What He's Poised to Do

“Oh, I remember you now,” I said. “The coward.” Insulting her, even in jest, was not an easy thing, but it yielded the desired result. She laughed and moved closer to me on the bench; between us there was a thin band of heat. She had also fallen silent, which was rare, and I had time to study her: the way her clothes, which were always tight, seemed insensible to her dimensions. That night, when I thought back on the day, I felt a thickness in the pit of my stomach. I had a girlfriend back at college, almost, and another girl who was waiting if that didn’t happen. Lisa could have been a summer fling, but she was not a summer fling. Her center of gravity was too low. It was wrong of me to hope for her, because my life was loaded up, and she was not the thing that would, if added, make it lighter.

Still, if I was content not to have her, I also did not want to watch her go elsewhere, and I made a point of keeping our lunch plans at least twice a week. For her part, she clearly felt some displeasure at her own excitement as well, and so she leveled the frame by reminding me of her power at every opportunity. She started to mention a recent ex-boyfriend named Alan and a number of unnamed suitors. There were also accompanying gestures, like reaching up to arrange her hair and, in the process, showing me the undersides of her bare arms before bringing down those arms and folding them across her chest. The whole effect was masterful; she aroused excitement while at the same time foreclosing any possibility of acting on that excitement. Because it was what I wanted, too, it drew us closer together.

“So,” Lisa said at the beginning of the third week, at the end of lunch, as she lit her cigarette. “Good weekend?”

“Not much to speak of,” I said.

“Well, then don’t,” she said, laughing. “I’ll tell you about mine instead. I had a friend in town from college, and we went to a party on Saturday night.”

“A good party?”

“A long party. A leave-at-four-in-the-morning-not-quite-remembering-your-own-name party. We smoked a ton of who knows what. But I wouldn’t say it was good. At the moment, I’m more into peace and quiet. Trying to focus on work.”

“Office work or painting work?”

She tapped out the cigarette. “That’s an interesting question, although you might not know it.”

I scowled at her. “Thanks, I guess.”

“I mean it. People think that because I paint, painting has to come first. But painting is observing, so it always comes second. What comes first is observing: a party, or my family, or this office. Yesterday I was watching how Schiff stands when he’s waiting for the elevator. He bows his head and turns one leg inward, like he’s trying to disappear. How can a big man disappear, really? He’s disrespecting physics. But it’s like he thinks that the elevator ride might be his last, and he’s not sure that he minds the idea.”

“You got all that from watching him for a few minutes?”

“It’s been a few weeks,” she said. “But I’m getting sick of sitting in the beige cage. I want to be able to move around. More to see. Do you think they’ll let me switch to the file room?”

“Hey,” I said. “That’s my job.” I was trying to joke, but my tone was wrong, and it dragged across the smooth surface of the indifference I had spent weeks polishing.

“I’m not trying to take your job,” she said. “I mean to take a few half days a week to help out in there. But I shouldn’t ask you.”

“You shouldn’t,” I said. “Ask Schiff.”

“Not Mortenson?”

“I thought you were observing everything,” I said. “Schiff will just say yes or no. With Mortenson, there’s always a kind of dance.” Telling her who had power was the only power I had.