m sure it’s going to be awhile before I’m familiar with your entire operation, but I feel like I’m getting a handle on things,” Paul says and wants to kick himself. Your operation? Why did he say your? Mary Lynn opens her mouth, but Paul cuts in. “Every day, I’m learning more about our business. First Bank’s, that is. Our business here at First Bank.”
Mary Lynn stares at him for just a moment too long. “I see. Well, why don’t you think about this some more, Paul. Let’s do the review next week. I’ll have Caroline contact you with a time.” Mary Lynn stands and peers down at Paul, his printout. “You know, Paul, I understand what it’s like to start a new job in a new industry, to get thrown into the fire. You let me know if there’s anything you have questions about, anything you’d like to go over. Okay, Paul?”
“That’s awfully nice of you, Mary Lynn,” Paul says. “I certainly will.”
As she leaves, Paul notices he is no longer tapping the pen; he is clenching it like a dagger. Come on, he chides himself, what’s the big deal? A six-month review sounds like standard operating procedure, right? Sure. Still, after Housman’s, it’s easy to get worked up, feel paranoid.
Nine years he’d been with that store. He’d started on the floor, selling men’s clothing, and worked his way up, finally managing the customer service department at Housman’s flagship store. Then a big national chain bought Housman’s, and one thing they thought they could do without was quality customer service—which, in Paul’s opinion, is not something you should skimp on. Of course, Chrissie wasn’t too surprised when Paul came home with a box and a severance check. Housman’s, she’d always told him, was a dinosaur—and we know what happened to the dinosaurs.
Two weeks later, Chrissie found a part-time job as a telemarketer, just to help out. A few weeks after that, Paul took this—the first job that was offered to him. Now his world is First Bank; his territory, the elite checking accounts. It’s his job to fish through the archaic computer system and push mountains of printouts around, to monitor the existing elite accounts and search for First Bank customers who might be eligible for one. The carrot for customers is no-fee accounts with perks like complimentary designer checks, safety deposit boxes, and investment services; the catch is that customers must maintain minimum balances of five, ten and fifteen thousand dollars for their respective Bronze, Silver, and Gold Checking Accounts.
The job might sound prestigious, but Paul is not allowed to truly interact with the elite account holders. If a customer is not maintaining the required minimum balance, Paul must send a series of firm but polite form letters reminding the customer of the agreement that was signed, the penalties that might be incurred. If the customer doesn’t respond, Paul must write a memo to Mary Lynn detailing the problem and the actions he has taken. After years of working for a department store and dealing with customers in the flesh, face-to-face, every single day, Paul has been distilled to a disembodied signature on the bank’s ivory stationery, to anemic initials on memos to Mary Lynn.
Paul checks the clock. 2:55. Chrissie should be home by now, even if she did something after work. Paul fully expected Chrissie would quit her job when he started at First Bank, but she says she doesn’t mind working a little and that they can use the money. The way he figures it, though, Chrissie spends all her earnings, and then some, on haircuts, manicures, tans, waxes, pedicures; on over-priced beauty products; on lunch dates and happy hours with girlfriends. Paul finds her pastimes, and her priorities, somewhat disturbing. Unbecoming, maybe, for a married woman. Four years now they’ve been married; two years they’ve lived in a neighborhood with
tricycles and basketball goals in the driveways. And still Paul is waiting for his wife to settle down.
He starts to reach for the phone, desperate to talk to someone. He can pass a whole day here and not engage in a real conversation. But as his fingers graze the cold gray receiver, the phone buzzes at him—an internal call.
“Hello?”
“Paul? Caroline. I’m calling to schedule your … performance review. Next Friday, three to four?”
Paul doesn’t have to check; the planner he bought upon starting this job has stayed almost entirely blank.
“Paul?”
“Sorry, I, uh … yes, that would be fine.”
As soon as he hangs up the phone, he picks it up again.
“Hey,” Paul says when Chrissie finally answers. “I was just thinking about you, just calling to say hello.”
“Oh. Hi.”
“Did you have a good day at work?
“Sensational,” she says, the word whistling through the slight gap between her two front teeth. He can picture her rolling her eyes. “So, what’s new—not another crime against office products?”
“Ha ha. No, same old, same old. But I do have my six-month review next week.” “Geez, has it been six months already? When?”
“Huh?”
“The review. When is it scheduled for?”
“Next Friday. Three to four p.m.” As soon as he says it, he can hear how peculiar that time sounds.
“Late on a Friday afternoon? Isn’t that when they fire people?”
“Huh. Well, I certainly didn’t get that impression. It’s just whatever time Mary Lynn’s secretary found on her calendar.”
