Paul Maliszewski

Cubicles

In the evening I leave my desk in order, but every morning, every single morning, when I return, my things aren’t where they’re supposed to be. This started just recently. I can’t remember when exactly. A month or two ago probably. No more than three or four months. Definitely less than five months ago. Sometimes it’s only little things that are not where they’re supposed to be. My photographs of my little babies, my Alice (seven) and my Matthew (nine), are moved around or knocked over face first or leaned back against this wall in such a way that they stare up at the lighting fixture situated directly above my desk. The little things add up after a while. They start to accumulate. You start to wonder if other people are doing things to you, playing tricks. I wonder anyway. You can’t put it past some people. I can’t anyway. There was a couple in the news, a husband and wife team upstate, who kept a little invalid boy locked up for years while they stole government checks addressed to him. I’m not in the same league as that poor invalid boy. I don’t for a second place myself on that same plane, but you never know is my point. One day, I mean, my favorite pen is misplaced. The next day my favorite pencil is gone. That pencil had sentimental value because my daughter gave it to me last Valentine’s Day. Then my keyboard is shifted. My box of tissues-gone. My keys are, all of a sudden, in a different cubby of my desk. Postcard from myself, from when I was in Mexico, in Cozumel, spun around on its thumbtack so that it’s now upside down. What’s the meaning of an upside-down postcard? Is this a signal? What in the world could possess an individual to do such a thing? I’ve asked Wilkerson to look into my problem. Naturally, he’s done nothing. He won’t do anything. He said he has bigger fish on his plate at the moment. That’s what he said, bigger fish on his plate. To myself I thought, You mean you have bigger fish to fry? Is that what you mean, mister? Or do you mean you have a lot on your plate right now? Is that what you meant to say? Him with his fish on a plate. The man makes no sense. Bigger fish. On his plate.

Let’s see, I could start right off and say, Hello, Sharon? This is Dennis. Or should I say, Hi, Sharon? This is Dennis. Hi, Sharon, Dennis here. Sharon? It’s me, what’s going on? Hi, Sharon, it’s me. How are you? I’m pretty good. Hi, it’s me, Sharon, and how are you? Hey, Sharon, it’s Dennis, how are things going? How are things? How’s things going? How are you? Hello, Sharon, how are you? How are you today? Or just how are you? Let’s keep it simple. If I remember nothing else, just keep it as straightforward as possible. Let’s see. Hey Sharon, it’s Dennis. It’s me. It’s me, Dennis. Hi, Sharon, look, I’m going to be trying to keep this simple and straightforward. That’s no good Sharon. Dennis. Hey. Too simplistic. Sharon, hi, I hope I’m not calling you at a bad time. Can I assume it’s a good time? Would she tell me if it wasn’t? Would she just mention it? Right at the outset? Just to let me know? I hope she would. I suspect she would, but how can I know? I have to assume. Let’s see. Sharon, I had a great time last weekend. Or would it be better to open with something seemingly tangential? Then work my way up to it? Did you happen to see today’s newspaper, Sharon, on page one I think it was, about that brother and sister, I think they were, and that retarded man, I think he was, and those two holding him hostage and them getting busted finally, just recently, yesterday, I mean? That was discovered in Gouverneur. The authorities discovered them in Gouverneur, right near where we were this past weekend? And now segue. Which I really enjoyed, incidentally, the weekend, I mean. This last weekend? Past weekend? What do I call it? This weekend? Last weekend? I had a great time beginning three and a half days ago and ending one day ago, with you, I mean. I had an excellent time together. Is that too presumptuous? I had an excellent time with you. I had a really great time with you. It was fun. Too vague. Last weekend was wonderful, with you. Last weekend was not an unpleasant one for me, and I hope it was as not unpleasant for you as it was not unpleasant, as I mentioned, for me. This is no good. This isn’t going well. This is no good at all. Let’s see.

