Helen Phillips - The Beautiful Bureaucrat

The basement.

If her job took place on an upper floor of “Z,” couldn’t the reverse job take place in the basement of “A”?

She hurried down the basement hallway, which was like all the other hallways but for its lower ceilings and eerie warmth. It resembled a nightmare but it was not a nightmare; here she was, trying every doorknob, finding each one locked.

Only he had stood on street corners beside her and their piled detritus. Only their two minds in the entire universe contained this same specific set of images: a particular pattern of shadow on the ceiling above a bed, a particular loop of highway ramp circled just as a song about a circle began to play on the radio. Tens of thousands of conversations and jokes. Without him she was just a lonely brain hurtling through space, laughing quietly to itself.

Hush-a-bye baby , she mouthed. To the beast, yes, but more to herself. The beast had been quiet for a while, perhaps resting. It was just as well, though, that the beast didn’t hear when the bough breaks, the cradle will drop.

She was shocked when the twentieth or so doorknob gave way beneath her fingers. She pushed, and the door swung open.

A baby-faced bureaucrat sat on an ergonomic chair in a bright white office. He eyed her scornfully; she felt again that old anxiety of the DMV.

“I’m from the ninth floor of ‘Z,’” she announced. “I’ve been sent by my superior to check in on an employee who works in this department.”

The bureaucrat raised his wilted eyebrows but didn’t speak.

“Can you direct me to—” she said.

“Superior who?” the bureaucrat interrupted.

She cursed herself for not knowing the name of The Person with Bad Breath.

“Ninth floor of ‘ Z ,’” she emphasized, attempting to match the bureaucrat’s irritability with her own, but even she could hear how juvenile her voice sounded. “It’s a rather urgent matter.”

“Sorry,” the bureaucrat said unapologetically. “I’m not permitted to release any information without clearance.”

“Where’s your superior?”

“Preparing for a meeting.” He motioned with a shoulder toward the inner office, where a colossal bureaucrat could be seen staring at a large computer screen. The screensaver’s yellow sphere was morphing into a purple cube.

“May I ask him one quick question?”

“Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works.” It was hard to believe that this person had a home, a bed, a history; that he existed outside the confines of this office.

“Is there anyone else to whom I can speak?” she said, aiming for disarming formality.

“I’m afraid not.”

“Might you please direct me to the office of Mr. Joseph Jones?”

“Around here we identify folks by their HS numbers,” the bureaucrat said, though she could have sworn that the briefest recognition passed over his features.

It took her a second to remember.

“I’ve got his HS number!” she said.

She unzipped her bag, her fingers slippery. The bureaucrat watched as she fumbled to pull the file out.

“You have the file,” the bureaucrat observed, mildly impressed.

“HS89805273179,” she read.

“Well, considering you have the file…” The bureaucrat gave in with a defeated sigh, placing his fingers on the keyboard. “What division?”

“He works in the Department of Birth,” she said.

“Oh,” the bureaucrat said, removing his fingers, relieved. “I’m afraid I can’t help you, then. You’re in the wrong department.”

Puzzled, she regarded the bureaucrat’s face, a face so bored it verged on tragic. Had she misunderstood everything?

Joseph’s file was open in her hands. She focused on the second row. G1, G2, G3. The word popped into her head.

“I mean Genesis,” she corrected, corking her exclamation mark. “The Department of Genesis.”

“What’s the HS number again?” the bureaucrat said indifferently, returning his fingers to the keyboard.

“HS89805273179.” That number: the number meaning his eyebrow, his toe.

The bureaucrat seemed to relish her agitation as he clicked away on his mouse for several long minutes.

“Sorry,” he said, still unapologetic, and for a bizarre millisecond she thought he was informing her that Joseph was already dead. “System’s been slow all day.”

She kept waiting. Every moment moving Joseph closer to whatever it was that would kill him. Something was happening in her stomach, a tornado of queasiness.

“HS89805273179,” the bureaucrat said at last. “He works here.”

“Where?” Josephine demanded, triumphant.

“Here,” the bureaucrat said.

“I mean, where’s his office?”

“I can’t release that information without clearance from a superior.”

“What?” She was fierce. “We already did this! I have his file, don’t I?”

“Rules is rules,” he said, offering up a fraction of a shrug.

“Tell me where he is.” She slapped the bureaucrat’s desk. “It’s an emergency.”

“ Your poor planning is not my emergency ,” the bureaucrat quoted. This time his shrug was even subtler. “Look, I won’t call security on you,” he added magnanimously.

“Security?” she thundered.

But those seven words had used up all his stores of generosity. “Or maybe…” he said, reaching toward the phone on his desk.

Back out in the hallway, she felt the weight of the entire building above her, as dense and impenetrable as the core of the planet. It pressed down on her, deflating her: just a pair of frightened, bloodshot eyes roving amid the remains of a skin-colored balloon.

Maintain your focus.

Locate 041-74-3400.

“Okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay,” she muttered.

His name a synonym for file.

Correction: his name a synonym for life , that’s what she’d meant.

Her mind unsteady.

Her gut unsteady, that’s what she meant.

Then the footsteps. Not the tap-tap-tap-tap-tap of bureaucrat shoes. These were sneaker footsteps. Sneaky footsteps. The footsteps of someone wearing a sweatshirt.

Merciful: a door bearing a picture of a woman in a triangular dress.

* * *

Theslipping figure on the yellow CAUTION! WET FLOOR sign in the restroom looked like someone preparing for sex or for birth, its androgynous legs flung open with abandon; abandon, the untamable urge, she was kneeling, clinging, heaving herself into a toilet, the tornado whirling her apart, molecules and despair.

The seven minutes she spent trying to pull herself back together passed in hazy, slow-motion desperation. Each minute potentially fatal for him. She cooled her cheek on the toilet seat as she shrank before all the different weapons that could be used against her — the ever-growing headache, the overwhelming pattern of the tile.

“There, there, child,” someone said, the voice far huskier than Trishiffany’s.

“Trishiffany?” she begged.

Something new had started to happen inside her, waves moving in a different direction. She swirled herself around, diarrhea, swirled herself back down, vomit. She held on to the toilet like it was Joseph, there was something so wrong with her, she was going to die, she could smell the animal stink of it, the shame. But it wasn’t her file she’d found, was it, and she remembered about the beast, how beasts make their mothers do all sorts of repulsive things early on, and there was a flicker of joy, and she became less scared, and the cloak embraced her back.

By the time she was done in the stall, the nice stranger had fled. Had there been a nice stranger?