Chrissie doesn’t respond. Paul wants to defend himself, but what Mary Lynn said was true—it has been difficult to start a new job in a new industry. Everything at the bank is encoded, every program, every policy swathed in a secret name or number, unintelligible to the outside world. And the people at the bank act in code, too, so much so that he doesn’t know if Mary Lynn’s stopping by was a friendly heads-up or a warning. Maybe it was her way of telling him she’s noticed that he hasn’t quite gotten the hang of things, that there have been oversights, errors.
“You there?” Chrissie barks. “Yeah.”
“I should probably let you get back to work. I’m kind of busy myself.”
Paul hangs up, wondering why he even bothered. It’s just that in his mind, Chrissie plays tricks on him. When he thinks of his wife, or when he says “my wife” in conversation, he tends to picture someone different than his real wife, someone that looks like Chrissie, blonde and slightly round, but someone who acts more like the girl he dated for two years. The girlfriend Chrissie could be a spitfire at times—but, just as often, she’d turn sweet, soft. The real Chrissie has lost all subtlety. Threw a plate at him last month when he complained about the dirty dishes. Is the Queen of I Told You So. Knows best—about everything.
Time for a break. Paul stands and discovers that his left leg is asleep. He hadn’t even noticed. He puts some extra weight on it as he shuffles out of his cube and enters the hallway, a narrow tunnel of gray walls just high enough to prevent normal people (that is, everyone except Mary Lynn and Jed) from looking over them. Walking past the collection guys, Paul tries to affect a normal stride and is relieved to get by without incident.
By the third turn, his leg is no longer tingling. He makes one final turn, heading toward the buzz and brightness of the large, open room that houses the customer service girls. Fifteen or so women of varying ages sit at their desks, headsets in place, fielding complaints from customers and answering questions from the tellers and loan officers downstairs, fingers click- clacking on computer keyboards as they look up numbers, credit accounts, adjust balances. Paul has to walk through this room to get anywhere—the break room, the bathroom, the back elevator. Like Paul, the girls are bodiless, yet they are not alone. They pass around plates of brownies or bowls of candy, roll their eyes at each other while on the phone, crack jokes in between calls.
As usual, Paul’s eyes seek out a friendly face—Eileen. She’s at her desk, her powder-blue cardigan in its eternal resting place around her shoulders. Unfortunately, she is on the phone. As he passes by her, Paul notices that she looks concerned or confused, her eyes squinting behind the enormous, square frames of her tortoiseshell glasses, yet her voice croons into the telephone, patient and kind.
Once, on his way out, Paul came up behind a few of the younger girls waiting for the elevator and heard them giggling about Eileen’s blue eye shadow. Sure, with her polyester slacks and feathered brown hair, Eileen might look old-fashioned, but so what? Paul wished to confront the girls; instead, he’d darted down the stairs, ashamed. If the tables had been turned—if it had
been Eileen who had overheard someone making fun of Paul—she never would have stood for it. She would have said something like “God made us all different on purpose.” If especially affronted, Eileen would have then pulled her sweater closer around her and walked away.
Paul hits the bathroom and then walks back through the girls, heading for the break room. Several of the girls are now huddled in the middle of the room, discussing who knows what. Paul breezes by them, nodding his head, but he may as well be a ghost; he garners not one look, not a single hello. Eileen is still on the phone, but Penny-Anne waves and smiles at Paul, her silver bun bobbing. Yep, he’s a real hit with the fifty-plus crowd.
In the break room, the light on the coffee maker burns red, and half a pot sits there, waiting. God only knows how old it is, but he’ll drink it. He douses the coffee with off-brand sweetener and powdered creamer, then leans back against the counter for a moment. The walls of the break room are lined with posters from the bank’s latest campaign: You Come First at First. Ah, yes, First Bank has it down—the pretense of the personal touch.
Eileen enters, pulling her glasses off and letting them rest, suspended by a cord, against her small chest. Closer to her throat, on a chain as delicate as a spider web, hangs a gold cross. The cross is the only jewelry she wears, and as far as he can tell, a wedding band has never graced her ring finger. She could be a widow, but there are no telltale signs, no framed pictures of grandkids on her desk.
“Why, hello, Paul! I see you’re just where I’m at, looking for that little jolt to get you through ’til five.”
Stopping in front of the vending machine, Eileen giggles. “Every day I tell myself I’m going to get through without these. Every day.” She drops a few coins into the vending machine, punches in a number, and then collects her Sugar Babies. “And every day, right around 3:30,
here I am,” she smiles, waving the shiny red and yellow bag. “Well, we all have our vices, don’t we?”
“Yes ma’am,” Paul agrees, trying to keep his voice even, normal. He’s seen Eileen’s afternoon routine before, and it always amuses him that she goes for the flashy Sugar Babies— and giggles about it like a naughty child.
