The Inner City Read online

  At five, she wanders back, already half-convinced that the letterhead must be out of date. She turns the corner at West Street and stops—all along Charles Lane there are people in suits and dresses, with briefcases and shopping bags and coffee cups in their hands. They move rapidly up and down the lane, but they’re eerily silent about it, not even their footsteps make a sound. But no doubt about it, they look like a commuter crowd, probably heading to the PATH train station just a few blocks away. It suddenly looks like Charles Lane is a thriving business artery. The buildings must be much deeper than they seem.

  Everyone is coming out from one door, and when she gets there, she sees that it’s actually a newsstand. She’s so surprised that she walks in to get a better idea. At once, all the rush slows down. Lena stands still, looking around, and everyone inside seems to pause, picking up magazines or studying the sign above the counter for sodas and bottled waters. Lena sees a doorway marked “Employees Only,” which has a dark curtain instead of a door. A man comes through, looks a little surprised, and then a small red light goes on over the doorway. She buys a soda and then leaves, joining the silent crowd outside as they walk to the end of the lane and disperse.

  The only possibility she can think of is that this is a classified work place of some kind, maybe a secret government job, and the idea thrills her. She would like to do something dangerous or risky or at least more interesting than her usual. She pictures herself bluffing her way in, like a spy or counterspy. She’s never done anything underhanded before; it’s her turn. People are always taking advantage of her; let them watch out now.

  Besides, it would be great to have a job that she could walk to. The subways are out of control right now with one accident after the other. The engineers say the signal lights are wrong; the maintenance people say the lights are fine. Trains crash into each other head to head or head to tail, it doesn’t matter, she’d rather stay off them.

  She wears an ironed blouse and a neat skirt the next morning and holds a briefcase with the papers she had picked up on the street, placed in a folder marked “Personal.” On top of that she puts her resume, and on top of that she puts Harry Biskabit’s memo. She gets to Charles Lane at 8:00 the next morning, and it’s empty. There’s one dog, one dog walker, and that’s it. She’s annoyed, because she’s trying so hard to outsmart everyone and it doesn’t seem to be working. The whole of Charles Lane has a blank, locked face. She touches the door where the newsstand was, and it’s shut solid and looks suddenly like it never was open, never in its life. She goes over to the river again, looking out at the traffic jam. There are a few boats on the river. She’s playing magic with herself. She’s telling herself that when she turns around, she’ll see Charles Lane bustling with life.

  Then she turns around, and it is.

  People are rushing around, back and forth. And there’s a little café where the newsstand was. It even has an outside table and two chairs. Why would the stores be different at different times? Maybe it’s some kind of new-wave timeshare scheme. Maybe on holidays it turns into a souvenir shop.

  She merges with a wave of employees as they go through the café door. She steps behind two women, close behind, and to prove she’s with them she starts matching their stride.

  They go through the doorway marked Employees Only. Lena keeps her head steady, trying not to look around too much. There’s a short hallway and another curtain, with a guard on the other side. She bunches right up with the women ahead of her, almost stepping on their shoes, and she nods briskly. The guard grabs her.

  “Your ID?” he asks.

  “Job interview,” she says. She opens her folder and flashes the letterhead. “See? Harry Biskabit. I have an appointment.”

  “You’re supposed to have a temporary pass.”

  She rises to the occasion, scowling and huffing a little. “Now,” she says, coldly, “how do I get a pass if I can’t go in to get a pass?”

  He blinks at her. “By mail?” he asks.

  “You know they don’t send them by mail. I was supposed to go in with those people you separated me from.” She waves at the disappearing backs. “Hey, Juanita, you forgot me!” Then she pouts. “Now what?” She sighs in exasperation. “Can you call someone?”

  He looks a little uncertain. “I just have instructions, you know. I don’t need to justify everything I do, especially when it’s regulation. But I do have discretion.”

