y the time Wednesday came, I was deeply withdrawn. For the first time in six months I'd gotten behind on my dailies, a fact that would wake me at 1, 2, and 4 o'clock in the morning successively. On Monday I'd stopped by at the shop thinking I'd address Vera frankly, maybe even come right out with it first thing - you know who I am, don't hide it; release me - but she wasn't there in the store that night, and the minute I saw Eddie's face I was tongue-tied. I drew a blank right off the bat as he came out from behind the counter, and when I did try to speak, my voice came out hoarse, which for no logical reason mortified me more. I stared past him down the wall of the shop into the back office where a rack of seconds stood behind the computer, itself poised at an angle on the cluttered little desk, and I felt my whole being retracting. Trapped in this unsaid trepidation, I didn't even ask where she was.

So by Wednesday morning I was even more sullen. I put on a generic cardigan. I was moving myself along through my life the way a half-built mechanical device gets moved along a manufacturer's conveyor, listless and unfinished. And I had no investment in where I went next. Had I reactivated my senses and attempted to confront the requirements of life instead of cowering, I would have had to acknowledge my glaring lateness with the charts and the agonizing anticipation of my appointment that day with Gerald. Instead I hunched into my coat, walking rhythmically toward the office and looking narrowly out of my eyes.

Around me the city, like Vera and Eddie's weekend bash, was rigidly apportioned, arranged according to what you had and what you didn't. But, unlike at the party, that morning, I didn't find it natural or innocuous. On the contrary, the city I passed through seemed tragic and abhorrent. From neighborhood to neighborhood, each about eight blocks square, you entered another island of uniformity marked by its abundance or poverty and festering hopelessly in its birthright. At Frederick Street, for instance, the regal stone row houses became sporadic and broke off altogether one block after that, where shoddy fourplexes crowded in on the sidewalks void of banister or garden patch. Or, turn the corner off Jay and your first whore was only paces down Arthur. There were the crumbling buildings of subsidized residences at Duane and Winston and the weirdly airy one-room dwellings down toward the end of Emmanuel, where the city itself seemed to break off into decaying fragments, little bits of community tumbling, scattered, into the dry fields that covered the landfill reaching outward toward the mountains. The neighborhoods may as well have been color-coded, I thought, as my fingers grew icy inside my leather gloves, themselves inside my pockets: one neighborhood red, say - the cars, buildings, corner stores all a uniform cherry, toddlers, school kids, and adults all dressed in the same moderate shade - and one entirely blue. Then as you entered your own appropriate urban area, crossed over, for example, Frank Street to Duane, you'd fully blend into your surroundings. You'd nearly disappear against the backdrop of the world that had spawned you. As I neared the immaculate edifice that housed Poplar & Skeen, I decided the downtown district I'd entered - where real estate was owned by multinationals and inhabited by companies that aspired to be - would be ochre.

On my desk were the graphs that I should have filed on Monday. The mere sight of them made me want to flee back to my little apartment and not reemerge for weeks. Seven long columns were untouched as were the blocks for my summaries, and Tuesday's sheets were entirely blank. But even staring at the evidence of that backlog, as I lifted my overcoat to the hook on the company-issue hat-stand in the corner and stuffed the red gloves Roberto had bought me into the pocket, I knew I wouldn't get through it before three. I knew I didn't have the resolve.

I read my mail and dropped another note to Scrivener, who still hadn't sent so much as Hello, and I cleared the irrelevant folders off my desk and dumped the miscellaneous mail. I started in on the Monday summaries. But later as the swath of light disappeared from my desk around 11 a.m. and my little square office grew one notch dimmer - one notch more blue-silver - I lay my cheek on my folded arms and slept. At lunch I wandered down to the court buildings and lingered on the benches for an hour and a half.

"Please sit," Gerald said about a quarter past three. It was just the sort of diffident state I was in; although I'd been waiting all morning for this very instant, I still showed up 10 minutes late for it.

I sat down in the forest green chair, my palms against the rough weave of the upholstery. I sat slightly hunched, this time, one knee bouncing. I wore slacks - the closest you could get at Poplar to jeans - and no bracelets.

"You're late with Monday's prospective evaluations," he said.

It was so habitual for me to be lively with him; I was on the verge of cheerleading now. "True," I said brightly, "Marissa must have mentioned it. I'll have them to her in an hour."

Typically he didn't respond. I thought, here was the man you'd trot out on a kids' show to illustrate the meaning of "official."

He returned his fountain pen to its stand and continued. "But that wasn't the intention of this meeting," he said.

For a second I looked straight at him, at the perfect hairline across his forehead that seemed machine made and the clean elongated nostrils, but then I looked down. A huge buzzing had begun crowding in on my listening. He was still gazing at the pen stand.

"It's our policy to inform you," he said, so hollow it truly was as if it weren't him but the abstract entity of the company who was speaking, "that the position of junior associate in Billing has been filled. We had an impressive candidate from the outside."

The buzzing had grown very loud. His voice had grown softer.

"It's our intention to thank you for your candidacy," he said. "We're certain the appropriate avenue for your advancement will present itself in the near future. Is there anything you'd like to say?"

It seemed an impossible question. Was he baiting me? I said, "Well, I'm disappointed," and I said it sharply, as if he were to blame. Immediately I realized it would be death to indulge.

"Yes," Gerald said. His hands were folded now atop a black and white binder. He was looking down over the edge of his desk and into the air. There was remorse in his tone, I could hear it, though just enough, I knew, to fill up one word.

As I left the room, I walked in perfect silence. Not a sound came from my moving, my rising out of the chair, my hands slipping into my pockets, my feet on the Mongolian rug. And I didn't stop to close the door. I left it wide open.

I think under different circumstances, I would have seen myself by then as damaged goods, as a burnt-out battery or something else that you couldn't revive. I think - given my cynicism and the way I generally see the world as a vessel for insoluble differences that people manage to transform into unceasing desire - I would have continued withdrawing forever, never afterwards striving quite as I had. Being rejected for that promotion was the kind of defeat that would, for me have been lasting. I don't think I would have gotten back on the horse for years.

But this situation was different. It was circumscribed and localized by the prominence of its causation - that is, I knew exactly what had made it happen. I could mark the minute my chances had been derailed and I'd lost my bearings. I had something specific to blame, for once, instead of my whole grim destiny.

So though I disappeared altogether from the office that day and over the rest of the week I must have appeared increasingly morose and withdrawn, I had not given over to the feeling of failure completely. Beyond the muffled, suffocating fog of my chagrin, there hovered invisibly in the clearer air this belief in a solution. I had to act, was all, I had to recapture my resilience and conviction.

And Thursday around noon, as Roberto finally stopped his knocking, his repeated, querulous "Elaine ... Elaine?" and I had lifted my head from my hands where I'd gone to hide from his persistence, I began to timidly envision that cure. There was the timbre of Roberto's voice at my door and the way he always loved the enigma of the future that reminded me of his words: "Profligate," he had said, "and inspiring." I remembered him pronouncing the name: The Mansion.

So even as I seemed to move in utter silence, to perform my work with no interest or respect, I was simultaneously, in the back of my mind, imagining the means to redress things. I was making a plan for the weekend.

P r e v i o u s   C h a p t e r s

B y   M a r t h a   B a e r

A r t   b y   D.   U r b a n k   a n d   J.   M o s e s

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