Louse (20 page)

“Thank you,” I say.

Mr. Lumpit's desk is one third the height of any other desk in the office but has the same surface area. He stands up on his chair and leans across the desk for a pad of paper.

“I have been asked to prepare your portfolio so that I can brief you on your financial status later in the week,” Mr. Lumpit says. “As a new trustee you have several payment options you didn't have in the past.”

“I see,” I reply as Mr. Lumpit picks up a pen as big as his torso.

“Yes,” he says. “It's really quite liberating, in fact. Fines, fees, new debitures can be quickly eradicated with a healthy cost containment plan. Not to mention the reduced interest rates and the volunteer programs we have set aside as incentives. You might think of consolidating, or funneling future time into futures in the organization. As a trustee as opposed to a future trustee, as you learned from the video this morning, you may use time as collateral to buy shares. G. is doing very well these days. Very well indeed. Futures are a healthy start for a forward thinker such as yourself, Mr. Louse.”

“Yes, indeed,” I say.

“In any case,” Mr. Lumpit says, “I just wanted to make sure that everything is in order. Your ID number, Mr. Louse?”

“Four, nine, four, five, seven, nine, zero, nine, nine.”

“Very good.” Mr. Lumpit writes the number on the pad and then jabs his little finger at the computer keyboard.

“It's really a very exciting time for you,” Mr. Lumpit says, smiling as the information instantaneously comes up on the screen. “The future is only a small step away in the life of us trustees. It is closer than we would ever expect. As the Executive says, ‘Time can only be captured by those willing to capture it. The end of the future is the beginning of the past. There is no middle passage. There is no time like the present.”

Mr. Lumpit continues to smile. I'm not sure what to make of him, other than that he is familiar to me. However, his smile is somewhat knowing and more than a little nervous. As Mr. Lumpit continues to smile, I notice through the corner of my eye that there is a quiet commotion taking place directly behind me.

I turn for a better view.

Mr. Bender stands at the door of an office. He is pointing at one of the accountants, one of those I recognize, a young woman with frizzy hair and an expressionless face. She slowly walks to Mr. Bender. Mr. Bender directs her to the hall where there are five other accountants standing beside Mr. Godmeyer, who is carefully placing heavy shackles on their legs and arms. I feel a shutter run up my back as I feel the synchronicity of events.

I turn to Mr. Lumpit. He is still smiling, his cheeks quivering.

“And you realize that you are eligible for the drawing, Mr. Louse.”

“I am aware of that, Mr. Lumpit.”

“Yes, ever since Mr. Moorcraft became Mr. Blank and G. was saved from destruction, it is safe to say the drawing can be at any time now.”

“Yes, I'm aware of that, Mr. Lumpit.”

“I'm glad that you're aware of that, Mr. Louse. Please be advised that this will be of great concern to you,” he says, smiling as though what he is saying carries a greater weight than I could possibly know.

“Yes, Mr. Lumpit.”

“Yes, Mr. Louse,” he says seriously.

“I'm afraid I don't understand.”

“I don't mean to disturb you, Mr. Louse. I am simply saying that caution befits a new trustee as well as cunning.”

Mr. Lumpit motions toward me.

“My final duty, Mr. Louse, just so you know, is to you. In that sense it is for the both of us. Keep that in mind as you proceed.”

Mr. Lumpit looks around a little and then looks back at me.

“Like you I have been allowed to remember little things. I have been informed of little things as well. For your safe passage, of course. The little things make big things don't they, Mr. Louse?”

“Yes, Mr. Lumpit,” I say. “Little things make big things.” And I realize that although I don't really understand what is happening, Mr. Lumpit is undoubtedly placing me into some kind of jeopardy.

“I'm glad you agree, Mr. Louse. Well, here is my little thing. For you, Mr. Louse, I have passage to a familiar place,” he says gravely as he taps away at his computer. “Ah, here we go, Mr. Louse,” he says as the monitor changes color and presents some
kind of financial document. Mr. Lumpit presses a button. The screen changes. And then all of a sudden Mr. Lumpit's expression becomes ponderous.