“So, how’s your day, Eileen?”
“Just fine, can’t complain. Well, I could,” she laughs her high, scratchy laugh, “but I’ll choose not to. How ’bout you? How are things going?”
Paul takes a sip of his coffee, muddy swill made all the worse by acrid sweetener and the slight aftertaste of Styrofoam. “Not bad.”
Eileen steps closer. “Are you all right, Paul?” “Oh, you know, just one of those days.”
“You poor thing. Well, we all have them, don’t we?” Eileen reaches out and pats Paul on the shoulder. “You’re doing jut fine here, you are,” she says and then slides her glasses into place on her nose. “Now, me and my Babies had better get back to the phone before we get ourselves in trouble, but you hang in there, okay?”
After Eileen leaves, Paul stares into the coffee maker’s knowing red eye and clears his throat twice. He then downs the rest of his coffee and tosses the cup into the trash.
As he walks back through the girls, he sees that Eileen is on the phone again. She smiles at him and taps a finger to her chin. Sometimes, when he’s walking through this room, he thinks about junior high, when he was every girl’s favorite crush, when he’d walk through the cafeteria, nodding and smiling at girls whose cheeks colored one by one. Mostly, though, he pretends the girls are his girls—that they work for him. At Housman’s, the girls at the service desk dealt with
routine returns and exchanges, but they’d come to Paul with sensitive or complicated matters. “Mr. Jensen,” they would say, “sorry to bother you, but …” Paul would listen to the girls and then tell them how to handle a particular problem, or sometimes he’d take care of it himself. A slightly embarrassed but defiant mother might come into his office, sit in one of two guest chairs, and explain how she’d paid $26.99 for little Jimmy’s portraits—only to discover that his fly was undone in every last picture! She might then look Paul in the eye, appealing to his sensibility. “A photographer, a professional photographer, should have noticed that, don’t you think? Your store can’t expect us to pay for portraits we can’t use, can they?”
He’d liked that: Can your store do such and such, will your store do so-and-so? And he’d liked how the girls called him “Mr. Jensen”—none of this “Paul” business.
Back in his cube, Paul resurrects the computer printout from earlier. Mulvaney. Yes. The Mulvaneys should move up; the Mulvaneys should be rewarded for their prosperity, their success. The Mulvaneys should be promoted from a Silver to a Gold Checking Account. He must send them a letter. Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Mulvaney …
Paul comes to with a start; he has dozed off at his desk. He checks his watch: 4:42. It seems like the last time he looked it was around 4:20, 4:25 maybe. His cheeks burn with shame—how many people walked by?
He looks at his computer, at the printout on his desk, and then back at his computer. He starts typing, raggedly, continuing his letter to the Mulvaneys, but he has to stop and reread the letter from the beginning, then backtrack even further and consult the printout. When he finishes the letter he is surprised to see that it’s well after five. He hurriedly straightens up his desk, then slips on his jacket and leaves. All of the girls’ desks are empty, even Eileen’s. She often stays
late, unlike the younger girls who shut down their computers at 4:59. Eileen must have had a meeting or something; she’s very involved in her church.
Paul walks the six blocks to the parking garage, his pace matching the brisk wind. It’s gray out, cloudy. And nearly 5:40. Chrissie will not be pleased, but at least he’s on his way now. He takes the elevator up to five, where his white Corolla sits alone, as if abandoned. Paul unlocks the door, climbs in, starts the engine, and notices the fuel gauge is on E.
Spiraling down through the parking garage, he plays a game. Can he make it across the length of the parking garage, to the next ramp, without pressing the gas? To do so he must resist the urge to brake at the bottom of each ramp. It makes him feel a little reckless. When he finally moves out onto the street, he watches the gauge, hoping it will creep up. Nope, not the slightest budge.
He thinks he remembers a gas station on the fringe of downtown. But will it be open? He hesitates as he nears an entrance to the freeway. He could chance it, run on empty, but if the car dies on the way home and he has to call for help, Chrissie will go ballistic. The blocks tick by, and then he sees a round orange sign up ahead. The sign is lit, a relief.
Caught at a red light, he sighs. There’s nothing worse than being stuck at a light when there are no other cars around. If he were a different sort of man, maybe he would just go, run the light. Instead, he waits, tapping the wheel as he looks around. No office buildings here. To his left, a few pieces of trash blow by a convenience store with bars on the windows. To his right, a warehouse stands in shambles and, further up the street, a dismal cinderblock building boasts a large neon sign: Lucky’s Tavern. Yeah, sure. Real lucky.
