Everybody Should Have a Hobby

Two small holes pock the carpet. My nice, smooth office carpet. High heel holes: the agent’s. She is watching me. Maybe she considers that part of her job. I wonder, though: does she watch all her clients? I feel a presence just outside the door, I hear soft breathing, I think I smell her perfume, but it could be the carpet. They might actually be one and the same. I keep very still.

The day I leased my first office, the agent clacked briskly across the polished parquet floor. Her shoes were very sharp. She shook my hand and ushered me into the elevator. “So,” she asked, her sharp shoes clacking sharply as she turned to face me, “what does your firm do?”

“Data services.” A lie. Well, not really.

“Ah.”

The elevator door slid open and we walked down a hallway past doors with cryptic names. At the end of the corridor she opened a frosted-glass door into a little pie-shaped space with a deep blue carpet and a narrow window looking out at a weathered brick wall. The carpet smelled nice. In retrospect, I wonder if maybe the agent didn’t have something to do with that: sprayed something into the carpet to hook prospective tenants. Modern management is full of little tricks like that. I imagine her holding—no, aiming—a spray bottle, bending over in her tight skirt, her sharp shoes poking little holes in the carpet. She wears a white mask over her face, her hair falls over her bare shoulders, her eyes gleam blackly. The thought becomes toxically erotic, I have to leave off for a while. That was more than a year ago. The carpet still smells nice and I happily keep paying rent.

I should explain. Some people collect stamps, some watch birds, some go surfing, some are into old bottles. Everybody should have a hobby; people would be more content, the world would be a better place. Me, I like offices. Offices are cool, they smell nice, they are the perfect place to get things done. I like being able to say “I’m at the office,” even if I don’t have anyone to say it to. I have four offices, I like having them, and I think they like having me. After all, an office without an occupant is a dead space. And death has no friends.

I was a sickly child. A schoolmate called me “girl” and a neighbor kid knocked me off my bike, hardening my resolve to avoid other people. Hoping to get me “interested in things,” my quietly despairing parents took me to the zoo, the airport, the symphony, a rope factory. I was blandly indifferent. Then, one Saturday morning, Dad took me with him to his office downtown in the Tower Building. The fluorescent lights were cool, the polished counters invited touch, and the aroma of coffee and cleanser was so unlike home. Things, interesting things, happened here.

The memory faded, and as a youth office life struck me as too regimented. I did other things of little consequence, I never actually worked in an office. All the tensions and flirtations and bosses and back-bitings and Christmas parties were denied me. Eventually, my parents died and left me a large legacy, and life opened into an ocean of vast possibility. I was alone, well endowed, in good health. The thought of spending my days at home became repulsive to me, I had to be someplace other than where I slept at night. During the day people went out: went to work, to factories, to offices. I had to be out in the world with them, part of the action. I needed an office.

I called the Tower Building, met the sharp-shod agent, smelled the carpet, and signed my first lease. Having an office brightened the daily prospects and made me feel like I was “on track.” But I soon grew bored with being in the same place every working day, so I called the agent and she showed me a neat little space at 1408 4^th Avenue, which I snapped up. For a while I was content. Then one day I passed the Hoge Building, peered up at its massive lion’s head gargoyles, and knew I had to have an office there. A different agent put me in a quiet room overlooking the alley, and a few months later he secured me a nook in the delightfully faded Lyon Building. I now had my little coterie of perfect places to get things done.

Seeing me entering one of my buildings, suited, briefcase in hand, one might take me for just another businessman going to work. But I transact no business in my offices; I place no orders, make out no invoices, answer no phones, employ no staff. Nonetheless, every weekday morning at nine I arrive at the office of the day. Each is furnished with a desk, swivel chair, floor lamp, sofa, and, in my Tower Building office, a computer. I settle at my desk, take the daily papers from my briefcase, and as I read them I circle interesting articles and make notes. At noon I join my fellow office-workers and lunch at one of several nearby cafés, then return to the office and lie on the sofa for a half-hour rest. For the balance of the afternoon, I clip out the articles I’ve circled, punch them, and put them in binders. I now have twenty-two ring binders filled with items of local, national, and international interest. I also have various pieces that I’m writing. One in particular, on the city’s older office buildings, has what I feel is great potential as both of historical interest and an aid to individuals looking for office space. I hope to finish it sometime soon. All my material will constitute a substantial time capsule which I hope to leave to a museum or academic institution. As I told the leasing agent: data services.