  She smiles, suddenly friendly. “I’ve always admired discretion,” she says. She’s trying to mimic some sassy movie heroine from some gumshoe movie. She’s getting a little jolt out of all the pretense.

  He grins. “If you don’t have an ID by tomorrow I’m gonna have to call in some backup.”

  “I understand,” she says, giving him big eyes and then slipping by. “I’ll make sure I get a good picture.”

  She takes a deep breath and keeps walking, fighting the impulse to slap someone on the back. She made it in! Of course it’s only a first step. She stops in the hallway to poke through her handbag, as if searching for a room number. When some more people come through, she falls in behind them.

  They walk down a half-flight of steps, then through a short corridor to a bunch of elevators. Lena follows the others in and faces the buttons. S1, S2, S3. The others push S2. The memo from Biskabit says S3, so she pushes that. People come rushing in and by the time the doors close, the elevator’s almost full. As soon as they shut, a murmur breaks out, as if they were suddenly allowed to speak.

  “Did you see the new offices yet?” one man asks his neighbour.

  “Katie’s department moved in. They’re still pushing for more storage, but it looks great. Not so crowded.”

  “We’re next,” the man says. “Can’t wait.” The doors open to S2 and they move out. That leaves just Lena and a slightly overweight man in a gray suit.

  He smiles at her. “You new here?”

  She’s a little thrown by that. How can she sneak in if everyone can see she’s new?

  “I was behind you when the guard asked for your ID,” he says. “Don’t panic. I can’t read minds.”

  “Phew,” she says. “I thought maybe I had a sticker on me or something.”

  The elevator doors open and they both step out. Lena lets him lead the way.

  “No, no, no, you look perfectly fine. Is this your first interview? Or is it a transfer?”

  She’s tempted to say transfer, it seems like the easy way out, but he would be sure to ask where she transferred from. “Interview,” she says. “And I could use some help finding the way.” She takes a quick look around. “It’s a big place.”

  It’s really astonishing, the size of it; there’s just no way of telling from outside. Lena is in a big main corridor, passing doorways with frosted glass and doorways with no glass. Some doors are open and show offices with stacks of files and multiple desks and people very busily going about their business. Phones ring and terminals blink. Every two hundred feet or so, side corridors intersect with the one she’s on, and when she looks down one, she sees people walking parallel to her, in rows of multiple main corridors. They’re like streets. In fact, every so often there’s a small coffee shop or a little sandwich shop. A clothing store as well; even a pharmacy.

  Her companion abruptly stops and holds out his hand. “Bossephalus,” he says.

  She doesn’t like his eyes, they’re too sharp. She smiles and holds the smile, uncertain about giving him her name.

  He winks. “Not to worry,” he says. “I’m not the bogeyman.”

  She un-snares her smile. “Sorry. Sometimes I’m such a New Yorker. My name is Lena.”

  “Lovely name; I don’t hear that often enough. Who are you going to see?”

  “Harry Biskabit.” It’s the only name she knows. Aside, of course, from the supposedly fired Philip Tarrey.

  “That’s good, that’s very good!” Bossephalus chortles. “We both start with B, that’ll be easy.”

  “Of course,” she says, trying to
sound like this makes perfect sense. They pass a doorway into a large open room with electronic maps displayed along the walls. There are little red beeping lights moving, and people are talking into headsets and clicking on little handheld computers. “Is that what I think it is?” she asks with interest. She has no idea what it is, really, but it seems like a good way to go.

  Bossephalus beams and pats her shoulder. “Parking department, downtown unit. Look,” he says, pointing as a red light moves closer to a blue light. “Got him!” The blue light disappears and the red moves on. “He thought he had that spot!” Bossephalus claps his hands. “I love that. Drives them crazy upstairs. Parking to kill for! That’s what the motto is. I bet that red was driving around for an hour. Those are the ones that are very dear to us.”

  Lena’s mind is racing. The maps on the wall are street maps? They must be street maps. Then the reds are cars looking for parking spots and, if she understands Bossephalus, the blues are parking spots. They disappear in one street and appear in another. There are green lights as well, and the greens always get the spots.

