by Karen Heuler
But she was beginning to think things had changed, as Ron beamed upon the company. “The Report on Reports is coming up, and I thought this year we’d push our presentations to the limit. You know, liven it up, throw in a joke. Put some zip in their zippers. We’re going to make this the best review ever!” He looked around at the fawning faces. “See what you can do. Put extreme into the routines! How’s the Facilitation Report, Paulina?”
“As you can see by looking at—let me see—page 2,” she began, “the main delays in project completion or status achievement break down into: personnel indecision, end-usage misidentification . . .”
“It’s a beautiful Report,” Ron interrupted. He had never interrupted her before. “And so long.” His smile paused for a second, just enough for Paulina’s heart to throw out a mismanaged beat.
“I try to be thorough,” she said defensively (always a mistake: the zebra about to be corrected by the lion surely has just that tone).
Ron nodded and Paulina slumped slightly in relief. “All the information is here. It just needs a little jazzing up. I think Mindy could help you there. A little of her style added to your expertise would really sell it.”
Mindy smiled gaily; Paulina tried to keep her eyes from darting around the room. “I didn’t realize you wanted style,” she said plaintively.
Ron looked over to Mindy and then back to her. “I do,” he said.
Paulina had never asked a hard question because she had never wanted an unpleasant answer, but that was not the way Mindy worked at all. “Way too obvious,” Mindy said, crossing out things on the printout Paulina handed her. “You’re letting everyone off easy. Let’s have some fun with this.” She gave a little shake to her head; her hair shook with it.
“That’s a beautiful hairstyle,” Paulina said as nicely as she could. She wanted to see if Mindy would show any guilt at all.
“Why, uh, thank you.” Mindy seemed to be searching for something to say in return. “I like yours, too. It must be so easy to take care of.”
“I used to have hair like that,” Paulina continued.
“I don’t recall.”
“Exactly like that.”
“Well, I’m sure it will grow back.” Mindy smiled and turned away.
But it didn’t grow back. By the next week there was no more fuzz than there had been. She began to wear a hat. One day Mindy tapped her on the shoulder.
“Excuse me,” Mindy said, “I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but your hat is bothering people.”
“Bothering people? How?”
“Well, they stare at it,” Mindy said. “They’re trying to figure it out. You know: why is she wearing a hat? Is she covering something up? Didn’t you notice how many times Jim said ‘cap’ at this morning’s meeting? It’s very distracting.”
“There was a meeting this morning? I wasn’t even there.”
“See? That’s how bad it is.” Mindy was quietly triumphant in a sympathetic kind of way. She had one of those deliberately soft voices that are supposed to be nonthreatening, legally.
And Mindy handed her a memo Ron had signed that specifically requested no hats unless for religious or medical reasons. “Well, I suppose that’s not a medicinal hat?” she asked with raised eyebrows. “Although it looks like it might be. . . .”
One fundamental problem was that Mindy’s mind was sharper than Paulina’s. Sharp, Paulina thought, as in: sees things clearly; as in: cuts without conscience.
Mindy removed most of Paulina’s questions and added this: Do you blame your boss for the delay or incompletion?
It was a jarring yes-no question and it was bound to get someone in trouble, maybe even cost some jobs. Mindy was revising the Report in such a way that it would be necessary to actually recommend some action. Paulina had expected to retire in thirty years or so, and she could only last thirty more years by keeping herself neutral and pleasant, but she was beginning to find her nerves snapping, her teeth grating, her head filling with explosive scenarios.
And there was something in the alert way everyone was looking lately that manifestly signalled the scent of blood. Change was coming, and change was not good.
Without hair, Paulina felt conspicuous. If people stared, she believed she looked monstrous. And if they didn’t look she was left in doubt: was she now somehow unnoticeable? Had she been dismissed from the world? She was thrown off her track; she was losing her way.
