Stripper Lessons

by John O'Brien

  You can always tell when someone works over the weekend by the way their desk is all straightened up Monday morning. No one would dare waste time doing that during regular hours. It’d be like begging for overflow work from someone less fortunate whose desk appropriately reflects their overwhelming workload. Pam’s desk looks sharp, and Carroll bets that if keeping it that way weren’t a breach of office etiquette it always would. He likes Pam. He’d like to see her tell her boss to fuck off one day. But she’ll never say that. No, that would never happen. Maybe that’s why he likes her.

  With the desk clean like this it doesn’t take long for him to find the file. He doesn’t even have to look in the drawer. It’s sitting squarely in the center of her desk pad, presumably in anticipation of today’s meeting with the client. Nor does it take long for him to realize that this isn’t really the file at all. Just by picking it up he can feel that it’s merely the jacket to the SoLo/Bombgate file, an expandable sleeve made out of sturdy red cardboard and cloth. Called a RedWeld by the vendor from whom they’re ordered, they cost a fortune, something like $4.65 apiece. He makes these things up for newly opened files every day by punching some holes and adding some labels. He made this one up back when the file was opened, remembers thinking that it was some sort of milestone when he typed the assigned number: So-Lotions Inc. vs. Morris Bombgate 089000–090. But even a new jacket has folders and clips in it, places to organize the various correspondence, documents, and pleadings. This is just an empty jacket. Useless. He can only assume that Pam put the contents on her boss’s desk—she had specifically mentioned the documents and litigation clips when they were still looking for it. That doesn’t explain where the rest of it is, or why it would be separated to begin with. But she wouldn’t have called off the search if she didn’t have that stuff, and if it’s found, it’s found. He’s tempted to take a look in her boss’s office, but he couldn’t face anymore drama right now. He’ll wait and ask her when she gets in.

  He can’t help but feel, walking away from Pam’s desk, a sense of loss at the file’s having been found, a deadness at having these events pass him by, and this in the wake of the horror he engendered last night, when he alone led those events way beyond anyplace they should have gone. There must be something in between, a way to move without falling down, a way to feel without pinching yourself. This is silly; there’s no reason in the world he can’t walk in and see if those clips are in Pam’s boss’s office. He turns around and retraces his steps to her secretarial bay. Around the corner and down the hall the bell of an arriving elevator sparkles: *I’m Here!* The morning is in motion, and people are plodding in to seize the day.

  Not receiving an answer to his tentative knock on Pam’s boss’s door, Carroll gingerly slips into the darkened office. Drapes drawn, you don’t often see that. The desk looks okay, but he knows better, knows that this is one of those guys who craves neatness without necessarily requiring order. Sure, the papers are stacked, but the stacks don’t represent any classification beyond a uniform size. The file fragments he is seeking are not readily visible, so he begins examining these stacks of paper. Fortunately most of them have ridiculous paperweights on them, which when lifted betray an accumulation of dust by revealing a dustless area in the shape of their little Lucite or mahogany bases. Here are two kids frozen under glass: World’s Greatest Pop! they claim. Nothing there. He checks under what looks like a big brass strawberry . . . no, it’s a nut: Buckeye–Barnes Association/Honors/1979/Cleveland Plaza Hotel. Nope. Next he lifts a Lucite cube with a miniature book sealed inside but doesn’t bother to read whatever corporate mumbo-jumbo is written on the tiny cover. Uhuh. How about this one, a model car, a red Lotus, little doors open and everything, he used to play with these as a kid, had a whole collection. SoLo/Huntley, dash 093, close but no cigar. Still, the car’s kind of neat, and he wonders if this guy drives a Lotus. Not with those kids, he thinks, looking back to the hunk of glass, they look demanding. He checks a few more stacks, some improbable loose papers, and finally the credenza, which sees little use in this office due to the fact that it is laden with antique law books. Like this is gonna impress a client: Well sure, it might be illegal now, but what about back in aught-six? Could I have done it then? Zippo. There’s not one fucking SoLo/Bombgate document in this office. Nothing. The harder you look the less you find. Applies to everything, all around, fucked. He leaves the office, lost in thought as he pulls slowly the door behind him. This guy, Pam’s boss, that’s a life in there. All that stuff, or at least some of it, is important to him. All in all it’s nothing to laugh at. He suddenly feels soft for this guy, and he wonders what would happen if he ever tried to shake his hand, or pat him on the back affectionately. But that would never fly; might as well try to kiss him on the cheek. It takes both caution and serendipity to make friends in this world, and even then the ones you cling to don’t want to hear about it. This guy, Pam’s boss, he’s got his own questions. Nothing to laugh at now, especially now.

  Okay. So what? Maybe Pam took the individual clips home to work on them. But then why not take the jacket? No, it doesn’t make sense. No way around it, he’ll just have to wait for her to come in so he can talk to her. He pulls shut the office door, which clicks now at his flank.

