Office at Night (5 page)

“W
e haven’t yet heard enough about Marge Quinn, we know almost nothing about her,” says the Frame.

“Nor about Hester Chan’s brother,” says the Canvas.

“What’s this about Chelikowsky painting? He doesn’t look like a painter,” says the Pigment.

“What does a painter look like?” says the Frame.

“What did he do or not do to JJ, and why did his marriage to Gladys break up, and why does he think someone wants to kill him?” says the Canvas.

“We’re a painting,” says the Frame.

“But not right now,” says the Canvas.

“Right now we’re words,” says the Pigment.

“Words, words, words.”

“Which means what exactly?”

“Does it mean we have to tell the whole story?”

“What’s the whole story? How would you recognize it? What would the whole story be?”

“Who is
we
here?”

“Yes, who is
we
here?”

“And weren’t we stretched and painted and framed long ago?”

“Aren’t we all long since dead?”

I
n the file drawer “C,” Marge finds a thick packet of files tied with a string—dirty, like a used shoelace. Chelikowsky/Cat 1, Chelikowsky/Cat 2, Chelikowsky/Cat 3, and so forth. And inside each file an unfinished charcoal sketch of a cat. And under each drawing a handwritten name in looped, almost feminine letters—in cursive that is, but a specific kind of cursive, like a man would write on a valentine to a secret lover or to conceal his identity, e.g., when requesting a ransom. Marge counts one hundred files containing one hundred drawings of cats, all tied together with that dirty string. Marge Quinn rummages through these. Marge Quinn stays very late doing this, after Mr. C. leaves, for a few nights. With little difficulty she identifies favorites:
Jorge
,
Piggy
,
Louis Armstrong
,
Cordelia
,
Tiffany
,
Liliana
,
Susan
, and
Helen
.

W
hy is he drawing pictures of cats? Why do you assume that
he
drew them? I drew them. I, Hester Chan, drew the cats. After he told me about throwing the cat across the room—which come on, is really horrible of him, unforgivable, completely, who cares that he tries to redeem that little story by saying he
caught
the cat before she went down?—after he told me that, I knew that I was in danger. But he told me in such an embarrassed, ashamed, horrified way that I think I overlooked something—I
know
that I did, because I often go along with things, because I want things to be easy.

Yes.

Yes.

Later, he threw me. He threw me, and he didn’t catch me, and I got hurt. It wasn’t just once. I lied about that. And I never told anyone this. I wanted to throw myself out the window after it happened the first time. And after that, every time I opened the window? That is the reason.

What?

What is the reason I draw
cats
? Oh, come on. For Christ’s sake. I draw cats for the same reason anyone draws anything: I love them. And I worry for them.

F
or a long time I sat in the other room, facing the door, and so could see, even if
see
is not exactly the word, who came in and what they wanted, from the moment they came through the front door. Positioned as I am now, next to the filing cabinet, I cannot do this. What I can do, right this minute, is look at Marge Quinn’s great can, and while this is not a small deal, not by any stretch of the imagination, I mean it’s a great, great can, it is not the same as being able to see who is coming through the door. Once a guy came in with a gun. He was holding it in his left hand, and in his right hand he was holding a cigarette. He came in and didn’t say anything, just looked at Chelikowsky, who was looking over some paperwork JJ wanted him to initial, then looked at his gun, then took a drag off his cigarette, then walked out again. I like to know when someone comes in with a gun. Even chairs can get shot. We can get shot, and we can suffer, and we can become damaged, and we can become scrappable. Not that, let’s just get this clear, I am complaining about my view, right this very second,
of Marge Quinn’s great can. I made that clear, right? It’s clear now, right? Very clear? She has a can, does Marge Quinn, that could take her far. If she plays her cards right. Can right. Ha!

Not, great as it is, that I like being sat on by it. It is a misconception that all chairs like being sat on. In fact I can speak with some authority, even if
speak
isn’t exactly the right word, for all the chairs in our office on that score. None of us like being sat on. Though I’m the only one who doesn’t like not being able to see who might be walking into the room holding a gun. Is that
who
or
whom
? One that, probably, has been used before. For nefarious purposes.

Hester Chan’s brother has a gun. He hasn’t showed it to her yet. I know he has it because three nights ago he came to see Hester Chan, and when she went down the hallway to the ladies room, her brother pulled out his gun and pointed it at Chelikowsky’s empty chair and said, “Bam!” We haven’t had a peep out of Chelikowsky’s chair since. Chairs are sensitive. Some of us more than others.

D
esks are solid, desks are sturdy, we serve as background, we support, we provide circumstance, we intimidate, we maintain. We are also full of drawers. Of nooks and crannies. We are stained in secret places. Here is a story—one Hester perched neatly on me to tell her brother once—or part of one.

A woman emerges from a river, crawls exhaustedly onto the bank, passes out. A moment later a man does the same. While they lie there, two bags float up beside them. The woman wakes first, sees the bags, takes them, and walks quickly away without waking the man. She makes her way to a train station and manages to climb aboard a train that is just leaving. She finds an empty compartment, pulls its light-blue curtains shut, takes off her damp blouse. As she is opening one of the bags to look for another shirt, she sees the shadow of a figure behind the compartment curtains. She freezes, terror-struck, but the figure moves along.

Instead of continuing to look for a shirt, she sits down on the bench, puts her head in her hands, and bursts into tears.
Sometime later, having fallen deeply asleep, she sits up and realizes the train has stopped. She puts her original blouse back on and leaves the train, stepping over various encumbrances related to cleaning as she goes. Not by chance the train has taken her home, but she does not go home. She goes to a hotel and asks for a room. The clerk is suspicious (she looks very bedraggled) and asks her for an exorbitant amount. She realizes that she has no money at all, let alone the princely sum he is demanding, and asks if she can stay on credit. He picks up the phone to call the bellboy to eject her, but as he does so her hand, which has been wandering around in her bag, uncovers a thick wad of cash that she hands over to the clerk, who is placated.

She is exhausted when she reaches her room but places a call to her father thanking him for putting the money in her bag. She tells him she loves him, then crawls into the bed and lies down and, for the third time since we first encountered her, sleeps. The next morning, having showered at length and generally tidied herself up, she goes to work. She finds her boss standing out on the curb in front of their building. He greets her, tells her he is waiting for someone, and asks her
if she will run upstairs and grab something out of his desk drawer, some papers. As he asks her this, he lights a cigarette. She agrees, of course.

When she gets up to the office, she finds it full of police. They want to know what the hell she is doing there, and she explains that she works there, that she has forgotten her wallet in the back room. The officer she is talking to tells her to get lost, they have an investigation going, but when he gets called over to look at something by an excited uniform, she darts quickly into the back room, opens the desk drawer, and removes its only contents: a bundle of correspondence. When she gets back downstairs, her boss is no longer standing there. She hears a
psssst,
looks up, and sees him across the street, beckoning from behind a newsstand.