The next week Paulina appeared in a wig that matched the hair she used to have. A few heads looked at her with interest. She saw Mindy glaring: the eyelids lowered; the upper lip raised. “What a nice haircut,” Mindy said in her oh-so-nice voice. “It looks somehow familiar.”
Paulina smiled at her vaguely. “Does it?” Someone down the table snickered.
Ron settled forward in his chair, his hands almost gripping the table. “We’ve got a new twist on the Reports this year; we’ve hired a Talent consultant for the presentations leading up to the Report on the Reports,” he said. “I’ve got an emcee to introduce each presentation of each individual Report, and to break it up, a magician in the middle, with a disappearing tiger. This year we’ll also have a choice of four entrées, all of them quite tasty. No mistakes like last year’s incident of the live goat.” He looked around benevolently. “We just need good, thorough Reports and a relaxed presentation. You can’t have a top-tier company without creativity, and that’s where we’re going—creative! Top tier!”
He started around the table, reviewing the area of each Report and discussing who would present it. Paulina had represented her section the year before and expected to do it again. Ron got all the way around the table before reaching Mindy and Paulina. He beamed fondly at Mindy, who put her hand up to stroke her hair modestly. Paulina lifted her own hand automatically.
“Now, Mindy,” Ron said, “tell us what you have in mind. You’ll be in charge of the section on questionnaires and appraisals.”
At that, Paulina’s hand dropped slowly, chastened. Mindy was now above her! When had the re-org happened, or was it still secret?
First the hair, then her rank. Paulina felt that she was all alone on the savannah, with something hungry moving towards her. Ron had said to rev it up, and she would do that. And she would take him by surprise to boot.
She went to everyone she’d interviewed before, going backwards through the questionnaires. She’d always filed the responses anonymously, of course, except for the letter coding in the top right hand of the first page, which indicated which department was involved and the initials of the employee.
“Have I ever stolen anything is one of the questions now,” Mort on the third floor said, holding the latest version of the questionnaire in his hand. “Have they? Don’t they steal my spirit while paying for my mind? What kind of questions are these? Number 91 asks if I’ve ever had sex in the office. That’s the only interesting question, and even that’s none of their business. But I’d like to know about the others, of course, the ones without offices. Are they using mine? Sometimes my chairs have been moved.”
“It’s a trick question. If you’re thinking about that, it shows you’re not working,” Paulina said. “It’s diabolical, actually, since once we ask the question we force you to think about it. I know what questions can do to people. They’re metaphysical, aren’t they? I never realized it before, how much I like questions. They’re the building blocks of reason!” She grinned somewhat foolishly, but she felt strangely moved. “I love my job,” she said. “I never knew it before. I love making questions.”
Mort looked at her sympathetically. “Just when they’ve started taking your questions away, too; that’s what they call irony, isn’t it?”
Paulina offered to present a small report on the residue of Reports; i.e., does anyone remember last year’s Reports? It tickled Ron, since she could go through his predecessors’ Reports and mock them.
“You can have ten minutes tops,” he said, “or the sherbet will melt.”
Pauli
na was guaranteed a position, which was now what mattered. She lied about how she was going to do the Report; she had something else up her sleeve. Always before, she had made up questions that everyone knew how to answer; what were the questions everyone knew how to ask?
In the meantime, she wore her wig slightly askew. It made Mindy self-conscious. Paulina began to dress better, too; she wouldn’t go so far as to say she was mimicking Mindy; she was buying clothes that were like Mindy’s, however, and she wore garments similar to Mindy’s the day after her rival did. She was working up to wearing them the day before.
She asked Mort: “What are the questions that really matter to you?”
“My top ten are: Is there a terrible disease beginning in me, how long will I live, is my wife faithful, are my kids good, do people respect me, why am I not happier, where is the money I deserve? If that’s not ten, it doesn’t matter,” he said.
Paulina wrote down them down and went to the departments and people she had interviewed before. “When will I be happy?” they asked, “And am I dying?”
