The Bureaucrat Page 2

  She sat at the entrance again, moaning and rubbing her thigh. It wasn’t broken, she knew. It just felt like agony incarnate. She’d have the bruise for weeks.

  The thought made her heart stop.

  Weeks? In here?

  She let go of her leg and checked her pedometer.

  It read 13,299 steps, nearly ten thousand more than when she checked it last. She tried to see the time, but—Connection to satellite could not be made.

  She’d never gotten the hang of how many steps equaled a mile. She’d bought the pedometer because Sandy at the office had one, even though she couldn’t have been earning more than Libby, not when she’d only been there a few years. Libby had bought the nicest one she could find online but never learned to use it, except as a watch.

  She slowly rocked to her feet. She glared at the entrance, but then lowered her gaze. Who was she kidding? Anger was useless here.

  She trudged down the straightaway, favoring her one leg.

  Halfway through, she stepped in a way her leg didn’t like. She grunted in pain, then limped to the wall, putting her hand on it to support herself. Her fingers dragged over the gray surface as she started ahead. Maybe this time she’d try one, one.

  The tiniest change in texture fell across her fingertips. A part of the wall had become smoother, glossy.

  She looked.

  A zero had been painted here on the wall, the silver paint shinier than the concrete around it. Swallowing, Libby pushed against it.

  Nothing.

  She moved to one side, pushed, nothing. She tried the other side.

  The wall hinged open, revealing a new path. She bared her teeth in a hungry way. They couldn’t keep Libby Frower down!

  The new course was another long straightaway. It might have lasted longer than the first hall, but Libby hadn’t bothered to track its distance with her pedometer. Besides, would it even be accurate with her limp?

  Going at the slower pace made it easier to notice the black and white caution tape bordering all four sides of the hall up ahead. Libby squinted and leaned forward. There was also a keypad nearby, embedded in the wall. And there was something funny about the light past the tape.

  Dimmer, she thought.

  She held her breath, and that’s when she heard it: a rapid clacking, like someone typing at a keyboard.

  Another person?

  She hurried to the tape as quickly as her leg would allow.

  YES!

  There was another hall up ahead with a little booth like a bank teller’s window—and someone was in it. Libby couldn’t see if it was a man or a woman. But between her and this person’s booth was a gap. The hall floor dropped out of existence for a hundred feet, leaving a shadowy void. For a second, Libby felt like she was in Indiana Jones, the one with Sean Connery.

  She looked at the keypad next to her.

  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, but no zero at the bottom. She laid her finger on the number one, but didn’t depress it. She held her breath, then bent her knees. If the floor was going to Houdini on her again, she could at least not bang up the other leg.

  She pressed the button.

  CLUNK. CLANK.

  The sound was deafening, like whatever machine that had activated was right over her head. A cry escaped Libby. She cowered, anticipating another fall. Instead, some genuinely awful music began. Instrumental easy listening, spewing out through low-fidelity speakers she couldn’t see. They were lucky. If Libby could have seen them, she would have kicked them until they broke, just to stop their ear-scouring hiss.

  A rumbling. Then a grinding.

  Libby looked all around her, then saw it: out over the void between her and the person in the booth (she could see them smiling now—and was it her imagination, or did she smell coffee?) something big was inching its way towards her.

  She counted as she watched it come into view, music warbling the entire time. At eighty-three she could make out what it was: a bridge. And it looked to be a perfect fit between her and the person across the void. But it moved achingly slow. Her count made it up to six hundred thirty-five before it made it to her. With enormous shots like bolts being thrown, it locked into place. The music, mercifully, stopped.

  The booth stood right ahead of her.

  Libby shrieked with excitement, hobbling onto the bridge. A real person! And she was almost there!

  She hadn’t even made it halfway when the nose of the bridge dropped. She fell on her tailbone again.

  “NO! NOOOooo!” Libby’s scream faded as she slid down into the darkness.

  Libby was dumped out at the entrance again.

  HOW??

  Sure, she was glad she wasn’t broken at the bottom of a pit or anything. But how could she fall back up to the top level?

  Never mind that. There was a person. I have got to get to that live person! They have to know what’s going on!

  So she entered again.

  The painted “0” was easier to spot now that she was looking for it. When she got to the keypad again, the bridge was nowhere to be seen.

  She pounded the “1” fearlessly. While the machinery grinded and the crap music wheedled, Libby fantasized about shredding the paper at the entrance to pieces in a thousand different ways. Through a shredder. With her herb scissors, with her teeth, throwing it to angry badgers…

  CLUNK. CLA—

  Libby dashed onto the bridge before the locking mechanism was activated. She pelted across it like an Olympic runner trying to beat a Kenyan, telling the pain in her leg to shut up.

  The distant CLANK sounded just as the safety tape on the other side came into view. Libby jumped.

  If she had looked down, she would have seen the bridge dipping beneath her feet, turning from walkway to incline in an instant.

  But she kept her eye on her landing spot just past the archway of tape. She belly-flopped onto the concrete and momentum drove her a foot further. She slid to a halt right at the foot of the booth.

  BOOM. The bridge was gone. But she was on the other side.