  “Carroll?” says Pam circumspectly, startling him and casting about for a reason to be suspicious. Looking ready for battle in her trenchcoat and armed with purse, lunch, and satchel, she just now came upon him as he stood outside her boss’s door. Well no crime in that, she supposes. “You’re here bright and early,” she allows as she yields her face to a friendlier fold.

  He’s unsure of how much she saw, unsure if he cares. “Pam. Hi. I got your note. I guess I wanted to take a look at the file after spending so much time looking for it.” He gestures ambiguously, encompassing the whole area with his arms but settles on, “So I looked on your desk, but all that’s there is the jacket. Did you take the file home? Maybe it’s in his office?” (a shouldered thumb, denial of hindsight).

  “Just the jacket?” asks Pam, glancing at her desk for reassurance and evidently finding it. “What do you mean? The file’s right there.” She sets down her lunch and lifts the red cardboard jacket: here.

  Could she not know that it’s empty? “That’s what I mean,” he says, moving toward and taking it from her. “It’s empty. See. (he shakes it upside down) This is just the jacket. The file itself is gone.” She still looks nonplussed, so he adds, “Maybe your boss has it. Maybe he came in over the weekend after you left and took out the clips.”

  She drops the rest of her stuff as well as her shoulders, unloading her burden with all the vexation of a furniture mover being victimized by an indecisive housewife. “That’s the file, Carroll. That’s what I found. Sure, maybe there’s a clip or two scattered around with some of the guys, but that’s the file. That’s it!” Taking it out of his hand and shaking it for herself, though this time right side up: “This is it!”

  Getting hot. His face is getting hot. “But that’s not it. That’s only the jacket. Pam, you said yourself that you needed some original documents from the file . . . and what about the litigation clip? Didn’t you say you wanted that? This is just the jacket! This is nothing. If this was all you wanted I could have made up a new one in two minutes. What good is this gonna do? You said the client was coming in and they needed the file today. Are you gonna hand him this? Is this gonna make him happy?” So much emotion, a lifetime of it packed into a couple of hours, it seems like. He feels out of control but different from last night. He feels right, feels like he shouldn’t walk away, shouldn’t even move his feet. This is broken outside, this is not broken inside.

  She senses him flying out of control, and she has a maternal urge to temper him. But she also thinks enough is enough, and isn’t her day going to be bad enough without playing nursemaid to a file clerk? “Carroll, Carroll, listen. I simply said that there were original docs with the file. We don’t need them today, and they’ll turn up as soon a
s whoever is working with them is finished. Last week I typed up a new motion to dismiss. That’s all the litigation clip that the client will need to see.” He looks the same to her, looks like he’ll be standing there for a thousand years. Well, enough is enough. After all, if he were a genius he wouldn’t still be in the file room. “I don’t expect you to understand. This client likes to come in and sign papers and have lunch, okay? He’ll be plenty happy to see this file sitting on the desk. It’s fine. This action is ancient, and what does he know from files anyway? He’ll be thrilled.” She busies herself for effect, ostensibly positioning her satchel and purse in their respective places. “You did a fine job for us—you know I always count on you—but this is over. Now Carroll, I’ve got a lot of work today. (he doesn’t get the hint) I need you to leave me alone so I can get to it. (doesn’t move) Leave, Carroll!” she says, clearly angry, and commences ignoring him.

  He bites his lower lip, casts about the hall for an answer. “He’ll be happy with that?” he demands.

  But Pam says nothing, just nods her head once, almost imperceptibly. He turns and walks down the hall. His own choice, looking for a lost file that everyone else thinks is found, and in this office there won’t be a lot of sympathy for his plight. One thing matters here: billing hours. No, here he is very much alone.

  The desk doesn’t seem a possibility, not his, not once he gets a look at it from the doorway of the file room, looking as he is through those red eyes, those red eyes that everyone gets and that grow more and more deleterious with each passing year until a guy finds himself calculating the ratios of shots per second and fast-food customers per square yard, and while Carroll isn’t about to go that route, neither is he ready to go back to his desk and sit there typing file inventories like a good little cookie. Still, he doesn’t want another scene like last night, at least not without thinking it through. Maybe a walk—he turns right around and heads back toward the elevators—maybe a walk . . .

  . . . into the West Los Angeles morning, and in this part of town that makes him the only pedestrian in sight. Okay, so there are a few people here and there running between buildings, but he is certainly the only one around who is taking a Walk. Not necessarily a safe bet; the cars out here on Olympic Boulevard are piloted by people who would be hard pressed to define the word pedestrian, wanton professionals with shouldered car phones and opened briefcases who would look upon the charge of Vehicular Homicide as mostly a pain in the appointment grid before they discovered with dismay that it can’t be wiped off their record by electing an evening at comedy traffic school. Nevertheless Carroll crosses against the light, causing brakes to be reluctantly applied. There’s a 7–Eleven down the block, and though he’s never been to this one, it now draws him like a magnet. A big, chalky, red and green magnet, he thinks, whatever the hell that means. His concern for the whereabouts of the Solo file—or rather, its contents—has waned, been supplanted by frustration and nagging questions, questions about how these people could turf so readily on this. It’s like they couldn’t wait to gobble up not The Solution but any solution, or like the first solution, by virtue of its being available, became for them The Solution. Sounds like a great way to make it to the morning coffee break, but what’s left to come back to when the decaf is drunk and the Twinkies eaten? And as if all that weren’t bad enough, he finds, as he walks along busy Olympic Boulevard, that he can’t help trying to look at the people in the cars, especially the blonds. If he catches a flash of blond go by at fifty-two mph he tracks it like a spectator at an auto race. Sometimes he’s wrong and there is no blond. But other times he doesn’t notice the blond until his head is already in motion. Amazing. More magnets. Of course he knows he isn’t going to find her like this, driving by in a car. That would be a long shot even if he knew where she lived and staked out her street, much less standing here in the middle of the morning commute. A woman like Stevie you wouldn’t see by accident, because if you did see her, then it wouldn’t be an accident.