What I’m looking at here is if I put in seven and three quarter hours yesterday and then do like seven and three quarter more hours today and then another seven and three quarter hours tomorrow, that means I have seven point seven five hours times three days. So that makes what? Five carry the one, two carry the two—twenty-three. That makes twenty-three point two five hours is what that makes. Twenty-three hours and fifteen minutes. So twenty-three and one quarter hours at nine dollars per hour means I’ll get twenty-three point two five times nine equals five carry the four, two, carry the two, nine, carry the two, twenty. Two oh nine point two five. Okay, so what that means is two hundred nine dollars and twenty-five cents, that is my gross there. Is that it? Looks right. That kidnapping victim up north got more in government subsidies. That’s crude, but it’s not like there isn’t some kernel of truth in there. But what I have to do is I have to take like twenty percent of two oh nine point two five and take that off. Two oh nine point two five times point two makes zero, carry the one, five, eight, carry the one, four. Forty-one point eight five zero. So what that means is it means I take that forty-one eighty-five there and subtract it, because the forty-one eighty-five needs to get sent along to whatever state agency place took care of the kidnapping victim before he was the kidnapping victim. Never mind that it ended up feathering the beds of the guy’s cousins, the way it always does. That’s a cliché, but it’s not like there isn’t some truth in that, too. So I subtract the forty-one eight-five out of the what was it again? The two oh nine point two five. That leaves me with zero four seven six one. One hundred sixty-seven dollars and forty cents is what that equals. I have to come in on Friday is what that means. There’s no way around it. I can’t call off. I simply cannot afford to call off. I’d like to call off. I have this tic in my right eye. It’s beside my eye, actually, and it only started just recently. It’s getting worse and more noticeable, and so I wonder if a little rest might be good. How I would really like to call off, especially right now, this week of all weeks, but one hundred sixty-seven dollars and forty cents sort of has other ideas at this point.

Last weekend was great, it was fine, it was good. I had a good time with Sharon, but I think I made an ass of myself. Maybe not an ass, that’s not right, exactly. Let’s see, we drove up north on 81. Outside was cold, gray. Large patches of the land looked as if the trees had burned to the ground years before, started to grow back, but then stopped because the effort was too great. As if the trees decided, look, let’s not bother. I couldn’t imagine living in a place where I had to really look in order to find something to look at. I said that to Sharon. But I admired the people who lived there, and not in a patronizing way. I said that also. Those were the things I said. We saw nobody. A truck passed us. I told Sharon I drew pictures of trucks when I was young. I hardly drew anything else. “This will have a point,” I assured her. We were and are at that stage where we impart inconsequential things about ourselves that seem like huge confessions. On each truck I drew I connected the cab to the back of the truck with two curly lines. Those wires—I believe they’re refrigeration wires—were practically the only details I provided. I liked the way those wires swayed. Sharon nodded in recognition of the curly wires. Let’s see, so one day my mother looked at my latest truck drawing and pointed at the curly lines. “What are these?” she asked. When I pointed them out to her on a real truck, she said, “I never noticed those before you drew them.” “You’re so observant,” she said. A couple of cars passed us. Sharon fiddled with the radio when the station faded. “I’m not sure why I brought that up,” I said. The land we were driving through was hard, but not like a stone, rather like some complicated puzzle. Sharon said that was okay, it was a good story. We were heading for a bed-and-breakfast. We had reservations. I said it didn’t seem like all that much of a story, really. The bed-and-breakfast ended up being in a resort town. I knew nothing of north country resort towns. I had never seen fit to combine the phrases “north country” and “resort town.” Maybe more of an anecdote than a story. It being winter, the resort portion—the restaurants and gift shops, the boat tours and putt-putt courses, and, I will always remember this, an outdoor maze constructed from hay bales—was closed. What could be closed was closed. Whatever could be boarded up was boarded up, covered with thin plywood sheets painted over with happy sentiments about hoping to see you next summer, to which someone had added swears in spray paint.

