2. She got up from her desk and told the other worker that she was taking her lunch break. The other worker didn’t say anything just nodded his head and continued working on his ledger. She put on her jacket and closed the door behind her, hearing the muffled sound of the bell tingling. She walked over to the gas station inhaling the scent of gasoline and urine. The lights inside were garish and flushed out all possible appeal any of the items for sale could have ever contained. Still, she picked up two hard boiled eggs, some corn chips and a bottle of milk. She brought them up to the counter behind which a teenaged girl was reading a magazine. The girl put the magazine down and picked up the items from the counter scanning them across the glass in the counter which had laser beams shooting out at all times to capture the information encrypted in the black stripes of the barcode printed on the items’ packaging.
She handed a ten dollar bill to the girl and the girl looked at the bill, holding it up to the light before pressing a button and giving back her change. The change was four dollar bills and some coins. She didn’t look at the coins before putting them in her pocket. She saw the little plastic receptacle where a few coins sat with a crumpled bill. The sign on the receptacle said "give," but she did not read the rest because she did not believe that loose change at places such as gas stations ever made it anywhere. Her items had been placed in a thin plastic bag that had a pattern of three arrows pointing each to the end of the arrow before it in a circle. She carried the bag to her car where she took out her keys and put one into the slot in the door and turned and the little cylinder of the lock on the inside of the door popped up and she opened the door. She sat down behind the steering wheel of her car and cracked one of the eggs. She peeled the shell off the soft white meat and then popped it whole into her mouth.
Her grandmother had been able to read fortunes in broken egg shells. In her car, cracking open the second egg and eating the corn chips, she looked at the fallen bits of shell and tried to imagine what her grandmother had seen. All she saw was brokenness and emptiness. She hoped that wasn’t her future but just a lack of imagination. A lack of whatever gift her grandmother had possessed. She wondered if her grandmother had seen her own death in the broken shells of an egg she might have used to bake a cake or cook an omelet or perhaps even had eaten herself, hardboiled and whole.
At the beginning of the century they had been taken and made to stand in front of the wall. Her grandmother, her grandfather, their neighbors, tailors, poets, watchmakers, musicians. They were made to stand in a line with their backs against the wall and then another line of people standing opposite had taken guns and shot them for dissidents.
Her hand was inside the bag of corn chips but there were no more corn chips left. She was staring out the windshield at the top of the wall that she could just make out. In her rearview mirror she saw the painter sitting on the kerb eating his lunch.
Back in the office she opened her ledger where she had left off. She did not really understand the nature of her job. She and the other worker were given tasks by their employer, running through lists of numbers and sets of figures, making adjustments, making sure that certain sets of figures matched other sets of figures, adding columns and entering data from various reports. But what the numbers represented or what purpose any of it was for she did not ask. Sometimes she had to go to the filing cabinet and look up some data. Sometimes she had to bind certain findings together. She was looking in her drawer for the hole punch when the painter came in from his lunch and put his lunch bag back in the filing cabinet. Unlike for him, there was an overseer to her work who made constant calls regarding files and facts and figures. He would call and ask that certain tasks be shifted in priority over other tasks. He would say that the file marked X147B was now considered rush and that he expected it to be ready in half an hour when he would send someone over to pick it up.
She punched holes in five pieces of paper at a time. Then five more. She had forty pages to make holes in. And then they all would slide into the three-ring binder, the teeth of which closed together to secure the pages. She put the binder in the outgoing stack.
There was another binder in the inbound stack and she pulled it off and placed it in front of her. She opened the binder. "Use Catalogue HZ790 to figure the adjustments." She walked over to the filing cabinet and pulled open the drawer containing Catalogue HZ790. There was a set of figures from the binder (labeled Form 17) which she had to compare to the figures in the catalogue. The catalogue had a set of if/then statements which directed her in the documenting of adjustments on a blank form (Form 32) which was then put in the binder and sent back. The original Form 17 was filed for future use or discarded after three years.