  The person in the booth didn’t so much as lean over to see what had happened.

  Libby pushed herself to her feet, dusted chalky residue off the front of her black cardigan.

  The man in the booth watched her without comment as she caught her breath. He wore a blue button-down, had a lush black moustache, and the golden brown complexion of an East Indian.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Hello.” Sure enough, he spoke with an Indian lilt.

  Libby smiled in relief. Tech support! I’m saved!

  “I’m looking for a way out of here.”

  “Oh, certainly,” he said.

  Thank heavens!

  “But before we can begin, I’ll need some information.”

  He slid out a keyboard while he was talking.

  “Sure!”

  “Your name?”

  “Libby Frower.”

  “F-R-A-U—”

  “Nono, F-R…” Libby stopped cold at the dour look he was giving her.

  “F-R-A-U-E-R?” he said.

  “No, sir,” said Libby.

  “Go ahead.”

  She spelled her last name slowly. He repeated it back.

  “Thank you, Ms. Frower. Now, I need some more information before we can continue. Is this acceptable to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is your address?”

  She gave it to him.

  “And the last four digits of your social security number?”

  She gave that, too.

  “Your mother’s maiden name?”

  Easy.

  “Date and time of your dog’s last dental cleaning?”

  What?

  “I don’t have a dog.”

  “Very well,” he struck his keyboard. “Date and time of your last dental cleaning?”

  “Uh.” Her mind went blank. “October? I think?”

  “We need the exact date and appointment time.”

  “I...I don’t k
now.”

  “Is there any way you can get that information? A receipt, maybe?”

  “No!”

  “Insurance forms?”

  “I—no!”

  “Hmmm.” His hand cupped his moustache, thumb pressing into his cheek. Libby felt like it was squeezing her heart. He stared intently at his monitor. “We really cannot proceed without that information, miss.”

  “Please! What’s next on the form?” She tried to stick her head in the window to see his monitor, but at this angle it was impossible.

  He gave her a look like she’d asked to use his toothbrush and turned the monitor away even further. “I’m afraid I can’t help you. But I have a colleague I can send you to.”

  He pulled a blue sticky note off the pile and wrote something on it. He handed it to her.

  Brendan. Hall 6.

  Libby jumped back as the man leaned out the window. He pointed to her left, where the hall curved beyond sight.

  “He’s just down there.”

  Libby nodded.

  The man pulled his window shut. Now he was a cloudy figure behind a sheet of gray frosted glass.

  Libby pinched the note between her two hands and marched down the curve. There were more numbers on the walls.

  Brendan wore a nametag. He was a blonde kid with carefree chin stubble who looked as out of place behind the service window as Libby would have been behind a surfboard.

  Libby leaned against his window. “I was sent here by a man with a moustache. He said you could help me with a date I need.”

  “Oh. Hmm. Okay.” The kid grabbed a legal pad and a pen.

  A legal pad? Seriously?

  He saw the look on her face. “It’s faster this way.” He nodded at his computer with his chin. “Trust me.”

  “Oh…kay.”

  “Name?”

  “Libby Frower.” She waited for him to ask about the spelling, but he went on to the next question.

  “Addy?”

  “What?”

  “Sorry, address.”

  Libby scowled, feeling old. But she gave it.

  “Last four of your social?”

  She recited them, listening to his pen squiggle on the legal tablet. The last squiggle had sounded too short for the number she’d given, but too late…

  “Mother’s maiden name?”

  She answered as before.

  “Date and time of your dog’s last dental cleaning?”

  She puffed her chest out. “Don’t have one.”

  “Kay. Date and time of your last dental cleaning?”

  Libby tapped the air with her finger. “That’s what I’m here about—I don’t know. He said you could help me.”

  “Who did, now?”

  “I…” Mr. Moustache hadn’t given a name and hadn’t, Libby realized, worn a name tag. “The man with the moustache.”

  “Huh,” said the kid. He scratched the back of his head with the pen. “Uh, could you wait a sec?”

  “I…sure?”

  He shut his window, became blurred behind the glass. Libby got on tiptoe, trying to see more.

  She saw him reach for something and lift a dark gray shape to his ear. Muffled conversation followed. She couldn’t make out any words, but the intonation of the last few grunts sounded like “Uh huh, uh huh.”

  The dark gray thing—phone?—went back on its receiver.

  “Okay. That kinda help’s above my pay grade, miss. You’ll need to go ‘round the corner”—he stuck his arm out and pointed with the pen—”and go straight ‘til you get to window 2155. They can help you there.”

  “Isn’t there some way I could skip that part of the form? The dog got skipped OK!”

  “Brendan” held his palms up. Don’t look at me, the gesture said. “They can help you there, ma’am. 2155.”

  Libby scoffed with disgust, then stalked around the corner.

  Some directions!

  The hall branched off frequently to other halls where Libby could see more and more booths. Now that she was looking for them, she could see inch-high numbers next to the tellers’ windows. Some had their shades up, others had them down, but none of them seemed to be working. Libby, familiar with the subtle cadences of desktop mice in the office, sensed that most of the clicking was of the Spider Solitaire variety, lacking the long pauses required to match the rhythms of reading through help files.