  “You’re controlling the parking spaces?” she asks. “You’re moving your own cars around?”

  “That’s it! We take the spaces ourselves or sometimes we give them to the luckies. The unluckies almost get it, but at the last minute they get stopped by someone crossing the street or a light changes, or a bus blocks the way, and then they can actually see someone else getting the spot they were heading for. Or we put cones up and it suddenly becomes illegal.”

  “Nice,” she says neutrally. “Smooth.” She doesn’t have a car, doesn’t like cars—why would anyone have a car in New York?—but it’s not nice, not a bit. What kind of place is this?

  Bossephalus taps her on the elbow and they go back into the corridor.

  “So you’re seeing Biskabit,” he says. “Didn’t know he was hiring. I could use some help myself. What do you do?”

  “Programmer,” she tells him. “Strong in html and design.”

  “Very useful,” he says. “We’re always looking for web designers. We put a lot of them in startup companies, but now we’re branching into corporate.”

  “The startups didn’t do so well,” she says cautiously.

  “No? We thought it went splendidly.”

  Splendid? Who could think that all those bankruptcies were a good thing? He must be terribly uninformed. “Where do you work?” Lena asks politely.

  He looks at her and smiles. “I’m in Information,” he says.

  There’s something about his smile that’s nasty, though she tries to talk herself out of it. Maybe he’s just a friendly man showing a newcomer around, she thinks. Maybe.

  They come to a wider corridor. She can hear drilling and hammering.

  “We’re expanding,” Bossephalus says, sweeping his hand along the corridor. “Our job keeps getting bigger, and there’s a limit to how much we can squeeze into our limited space. So—up we go.” He’s very cheerful about it.

  She squints at the corridor. “Up?”

  “They can’t have it all,” he says easily. “We’re willing to put up with a lot, since we like what we do. But as they grow we grow, so we’re forced to have some additional entries and vents and a window here and there. Very modest when you consider.”

  She’s trying to piece this together and stupidly repeats, “Up?” Could her downstairs neighbour be on to something? Could they really be taking some of his apartment? It seems incredible, but Bossephalus raises his eyes up to follow his pointing finger. He lifts his chin and the look on his face is satisfied and confident.

  “We’re really just shifting them around a little. When you think about it, nobody uses all the space they have. Tops of closets, under the sink, behind the tub—add it all together and it’s substantial real estate. We have the science to do some adjusting. We’re careful not to give them anything concrete to go on.”

  “I see.” She struggles to make her voice noncommittal. “You just make them a little more cramped? When they’re already complaining about being cramped?”

  He beams. “Nicely put.”

  They start to pass men on ladders drilling upwards and men with expanders—wide metal brackets with a wheel in the middle—widening the drilled areas. Bossephalus motions for Lena to follow him into a long room with calculators and screens with groups of numbers. “This is one of my favourites,” he whispers, and nods towards a lottery machine. “It was my idea to get involved in this. Every third lottery winner will have a problem—we give it to someone who has a warrant out on him, or a guy who’ll say it was his own purchase but his buddies at work say it was a group ticket, or a mugger finds the winning ticket in the purse he just stole—that’s tricky! What will he do?”

  She decides she has to go along with him, cheer along with him. “I like that,” she says in an appreciative sort of way. “It’s a moral dilemma that’s really a legal dilemma. I mean, a criminal dilemma. What to do, what to do.” She’s trying not to think about implications, any implications. Her mind is snapping around like cut wires.

  “You see the fun. Now, I’m getting forgetful. Where am I taking you?” He turns up his smile, it’s now bright and gleaming. There’s a little edge of intimacy in it, as if he has something up his sleeve.

  “Biskabit.”

  “Oh yes, that’s right. And what department is he in?”

  “Personnel. Human Resources. Whatever it’s called, I forget. They keep changing the name, don’t they?”