Then next I noticed my appointment book was getting all out of order. My appointments in my appointment book were changing. Someone was changing them. Someone had to be changing them. There’s simply no other explanation. At some point in the not-too-distant future someone will come along and hold me hostage for just years and impersonate me, and lots worse. They already have a term for this, the authorities. Identity theft, they call it. After I come in and restore order to my desk every single morning, I then look at my calendar and see what I have to do. Now today I saw my 2:30 meeting crossed out. I didn’t remember crossing out my 2:30 meeting. I didn’t remember changing anything. But my 2:30 meeting was crossed out using my favorite pen. My favorite pen is a black felt tip with an extra-fine point. I buy them by the box since the pens in the supply closet are so shoddy. Now even though I didn’t remember using my favorite pen to cross out my meeting and despite the fact that I’m not the forgetful sort, the fact that it was so clearly my favorite pen, the fact that I could tell, from looking at the line, the thickness of it and so forth, those facts, taken together, made me think twice and second-guess myself and really sit here and wonder if maybe my 2:30 meeting was, in fact, canceled. Had I drawn that line through my appointment? Was my meeting really canceled? I assumed that’s what it would mean. That’s what it would seem to mean. Its how I’d personally cancel a meeting on my calendar, but was it really canceled? For real? Who could I ask? Not Wilkerson. Who else knew about the meeting? And who wouldn’t hold it over my head if my question turned out to be dumb? Of course it’s canceled! Didn’t you hear? Canceled, the meeting isn’t canceled! What a stupidly dumb and stupid question for you to ask! Who knew about the 2:30 meeting? The line even looked like my handwriting a little bit, if I studied it. When I looked closely at it, it did appear something like the sort of line I might draw.

A woman comes into work and finds her things in disarray. This is about that woman and what she does, thinks, feels. First thing she does is she picks up the phone to call her boss, say, a Mr. Wickerton. No, first she sits down, maybe breathes heavily, drops her keys into her desk, then picks up the phone. The phone does not work. She can’t get a dial tone. She hits the thing that sticks up and can be pushed down. Hang-up button? She repeatedly hits the thing I have to find the correct name for. Still nothing. The woman notices the cord dangling by her side. At least the line isn’t cut, she thinks, the way it always is in movies, ominously. She finds the end of the cord and plugs it back into the receiver. I’m not sure the woman would actually think about phone lines in movies. She dials Wickerton. I’m sorry Mr. Wickerton’s not in his office at the moment, says Wickerton’s secretary, whom the woman doesn’t want to speak to even this much. I’m sorry I don’t know when Mr. Wickerton will return, says Wickerton’s secretary. She will not have a name, for various reasons. I’m sorry I don’t have any general idea as to what time he’ll be in. The woman is getting frustrated. Insert a reminder about her desk’s order disordered, her appointment calendar allegedly altered. How this has been going on now for x number of weeks. She wraps the phone’s cord tightly around her wrist and fist. I do wish I could be of more assistance to you. I’m happy to take a message and let him know you called. The woman says don’t bother, she’ll try back. She hangs up and disentangles herself from the cord. This much is true, but it’s what happens next that’s important. Perhaps the cord is wrapped around her wrist and arm, to avoid the rhyme. Fist and arm instead? Next the woman goes out to the parking garage. Say it’s the end of the day. She is tired. It’s been a long seven and three quarter hours. She wants to get home. Would she instead say “exhausted”? Her car is in a different spot. Or even better, or worse for the woman, her car is gone. She’s simply not the forgetful sort, she explains to the garage attendant. The attendant has to appear before the woman can tell him what’s happened. Maybe after she sees that her car is gone, she finds the attendant. I’m not sure. I’m basing this on guesswork. The woman continues searching for her car as she also looks for an attendant. She has to find him; he doesn’t appear. Those guys never just appear, right? Woman: This attendant is so little help to me in my moment of great need. She wouldn’t say that. Say the woman is beside herself. I always liked that phrase, beside herself.