"If the difference of a figure in Row A is larger than five (5), subtract three (3). If it is smaller than three (3), add five (5)." "If the sum of Rows A, B and C is a multiple of three (3), add one (1) to Row B." "Add the figures of Column 5. If the sum of the adjusted form is less than CAT form AND the sum is less than original form, see Form B. If the sum of original is greater than CAT AND the sum of adjusted form is greater than original form, see Form C." It went on like that, with instruction after instruction until she had made all of the proper adjustments and filled out all of the proper forms.
She was in the middle of a seemingly overly-complicated series of computations when the painter came into the office and started saying something. She finished her set of computations before putting her pencil down. She rubbed her temples and tried to concentrate on what he was saying. Something about a hole in the wall.
Like everything else, there was a manual for any circumstance that might arise with regards to the wall. She stood up and walked over to the filing cabinet. She’d never needed to refer to the manual before. The other worker had told her that there was one. He’d worked in the office for years, perhaps forever, and said that before this painter there had been others and that before them there were other types of workers on the wall and they were always employed through this office and any questions with regards to the wall could be answered by a manual in one of the filing cabinet drawers. She didn’t know why he hadn’t gotten up to get the manual, but she remembered having seen it just the other day when she had been trying to find something else.
The other worker had gone back to the sheets of paper he had spread out across his desk. One of them looked like a map and he kept looking between it and something he was writing on a piece of paper.
She found the manual and took it to her desk, opening it up to the index, looking for what to do in the event of a hole. There were twelve entries for the word "hole," and she opened to one of them but it described the proper procedures for making a hole in the wall. The next entry wasn’t right either. But the one after that told her to call a particular number and report the hole and it would be taken care of.
She told the painter it would be taken care of.
He still stood there as if she hadn’t spoken. Maybe he was hard of hearing or a bit slow. Maybe there was something else he wished to ask. But if there was, she wasn’t going to sit there and wait for him to screw up his courage. She was behind in her work and she didn’t feel like getting reprimanded on account of his shyness. She wrote down the telephone number from the manual and when she looked up, the painter was gone. She would make the call after she had finished her tasks for the day. She looked over at the other worker behind his desk but he did not look up. He was still writing and looking back and forth at the map she had seen on his desk.
She worked for another hour and a half before finally making the call. She picked up the telephone which sat at the back of her desk and dialed the number she had written down. She listened to the ring of the telephone. She wondered who she was calling. It wasn’t the telephone number of the person to whom she made her regular reports, her overseer. The telephone continued to ring. A voice started talking but it was the distinct tone of a prerecorded message. The voice stopped talking and there was the sound of a beep after which she started leaving her message about the found hole in the wall. She left her number and name and hung up the telephone. She had a headache and looked forward to getting home, putting her feet up and watching something on the television.
She looked at the time punched into her time card: 7:45. The other worker was cleaning up his desk, putting away his unfinished project and getting his jacket on. She thought about waiting for him so they could walk out together but she decided not to. She told him goodnight and walked out into the parking lot.
She got into her car and sat behind the steering wheel, deftly maneuvering the car keys in her hand from the door key to the ignition key. She started up the car and watched her coworker walking down the street. Again she contemplated talking to him, asking him if he needed a ride. But he probably lived nearby, otherwise why would he have walked? She didn’t want to embarrass herself by offering a ride to only a block away. So she put her foot down on the accelerator and pulled out of the parking lot.
She watched the street lamps as she passed them. They seemed to diverge out from some central focal point, surging straight towards her, her eyes locked on the twin lights and them on her, and then at the last second slipping around her on either side of the car, rushing past and beyond her.
At home she made herself supper. Rice, cauliflower with melted Swiss cheese and a glass of Zinfandel. She turned the television on while she was making supper and sat in front of it as she ate. She watched television for two hours before the telephone rang. It was her brother.
"Did you see Strangers?" he said, mentioning the name of the sitcom that she had just watched.
They talked about the episode for forty-five minutes before he said, "Hold on, I’ve got another call."
She watched a commercial for dish detergent with the telephone pressed to her ear, listening to nothing. The dish detergent looked like it worked really well, getting out tough greasy build-up without leaving your hands wrinkly. The name of the detergent was Salvation and she wrote it down on a scrap of paper she kept on a little table beside her recliner.
"Hello," she heard her brother’s voice come back on the other end of the telephone.
"Yes," she said.
"Hey, I have to take this call but why don't you call me tomorrow?"
