Helen Phillips - The Beautiful Bureaucrat

“I see that,” he said. He kissed her forehead.

She awaited his solicitous questions, any expression of concern, but he just stood there pulling on his jacket and looking dimly pleased with himself, like a man headed out for a breakfast of croissants and café au lait with a ravishing mistress.

“Rest up,” he said with a wave. She couldn’t tell whether the words sounded hollow or if her own ear lent them that emptiness.

She closed her eyes, trapping her tears, and gave herself permission to float, to imagine café au lait or wine in a plaza in Spain, bright music, people dancing, someone encouraging her to dance. But all she saw when she shut her eyes was her office, three days’ worth of gray files devouring her desk, the bruised pink walls sighing, pressing in toward the humming computer.

By midmorning her physical state had slipped to match her lie; she felt feverish, queasy, permeated by illness. It took her half an hour to convince herself to stand up, go to the bathroom, drink water. There was a spider in the sink.

“Hey,” she said to the spider.

The spider looked up at her.

“Hi,” the spider said. “Man, you should really go back to bed. You look terrible.”

“Thanks,” she said, sarcastically or gratefully; even she couldn’t tell.

She lay in bed. A scrap of sunlight journeyed down the window well and across the butterfly quilt. The bed spun slowly in a circle, clockwise; then it spun slowly counterclockwise. The ceiling began to undulate.

Undue late.

Ulna duet.

Luau dent.

Dual tune.

Do la nu.

Duel aunt.

Laud tuna nut.

A dune lute.

“Please,” Josephine begged. “Silencio!”

Ice in sol!

Lice is no!

Slice eon!

An enormous black dog stood in a shadow in the park, waiting to attack, silent and beautiful. Panicking, she sprinted away and jumped into a car. She began to drive, even though she had forgotten how to drive. She ran a red, got trapped in an intersection, caused a traffic jam, merged onto a superhighway, one of those immense twelve-lane highways of the hinterland. She was going to have an accident but at least she was alone in the car. Then she glanced in the rearview mirror and realized she was driving a bus filled with a hundred billion people.

“You can quit!” she shrieked at the ceiling.

On Thursday, she commuted with Joseph as usual, in her typical tame skirt and cardigan, pretending today was a day like any other. After a morning spent sitting in her chair, ignoring the avalanche of gray files on her desk, not daring to move, barely daring to blink, she finally stood up just after noon, exited the room, and marched down the hall to the office where her interview had taken place.

“Come in.” The voice as dry as ever.

Much to Josephine’s surprise, the desk was covered with a white tablecloth and set for an elaborate luncheon for two, each of the four courses guarded beneath its individual metal dome. A carafe of water, a stainless-steel coffeepot, cloth napkins, multiple spoons and forks, a pair of salt and pepper shakers, a pitcher of cream, a basket of rolls.

The smell of the bad breath filled the room, worse than ever; Josephine half-expected to spot a small dead creature on her boss’s tongue.

“Pardon me,” Josephine murmured, relieved that she had an excuse not to enter. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I can come back later.”

“Please sit, Ms. Newbury.” There was still that vagueness to the face, the skin chameleoning into the gray walls until the mouth seemed almost to float unmoored in the air. The right hand gestured toward the second place setting, then grasped the carafe and filled both water glasses.

Josephine blushed, hesitating in the doorway.

“The table is set for you, Ms. Newbury,” The Person with Bad Breath said with a smile either kind or grim, impossible to decipher. “I have been awaiting you.”

Alarmed but obedient, Josephine closed the door behind her and sat down.

“Please, enjoy your soup.” The Person with Bad Breath removed the twin metal domes over their soup bowls.

It was a green soup, split pea perhaps; Josephine’s fingers were weak on the handle of the spoon. She tried and failed to focus on her sizable hunger rather than on the smell emanating from her companion, now worsened by its partnership with the flat overcooked odor of the soup.

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank you,” The Person with Bad Breath said, spreading butter on a roll, “for your service.”

Sir vice.

Josephine lifted her second dome, focused on the limp cucumbers and pale tomatoes of the salad, her eyes craving any sight other than those arid lips. She took refuge in draining her water, looking at her lunch companion through the shield of the bottom of the glass.

“Have I ever told you, Ms. Newbury,” The Person with Bad Breath continued jovially, “about my pets?”

Spy pest.

As it turned out, The Person with Bad Breath owned two cats, sisters, thirteen years old, but with very different personalities. Wasn’t it funny that Lucky was charming while Charm was a misanthrope. Josephine couldn’t help but picture the cats as faceless, their little fangs floating.

The cat monologue carried them through the main course — an overly creamy fettuccine Alfredo of which Josephine ate three bites — and delivered them at last to the sticky, sickly cherry pie.

“I could eat this pie forever,” The Person with Bad Breath declared, and then, with a wave of the fork toward Josephine’s untouched dessert, “Mind if I assist you with that?”

Josephine shook her head no, and her boss devoured her pie.

“I quit,” Josephine said.

“Did I ever tell you about Lucky and the pumpkin pie?” The Person with Bad Breath untwisted the top of the saltshaker and took a swallow of salt.

Josephine stared.

In the same casual manner, still rambling about Lucky and Charm, The Person with Bad Breath untwisted the top of the pepper shaker and gulped some down; licked all the pats of butter off their foil wrappers; drank the remainder of the cream straight from the pitcher.

“And that,” The Person with Bad Breath concluded, “is why I had to attach an air freshener to Charm’s collar. You can’t quit.”

“This is a free country, isn’t it?” Josephine said with a flare of rage.

“True.” The Person with Bad Breath picked up the dome with which Josephine had covered her fettuccine Alfredo when she set it aside. “But you are someone who has yet to use herself to her full capacity.”

Josephine was paralyzed, unable to respond.

The lips twisted up into a mysterious, parched smile. The fingers twirled a fork deep into the pasta.

“Go ahead. Leave now if you must,” The Person with Bad Breath said. “Take Friday off; we will see you back here next week.”

“Let’s get going,” Joseph said as he came through the door of the cellar after work on Friday.

She was sitting slouched at the kitchen table, clinging to a mug of tea, as she had been when he left for work—“I need some extra time to get ready today,” she’d lied, “just leave without me, it’s fine.”

“Going?” she said now with her unused voice.

“You okay?” He looked hard at her.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“No,” he observed. He came over and stood behind her and cupped her neck with both hands. “But at least it’s the weekend. Work okay today?”