  Still, the kid had told her to go straight. She recited the number he’d given her like a mantra.

  At last the hall came to a hub. Four teller windows were embedded in a giant pillar, facing out in each direction. The one around back had the number she wanted, but the shades were closed. She could see the shadow of a big man within.

  She tapped apprehensively on the window.

  Laughter boomed from behind the glass. Libby stared. Did he just slap his knee?

  She rapped again. The conversation behind the glass kept on.

  The man laughed again. The sound made Libby snarl.

  Jackoff! Doesn’t he care?

  She pounded her fist over and over on the glass.

  The silhouette finally turned towards her. Libby manufactured a smile.

  The frosted glass lifted six inches. A doughy face appeared in the gap.

  “Lunch,” he said, then shut the glass again.

  Libby’s nails bit into her palms as she clenched her fists.

  Wait ‘til lunch is over, friend. You’ll be sorry!

  But cold reality doused her anger when she looked around. No bathrooms. No vending machines. No chairs to wait in. No one to commiserate with. Just the same gray walls.

  The fat man was her ticket out. She couldn’t afford to piss him off. She ran a hand over her hair and shifted off her bad leg. It was killing her again.

  At last, the window opened. The bald man didn’t bother to look at her. Or smile.

  “Name?”

  He asked the same questions the others had, but with long pauses between them as he typed in the answers.

  Finally, he arrived at it. “Date of your last dental cleaning?”

  “That’s why I’m here! That’s why—I don’t know the date, but a guy with a moustache told me to go to Brendan, who said you could help.” She squeezed her fingertips together behind her back. It was helping keep her voice pleasant.

  Baldie didn’t seem to care.

  “Oh. Shoe size?”

  Libby sputtered. “Ten and a half.”

  “Brand of napkins currently in use at your residence?”

  “Um…” The one with the fairy. “Sparkle!”

  “Those aren’t technically napkins.”

  She squeezed her fingers. She could feel the bones. “It’s what I use!”

  Baldie rolled his head back. He was either rolling out a kink in his neck, or it was the most indifferent shrug Libby had ever seen. He went on. “Last three addresses you lived at, not including your current residence.”

  The first came with relative ease. The second arrived after a bumpy exit through her mouth. But the third address—addy—was shrouded behind a fog in the cobwebby corners of her memory.

  She made the mistake of glancing at Baldie. He had his pointer finger up by his chin, but one swing of his arm could delete her whole entry. If she couldn’t remember, who knows where she’d be kicked to next.

  Libby turned on her memory and breathed fire. Don’t you crap out on me now!

  The fog parted just enough.

  By the time she finished reciting the third address, sweat glistened on her brow.

  The man pressed enter.

  “All right. According to my files, all third-party records of your dental exams were lost due to malware.”

  Libby was tempted to explode. Then a thought struck her. “What about the hard copies?”

  Tap, tap.

  “Burned in a fire.”

  She sucked her lips against her teeth. “Well, could you call the dentist?”

  Tap!

  “Shut down two years ago. Economy.�
��

  Baldie finally looked at her.

  “It’s you or nobody, sweetheart.”

  I oughta sue you for sexual harassment!

  Then it dawned on her; without anyone else to verify, couldn’t she just make a date up?

  “Try October 10, 2015,” she said.

  His eyes went back to the screen. Tappity tap.

  BLETCH!, went his computer.

  “Doesn’t match our records.”

  “WHAT? You mean, you have it?”

  “I don’t, ma’am. But your info doesn’t match our records, and without a match, we can’t continue.”

  “I…I can’t give you that date. I don’t have it.”

  “Sorry,” he said in a tone that wasn’t. “Can’t help you.”

  She stood there.

  His phone rang. He turned to answer it. As he did, Libby saw it.

  The corner of his mouth twitched upwards, then was quickly jerked back down, but it was too late. Libby had seen the man smirk. At her!

  “YOU SON OF A BITCH!”

  Libby lunged through the window and grabbed the fat man by his failing thatch of hair.

  She expected to pull him towards her, out into the hell of the maze. So when the hair tore out like grass from new turf, chunks of scalp dangling from the ends like sod, it made her freeze.

  Baldie reached to shut the window.

  “No!” Libby grabbed the man’s jowls. To her horror, her fingers punched right through them.

  She screamed and pushed him away. The pieces of Baldie stuck to her hands were bloodless but flesh-colored and crumbled in a way that reminded her of foam mattress toppers.

  The man slapped at her, half his face gone. But once she saw that the carnage she wrought was bloodless, Libby’s lizard brain took over the controls. She jumped, trying to get into the booth with him, but she only made it halfway across the threshold. Her legs kicked in the air as she balanced on her belly. The other half of her reached into the booth. She tore and tore at him, flinging pieces onto his keyboard, out into the maze behind her.

  When his eyes were gone, she knocked over his computer monitor, just because.

  She kept going. Now his head resembled an apple core. A few seconds later, she discovered that the center of his neck was hollow. The civilized parts of her brain noted that air was still blowing out of it, but she couldn’t really say he was screaming, because the sound wasn’t right, wasn’t right at all…