“It seems that a trip to the Controller is necessary, Mr. Louse. Certain developments,” he says, still considering the information on the screen.

“Excuse me,” I say, as I continue to watch Mr. Bender do his rounds. One of the accountants is cowering in the corner of his office. Mr. Bender walks after him, takes him by the arm, twists the man's arm around his back, and leads him into the hall.

“An impossibility,” Mr. Lumpit says, acting a little distracted, as though he finally acknowledges the arrests taking place around us. “At least an improbability. A mix-up.”

“I don't understand,” I say.

“According to this file it shows that there are two Herman Q. Louses with two different files with two different sets of data, with several ID numbers.”

Mr. Godmeyer is now placing black hoods on the heads of those accountants he has already shackled. When I look back to Mr. Lumpit, he rests his tiny chin into his tiny hands.

“There're no two ways about it, Mr. Louse. I'm afraid I'm going to have to send you to the Controller to straighten this out.”

“Whatever you think is best, Mr. Lumpit.”

“Most definitely, the Controller. This way, Mr. Louse.”

I follow Mr. Lumpit out of his glass encased cubicle down the hall to an interoffice elevator bank. He presses the button of the elevator.

“Ninth floor,” Mr. Lumpit says. “Room nine-eleven. Best of fortune to you. Once again, congratulations.”

Mr. Lumpit says all this smiling, cheeks bulging and quivering nervously.

“Be careful, Mr. Louse.”

Mr. Lumpit walks back to his office. As he arrives, Mr. Bender approaches him and leads him to the hall. He is the last one, making it an even dozen. Mr. Godmeyer cuffs his wrists and ankles and places the oversized black hood over his head. Mr. Bender walks out and takes the front. Mr. Godmeyer takes the back. And then off they march through the hall until they drift out of sight.

The elevator arrives.

I step in and punch the ninth floor.

The doors close and I ride up.

When the elevator doors spread apart, a man falls toward me into the elevator and makes a tremendous thud as he drops onto his left shoulder and then onto his face. I bend down and turn him over. I place my cheek against his mouth and find that he's breathing. His skin is warm. The fat arteries in his neck pulse ever so slightly.

“Excuse me,” I say as I gently tap his cheek.

The elevator doors close onto his shins and bounce back open.

“Are you going to come to?”

I tap at his cheek again, this time a little harder. He is a man of medium height and wide proportions. He has thick brown eyebrows, a pockmarked face, and a permanent dimple shaped like an asterisk on the lower part of his jaw.

“Sir?” I say again as the doors close and bounce back. I dig my hands underneath his shoulders and pull him out of the elevator into the wing, where I notice there are a half dozen other men and
women passed out on the floor in various contorted poses, sparsely and evenly scattered to the end of the corridor. I drag the man in my arms out of harm's way and lean him against the wall under the elevator control panel. As I stand up from placing him in as comfortable a position as I can possibly arrange, a thin woman with straight auburn hair and narrow arching eyes walks out from the office closest to the elevator.

“Excuse me,” she says appropriately.

“Excuse me,” I say as I step back. “Would you happen to have any news about this?” I wave my hand at the unconscious bodies in the hall.

The woman presses the “Down” button to the elevator and turns back to look at the bodies. She yawns as though she is about to answer me, or is at least considering my question, and then drops forward as her eyes disengage from consciousness and roll up toward the top of her head. To her good fortune, she falls directly into my arms. I pull her close and drag her over to the door from which she just came.

I walk down the hall toward nine-eleven, making my way around the sprawled bodies. I have never been to the ninth floor. It is similar to most other floors: transparent glass walls, white doors, beige floors, a popcorn ceiling, an internal labyrinth of offices recessing to the periphery of the building. As I walk down I notice that there are many others inside who are passed out cold on top of their desks, on their phones and computer keyboards, on the floors, in the aisles, sitting upright in chairs, teetering to one side or the other. Those who are still conscious act as though nothing has happened. They continue their duties in the manner they are accustomed, pushing aside those who are in the way as necessity dictates.

