Helen Phillips - The Beautiful Bureaucrat

He sat up, her wrists still locked in his fingers. His skin looked strange, evil, gleaming nude in the pale alley light that snuck down the window well.

She was having trouble recognizing him. He seemed euphoric, rich with energy, almost superhuman.

“Are you a demon?” she said.

“Demon demeanor,” he said. “Demoner.”

He dropped her wrists and went for the buttons on her blouse. She slapped his hands hard, as hard as she could; it felt good.

“Demean or?” she spat.

“Nice,” he said, reaching once more for her buttons. “More, please.”

She obliged with another slap.

“Take your clothes off,” he commanded like a rapist. “It’s important.”

“You sound like a rapist,” she said.

He laughed like a rapist. “You were the one who wanted it last time.”

“I wouldn’t have sex with you now for—” she failed.

“For what?” He was abuzz, brimming over, unable to cap his vitality.

“A million dollars!” she raged, clichéd. “All the tea in China!”

“But you have to,” he said, jubilant. His hands firm again on her wrists. He was naked and she was dressed but they both knew who was really naked and who was really dressed.

She couldn’t understand anything anymore. What was happening to him? Was their life together almost over? Some of your aspirations are unrealistic. He was touching her hand. Maniacally stroking the lines of her palm. It reminded her of something. She pulled her hand away. She curled herself around herself.

“Everything is good,” he said.

She wished to make herself into a perfect sphere, no handles for him to grip.

“If you understood you’d understand,” he said. “Take off your clothes.”

She made a sound of protest.

“Think of it as make-up sex,” he suggested.

“What about the fight?” she said to her knees.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “and I’m not sorry.”

He grabbed her, the ball of her, and peeled her arms from her legs.

She was fierce; she clung to herself; he laughed as though it was a game; maybe it was a game; she swatted at him, she twisted her spine, she pretended to be air but always he got hold of a limb.

She gave up. Lay flat on her back on the butterfly quilt. He trailed his lips down her chin, down her neck, all the way down. That infuriating mix of wrath and desire.

Later, she was above him, eyes shut, pressing her hands against the dust-thickened window, taking those long deep insane light-headed breaths that come just before, and then, as it hit, she opened her eyes with a scream of joy — there on the other side of the dim window was a man, a trespasser, his splayed fingers an echo of her splayed fingers, his oily face lengthened in an expression of ecstasy, his eyes brilliant gray and wide open. Her scream of joy veered into a scream of horror; her eyes snapped shut for safety.

Joseph rose up from beneath her, puzzled, normal, saying the right comforting things, asking the right concerned questions.

When she opened her eyes again, the window was empty, the maniac vanished. She pulled Joseph back down so they were both low on the bed, hidden. Mistaking her urgency for desire, he pushed himself into her again, and who was she to deny the heft of it, the absoluteness of his presence, the seam ripping beneath them.

Every morning the Database awaited her like a living thing, luminous and familiar, alongside stacks of gray files. It was wise to put bureaucrats in windowless offices; had there been a window, September might have taunted her with its high and mighty goldenness. As it was, she and the files were headed into the murky depths of Friday. Her blank stare frequently resurfaced, positively vengeful, separating her from the world with its indifferent glaze. The files mocked her, their voices whispery as paper cuts. She worked coldly, like someone who had never loved — there was ice inside her, notwithstanding the past two days, during which Joseph had made her hot chocolate with five spices each night, delivered in a large mug along with whipped cream and a series of reassurances, received with a roll of her bloodshot eyes.

At noon she sat at her desk, in the clawed pinkish cube that had become her life, eating a cheese-and-mustard sandwich. The sandwich was soggy, falling apart, virtually inedible, yet she never let things go to waste. The lonesomeness of the bureaucrat’s lunch.

But then there was Trishiffany, appearing almost magically in her bubble-gum suit, slamming the door shut behind her, placing a plate of cookies covered in pink plastic wrap on Josephine’s desk.

“For me?” Josephine said shyly, like a starlet winning an award.

“Anything for you, Jojo doll!” Trishiffany said. “Hey, I’m your best friend here, aren’t I?”

There was, of course, little to no competition (Josephine remembered with slight yearning the three busy lookalike bureaucrats who had [mis]directed her to the vending machine). Still, that didn’t take away from the extreme tenderness she suddenly discovered in herself toward Trishiffany, who was busily unwrapping the plastic and pushing the plate toward her.

“Kitchen-sink cookies,” Trishiffany proclaimed. “Sounds disgusting, right? But I’ve always been so torn about chocolate chips versus butterscotch chips, but here you don’t even have to choose! Walnuts and peanuts! Oatmeal and cornflakes! Raisins and dried cherries! Not to mention the shredded coconut. Sometimes we just need our freedom, you know?”

The cookies were fat and dense and golden. Trishiffany watched her pick one up.

“So?” Trishiffany demanded before her victim had finished the first bite.

Josephine had something to say but she hesitated to say it.

“So?” Trishiffany repeated.

“This is the food I’ve always wanted to eat,” she confessed.

“Of course!” Trishiffany purred. “Of course it is, Jojo doll.”

Josephine finished the cookie and began another. But Trishiffany wasn’t eating.

“What, making me eat alone?” Josephine said.

“Oh … my girlish figure.” Trishiffany looked down at the pink lines of her hips.

“What about my girlish figure?” she retorted, picking up a third cookie, and then paused, wondering if the cookies might be poisoned.

“Well I haven’t been through what you’ve been through lately,” Trishiffany said. “You’ve earned a cookie or seven.”

“What I’ve been through lately?” Josephine repeated slowly, alarmed. She hadn’t said a word to anyone about anything. Yet at the same time it felt so pleasant to hear someone express compassion for her situation. But then she conjectured, with a jolt, that Trishiffany could be the other woman. “What have I been through lately?” she said, guarded, testing the waters.

“Oh Jojo doll!” Trishiffany said. “You’re so cute! You don’t need to be so suspicious all the time, you know?”

Josephine looked directly into Trishiffany’s bloodshot eyes. Her own tired eyes recognized themselves in her coworker’s. You tend to be worrisome and insecure inside . She dismissed her ludicrous hunch.

“I know,” Josephine admitted. She bit into the third cookie. The cork was loosening — she wanted to talk to Trishiffany — about her bad skin, her unreliable eyes, her vanishing husband, the man in the Chinese restaurant, the vagabond in her orgasm. She wanted to be held by someone kind. She wanted to cry into a cocktail across from a woman who always remembered Kleenex in her purse.

Trishiffany blinked, then winked. “Let me know if you ever need a free hug,” she said. “I’m all about the free hug, you know? The other day I saw a guy on the subway holding a sign that said FREE HUG, and I was all about that.”