Helen Phillips - The Beautiful Bureaucrat

HOEZEL/JOSEPH/ALEXANDER

HYUN/MIN/SEO

IANACONE/JOAO/PAOLO

IGNOWSKI/ALAN/ALEKSANDER

IKZDA/JENNIFER/SUN

ILIFF/GEORGE/EVAN

IMAIZUMI/KATSUMI/REI

INNIS/GREGORY/BARRON

IRESON/STELLA/JANE

IVASKA/ELMA/ADELE

IWATA/KIYOJI/MASAKI

JABARA/AZARIA/LEYA

JACKSON/MATTHEW/SHANE

JAISHANKAR/AARAL/DAEVI

JAMES/ANIKA/SUMMER

JEANBATISTE/MARCUS/HENRY

JEHLE/LUELLA/WINONA

JEONG/KIMBERLY/SARA

JI/MARVIN/MIN

JIMENEZ/DOLORES/DELGADO

JOACHIM/HEKTOR/BORREGO

JOLIVETTE/ZENA/CRYSTAL

JONCAS/MARION/CLAXTON

JONES/ELIZABETH/CAROL

JONES/JOSEPH/DAVID

JONES/JOSEPH/DAVID.

JOSEPH DAVID JONES.

There are plenty of Joseph Joneses. Plenty of Joseph David Joneses. But the birth date was there. And the death date. Today’s date. 10082013.

She sat at her desk in the perfect silence. Her body was doing strange and terrible things — her heart, her bowels, her sweat glands — that made it very difficult to think.

This gray file. Just like billions of others. Its pages cool and quiet. Yet his. His blood and spine, his teeth and hands.

Take it and exit.

She seized the file and ran to the door.

No. Hide it first.

Her fingers were quaking, nearly useless, but she managed to zip the file into her bag. In her brain, the sound of heavy rain.

Don’t forget your cloak.

Now go, go, go.

She clutched her bag and ran out into the hallway.

But appear calm!

Against all instinct, she slowed. She exited the building at a sedate pace and strolled down the block, her muscles aching from the restraint.

When she reached the corner, she glanced back at the building. She broke into a run, clinging to the contours of his file inside her bag.

File.

Life.

How had she never noticed?

She called him as she ran. Again and again the automated lady offered the intolerable option of leaving a voice mail.

She ran for a long time, not daring to look behind her. She had stolen something quite precious, the most precious thing on the planet; who knew what they might do to get it back.

Sunbeams reflected brutally off windshields, cars transformed into machines for harassing sensitive eyes, a sudden-onset headache. Her hazy vision interpreted a run-down apartment building as a cathedral. She ran past an old lady in a wheelchair missing one purple shoe. A large man carrying a miniature pumpkin. A naked doll with male genitalia. A line of children in angel wings marching across the street, calling out to one another in Spanish. The whole inexplicable world reminded her of him.

She had no plan.

She had removed his file from the premises — what greater act of courage can be expected of a bureaucrat?

A subway train rumbled beneath the sidewalk, vibrating the lampposts and the blue mailbox and the geraniums on someone’s stoop, shattering the illusion that this street was anything more than a humble layer atop tunnels and sewers, rats and rot.

She needed a safe place. Was any place safe?

Only he had been there to witness the dustbin of green shards when she shattered the stranger’s heirloom plate.

At least a quiet place. Water, birds.

File!

File!

Life!

Life!

File!

The precious beast sounded agitated, almost frantic.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Josephine murmured unconvincingly.

A young couple strolling in the opposite direction stared at her.

* * *

Ithad become a soft and mild day, no day for a chase. And there was nothing to back up her suspicion that she was being pursued as she entered the park, no screeching car brakes or heavy breathing behind her.

She half-expected to find him on the less-than-perfect bench, perhaps holding his phone out to the water, recording the sound of swans. Only when he wasn’t there did she acknowledge how much she had been anticipating his presence.

Instead, just the empty bench, its paint in worse shape than when she and he had eaten figs here less than three weeks before.

She sat exactly where she had sat that night. If she could scoot a tiny bit in time, she’d be sitting next to him: unpregnant, innocent, ignorant.

The day was becoming more golden by the minute. Glimmering fall weather that denied death as sunbeams glossed dying leaves. On a log poking out of the radiant water, three turtles stretched their necks up toward the light. She imitated them, the sun a tranquilizing balm on the hidden skin of her throat. But then she tipped her chin back down, frightened by the lulling brilliance of this day, the inappropriate and offensive beauty of the world.

What next?

Life, the beast whimpered. File.

She unzipped her bag and confirmed the presence of his file, though there was nowhere else it could be.

He could die by heart attack.

He could die by car, by bus, by truck, by train.

He could die by gunshot.

He could die by suicide.

She panicked.

* * *

“911,what is your emergency?”

“My husband is going to die today.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“From the park, but—”

“Which park?”

“The big one, the main park, but—”

“Where in the park?”

“By the lake, but he’s—”

“Which lake?”

“The lake with the swans.”

“With the swans?”

“Where people always feed the swans.”

“What are the cross streets?”

“It’s in the middle of the park. But my husband isn’t here.”

“Didn’t you say that you are concerned for his life?”

“But he’s not here. I don’t know where he is. But I know he’s going to die.”

“Ma’am,” the dispatcher said gently. “Ma’am. Do you need an ambulance?”

“No.”

“Do you need the police?”

“I need someone to find my husband.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“Yesterday?” The dispatcher paused briefly. “You can file a Missing Persons Report with the Missing Persons Unit. I can give you the number. Do you have a pen and paper?”

Her hand scrambled around in her bag, located a wooden pencil with a broken point. There was no paper except for the form in Joseph’s file.

“What makes you believe that your husband’s life is in danger?” the dispatcher inquired, possibly out of professional obligation, possibly out of curiosity.

Josephine ended the call.

* * *

Asidefrom the paved path, the distant sound of sirens, the buildings visible over the trees, this could be a lake in the wilderness of the hinterland. Trapped underwater by sticky mud in the shallows, orange leaves more vivid than any other leaves. She looked back at her parents as she ran down the trail at dusk. “Will there be a troll?” she hollered, rounding the rock outcropping, passing out of their sight.

“Josephine!” her mother said, speaking too loudly into the cell phone. The word, the warmth, was enough to unleash a swift quartet of tears. “Josephine?”

“Hi,” she managed to say. Where to begin. She touched her stomach, hot with grandchild.

“I have been thinking about you! Did you get my text?”

“Yes,” she said, not recalling any text. How to ask for help. What kind of help to ask for.

“I’d be so happy if you’d text back to my texts,” her mother said.