If I get one six seven point four for putting in two three point two five hours, what does that mean I get per hour, for real, after everything’s said and done? I’m not talking about the nine per hour I’m promised, I’m talking about whatever’s left after everyone’s lined up for his share. What’s that make there? Seven point two even. Call it seven dollars and twenty cents after all’s said and done. What am I looking at there per minute, just out of curiosity? Take my seven point two even and divide it by sixty. What’s that make? That makes point one two—in other words, twelve cents a minute. Twelve cents for a minute of my time. I can’t even believe that. It’s right though. When I work it backwards I get the same one six seven point four I started with. I checked. And even better, when I take the point one two that represents all that I add up to for one minute here and divide that into sixty parts, for the sixty seconds, I end up with point oh oh two. It’s not even worth continuing, almost. In other words, not even a penny a second. Less than a penny a second. I add up to a penny after five seconds. Another five seconds, I’m looking at two cents. Sit here, look busy, fiddle around for fifteen more seconds, and I trade my two cents in and get a nickel back. Christ, this is futile. This is just textbook futility. I’m starting to think seriously about calling off Friday. This tic near my right eye is like a fight electrical charge now, rolling underneath my face. It’s just below the skin, a trembling, quivering, annoying type of thing. Maybe I’ll take my penny-every-five-seconds self and see if I can’t find something better to do than sit here and stack pennies up to my eyelids and trade them for nickels, only to find, nearly eight hours later, that I’m only good enough for whatever’s refrigerated and leftover and sufficiently alert to handle something televised at a low volume. I fall asleep in my clothes, in a tie and dress shirt, usually, with my shoes on more often than not. I could be buried I’m so well dressed.

Why should it have escaped me that the town would be closed for the winter? I should have done more research. I apologized to Sharon, and she said, “Please don’t worry about it, it’s no big deal, now we know.” Which was nice of her to say, but I persisted in thinking myself misled, and dumb for being misled, if that makes sense. “At least the food’s good,” she said. “True,” I said. We found one restaurant, practically the only one open. Every night the waiter brought me a plate with a fish so large it hung over the sides. I struggled to solve this place that was more puzzle than rock. I tried to find something about it I could latch onto. Every place has some essential thing, doesn’t it? I wondered that as we drove along the road that hugs the eastern coast of Lake Ontario. I was quiet mostly. It wasn’t the comfortable sort of quiet, admittedly. I was looking around, almost desperate, I would call it. I was trying to find a view to enjoy, something to observe and point out, an odd bird maybe, or a sign that could be taken a variety of ways. A pigeon would have seemed extravagant in this setting. I wanted to see something along the lines of the curly wires hanging between the front and back of an eighteen-wheeler. I wanted to see something as if for the first time. I was looking for that type of detail. We caught the tail end of a radio report about the retarded man, and I thought then and said a moment later, “Good lord, where was that? Where could that have happened?” We passed houses and houses and houses. There was some snow, a few flurries blown out of the trees across the road. Eddies of snow washed over the pavement. Nothing very near to extraordinary. We had the lake to our left, and then, when we turned around, we had the lake to our right. Every few porches sheltered a stack of folded and tightly rolled newspapers. There was old mail stuck in some mailboxes. Census forms, untouched and in red plastic baggies, dangled from every doorknob. Someone had been here before, once. A FedEx truck swung into view and passed up ahead. Five, maybe ten seconds later it passed again, driving fast in the opposite direction, away from the lake.