  The 7-Eleven is doing a brisk business, what with forty-ounce javas, cellophane-wrapped breakfast goodies, and a microwave on the premises. The clientele is surprisingly blue collar, not at all in keeping with the look of the drive-by traffic. But this doesn’t save Carroll from the derisive looks dealt to anyone shady enough to be walking up to a place like this. They know something must be wrong, and to play it safe they give him a little sneer, better yet a murmur capped with snickers, a little special bonding with a friend in the passenger seat. Carroll runs the gauntlet of freelance cable installers and beat pickups laden with lawn mowers and Mexicans. Once inside the door he looks to his left and notices the familiar color-coded height sticker running up the doorframe. Impossible to tell how tall you are by one of these things, he’d probably have to rob the store, pause here on his way out the door, and wait for his public defender to get a hold of the witness report before he could get his own height. A long way to go for an official stat. Still, it’s nice to be noticed. He takes a few steps around the congested aisles, wondering if there isn’t something to eat that might calm him down but knowing that even if there is he isn’t likely to find it in this place. For the other customers, who know exactly where to look for what they get every day, he is very much underfoot, and they impatiently push past him, just as they would speed around a disoriented driver who slows to read addresses on a busy street. Looks of exasperation and superiority crowding their faces, they home in on the goody in question, perhaps a Breakfast Sausage Bun-Yum or an Oat Bran Berry-Bagel, snatch it from the shelf or bin with dispatch, and fall into line at the register, only to secretly agonize about whether to go back and get one that isn’t squished on the side, and fuck that idiot who stood over my shoulder and made me hurry when I picked this one out. Carroll tries the candy section, sees nothing he wants. Slurpees, soft-serve ice cream, cereal, dental floss, brownies, Brillo pads, soup, nuts, he looks in the dairy case, sees the milk then walks all the way around the store to the honey. There is nothing here he can use, nothing that will help him this morning. He shuffles out to the parking lot, leaving the busy clerks less worried about what he may have boosted than about what manner of corporate Big Brotherism may have caught them looking less worried. Outside on Olympic Boulevard a passing semi barreling through a yellow light raises the dust of the street to a swirling cloud that moves to settle about the 7-Eleven lot. Motley litter takes a short old ride. It’s like this all over.

  With no idea what to do, except not to go back to work yet, he continues walking east. Heavy traffic pounds his back with the vacuum of speed, sucking him along the periphery as if entreating him to get with the program and buy a car, rent one, even hop a bus, anything! In truth they want more; any car won’t do. His Vega, when he’s in it, is always subject to contempt from the other drivers. They look right through him on the road, look surprised when, after speeding like hell to reach his rear bumper, they suddenly realize that they can’t drive over him. Los Angeles is not exactly a safe haven for American cars built in the seventies. Where do they all go? In the East they stay on the road forever, even with the rust. Perhaps one night the Vega will be seized, taken out of his apartment garage under cover of darkness, wrapped in blankets and spirited away to a clandestine debriefing center in the desert. Rebuilt and repainted, it will surface months later at a snow-covered car lot in Cleveland, Ohio, dazed, headlights vacuous as they stare out from under the words E-Z TERMS! Carroll stumbles, looks down, and realizes that, halfway along this sunny block, the sidewalk has degenerated into a mostly dust path. Like a sidewalk ruin, there is a bit of man-made surface every five or six feet along the path, skew pieces that seem to be pushing up from under the dust and gasping for air, or maybe they’re still sinking. Hard to tell. Might be merely different parts of the same process.

  This section of LA is zoned in such a way that tall commercial structures tower over residential blocks. This can’t have been going on all that long, for the commercial buildings are not that old and the houses look
mostly paid-off. In some places remnants of an old neighborhood business district can still be discerned between the granite and glass and the well-kept lawns, very much so at the intersection on which he now stands, up the cross street and past the next light. Here lies a small storefront bar under a busted neon sign, busted neon in the shape of a farm animal, busted in such a manner that there’s no way to further identify the animal, farm in fact being indicated only by the faded straw painted near its . . . hooves? No matter, anyone sitting in this place has likely been sitting there long enough to learn, know, and forget the name. Except Carroll, who impulsively drops out of his walk and bumps through the door.