Emily St. John Mandel - The Singer's Gun

“Oh, I mark all the errors that I find.” The pleasure in Nora’s voice was unmistakable. Her eyes were alight; she was in her element. “I’ve told you that many times.”

“Okay, well, thanks for pointing it out. I’m going back to work.”

But Nora disliked having the game cut short. “If you’d ever like to borrow my dictionary, Elena,” she said sweetly, “you’re welcome to look up any thing you need.”

“I don’t need your dictionary. Thanks.”

“Well, but the thing is, Elena, you thought there was a hyphen in ‘today.’” All wide-eyed innocence now, the malice vanished like a passing cloud.

“No, I didn’t.”

“So what you’re telling me is that you saw it,” her voice incredulous now, “but decided not to correct it, even though you knew it was wrong ?”

“Look, obviously I just missed it,” Elena said. “Are we done?”

“Elena,” spoken very seriously and reproachfully, like a CEO on the verge of firing a disobedient minion, although as far as Elena was aware Nora’s supervisory role was so nominal that she didn’t have the ability to fire anyone, “I know you haven’t been in your position for very long, but one thing that might not have been made clear to you is that it is our responsibility to correct every error that is made. That includes the errors that we don’t think are important enough to correct.”

“That’s cute, Nora. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to work.”

“Elena, just because I pointed out your mistake doesn’t mean that you have to get all pissy with me. I find it annoying.”

Elena went back to her cubicle, and some time passed in which she did no work whatsoever.

“What are you doing? Are you okay?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” Elena said. A coworker was standing at the cubicle entrance. She realized she had been sitting for some time with her head in her hands. “Just a headache.”

“It’s five o’clock,” Mark said. “You could probably leave if you wanted to.”

“Right,” she said. “Thanks.” She was unsure what she was thanking him for, and Mark didn’t seem to know either. He stared at her for a moment through glasses so thick that his eyes were magnified, shook his head and turned away. It was the most he’d ever said to her. She picked up her handbag and left her desk in disarray. She descended to the marble lobby and down the steps that connected the tower to Grand Central Station, walked across the main concourse with its ceiling of stars. She stood packed in among strangers on a series of subway trains until one of them deposited her on a hot street in Brooklyn, the air still bright but the shadows slanting now, children drawing pictures of people with enormous free-form heads and stick arms on the warm sidewalk and men playing dominoes at a folding card table, speaking to each other in Spanish and ignoring her as she passed. Three keys were required to get into her apartment building. A metal grid door slammed behind her like a cage and there was a regular apartment-building door just behind it, then a little foyer with dusty archaeological layers of takeout menus and unclaimed mail rising up under the mailboxes, then another door after that. At the top of the stairs a fourth key was required to open the door to the apartment, where the first thing she saw when she came in was the tank of goldfish that Caleb kept on a table in the hallway, the five fish bright and perfect, the tank impeccably maintained.

“You know,” her mother said, “I wish your sister had your kind of ambition.”

“I don’t know that it’s ambition , exactly.” Elena was filling a kettle with water, the phone held between her shoulder and her ear. She hadn’t spoken with her mother in two or three months, and she was surprised by how much she’d missed her voice. “I’m not sure what it is. It’s more like a gene for escape. You’re either born with it or—” She placed the kettle on the stove and stood watching the blue gas flame as she listened. “No,” she said after a moment, “I think ambition makes you accomplish things, see things through. All I’ve done is leave and quit.”

“That isn’t a minor accomplishment,” her mother said. “The leaving part, I mean. All I’m saying is, when I look at your sister. .”

“I don’t know, it’s hard to think in terms of having accomplished anything at this point.” Elena listened for a few minutes, looking at her reflection in the darkened window. In the Northwest Territories it was two hours earlier, five o’clock in the afternoon, and her hometown was so far north that at this time of year the sun wouldn’t set at all. She imagined her mother sitting by the window in the blazing daylight, flecks of dust in the sunbeams and the dog sprawled out on the carpet, until the whistle of the kettle snapped her back to New York. Elena turned off the flame and poured hot water into an open container of instant noodles on the countertop. Her mother was still talking. “You don’t understand what my job’s like,” Elena said when her mother stopped to take a breath. “It isn’t really bearable. I was supposed to be a scientist, and now I’m just here working. My only accomplishment is that I left.”

“You’ve survived in that city,” her mother said, “for how long now? Eight years?”

“Eight years. Don’t say ‘that city’ like that. You make it sound like Baghdad. Is Jade home?”

“Your sister’s not feeling so well, actually.”

“She doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“No,” Elena’s mother said mildly, “she doesn’t. She never tells me why not. Don’t take it personally, love, she’s been moody lately. How’s Caleb?” Elena’s mother had never laid eyes on either Caleb or New York City; both entities were the subject of frequent speculation and perpetual concern.

“Caleb’s fine. He’s studying.”

This provoked a brief silence, because the question of why Elena wasn’t studying too had never been resolved to anyone’s satisfaction. Elena’s mother cleared her throat.

“Well,” she said, “take care, now.”

“Goodnight.”

The line went dead. When Elena’s mother ran out of things to say she signed off without preamble. There had been a time when Elena had been annoyed by this, but tonight she found herself admiring the decisiveness of the ending.

Outside the sky was growing dark. There was thunder, and when the rain began Elena opened the window as wide as it would go. The sounds of the storm filled the kitchen. She stopped thinking about Broden for a moment and picked up the newspaper, and she was eating noodles and reading the news when Caleb came in. She heard him stop by the goldfish tank and murmur something approving to the fish. His glasses fogged quickly in the warmth of the kitchen; he took them off and blinked at her from the doorway, his hair dark with rain.

“You had no umbrella?”

“It broke,” he said. He was smiling in a far-off distracted way that meant the research was going well. She raised her face to him when he approached her, but he kissed her forehead instead of her lips.

“Have you eaten?”

“I had a sandwich up at Columbia,” he said. “Instant noodles again?”

She nodded.

“How was work today?” He was taking off his rain-soaked shirt and hanging it over a kitchen chair. His naked back had an unearthly pallor.

“Oh,” Elena said, “you know, an average workday. .” and realized that of course he didn’t know. Caleb didn’t hold a regular job, and to the best of her knowledge never had. “Well,” she said. He was staring at her, half-smiling, hoping for a punch line. “I guess you wouldn’t know, come to think of it.” She laughed quickly to make this last comment as joke-like and unresentful as possible. Caleb smiled back and retrieved a carton of orange juice from the refrigerator. “Are you cold from the rain? I was just going to take a hot shower.”