A few days later I discovered my car moved. It was still in the parking garage but in a different spot, on a lower level. A few days later I found my car backed into its spot. A few days later my car was gone. I wandered across the second level and up to the third, looking for my car. I could only find other people’s cars. But that was not the worst of it. Hours later, after completing the necessary forms, giving statements for reports and information to fill in blanks, I got home. My husband was there. He was watching a circus in which minor celebrities tame lions and fly through the air in misguided attempts to become less minor. The first thing out of his mouth, before I could say even, I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to call, or you won’t believe what happened, before he thought to say he was concerned or ask what’s wrong, are you okay, was this: “Do you think it was a good idea to stay out this late?” I looked at him like I heard him speak Dutch. “Do I think what? A good idea to do what?” He repeated himself. It sounded like English now but from some conversation occurring on the other side of the country. Like our lines were crossed with another couple’s. I lay into him about how yes, in fact, I do think it was a good idea to stay out giving a report to the parking garage company and stay out partying with the police and their wild forms and then stay out some more, frivolously contacting the insurance company, because our car was stolen. He sat down then. “Oh,” he said. “Wow,” he said. In the past few months I’ve gone from expecting the worst to happen to waiting for the worst to find some new, improved way to get even worse. As more news about that poor invalid boy came out, even that situation worsened. It transpired that the husband and wife confined him for days at a time in his wheelchair by sticking a long loaf of French bread between the spokes. I can’t put that French bread out of my mind. Chains, rope, those are items traditionally used to confine a person. Those are the implements of kidnappings. Something metal, strong. But a loaf of bread? There always seems to be some such detail in these gruesome stories. I can just imagine them sticking that bread between the spokes. There, one of them says, this bread should hold you. Our lives humiliate us—mine does me—when we see how easily they’re thrown off kilter. No need to waste good, solid rope when a piece of old bread will do the trick.

The woman tries to deal efficiently with the garage people, but they don’t move fast. First come the forms. Describe forms as blurry photocopies of photocopies, with lines cut off the bottom, etc. These are designed to get them off the hook, liability-wise. Would the woman think the forms exculpate them? Is exculpate the word I’m thinking of? Then it’s to the police station, to give a report to an officer who’s heard it all before. He’s sympathetic but not fazed. The pattern of little stuff being moved around her desk, that’s curious to the officer but not helpful. Make the officer cut her account off. Is this pertinent to the case of your car, ma’am? Or: Why not jump ahead to when you discovered your car missing, ma’am? The woman hates to be called ma’am. The woman tells the officer about her car being moved to a different level, then backed in instead of fronted. That gets the officer’s attention. It’s out of the ordinary, assuming she didn’t just park it on a different level, he thinks, or back it in one day for some reason. The officer takes down the information knowing it won’t help. Let me be frank with you, the officer says, it’s exceedingly difficult to catch the perpetrators. The woman nods. As soon as she hears this, she feels as if she’s heard it before. This is all happening to her, but it also seems routine. When they’re done, the woman gets up to leave. The officer says something about making sure she can find her way out. The woman says she can manage, she’s not the forgetful sort. Should I say that’s the second time she’s explained this? Maybe they shake hands then, the woman and the officer, or maybe not. When the woman emerges from the building, it’s night. I’m not sure how she’s getting home. Maybe a cab. The buses have stopped running. Maybe she calls her husband. Is there a pay phone? Does she have change? Does she keep it in a coin purse or let it collect at the bottom of her bag? Can I introduce the husband this late? Maybe the officer gives her a ride? Maybe it’s okay to leave her there, for now. Things have escalated nicely or, from the woman’s perspective, terribly. First it was petty desk pranks, increasing in frequency and overtness, then her car, and now this is the end. I don’t know what happens next. I don’t really know the woman well, so I’m piecing this together. Maybe she stands outside. Hardly anyone around. A few cars pass. Some loud, throbbing music from one. Someone honks and someone else screams at her as they drive by. This is one of those downtowns that dies every day at five. Could she think that? Would she think that? Or is she done thinking? No more thought, just her on the street, from above, outside darkened buildings that dwarf her.