They did their projects even in the middle of these questions. “Can my father hear me in his coma?” one asked. “How much pain can my daughter stand? Why am I afraid? Is there God, is there God, is there God?”
Paulina wrote the questions down frantically and began to organize them so they changed subtly but progressively from “When will I be happy?” to “Where is my true home in all this?” to “Why am I afraid?”
Through it all, of course, she wore her wig, unable to regain her hair by any natural means. Mindy certainly wouldn’t be shamed into giving the hair back, so what was Paulina to do?
The Report on Reports loomed large, as did all the questions associated with it, which Paulina now considered in all their serious political consequences. Historically the Reports had been used to eliminate people, to repress people—certainly in that regard all the janitorial and support staff were consistently repressed by the sheer fact that no questionnaire was ever directed their way.
So she asked the building super and the janitors and cleaning women. She spoke to the secretaries and the temps and the phone-system administrators. Their questions were the same as Mort’s, only with a few more about money. Paulina was excited by the pathos of their wonder, by the exactness of their needs.
“I don’t agree with some of your questions,” she told Mindy. Mindy, after all, was still doing Paulina’s section of the Reports, gathering the responses to the latest questionnaire.
Mindy shrugged. “You don’t have to,” she said easily. “We’re trying something different. You’ll understand eventually.” At that she grinned a full, white-tooth grin, the pose of a benevolent predator. Paulina could feel the lion’s eye sweep towards her; she felt in danger of being culled. The herd never actually sees the one who gets eaten, she thought; they look away from the kill. She wanted to force them to look, all of them.
Paulina knew what she wanted to do. “We’re going to sing our Report,” she told Mort and Joe, a super, and Yvonne, a cleaning woman. “We’re going to change their hearts with the power of our questions.”
“There are some Voices on the staff,” Yvonne agreed. “I hear them late at night, emptying the pails.”
“Henry has a voice like a boom box,” Joe added. “And the moves, he moves like a wave. He should be out in front.”
“We will all be in front,” Paulina declared, “in our own individual ways. We need to show how strong we are.” Her wig felt like it was slipping; she righted it. Yvonne and Mort modestly averted their eyes, and it made Paulina waver. She might be endangering them. “On the other hand, it might be risky. Maybe we shouldn’t do it,” she said softly.
“I’ve never been in a Report,” Yvonne said. “And I’ve been cleaning these offices for twenty years.”
Joe nodded “We want to do it. This is our one chance.”
The Reports took all afternoon. The minor Reports came first, like warm-up bands; they weren’t expected to grab attention. Ron glowed with achievement; he was obviously being groomed for promotion and it looked like Mindy would replace Ron when he left. All Paulina’s hopes of anonymous longevity were squashed.
Mindy wore an iridescent pearl-coloured body stocking with a long pearl-coloured skirt with tremendous slits. She threw out numbers as if she’d made them up. “Fine fractals advanced to 78 by knocking out the middle,” she said and did a split, her arms thrown upwards. “Move the work downwards and pack them in together.”
The crowd roared at Mindy’s dance; the bosses nudged each other. Mindy humbly bowed with arms crossed over her breasts. Her eyes held grateful tears.
“She’s wowing them,” Mort muttered.
As host of the Report on Reports, Ron introduced each participant by doing somersaults to and from the podium on the stage.
There was a mime who did a Report on Physical Inventory, then a clown who did the Financial Report, a juggler who did The Service Sector, and finally it was Paulina’s turn, the Report on Previous Reports.
She wore a long black gown with long black sleeves. She walked silently mid-stage and turned her back to the audience, which caused an uncertain snicker.
The stage had been prepped by the janitorial staff, which had set up pneumatic risers and small beams of light shooting up and out.
Janitors, secretaries, cleaning women, mail clerks and cafeteria workers stepped forward as the rear black curtain rose. They moved in straight lines and broke apart to form a large slow V on stage. Then the risers rose, and they were a chorus.
