Losing It

We stared at each other.

Jeannette and I went up the stairs. “She’s James Kramer’s mother,” she said. She glanced at me sideways and rolled her eyes. “She used to be a judge. Down in Florida? Now she helps out around here.” And then, as an afterthought, as if she felt bad: “A lot of grit there. A lot of wisdom.”

“Sure,” I said.

We walked around and she pointed out all the things I would have to do each day. I was to keep track of the supply closet, water the plants, make sure the conference rooms were ready when there was going to be a meeting by putting coffee out, answer the phones at the front desk for a few hours, dust a row of glass clocks that were awarded at a yearly conference, run a package up to the titles office on Green Street now and then, and other low-grade tasks. Since there wasn’t much to say about the job, most of our conversation centered around the cruise Jeannette had just taken with her husband.

“Did anyone jump overboard?” I said.

She shrieked with laughter. “No, hon,” she said.

“Was all the food free?”

“It was, it was. And get this, there was a different ice sculpture in the shrimp every night. I said to Ken, I said, ‘What do they do with the old ones? Lick ‘em?’”

I laughed. “That’s right,” I said. “They just lick them down.”

“They say, ‘Now lemme get that shrimpy ice thing. I wanna lick it!’”

We both cracked up, with her elbowing me in the ribs a little. I thought I had found a kindred spirit, and later I would be a little crestfallen to realize that Jeannette had this dynamic with pretty much everyone and would laugh at anything you said as long as it was under your breath and in a secretive manner.

I met Wes again. He was on the phone and gave me a polite nod. Ed Branch was tenderly pruning an office plant. I was introduced to a paralegal roughly my age named Allison Block. She looked up from her salad in a friendly way and shook my hand over her desk. I met James Kramer for the first time. He was on the phone and waved us away.

Just like that the flurry of activity was over and I was sitting at the front desk, by myself, in the quiet. I could see a pebble walkway through the glass front door. I was on the ground floor of the building, and something about the awning outside, and the way the light slanted in, gave the impression of the room filling up with shade from the ground up, like an aquarium would with water. Everything was becoming submerged: the taupe sofa, the coffee table, a picture in a heavy brass frame. I swiveled around in my chair. I checked my e-mail. I contemplated quitting, if not tomorrow then the day after that. Because what was I doing in this staid, afternoon-y place when what I should really be doing was working at a restaurant or something like that—a place with people my age and alcohol and energy and lines that could be crossed? I probably would have made up some excuse and found a way out, if it wasn’t for what happened the next day.

It was about three in the afternoon and I was sitting there, looking through a calendar featuring North Carolina’s flora and fauna when Jeannette swished by and asked me to take a file up to one of the lawyers, someone I hadn’t met before.

His office was upstairs and at the far end of the building, next to a line of windows that overlooked the train tracks. It was deserted in that part, except for an abandoned copy machine and some dusty boxes of files and a secretary’s desk to the side of the door, where I saw that Caroline, the old lady, was now sitting. She appeared to be dozing in her chair, the same prairie dress bunched up around her neck, her head lolling to the side. I crept past and knocked. No answer. I knocked a little louder.

I was about to walk away when something stopped me. I stood and looked at Caroline and the crumpled way she was sitting. Her head was lying back against the chair. Her mouth was open. She was positioned like a rag doll that had been thrown from across the room and happened to land that way—one hand resting in her lap, the other dangling down by her side. Her legs were lolling open under her dress. She looked deflated, inanimate. My eyes rested on her chest, searching, I realized, for the rise and fall of breath. I didn’t detect anything and my heart started beating faster and I was just raising my hand to cover my mouth when there was a voice behind me.

“She’s not dead.”

I turned around. It was a man a little taller than me. He had a ponytail. He looked to be in his forties and had thick brown eyebrows and a forehead that cropped out over the rest of his face.

“Oh, sorry” I said. “I wasn’t—”

“No, no, it’s fine, I do that a lot, too. Not stare at her,” he said quickly. “But, you know, wonder if she’s dead.”

I turned back around. I squinted.

“Are you sure she’s not?” I said.

“Well, ninety-nine percent.”

We stood there.

“Man she’s old,” I said.

“Yeah.” He leaned back on his heels. I felt him look me up and down. “She’s basically a wizard at this point.”

We stared for a moment longer.

“She’s a great woman,” he said, as if he felt bad. “Very wise.”

“Sure,” I said.

He turned to me, smiled in an open way, and stuck out his hand. “I’m Elliot.”

“I’m Julia,” I said.

We turned back.

“Why does she have all those seashells on her desk?” I said, pointing to a chalky pile of shells and rocks.

“It’s just … Don’t ask. Her grandson. I don’t know.”

“Is she your secretary?”

“Technically, yes.”

We continued to stare.

Caroline’s eyes snapped open.

“Oh my God,” I said.

“I’ll just be getting back to my office,” Elliot said loudly.

“Elliot Grouse?” I said. “Here.” I shoved the folder at him and we quickly walked in opposite directions.

Back down at the front desk, I kept thinking about the interaction. I ate some mints from the mint bowl. I swiveled around. I ripped off a bunch of pages from the flora-and-fauna calendar. Elliot. Elliot Grouse. He had big eyebrows and sleepy eyes and features that sat low on his face. I answered the phone. I searched through the drawers and sharpened all the pencils. It was something about the way he’d looked at me. There was an ingredient there that I needed to isolate.

I finally put my finger on it—it was appreciation. He’d so appreciatively appraised me and shaken my hand and smiled. It was a smile that was approving and receptive and open to all possibilities.

I felt jittery. I ate another mint. I turned the floppy, plushy dog over and over in my hands. There was something there, definitely, I thought. Maybe this was going to be easy. Maybe it wouldn’t be hard to pour myself into the opening that smile had given because there was a touch of desperation there, too, on his part, I could tell. I thought of his ponytail and his wet appreciation, and the way he looked at me as if I were smeared across the universe and he was dazzled but also wistful.

He reminded me of this couple I’d seen on a tour of the Air and Space Museum in D.C. They both had really long hair and the guy was wearing a cape and holding a stuffed animal, and the woman was wearing a bustier like a medieval wench would wear and they were just drinking each other in the whole time. A sense of hostility and suspicion rose against them from the rest of the group, but I was fascinated. The woman wore dark red lipstick and was overweight but walked as if she had gold coins jingling in her limbs. You could tell they were just really happy to have found each other and they didn’t care what anyone thought and there was nothing either of them could do that would be embarrassing in front of the other person.