In retrospect I should’ve taken Sharon someplace lively. A short cruise maybe. Let’s see, someplace sunny and filled with people eager to be with other people. I have this habit: when hardly anybody’s around, I notice how quiet I’m being and that makes me quieter, even when Sharon asks me what I’m thinking, to draw me out. I started to think about telling her how I drew pictures of trucks when I was young, but I realized I’d mentioned that. I needed another inconsequential thing to relate in significant tones. I didn’t remember anymore what had originally prompted me to think of those drawings. Maybe something came up in conversation. That’s often how it works. But once I thought about those refrigeration wires, I wondered what I’d observed since then that was on par with them. Were there any more curly wires? Would there be another moment when I pleasantly surprised someone? It isn’t difficult to imagine the effect of this line of thought on conversation. It led to no conversation. That night I dreamed I drove cattle across a prairie. I rode a buffalo owned by the musician Neil Young. He took me aside and said I had to return his buffalo by sunup. “This is my special buffalo,” he said. “I need it back by sunup.” In the dream everyone said things like sunup. There was a storm. The cattle got spooked and milled restlessly. Then there was a stampede, and I was thrown from Neil Young’s special buffalo. In the rain and lightning and thunder, I wandered across the prairie, looking for the buffalo. I found only scared cows. In the morning, before we checked out, we ate breakfast. I had a bowl of fruit with grapes and slices of bananas, apples, pineapple, and oranges. Sharon had an English muffin, orange juice. I couldn’t explain my dream and didn’t try. “This pineapple is so tangy,” I said, to say something. It numbed my lips. I touched my fingers to my lips, checking if I could feel them. I couldn’t believe how strong the pineapple was. Sharon said pineapple does that sometimes. She said that native Hawaiians applied pineapple juice as a local surgical anesthetic. “How wonderful,” I said. “That’s so strange:” I was glad to talk. Now I don’t know if that’s true, about the anesthetic and pineapples and Hawaii, but I’m not sure I want to know if it’s not true. Or maybe I could ask her, when I call. I’ll start right off and say, Hello, Sharon? This is Dennis. Or hi, Sharon? This is Dennis. How’s it going? How are things? How are you? And then say, about those pineapples, about their being an anesthetic, is that really true? Or, is that true really?

The seven point two even I get per hour, for real, and the penny every five seconds that amounts to wouldn’t be half as objectionable as it assuredly is if only I had a way to keep track of the time. What I mean is I’d like something instead of the wall clock. During some idle time here, I designed a bird clock. In my drawings the bird clock consists of a pole, like an average telephone pole except eighty feet tall, sunk into the ground and secured to a ten-foot by ten-foot platform. The pole has rope wound up the side, and it’s thick rope and strong and so tightly wound that I can climb up the pole by grabbing onto part of the rope, stepping on some rope below, and then reaching up for some higher part of the rope. The point is that the rope provides hand- and footholds, so I scamper up and down. Two point five feet from the top of the pole, I’ll build a smaller platform with some thin railing and a simple plank floor measuring two feet by two feet. There’s room to stand but not much for dancing. The upper platform allows me to adjust the workings of the clock. The workings consist, right now, of four wooden armatures that project from the top of the pole. The armatures are separated by ninety degrees and connected to the pole at an axle, which lets them turn freely. What I got at the end of the armatures—each armature is twenty feet long—are three-foot lengths of thin line, a nylon or monofilament, and at the end of each line is a bird. The birds are tied to the line in such a way that they fly unimpeded. Nothing’s cruel about it. The birds wear special harnesses fashioned for this application. Nothing has to be cruel. The birds fly around, turning the axle, and that registers as time. I’m not sure how yet. Wooden gears are involved. Throughout the day, when the clock counts off an hour, what I do is I scale the pole and bring in the birds. I climb down the pole with one bird tucked underneath my arm. I get another bird, let the first bird rest, and bring up the new bird to replace the tired bird. This goes on all day. I also perform routine maintenance to the armatures on an as-needed basis. Apply grease to the axle, for example, and check for fraying. It wouldn’t take me long, but it would sure make the time go. It’s impossible to put a number on the value of extravagant uselessness. Others help me change the bird clock if they want, so long as they aren’t afraid of heights and promise to be careful with the birds. Pigeons make good birds for this application. I trust time to pigeons. I always liked pigeons.

PAUL MALISZEWSKI has had writing appear recently in Harper’s, The Paris Review, and the Pushcart Prize anthologies. His story “Prayer for the First Balance” was first published in the Spring 1999 issue of The Gettysburg Review.

“Cubicles” appears in our Summer 2003 issue.

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