They sang:
My dreams have changed; why do they haunt me?
Who are these men who never seem to see me?
What happened to the joy I thought was due me?
How did I come here?
The pneumatic risers thrust different questions into the air. Each question or row of singers was answered by another row of singers with another question.
Where is the wonder, the hope?
Why is my heart drawn down at the start of each day?
And my spirit wasted?
They had wonderful voices, both magical and mundane. It was their one chance to ask the questions that bothered them; no one would listen to them again.
They ended:
When I was young, I never thought to come here;
How did I come here?
At the last word the risers in their various positions descended, and the spotlights went off scattershot, like ducks being hit at a midway.
“Lights up! Lights up!” Ron shouted, rushing out with his arms raised. He beamed broadly, as if he knew quite well what everyone was thinking. “Weren’t they terrific?” he cried insincerely. “But my, my, my, weren’t they a downer?” He winked broadly. “And wouldn’t you know it—it couldn’t come at a better time—the next one up is Manny Gomerson with his Judgement on the Reports. How we doin’, Manny?”
And to Paulina’s dismay (she hadn’t known their performances would be rated), Manny came out in a full-fledged tuxedo with a bunch of large interoffice envelopes in his hand. “Oh, that one wasn’t good for morale,” Manny stated, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. “I mean, this is a job, right, not a psychiatrist’s couch. But enough philosophizing—let’s get down to work. We have seven prizes and eight Reports. How should we do this, Ron? Everyone made a great effort, and they all deserve prizes, but we don’t have enough to go around. We have to do some eliminating, okay? Can I have everyone up front?”
Mort patted Paulina on the shoulder—a loser’s pat, Paulina thought glumly.
As the last one off the stage she was the first to go back on, and lined up with Mindy, the mime, the juggler, two clowns, a baton twirler and a man who did a swing dance with a manikin. “They’re all going to win and I’m going to lose,” Paulina thought. She told herself that winning didn’t matter, that she had wanted to show off the truth and beauty of the chorus—but the chorus was huddled in the wings with disappointed faces.
; “Only the first two rows vote,” Manny warned (those rows were reserved for bosses). “You just send in a number on your cell phones (everyone’s got a line to the Tally Committee now, right?). One to ten, ten the best. Here we go!”
The audience cheered and booed with absolute abandon. Ron encouraged it, striding across the stage like Groucho Marx and stopping to hold his hand over someone’s head for the vote. “Mimes are in a revival,” he shouted. “They’re kitschy, they’re quaint. But we still hate them, don’t we?” And the audience roared. They roared for Mindy (“Who knows what she said? Look at that dress!”) and the juggler (“Have you ever tried it? Start with eggs.”) It was obvious that the crowd was roaring at Ron, not the performers, because he got to Paulina and said, “We all appreciate the effort involved for everyone concerned, let’s give them a hand,” and the crowd clapped politely but unenthusiastically until Ron added, “For the anti-Hallelujah chorus.” Cheers and catcalls rang out.
A phone rang onstage and Ron picked it up. “We have our winners!” he shouted, holding up the envelopes, and he named everyone but Paulina. “Congratulations, all!” he crowed. “Your contract is renewed for another year.”
Paulina stood empty-handed. “Contract? I never had a contract.”
Ron rushed forward. “Which brings me to our latest announcement. As of today, all Report positions will be contracted out on a competitive basis. Sorry, Paulina, your bid lost.”
Paulina’s heart was sinking in full view. “Bid? Bid? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You didn’t think you had your job forever, did you?” Ron asked with theatrical sympathy, and turned to the crowd. “Who thinks they have their jobs forever?” The crowd booed. “See?” he said, turning back to her. “It’s just the times we live in. The times require sacrifice.”
The crowd cheered. Ron raised his hands and shook them together. “The party’s over!” he said. “Your jobs are all secure.” The audience applauded and laughed and began to leave their seats. He turned to Paulina as Mindy came over to join them.