THE BEGINNING OF SORROWS

Paperclips. That was what he wanted to steal from the office supply cabinet today. Not just one, but several. Perhaps an entire box, a case, untold multitudes. He’d soon have a system that would allow him to pilfer supplies of gradually increasing value. He’d chart it in Excel.

“Can I help you find something, sir?”

He clanged the doors closed. Tricia. Tricia with the mail and crabapple knees. Boyish shoulders and legs thin as an empty coat rack. Her chest a percolation of asthma bubbles. “I need more,’ he said.

“Of course you do.” She lurched forward and brushed past, close enough he could smell her morning shampoo. “You mean paperclips, of course. They’re right here.”

He backed away as he always had—careful, with propriety. It wasn’t getting caught that worried him as much as not being able to continue. Things had been left as expected in the cabinet. No item shifted out of place. Changes were coming but best not to trumpet alarm. He glanced around the office at others to see if any eyes focused on him at the supply cabinet. Suspicion was another body in all flesh, eager to muscle into form. He’d seen accusations made in the office about many things. Such warring was always done with boiling faces, clenched fists, the rutting posture of the shamed or accused. He tried to be above such flittering but it was always difficult to cloister one’s real desire so he remained alert for the raised eyebrow or the furtive smirk. Tricia’s fingers traced the letters on the box spines, feathering into the lower arc of an S as if it were the hollow of a knee bent in nakedness. Colored bracelets clinked on her left wrist, but still he could see the scar slithering between bands of color. For a moment he wondered what it would be like to grab her arm and bring that scar to his lips but Tricia handed him a box of silver paperclips, fingers curled up over the edge. She pushed the box toward him, shaking it in the air. “Are these the size you need? We might have—bigger.”

 Her mouth was wide like the grin of a fish.

He said they were fine. As it had been from the start, saying a thing made it real, so he talked as little as possible these days. Such language would return its ink to the air before the drying. Time was short, frantic. The future written already. If only he could find another way to keep the line moving. He carried the box into his office and closed the door. The remainder of the morning he spent shaping the paperclips into small animals and arranging them on his desk. A lion’s mouth. An eagle. The horns of a bull.

The hour tolled. Lunch was McDonald’s. He hitched his pants up over his belly with both hands. Diet didn’t really matter anymore. He’d be discovered, his actions observed by those few souls that still had attention. It was suspicion that fueled their witness. No more common element amongst men than suspicion, save lust perhaps, though that was almost always suspicion’s lighter shade. He’d seen it all in his time here. Cast away, his office now two floors lower then when he started. Of course he was on his way out. Had been for some time. This was his last chance before fading. In older days castigation was rarely done with such slow disdain. All the elder partings accomplished via axe and bloodletting. The modern ways, though cleaner, were more cruel in their intent. So, McDonalds, yes. Diet no longer mattered. Would it be bad, he wondered, to grow so monstrous that people cowered before him like they once had? So large he couldn’t be ignored? The double chin a necessary requirement for feared management. It had been so long since he’d been feared in that respectful manner. Fat men always seemed full of life, commanding. That was what he wanted more than anything. He could stand with his arms out in front of a tailor’s mirror, someone young kneeling, stretching the tape down his thigh, reaching around his waist to read the number, breath burbling in a stringy throat. He’d joke about needing a diet and laugh. He could be jolly. His neck thick. Wrists substantial enough that she would try to encircle it between her forefinger and thumb. She’d come close, all bony elbows and knees in his lap, the bright splash of her laugh warm against the plateau of his chest. He’d wear glinting cuff links and shoes that clapped down long halls, his shadow to dwarf the sun. Mere fantasy, this speculation. Useless. He thought again of her bracelets, how she couched her shame in such color. The scarless were dreadful and self-absorbed. The woman in front of him in the line couldn’t make a decision. The flesh of her wrists unmarred. Two crumpled dollars clutched in her fist. Fingers nervous. Her shoes flat.

“Just get the fries.” He leaned forward. “They’re on the dollar menu. There isn’t much time.”

He waited for the woman to make up her mind. No, the fat weren’t jolly, he decided. The fat were always the ones most wanting. Should probably have a salad. The woman scratched at her side, afflicted with some unseen pestilence. She wobbled from one foot to the other as she worked through the options, though she was thin enough that weight shouldn’t trouble her arches. The menus were garish with color, humming. Registers rattled at the harsh closing of their drawers. Hot grease foamed in a yellow boil. Loud kids romped and tired mothers picked at their salads, tried to hush their children, shaking forks. One of everything is what he wanted. To sample it all before the saying of it was done.

Three plastic forks and two knives. Fourteen packages of fancy ketchup. Eight straws. Nearly a palm full of salt packages. Pepper and napkins. He refilled his drink three times.

Near the day’s end, the office befallen with redolence, yet still Tricia typed on the computer. Instant messaging her friends. Little smiles bloomed on her face. It was as if she thought happiness a given, like time or air. The last few months she’d aged into herself the way a flower arrived at its full color, oblivious, unaware. Beauty innocent of itself was such a rarity. He watched her through the blindslats. A giggle at something on the screen. The scar would reveal itself in her movements. One flash would be enough to show that true body. Thus the forsaken pine for a glimpse. She picked up the phone and looked toward the window he crouched behind. The blinds snapped back together. His phone buzzed.

“Sir, the boss is on the phone.”

He told her he was engaged with a timeline project long in the making. Could she take a message, please? This had worked before.

Her pause longer than a breath. “Of course.”

Did she know? He opened his desk drawer. Pens, pencils, staplers, glue. It was all hoarded there out of sight for him. All for him. Mechanical pencils. Six blank CDs. Copy paper. Rubber bands. Rulers, neon markers, three forever stamps, pristine, and three already curled by saliva. Toner, trash bags, stir sticks numbering six. Creamer that could cloud the darkness from coffee. A note concerning a tryst. He closed the drawer. Perhaps he should buy a safe in which to keep all these things. There could be fire. All these items moved through her careful attention, touched by her solemn fingers. He didn’t know what to do next to keep his heart going, to keep the line moving up. His desk a zoo of ravenous, silver animals.

“Sir?”

“Yes, Tricia.”

“He was calling about inventory discrepancies is all. Nothing else.”

He couldn’t remember hanging up, but the light on the phone was dark. Breath slowed and caught in his throat. He’d been seen. Machinery hummed behind the walls, working toward goals. He watched the inch of light under the door for shadow stutter. The drawer weighted with the trinkets of his culling. To suffer through all the hours of all the days for this brief bliss. The window behind him large as the side of a ship, though he wouldn’t be seen. No one ever looked up here. The view opened onto a city that moved without regard for him. That didn’t matter. He switched off the office light and stood, trembling, dizzy with the sudden height. Forehead a cool oval against the glass, palms spread, fingertips squeaking. That glass shade of him loomed up unbidden, causing the buildings to quake. No, that was the mere shudder of anticipation. Breath splashed cumulus on the glass. The hour for which he waited approached. It felt near, but it always had. The city fogged and cleared before him, teeming, unafraid. That inch of light swelled to several bright feet as Tricia entered. The office darkened as the door closed. Her face slid up to his in the window and he watched in the glass as that scar rose to his mouth. He had hoped to find beauty before the end.