Came Grief and Compassion
part one
The elevator doors slid open every morning, and there was your world. It was a world of fluorescent lights, fabric covered cubicle walls, and off-white plastic cases. It was a world of facades. Behind and inside everything was something else. There was a little vent on the side of Foy’s computer that emitted a steady stream of warm air. Once or twice a week, Foy would find himself staring at this vent, and he would feel compelled to lean in and sniff the odor of electricity, hot circuits, and plastic. The first time he did this he whispered, “That smells like technology.”
There were no seasons in this world. The temperature hovered around seventy degrees at all times. The only evidence of winter, for example, was the sudden appearance of coats, scarves, and other padded clothing on the people who got off the elevators. They shed these as they walked into the office, growing thinner with each step.
All the colors were neutral, all the edges were rounded, and everything was bathed in artificial light. It was like an environment drawn up in a board room and fleshed out by an action committee.
His old world had been richly textured. There were candles and dark wooden pews. There were robes made of rich cloth, and solid tables that held ancient elements. There were the lines on the faces of the elderly and the noises of children. There were the toys and other silly things stuffed here and there into the bookshelves of his old office. There was the sound and feel of his pen scratching out sermons on luxurious linen paper. There was the wonderful moment before worship when a deep bell rang three times, and everyone, even the children, became solemn.
There was great tension in his life in those days. Not the kind that comes from external pressure, but the kind that exists between truths. He lived along the slippery plane of a great continuum between life and death, flesh and spirit. He was in and out of people’s lives, baptizing them, blessing them, marrying them, and burying them. And all of this while the year moved gracefully through the seasons, Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and the long waiting they call Ordinary Time.
But there were some good things about this world too. For one thing, you could leave it. It took Foy a long time to get used to the idea that he could leave his job at the end of the day, and the thought of that still made him giddy. He watched people trudging toward the elevators and wanted to shout, “We can leave! Isn’t that wonderful?” But they wouldn’t understand because they had always been able to leave. They couldn’t imagine a job that you could never leave, not even for a moment.
He had been a little disappointed at first when he found out there were no punch cards. When he was young, he used to have a job where you punched out. You shoved a thick time card into a slot, and it made a satisfying “Ka-chunk” sound. Now you unhooked your ID card from your lapel and swiped it through a computer slot. When the green light came on you were good to go.
Over by the copier there was a smudge on the wall of a cubicle with an empty frame hanging around it. Apparently a woman named Doris, who wore too much makeup and was also said to have been a pain in the ass, fainted one day and slumped against the wall, leaving a smear of fleshy color on the fabric. Tom the technical writer brought the frame and hung it there, turning the smudge into a work of art.
Doris ended up leaving for reasons that no one remembered. Tom left, it was said, because they outsourced most of the technical writing to Pakistan. But the picture was still on the wall two years later, and there were still people around who knew the story behind it. Foy wondered what would happen if everyone who knew the story left. He could imagine the day when someone noticed the smudge and the frame, puzzling over them before dropping the frame in the trash and cleaning the wall. What would be left of Doris and Tom?
There were a lot of good stories floating around the office, many of them linked to various artifacts like stains, broken furniture, curious traditions, and quirky rules that obviously came into existence following some incident. In the cubicle village, how long you worked there was less important than your ability to hear and learn the stories and the corporate lore. Foy learned stories quickly, but then stories were what he always did best. He exegeted the office gospel, pulling out the archetypes and zeroing in on the hot spots. Hell, this was just like preaching. After a few months it seemed like he had been there for years.
All that was needed were eyes that could see, and Foy could see things. That used to be his calling – to see things. You can’t turn that off. If you can see things, you can see them, and you can never really close your eyes again.
One story he had not been able to figure out was the one about Suzanne, a woman who had some sort of accounting job, or so it seemed to Foy. He wasn’t sure what she did, but she talked about spreadsheets, and she walked around carrying a thick stack of computer printouts. Definitely a numbers person.
Suzanne’s son died of leukemia. That much of her story was whispered to him in his first week. But Foy began to see that there was something else going on with Suzanne. She seemed like some sort of outcast. It seemed to Foy that Suzanne lived on a whole other plane of existence. She moved gracefully among the office people, interacting with them, but she was not in their world.
Sometimes, if Foy was breathing right, like in prayer, it looked like everyone was moving around Suzanne’s cubicle in fast motion. It was like in the movies where all the cars and people are sped up, but one person is frozen in time, staring at the camera, jerking a little, out of synch with everyone else.
Occasionally Suzanne would put her head down on her desk, hiding her face in her folded arms and stay like that for a few minutes. Whenever she did this, Foy noticed that everyone looked away. There was something taboo about Suzanne and her cubicle, and the whole village was keeping a respectful distance.
Part two will arrive when it arrives. It might be a week.
rlp
Other Foy Davis Stories
8:36:54 AM 
|
