9/30/1999 Geoff Ashbrook
Larry walked into the office and walked up to the desk where Nuwia was sitting in her matching hat and uniform and he stopped and put down his briefcase. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a little red hat with beads all over it and put it on his head. As soon as he did, Nuwia looked up and said, "Mr. Fredrieckson, I must not have seen you come in, Good morning."
"Good Morning, Nuwia," he said. "Could you tell me, what's my schedule looking like today?"
"You have a new client coming in at seven forty, and the rest of your day looks pretty clear."
"Thank you."
"Have a good day."
"You too,"
He looked at his watch, it was seven thirty. He took the little hat off and walked over to the message board on the wall. Then behind him he heard Nuwia say "Oh, Mr. Fredriekson. Mr. Fredriekson?" And she looked around the room, her eyes passing right over him. "Oh well, he must have gone into his office."
He quickly put the little hat back on, and said, "I'm sorry, did you call?"
"Oh, Jeese, you were standing right in front of me. My head's just not on right today or something. I just remembered that you also have a meeting with Mrs. Ferdinander at eleven."
"Thank you, Nuwia." he said, and with that he got his briefcase and walked into his office.
Shutting the door behind him he tossed the red hat onto his desk, went over to the closet, put away his jacket, and then went to his desk to sit down and popped open his vid-phone. He dialed up Mike and soon the image appeared of his old friend arranging a hat on his head; the hat was covered with trinkets and images of movie paraphernalia. "Say Mike, I just wanted to drop you a note. You know that new horror sci-fi movie: Robin Red Crest? It's showing at the Tower-Ten and you should really see it."
The face on the screen spoke back to him, "Thanks for the tip, I really have to go now, but I'll see it tonight and get back to you later."
"Bye,"
"Bye,"
The conversation closed with two huge grins disappearing from their screens, then Larry let his smile fad to a small thin line and he closed the vid-phone screen. Then the intercom on his desk flashed a green light and Nuwia's voice came over, "Mr. Freidriekson, Mrs. Hannabell is here to see you."
"Send her right in," he said, and then someone opened the door and came into his office.
He squinted his eyes, her face seemed to be a complete blur. And the rest of her wasn't all that clear either.
"So your Mrs. Hannabell, is that correct?" he said, standing up and extending his hand. And he felt her hand before he saw it, it was like a shadow flitting through the air landing solidly in his hand and then quickly melting off again.
"Yes," she said. But he could barely hear it. It seemed very far away, and almost as if it had been distorted by a computer. He tried looking into her face, to find her eyes, only partially identifying floating dark spots, but it hurt his eyes to look at her for too long so he retreated to shuffling papers around his desk pretending that he was looking for something.
"Oh, please, have a seat," he said. He smiled as he watched a chair seemingly drag itself from the back wall of his office up to the front of his desk. In his mind he tried to fade her out completely. How does one interrogate a chair? He straightened his tie, still grinning a bit.
"Mrs. Hannabell," he said, "It says here that your husband died in a helicopter accent four years ago. Is that right?"
"Yes, that's correct. He was coming home from work and a tree fell on him."
"While he was in the air?"
"That's what I was told."
"I see." He said, placing an index finger longways against his lips, looking studiously at a blank piece of paper that he'd picked up off his desk. "Now, Mrs. Hannabell, there's something I'd like you to do which is customarily asked of all of our clients."
"Why certainly." She said, her voice tinny, electronically hollow.
"While I ask you some routine questions, to build up the character of the person that you would like us to… produce… for you, I'd like you to put on this hat." And he held out a hat to her.
"Of course," she said, and she took the hat from him and placed it on her own head. And as soon as she did her body all of a sudden came into focus for him, accept she was blank, like a crash test dummy or a storefront mannequin. Her clothes were plane, and so non-descript, that he couldn't tell if she wore a dress or pants.
"Now, some of these questions may seem indirect, but the point is to fish around a bit, you know, to get a general kind of idea. So. Where did you grow up?" he asked.
"Right off lake Dobingo by the Cantilever Plaza, in New Madrid."
"Never been there myself," he said. "Any pets?"
"A bird. I had a dog when I was growing up but I can't reach back that far very well. You know."
"Yea I know what you mean. Brothers and sisters, older or younger?"
"Two older sisters, one younger brother."
"And what do they do?"