  “Do they?” he says smoothly, as if it doesn’t matter to him. “Here’s Billings.” He waves his arm. “We’re sending out cut-off notices to people who have no idea why; we’re sending out $10,000 electric bills to small studios; $10,000 phone bills to poor people. The interns make up collection notices with unreadable phone numbers!” He laughs. “We scramble the records at the source, of course.”

  She thinks of people getting those bills, trying to cope with them. She had a notice from a collection agency once; it drove her crazy. She blurts out, “Why?” She regrets it immediately. Wherever she is—whatever this place is—it’s obviously not an ordinary job, these aren’t ordinary people. She should keep her head down and shut up.

  “Why?” he murmurs, repeating her question in a sad little voice. “When did you hear from Biskabit?”

  “I didn’t actually hear from him,” she says. “I heard about the job. From a memo. A job description.”

  “In the papers?” he suggests.

  She’s blinking too much, she knows she’s blinking too much, but she can’t stop no matter how much she wants to. “In some papers,” she says. “I found some papers.”

  He sighs. “Come along with me. We’re almost there.”

  They pass more open rooms. Some rooms have signs on them: “Obstruction. Illegal Towing. Merchandise Warranties.” One of the biggest rooms says, simply, “Chemicals.” She hears people yelling, “Skin reactions! Fumes! No noticeable odour!”

  Her feet are getting leaden, she’s becoming heavy with dread. If I can just get rid of Bossephalus, she thinks, maybe I can make my way back and out. How many times have we turned? I can’t remember how many times we’ve turned.

  “It’s a great job,” he explains. “You have to love it.” He clasps his hands together in delight. “Love. It’s a chemical, you know. A little bit of a drug in the right place. Sneak it into their coffee or their potato chips—voila! Take it away and forty years of marriage goes down the drain. Of course, sometimes all you have to do is get someone a little sexier, a little more spangled, and put them in the right place. Take someone with the name of Denise, for instance. Smart and sexy and just a little bit dangerous. But you know all about Denise,” he says.

  Her heart does a little thud. Is this just some wild coincidence, or is Bossephalus talking about the woman who clicked her heels and took her love to Oz?

  She passes a screen that shows a massive backup on the bridge. She doesn’t look directly; her eyes roll out to t
he side. The bridge camera swings from the long view to the short view. It’s a jackknifed tractor-trailer, as usual. “Why is it always a tractor-trailer?” she asks, trying to make it a joke. “Shouldn’t they be outlawed?”

  “The Bridge and Tunnel Authority!” he shouts. “We own the Bridge and Tunnel Authority! Between that and the construction jobs, we hardly have enough staff. Well, construction doesn’t actually need staff once they put up the orange cones, do they?” He’s pleased with himself.

  Then he puts his hand on her shoulder. At first it’s just a slight touch, but he adds weight to it. They turn a corner and there are four people standing there, as if they’re waiting.

  “The membership committee,” Bossephalus says easily. “Come to greet us. You, actually.”

  There are two men and two women, all in white lab coats. They stand in front of a door marked “Accidents.” The women smile at her politely, the men move behind her and she can’t see their faces, but she can feel them.

  “What’s this?” she asks, her mouth dry.

  “We’ve been thinking about what job would be best for you,” Bossephalus says. He’s very happy.

  “Who’s ‘we’?” She tries to sound tough, but it comes out faintly.

  “Think of us as a service organization,” he says. “Only we serve ourselves.” He points to his ear, which has a small device, like a hearing aid. “I’ve been getting reports on you all along. Let’s go this way.” They take a left down another corridor, which has stacks of filing cabinets pushed to one side. “We’re digital now, of course,” Bossephalus murmurs. “Computers, chips, cameras everywhere. Look it up, nail it down. We keep track of millions of people above us, we visit them, we live among them. And we play a little.” He laughs. “We play a lot. We’re scientists.” His eyes roll toward a sign. “Medical Records.” She doesn’t like the sign.