He turns his attention back to the gas station, just a couple blocks away; he’s anxious to be done with it, to be on the freeway heading home. When the light turns green he takes off, no
longer worried about conserving gas. As he zips down the street he notices a woman coming out of Lucky’s—wait—can’t be. Paul slams on the brakes, looks over his shoulder, throws the car in reverse, and zigs backwards, bumping against the curb in front of Lucky’s.
It is Eileen, looking odd.
He throws the car in park, leans across the seat, and unrolls the window. Eileen’s large square glasses have disappeared, her blouse is loose from her slacks, and her brown hair is blowing every which way in the wind.
“Eileen!” he shouts, leaning across the seat. “Eileen!”
Eileen staggers slowly toward him, eyes squinting. Still several feet from his car, she hunches over, lips pursed.
“Eileen, are you all right?” Paul yells.
“I’m just out here getting some air!” she answers shrilly.
A stocky man with a beard emerges from Lucky’s and slings an arm around Eileen. “Everything okay out here, old girl?”
Paul clutches at his seatbelt release, ready to spring free should he need to rescue Eileen. “Eileen, can I—”
Eileen waves her hand dismissively, but Paul doesn’t leave. She turns on him then, shouting, “Go home, Paul! Just go home!”
The man says something unintelligible, then raises his arm and swats Eileen on her backside. Eileen squeals and slaps the man on the chest, chastising him. But even Paul can see she is only pretending, teasing. He rips away from the curb.
Minutes later on the freeway, as big, messy drops of rain begin to splatter the windshield, Paul remembers having passed through an intersection—was the light green? He doesn’t know, but he knows he was speeding. Still is. Shouldn’t be.
Finally, coming off the freeway, he slows down, turning onto one street and then another and another and another, passing squat rambler after squat rambler, each colorless in the gray evening, the rain. And then up ahead is his house, no prettier, no uglier than the rest, nothing to mark it as his, as special, except for the doorway. Chrissie is forever forgetting to turn on the porch light. His house: The home of the darkened doorway.
As he pulls into the driveway, the car dies. He barely manages to get the rear end up on the driveway and out of the street.
Shit. Chrissie is really going to get on his ass about this. Paul sits in the car, the rain on the windshield all but erasing his house, wondering if it’s even worthwhile to go inside. He’s late already and the car’s out of gas, which will mean a trip to the gas station later—no, not one trip but two: one in Chrissie’s car to fill up the gas can and another to fill up his car. And of course Chrissie will insist on accompanying him, even though she hates to drive in the rain, because she doesn’t like him to drive her car and because she’ll want to be by his side, complaining all the way. They’ll have to wait and do it after dinner, he guesses. Dinner—damn it. Why didn’t he call to say he’d be late?
If only he could tell her, if only he could make her understand, about the bank and its codes; about Mary Lynn, half-Amazon, half-automaton; about Eileen, half-angel, half … well, he doesn’t even know. About the younger girls who don’t see him. About Jed and his taunts.
Jed. How easy it was for her to excuse him.
He won’t go in. He’ll back out of the driveway right now, take off somewhere, find a bar, stay out all night, call in sick tomorrow. That will show them all. Call in sick for the next ten days, maybe. Screw the performance review and its ominous Friday afternoon time slot. Maybe he’ll stay away for so long that Mary Lynn will have to send him a series of firm but polite letters, reminding him of the agreement he signed, the penalties he will incur. It would be worth it. To not have to face Eileen. He cannot bear her acting the same, day in, day out, while only he knows the truth, her deception. Church group, my ass. Bible study at Lucky’s tonight, Eileen? If he has to witness Eileen pulling that sweater of hers in closer and saying, “Well, we’re all God’s children. We’re all equal in His eyes,” he will lose it.
In the dark, he grasps the cool hard metal of the starter key and then freezes as he remembers. The car is dead. He is stuck, and the longer he sits here in the driveway, the madder Chrissie will be. No explanation, no reason, no plea will soften her rage.
He unfastens his seat belt, grabs the keys, opens the door, and steps out. The rain hits him square. Suddenly the porch light blinks on; Chrissie must have heard his car. He tries to picture her, not the wife he prefers to imagine but his real wife, on the other side of the door, ready to tan his hide. He hears the deadbolt unlatch, and he drops to the ground, lettings his keys fly, assuming the starting position.
The front door cracks open like a gun, and he’s off. Running. Through neighbors’ yards, down the street to where he came from, around a corner, past one stop sign and then another, on and on. Long distance. Alone. Running in his suit and dress shoes like some kind of madman. Half-blind, soaked through, he pushes himself, his body burning in the rain.
There will be no euphemisms; Chrissie will lay it out: “You’ve lost your fucking mind.” She will berate him, she will interrogate him, but he will not be bothered. He will let it all wash over him.
Well, he will say to his wife, stranger things have happened. Yes, stranger things. She is a stranger. And everyone. Stranger.