She started talking but his mind began to drift off, he thought about being on a lake when he was younger, he remembered getting up early in the morning to walk loops about the lake, to sneak into General Gladspin's herb garden and steal tobacco and the more thick-smoked south American tobacco, which he used to hide and dry and roll into homemade cigars, mixed with other herbs from the garden he never identified. And he would stroll around the lake, smoking, watching the birds fish and wander on the beach and dip for little clams. And he used to watch this one lifeguard, one of the few girl-lifeguards there, who always came early. He was quite taken with her, even though he was only in middle school and she was probably in college. He would wave and she would smile. She would usually have a book to read and he'd ask her what it was. She read all kinds of stuff. He'd ask her if she wanted to smoke and she always politely declined. And he would walk around and around the small lake, with her buried in the book. Sometimes he felt that as he walked he was slipping into what she was reading, finding bits of a plot scattered in the sand by the waterline. He could see as dimensions of the waves the flowing of the story. At the times when he was walking toward her, he would look back and forth between her and the water, and he found that he could see what was going to happen before she read it. The way the water moved and what it did to the shells and rocks that played the characters; what characters moved toward and away from the others. But he never told her about this. Sometime he felt that as he walked he was leaving a rope behind that went round and round, tying her too closely to the story. He would fear coming around and finding only the book there, her having fallen into it. He dreaded seeing in the waves some indication that she had entered the story herself. So he walked slowly, mixing his steps so that she could break any line he tied, if she tried.
And then he began to return from the daydream into the room he was in, and the lady's voice slipped back into his mind. "But now he runs a pet store, if you can believe that," she said, and laughed, "while Debra is still in Seattle trying to find a job in graphic art."
"And Deborah's you older sister, right?"
"Yeah," she said.
And he realized that her voice was more normal and warm sounding, and too he noticed, and tried not to reveal anything of the suddenness of it, that she was no longer a blank figure, but had the face of the girl from the lake from his memory. Her hair was a little different, and she was dressed in a helicopter pilot's uniform, which he thought looked pretty snazzy, and she smiled, and he smiled back as if nothing were any different.
She lifted her hands to her head to adjust her hat, and her body shifted and blipped like a computer screen scrazing-out with the chord being jiggled. When the image settled she was wearing the plane white clothes of the mannequin again, which she still looked good in, and her eyes were now completely white, which was a bit disturbing, but again he tried not to react.
"How about your parents?" he asked.
"Well, my father worked at the prefecture-"
"Was he an official?"
"No," she looked down at the floor and put her fingers against her cheek and giggled, her raw white eyes flashing off a reflection from his desk lamp as she looked back up, "He was the cook. He worked for the prefect, and he actually made a lot of the decisions. That was something I learned growing up. That the people in the government who really had the power were the cooks and the maids and the tour guides, and janitors, especially this one really nice retarded janitor named Mackey. He was so cool. He was the most important person in the country, the mastermind behind it all." She giggled again. "Not really, but they do have a lot of influence, particularly with the diplomats."
"Who did you father cook food for?"
"I can't tell you that, persay. He cooked for a lot people though. The rest you'll have to guess. He liked hot air ballooning too." After she said this she blinked and her eyes returned with color, a swirly light orange-blue. "And my mom didn't work in the prefecture, but she was really good friends with the prefects wife, and they ran a dress shop together. And I can't tell you anything about that."
He looked up from his desk and saw that she had a long green and yellow dress on that was covered with pockets and patches and decorated with long running ruby spirals and vertical dark green lines.
"Ok," he said making some marks on the blank piece of paper, "That should be enough background information. Now," he looked her in the eyes, "About your person. Are you looking for someone to replace your husband?"
"Oh heavens no." she said.
"Do you want to base the character off of him in any way? Even if that means to go in as many opposite directions as possible?"
"I don't know. I'm not sure how much he has to do with this. I mean, he was a nice guy and a pretty good father. Let me think. I know I'm supposed to think he's central to this one way or another, but, I-mean-I-know this could just be a complete cop-out, but I don't think I've met the guy. I don't think I'm even close. And that's cool with me. But then you'll ask why I'm here, if I'm looking for someone I don't want to find. It isn't that I don't want to find him, I like hanging out with the people I meet, it's just this feeling I have, you know?"
Larry put the piece of paper down and opened the drawer of his desk and took out a wooden box. He undid the latch and lifted the lid, and took out a small somewhat carved animal made mostly of green stone. It was part insect and part mammal, with long wide wings that glistened with an oily rainbowed refraction, and long legs for the African veldt, with a furry muzzle and horns and a leather pouch for holding very small glasses of pulpy orange juice. It shook itself and hoped around happily in his hand. Then with his free hand he opened another drawer and took out an old Chinese cricket cage, and lifted the door and noodged the little creature inside. The door-gate clicked back down with a snap of a shut, and he stood up from his desk and he walked around and knelt down and presented her with it. She held it up and the cage squeaked a little from the dense wooden handle as it swung. She looked at the creature, as it sat and preened itself like a cat.
"How much do I owe you?" she asked.
He held up his hands and waved them slowly. "Just keep listening to that feeling. It's already more of a price than I'd prefer to charge. Feel free to stop back any time, you know?"
And she watched him stand back up and walk over to the closet that was by the door. He opened it up and looked around in it, and shut the door again. And then he just sort of stood there, looking around the room, as if there were something he wanted to say.