Issue 3 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

espect for those who supervise him (they would not
have survived the regimen of the air force). He brings a
sack lunch every day consisting of a hard-boiled egg, a
bag of barbecue potato chips, and a thermos of orange
juice laced with vodka. His job is to type the invoices,
then bring them over to me, who must then fill the
orders, pull the books from a long row of shelves, stack
them neatly on a long table and pack them in cardboard
cartons. Late in the afternoon I load the heavy cartons
into the company's Volkswagen van and drive to the
Rincon annex, a good thirty blocks, maybe forty, from
my place of employment in the inner Mission District.
From Valencia Street I go directly to Mission, follow
Mission all the way, past the main post office at Seventh
Street, that gray building with the pigeon-infested
steps, past the dark warehouses, the dreary furniture
outlets, the office supply dealers, until I come to the end
of it, the Embarcadero, the loading docks of the Rincon
annex. I relish each moment I am away from the mail
room, drive the long route back, over Potrero Hill, the
engine of the Volkswagen van whining on the steep
grades. When I return, all that remains is the metering
of the first-class mail. We have a hand-cranked meter,
for the company is yet young and the profits, I gather,
not substantial. But the meter has an attractive feature:
it seals the envelopes. I have learned to be very fast with
this postage meter. I like the feel of the crank, cold at
first, then warm, smooth, vibrating from the inner cogs
and gears it sets in motion.
II
It seemed so innocent. But what, after all, had she
expected? Chains? Whips? To be forced to wear ludicrous
spike-heeled boots and tower over him like some
fierce Amazon while he cowered at her feet? Well, but
she would have done it, had gone into it prepared to do
anything, so long as no serious physical harm was done
to anyone. Anything to break that deadly tedium, that
orderly decay. Of course, it was not quite the affair she
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had imagined, but she supposed no one had that affair.
Life was always compromising you, teasing you with
the promise of something close to that other desire, then
forcing you to settle for second best or nothing at all.
She had had enough of the nothing at all. And so when
she'd seen him that afternoon at the Coffee Cantata on
Union Street, sitting alone at a small table for two, sipping
a green daiquiri, his pale languid face set off by his
dark hair, by the brilliant red of the wall behind him,
she had seemed to know immediately that she
would—not on this afternoon perhaps, but on some
other, some rainy Saturday when her husband was in
Fresno with his boyfriend—get up from her own tiny
table and walk across the room to him, calmly take the
empty seat opposite him and ask if she might buy him a
drink. When he'd stood, taken a deep breath, looked
her straight in the eye, it was as though he believed he
had the power to read her mind. But was choosing not
to—not at that time. She was pleased with this display
of fine arrogance. It showed that there was more to him
than met the eye.
You have the sensation of being in a room beneath
the sea, or in a chamber underground. No, beneath the
sea. For there is that stillness, and outside, beyond the
windows, a slow-moving dark and deep world. In here
you are alone with the woman. She lies on the bed,
perhaps by now asleep, her arms extended straight,
each hand with palms turned down. Fingers curved
slightly, so that the red fingernails, long and shining,
seem to merge with the bright red bedspread, directing
your attention away from the rose-shaped stain on her
white slip. Or, rather, rendering it only part of a pattern,
a design in which the color red is seen to be inseparable
from light itself, becomes the medium of
light.
I am thirty-five years old, but she thinks me
younger. I look younger, perhaps ten years younger. At
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