"Ok," she said.
And then they said goodbye to each other and she hung up the telephone. She looked at the little notepad where she had written the words: "Salvation Dish Detergent." She watched ten more commercials before turning off the television and got ready for bed.
She brushed her teeth and her hair. She took off her clothes which she put in the laundry basket in the closet which reminded her that she would need to be doing her laundry soon.
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She handed a ten dollar bill to the girl and the girl looked at the bill, holding it up to the light before pressing a button and giving back her change. The change was four dollar bills and some coins. She didn’t look at the coins before putting them in her pocket. She saw the little plastic receptacle where a few coins sat with a crumpled bill. The sign on the receptacle said "give," but she did not read the rest because she did not believe that loose change at places such as gas stations ever made it anywhere. Her items had been placed in a thin plastic bag that had a pattern of three arrows pointing each to the end of the arrow before it in a circle. She carried the bag to her car where she took out her keys and put one into the slot in the door and turned and the little cylinder of the lock on the inside of the door popped up and she opened the door. She sat down behind the steering wheel of her car and cracked one of the eggs. She peeled the shell off the soft white meat and then popped it whole into her mouth.
Her grandmother had been able to read fortunes in broken egg shells. In her car, cracking open the second egg and eating the corn chips, she looked at the fallen bits of shell and tried to imagine what her grandmother had seen. All she saw was brokenness and emptiness. She hoped that wasn’t her future but just a lack of imagination. A lack of whatever gift her grandmother had possessed. She wondered if her grandmother had seen her own death in the broken shells of an egg she might have used to bake a cake or cook an omelet or perhaps even had eaten herself, hardboiled and whole.
At the beginning of the century they had been taken and made to stand in front of the wall. Her grandmother, her grandfather, their neighbors, tailors, poets, watchmakers, musicians. They were made to stand in a line with their backs against the wall and then another line of people standing opposite had taken guns and shot them for dissidents.
Her hand was inside the bag of corn chips but there were no more corn chips left. She was staring out the windshield at the top of the wall that she could just make out. In her rearview mirror she saw the painter sitting on the kerb eating his lunch.
Back in the office she opened her ledger where she had left off. She did not really understand the nature of her job. She and the other worker were given tasks by their employer, running through lists of numbers and sets of figures, making adjustments, making sure that certain sets of figures matched other sets of figures, adding columns and entering data from various reports. But what the numbers represented or what purpose any of it was for she did not ask. Sometimes she had to go to the filing cabinet and look up some data. Sometimes she had to bind certain findings together. She was looking in her drawer for the hole punch when the painter came in from his lunch and put his lunch bag back in the filing cabinet. Unlike for him, there was an overseer to her work who made constant calls regarding files and facts and figures. He would call and ask that certain tasks be shifted in priority over other tasks. He would say that the file marked X147B was now considered rush and that he expected it to be ready in half an hour when he would send someone over to pick it up.
She punched holes in five pieces of paper at a time. Then five more. She had forty pages to make holes in. And then they all would slide into the three-ring binder, the teeth of which closed together to secure the pages. She put the binder in the outgoing stack.
There was another binder in the inbound stack and she pulled it off and placed it in front of her. She opened the binder. "Use Catalogue HZ790 to figure the adjustments." She walked over to the filing cabinet and pulled open the drawer containing Catalogue HZ790. There was a set of figures from the binder (labeled Form 17) which she had to compare to the figures in the catalogue. The catalogue had a set of if/then statements which directed her in the documenting of adjustments on a blank form (Form 32) which was then put in the binder and sent back. The original Form 17 was filed for future use or discarded after three years.
"If the difference of a figure in Row A is larger than five (5), subtract three (3). If it is smaller than three (3), add five (5)." "If the sum of Rows A, B and C is a multiple of three (3), add one (1) to Row B." "Add the figures of Column 5. If the sum of the adjusted form is less than CAT form AND the sum is less than original form, see Form B. If the sum of original is greater than CAT AND the sum of adjusted form is greater than original form, see Form C." It went on like that, with instruction after instruction until she had made all of the proper adjustments and filled out all of the proper forms.
