“Hello,” she mouths, looking straight ahead into the opaque window, before hopping down and jogging back to the building. She stops at the door to brush off her dirtied knees and shins.
CORPORATE TALKING
Days go by. Her boss is gone again; she doesn’t know when he’ll be back. She asks him once, when he calls with instructions to re-type and mail an email he has sent her.
“Do you know what day you’ll be back? By the end of this week, you think?”
“Hard to say, hard to say,” he says, trailing off, “it’s just hard to say at this point…”
This is enough to tell her that— for the time being, she doesn’t have to worry about being caught as she continues to come in early, and to stare out into the hallway, waiting. Sometimes she waits a long time and the man never comes out. She knows he got the note she left on his van— because it’s gone. Unless the wind carried it off. Unless someone else took it. He must come out sometimes— she’s noticed the van’s shifting position in the parking lot. Someone is moving. She wonders if he is well stocked on supplies, if the room is some kind of above-ground bomb shelter. Maybe he is an agoraphobic. It eventually occurs to her that she might hear more if she stations herself at the wall shared by the two offices, behind a sloping, lopsided desk in the storage room. With its musty darkness, and its piles of broken appliances and clutter, it looks as though the bomb has already hit. Iris flicks on the light and squeezes in between an ancient Xerox machine and a dented file cabinet to get to the wall.
She doesn’t know how he got into her office to leave her the note, but despite his stillness, she has come to believe that he is capable of anything. The least he can do now is to make some noise— a snore, a sigh— anything to feed her wonder.
On the days he complies, with the scoot of a chair, a hearty yawn, or a coughing fit, she feels his presence on the other side all day long. Even the sleepy sound of his classical radio is enough. She is typing and she imagines he is combing his hair. She is filing, and he is making a sandwich. While she is standing in front of the fax machine, watching it crank out a sheet of paper in fits and starts, he is doing tai chi, arms outstretched, left foot pointed, toes first, toward the closed window, breathing in the same recycled air. If it weren’t for the wall, they would inhabit the same space, entirely. She wonders if he knows this.
On the days she hears nothing, she imagines that he has packed up and disappeared. She checks every morning to make sure the white van is still in the parking lot, but it could be a different white van, there are other white vans— she never did take note of the license plate number. Or maybe he is still asleep, she tells herself, maybe he is asleep and dreaming of air, his body slumped over in the green chair or conked out on the floor, his consciousness floating just outside, between the thin, viscous clouds.
It’s not enough.
On a Friday morning at eight o’clock, Iris decides to knock on his door. She convinces herself to do it by imagining the worst that could happen. The worst that could happen is that he won’t answer, she decides, and she already knows what that’s like. She does not think about the best thing that could happen. She doesn’t get that far.
So she steps out into the hallway, taking care not to lock her own door behind her as she does not bring her keys. She reaches out her hand and knocks one time, pauses, then three quick knocks, like a stuttered exclamation point. And then she waits.
She counts thirty seconds and knocks again. She hears a thump and what sounds like a rustling of fabric. He is in there, somebody is. Or he has escaped out the window, letting the drapes fly in the breeze, knocking blunt objects off of tables. But still no answer.
“Hello?” she finally says. The rustling stops.
“Hello?” she repeats, having again arrived at thirty-Mississippi in her head.
When he fails, still, to respond, she talks to the door.
“Was the note I got— the one in the box— was it you?” She thinks then that she should have brought it as some kind of visual aid, but it is at home, on top of her dresser. She could slide it under the door to jog his memory, but then she might not get it back.
“Hello,” she tries again, more quietly this time, “I answered it. Did you see that I wrote back?”
She knocks again, just two quick taps, and before she has even retracted her fist, the door opens a crack. The man brings his face forward into the opening and looks at Iris. His eyes are half closed, with puffy bags underneath. She takes a step back.
“Hmm?” he whimpers. She understands now that she has woken him and she can’t remember, suddenly, what was so urgent, what she expects him to do or say.
“Um…” she starts, “I was just asking if… I just wanted to… to introduce myself.” She reaches out a limp hand, and they both look down at it wavering slightly in the dim light of the hallway.
He pauses before opening the door a little wider, his posture protective. His feet are bare, and he is wrapped in a white quilt, thick black hair exposed on his shins.
“Pleased to meet you,” he says, his hands clasped inside the quilt so he is cocooned.
Iris drops her hand down to her side.
“So…” she says.
“What?”
“So… I asked you something, and I was just curious, I guess.”
“I’m sorry— I don’t follow,” he says, his eyes darting between her face and the hallway behind her.
“I asked, and then you said don’t ask.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he says.
“And then I said— it was you, wasn’t it? Isn’t that your van outside?”
“Uh…”
“I’m sorry, I should just go,” Iris stammers. “I don’t know what I’m asking you for. Forget I said anything, just forget…” she trails off, watches the man’s face as he sucks in his cheeks and looks up at the stucco ceiling. She takes a moment to look past him and into the room. There are boxes overflowing with papers, furniture half assembled, metal scraps laid out on a tarp. He is busy, she thinks. There is a new addition, too, a Murphy bed, its thin white sheets softly rumpled, like little milky waves she can imagine sinking into, sinking until she disappears. Flip a switch and into the wall she would go.
“No, I’m sorry,” he says, and she re-focuses on his face, his cloudy eyes and greasy hair. “Sorry I couldn’t be of any help.”
He begins to shut the door then, but stops. He reaches a hand out and touches Iris’s arm, startling her. His hand is warm, his long knobby fingers light against her bare skin.
“Please don’t mention this to anyone. Not for now, all right?”
He pulls his hand away and Iris folds her arms.
“Mention what?”
He smiles and nods slowly, then shuts the door, and she hears the click of a lock turning.
She stands paralyzed for a long moment before slipping down the hall to the ladies’ room. She places her hands on either side of the white porcelain sink. The greenish overhead light makes her hands appear old, veiny, and dry. Or maybe it is the softer light in other rooms that makes them appear young and soft. She runs her left hand over the back of her right and it feels neither rough nor soft. It is too familiar. It is just her skin.
She looks into her reflection. The circles under her eyes are dark, maybe even darker than usual. She looks into her own eyes and tries to determine her expression. What is her face saying? Like her skin, it is too familiar for her to know, for her to even see it.