I step over a man's arm and turn left into room nine-eleven. I open the door and follow my way, straight and then left, through a glass-paned hall that deposits me at the front desk, at which, to my utter surprise, is Ms. Florence Berger. She is sitting upright in her chair, staring directly at me with her neck rigidly upright and her head angled forty-five degrees over her right shoulder. Like Mr. Sherwood's receptionist, Ms. Berger sits with one hand folded over the other on top of a green blotter. When I step up to the desk, she delicately replaces one hand for the other.

“Herman Q. Louse to see the Controller,” I say, not mentioning Ms. Berger's name in order to spare her the humiliation of her thinking that I know who she is.

Ms. Berger just stares at my chest and moves her head from one shoulder to the other. Her green eyes are bloodshot and glassy. Her lips are tightly pressed together so that I can hear her breathing through her nose, and I can't help but think of the arrows of water darting away from her when she was in the tank. I don't remember Ms. Berger as well as I do Mr. Lumpit. I merely have an image of passing her and looking at her talk to a balding man with thin eyebrows.

I wait a moment longer for Ms. Berger to respond. When she doesn't, I walk back toward an office enclosed by oak walls, assuming, I think safely, that this is the Controller's office. On my way there I find that everyone in this department has fallen over in the same state as those in the hall, all except one man who is gray at the temples and who is intermittently bouncing his fist against his knee after vigorously scrubbing his computer screen with a white cloth, in order, it seems, to stay awake.

“You won't find him in there,” the man announces as I continue toward the Controller's office.

“Where is he?”

“Arrested. Some say conspiracy, some say for his relationship with the Executive Controlling Partner, some say for money laundering, some say for mishandling records, some say for all of the above. He was mischievous. Very mischievous. I dare say he has what's coming to him.”

And with that, the man very vigorously bounces his fist on his knee. He punches hard, hitting, but to no avail. And then as spontaneously as the woman began to fade back near the elevator, the man yawns and slowly slinks off his chair, under his desk into a ball.

I sniff the air in search of an unusual scent, thinking that it might have something to do with an escaped gas. But all I can smell is ammonia, as fresh and pungent as it always smells wherever I happen to be in G. Its smell is so ever-present I can hardly even smell it until I close my eyes and think about it hard enough.

When I open my eyes, I find that Ms. Berger has gotten up from her desk and is now standing next to me.

“If you will please follow me, Mr. Louse,” Ms. Berger says in a barely audible monotone. Her eyes are no more alive than when I arrived. Her lips move without any indication that the rest of her face knows that she has just spoken.

I don't even feel compelled to ask her why or on whose orders. I must have faith that whatever it is that's guiding me has some greater intelligence. I allow Ms. Berger to walk ahead. I follow her slow, soft movements back to the oak walls of the Controller's office.

“If you'll just swipe your card through the sensor, Mr. Louse,” Ms. Berger says.

“Yes,” I say, not knowing why I should, but somehow knowing it will work. I am obviously here for a particular reason.

I swipe my new trustee card through the sensor device. The door clicks open and swings in.

Ms. Berger and I slowly follow it and allow the door to automatically close behind us. The office is the exact image of Mr. Sherwood's office only smaller, more compact, with no windows. The man outside who informed me that the Controller had been taken away was mistaken or was living through an hallucination when he watched him being hauled off. For the Controller, who turns out to be Mr. Hamilton, my former collections official, is here, reclining back in his leather chair, passed out like the others.

Ms. Berger wheels him off to the side, into the back of the room against a wall of bookshelves filled with ledgers and other books full of what look like rules and regulations and other such things. When she returns to the desk, she steps before the computer terminal.

“May I please have your identification card, Mr. Louse?” she asks as she holds out her hand.

“Yes, of course,” I say and hand her the card over the desk.

She runs the card through a small black box next to the computer and then looks at the monitor. I walk around to the other side of the desk to see what she is seeing, to find five rows of numbers scrolling up the screen. When the numbers are through scrolling, Ms. Berger hands my card back to me and then lifts the lid of another black box, larger and more rectangular than the first.