She was in the middle of a seemingly overly-complicated series of computations when the painter came into the office and started saying something. She finished her set of computations before putting her pencil down. She rubbed her temples and tried to concentrate on what he was saying. Something about a hole in the wall.
Like everything else, there was a manual for any circumstance that might arise with regards to the wall. She stood up and walked over to the filing cabinet. She’d never needed to refer to the manual before. The other worker had told her that there was one. He’d worked in the office for years, perhaps forever, and said that before this painter there had been others and that before them there were other types of workers on the wall and they were always employed through this office and any questions with regards to the wall could be answered by a manual in one of the filing cabinet drawers. She didn’t know why he hadn’t gotten up to get the manual, but she remembered having seen it just the other day when she had been trying to find something else.
The other worker had gone back to the sheets of paper he had spread out across his desk. One of them looked like a map and he kept looking between it and something he was writing on a piece of paper.
She found the manual and took it to her desk, opening it up to the index, looking for what to do in the event of a hole. There were twelve entries for the word "hole," and she opened to one of them but it described the proper procedures for making a hole in the wall. The next entry wasn’t right either. But the one after that told her to call a particular number and report the hole and it would be taken care of.
She told the painter it would be taken care of.
He still stood there as if she hadn’t spoken. Maybe he was hard of hearing or a bit slow. Maybe there was something else he wished to ask. But if there was, she wasn’t going to sit there and wait for him to screw up his courage. She was behind in her work and she didn’t feel like getting reprimanded on account of his shyness. She wrote down the telephone number from the manual and when she looked up, the painter was gone. She would make the call after she had finished her tasks for the day. She looked over at the other worker behind his desk but he did not look up. He was still writing and looking back and forth at the map she had seen on his desk.
She worked for another hour and a half before finally making the call. She picked up the telephone which sat at the back of her desk and dialed the number she had written down. She listened to the ring of the telephone. She wondered who she was calling. It wasn’t the telephone number of the person to whom she made her regular reports, her overseer. The telephone continued to ring. A voice started talking but it was the distinct tone of a prerecorded message. The voice stopped talking and there was the sound of a beep after which she started leaving her message about the found hole in the wall. She left her number and name and hung up the telephone. She had a headache and looked forward to getting home, putting her feet up and watching something on the television.
She looked at the time punched into her time card: 7:45. The other worker was cleaning up his desk, putting away his unfinished project and getting his jacket on. She thought about waiting for him so they could walk out together but she decided not to. She told him goodnight and walked out into the parking lot.
She got into her car and sat behind the steering wheel, deftly maneuvering the car keys in her hand from the door key to the ignition key. She started up the car and watched her coworker walking down the street. Again she contemplated talking to him, asking him if he needed a ride. But he probably lived nearby, otherwise why would he have walked? She didn’t want to embarrass herself by offering a ride to only a block away. So she put her foot down on the accelerator and pulled out of the parking lot.
She watched the street lamps as she passed them. They seemed to diverge out from some central focal point, surging straight towards her, her eyes locked on the twin lights and them on her, and then at the last second slipping around her on either side of the car, rushing past and beyond her.
At home she made herself supper. Rice, cauliflower with melted Swiss cheese and a glass of Zinfandel. She turned the television on while she was making supper and sat in front of it as she ate. She watched television for two hours before the telephone rang. It was her brother.
"Did you see Strangers?" he said, mentioning the name of the sitcom that she had just watched.
They talked about the episode for forty-five minutes before he said, "Hold on, I’ve got another call."
She watched a commercial for dish detergent with the telephone pressed to her ear, listening to nothing. The dish detergent looked like it worked really well, getting out tough greasy build-up without leaving your hands wrinkly. The name of the detergent was Salvation and she wrote it down on a scrap of paper she kept on a little table beside her recliner.
"Hello," she heard her brother’s voice come back on the other end of the telephone.
"Yes," she said.
"Hey, I have to take this call but why don't you call me tomorrow?"
"Ok," she said.
And then they said goodbye to each other and she hung up the telephone. She looked at the little notepad where she had written the words: "Salvation Dish Detergent." She watched ten more commercials before turning off the television and got ready for bed.
She brushed her teeth and her hair. She took off her clothes which she put in the laundry basket in the closet which reminded her that she would need to be doing her laundry soon.
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