Emily St. John Mandel: The Singer's Gun

Elena liked to pause by the floor-to-ceiling window in the reception area on her way back from the water cooler and stand there for a moment, sipping from a paper cup. He knew this because he watched her through the window of his office, their reflections separated by an interior wall but side-by-side on the hotel’s dark glass. Sometimes she waved at him and then he’d wave back, but more often she didn’t seem to notice him at all and then he’d watch her unobserved. At the end of the day it sometimes made him sad to look at her. She was tragic in the way he found half the office girls he’d ever met tragic, especially the ones who didn’t come from New York. She was one of millions of girls who’d come there from elsewhere and somehow gotten stuck in the upward trajectory, lost in the machine; making photocopies and fetching coffee for other people from nine to five or nine to six or nine to eight five days a week, exhausted at the end of a workday that far too closely resembled the workday before, and the workday before, and the workday before that; young and talented and still hopeful but losing ground; bright young things held up by their pinstripes on the Brooklyn-and Queens-bound trains every weekday evening, heading home to apartment shares in sketchy neighborhoods and dinners of instant noodles from corner bodegas.

The new secretary never stood by the window, and if she had Anton wouldn’t have waved to her. When ten days had passed without Elena, without email access or an explanation or word from his supervisors, he called Sophie to tell her that some genius had called a six o’clock staff meeting and he’d be home late. He closed himself in his office with a bottle of water and a sandwich. It seemed at least possible that if Elena were elsewhere in the building, her new office might be on the side of the building that faced the hotel, in which case he hoped he might see her reflection after sunset.

Sometime after seven his office window began to appear faintly on the surface of the glass tower outside, like a photograph rising out of liquid in a darkroom. An hour later the image was clearer, and by nine o’clock — damn these endless summer evenings — Anton could see almost every window of his building reflected on the side of the hotel. He tried to watch every reflected window at once, but the angle was such that he could really only make out people on the two floors above and below him. Any higher and he could see only the reflections of fluorescent lights. Any lower and there were only windowsills and angled blinds, a potted plant in an office four floors down. As time passed most of the lights blinked out. Two floors above him a man was working late. The man paced by his window once, twice, holding a cell phone to his ear and gesturing with his other hand. Anton stood close to the glass, looking from window to window, but none of the brightly lit squares held Elena.

He called the company’s main number at nine thirty. He listened to a recorded voice reading names, but Elena’s name wasn’t in the directory. It was strange to think of her living off the company grid, invisible and out of reach. Typing somewhere under the radar, making unrecorded calls.

On Monday morning Anton arrived at the office to find Jackson talking to the new secretary — Maria? Marla? Marion? — and the new secretary looked away with an unsuppressed smirk as soon as she saw him. Jackson smiled.

“Good morning, Anton.”

“Jackson. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Anton was moving past Jackson into his office, but he stopped just inside. The room was utterly empty, the desk and chair and sofa gone, his computer. Only the telephone remained, adrift on the carpet, plugged into the jack that had been behind his desk. He lifted his diploma down from the wall and held it to his chest. Jackson was watching him from the door.

“If you were planning on firing me,” Anton said, “why didn’t you do it on Friday?”

“Oh, we’re not firing you. Can you think of any reason why we should?” Jackson’s eyes flickered over the diploma. “I just came to show you to your new office, actually. We’re reorganizing a little.”

“Why can’t I stay in my old office?”

“You’re being transferred to a new division,” Jackson said. “You’re aware that we’ve taken over space on the twenty-third floor?”

“I remember hearing something about that.”

“Well, we’d like you to head the new team up there,” Jackson said. He inclined his head for Anton to follow him and they walked out together, through the open workspace where no one looked up as Anton passed, beyond the glass doors to the corridor by the elevators, where Jackson pushed the down button and stood avoiding Anton’s eyes until Anton gave up trying to make eye contact and stared down at the carpet. When the elevator arrived Jackson pushed a button marked M between the lobby and the first floor.

“The mezzanine level,” Jackson said when Anton looked at him.

“You said the new division was on the twenty-third floor.”

“I’m afraid the offices up there aren’t ready yet,” Jackson said. “Still under construction. It will probably be a month or two before we can occupy the space, so we’re putting you in a temporary office space for now.”

“On the mezzanine level? Is that even a floor?”

Jackson managed a pained half-smile but had nothing to say to this. The elevator was descending. The corridor on the mezza-nine level was unusually wide, and covered in linoleum instead of carpet. Bare lightbulbs hung at intervals overhead and pipes were exposed along the ceiling. Anton was struck by the white noise of this place, an indeterminate rushing and whirring, the vibrating of engines — were they close to the boiler room? Some sort of enormous central pump? — and the movement of air and water through the pipes and the ductwork all around him. He thought it was like being in the depths of a ship. The doors down here were older than any he’d seen elsewhere in the building, battered wood with scratched-up brass handles.

Anton heard a sound ahead, shuffling footsteps and a rhythmic squeaking; a woman came around the corner, pushing a plastic cart full of cleaning supplies. Her ankles were swollen as wide as her knees, and she stared flatly at him through thick round glasses as he passed. It occurred to him that he had seen her on his floor a hundred times and that neither of them had ever said hello. He said Hello this time, softly, experimentally, but she didn’t answer him and her expression didn’t change. They passed doors marked Security and Building Services and then a series of doors marked Dead File Storage, one through three. Jackson paused at the fourth one, Dead File Storage Four, fumbling with keys. Anton didn’t find the name of the room particularly comforting from a career ascension standpoint.

“It’s much larger than your old office,” Jackson said.

This was technically true. The room was enormous and nearly empty, and Anton’s footsteps echoed on the linoleum floor. His desk, chair, and sofa were marooned at the far end of the room, which was otherwise unfurnished and very bright. At the end of the room farthest from his desk, a line of decrepit filing cabinets stood unevenly against the wall. There were four large windows, none of which had blinds.

“This is a very strange office,” Anton said.

“It’s temporary,” Jackson said. “Larger, though, isn’t it?”

“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. What is this new division? What will I be doing?”

“I’m afraid I don’t have the specifics. You should wait to hear from your supervisors.”

“What do I do in the meantime?”

“That’s between you and your supervisors,” Jackson said, and left Anton alone in the room. Anton went to the nearest window. He was on the same side of the tower as his old office, but so far down that the reflective glass wall of the hotel was blocked by a line of colossal air vents. His new windows were only four or five feet above a gravel rooftop. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, allow me to explain. I only wanted to work in an office, and some things weren’t possible by normal channels. This is all I ever wanted. There were certain shortcuts I had to take.