It would be nice if I could find a way to generate some revenue from what I do. “Monetize,” as they say now. These offices don’t come cheap, and I’ve been putting in a lot of time and energy, and when you get right down to it, making money is really what offices are all about. I’ve clearly got some conceptualizing to do, and after all, conceptualizing is also what offices are all about. I study the doors of the other offices and try to divine what goes on behind them. Some of the names—Mobile Logic…Fluid Solutions…Evenstar—defy analysis. I sometimes stop outside the doors and listen quietly, but the faint rustlings and muted mutterings—if I hear anything at all—tell me little. They could be minting gold coins or cloning human embryos for all I know. You have to figure that some of these concerns are start-ups, and will one day either make money or fail. Some are surely only mail drops or fronts. In general, however, for any concern to hire staff and pay the rent, revenues are essential. I have to face facts: I am an anomaly in the office world. However, I prefer to think of myself as a bona-fide start-up. After all, society is information and data-obsessed, and I can provide information and data as well as the next man. A government contract would be nice, or a deal with a major institution.

In the elevators I listen to my fellow office-dwellers and try to glean tidbits about their activities. Most of the talk is trivial, but now and then I pick up hints of something more substantial. If they’re making money, maybe some of their expertise will “rub off” on me. I especially like to hear the women joking about co-workers or assignments, and see them clacking away into the lobby, their sharp shoes pointing toward home and wine and romance. I wonder what their offices are like, and if they have the same carpet smell as mine. I’d like to see them, but hesitate to enter without having actual business to transact. I’d probably be best advised to put it out of my mind, but of course the mind has its own ideas.

Lately I’ve noticed her loitering around the foyers and lobbies of my buildings. The first time I saw her I raised my hand in greeting, but she abruptly turned away. I figured she had seen an associate or had been distracted by something or other. It happens. But on subsequent sightings, and even though we made eye contact, she again turned away.

I am trying to determine what this might mean. Perhaps she was caught off-guard and embarrassed, though why she should have been, I have no clue. It would be nice to think that she is a kindred spirit, someone who shares my affinity for offices, but perhaps afraid of coming on too strong and breaching professional ethics. I can respect that; indeed, the possibility makes me regard her in a higher light. But of course there are other, perhaps even sinister, possibilities. I’ve got to keep my guard up. My limited experience being what it is, not to mention failure to monetize, I must accept that most women would probably find me deadly dull. Deadly to the point of self-annihilation? I don’t know as I’d go that far, but the option is there. Oh, it’s always there. Thinking back, my relationship history is essentially nil, and I wonder if I’m really not cut out for one. Perhaps my relationships with my offices will have to be enough. After all, many people don’t even have that.

Meanwhile, I must face up to the reality that despite arming myself with auspicious environments for getting things done, I have gotten nothing done. At least, nothing monetizing. I see no imminent prospect for getting any monetizing done, I sense the odds are less and less in my favor. I am suspended in the ether above the 1408 and the Hoge and the Lyon and the Tower buildings, my essence wavering between the corporeal and the ethereal. A sudden crash, a choked scream, a murmur in the alley—all tell me that time is short, that patience is wearing thin, that success is not to be, that I may as well throw my work into an incinerator. I feel I have transgressed somehow on office deportment, and that the agent has caught me out. The question is: what are the consequences? Will this be held against me, and perhaps even impair my ability to monetize my life? I may have to do some fast talking to convince her of my legitimacy as an office-holder.

Now, though, the days seem to be getting shorter and the nights longer. I only hope I haven’t boxed myself into a situation that I may not be able to get out of. One thing is very clear: My paperwork is not going to let up. I never realized how much space words consume, but the legal pads themselves are taking up more and more space. Well, that’s part of the process. In fact, I like legal pads. They make for a nice collection.

I’m not sure how I got to this point. I had every advantage: loving parents, good schools, trips to see interesting things, the Saltmarsh dance class, cotillions, college offers. And yet, none of it “took”—except the trip to Dad’s office. Every now and then I think of the boy who pushed me off my bicycle, a boy who very likely had none of my advantages. I remember riding around him as he walked down the street, staring at him and grinning. He was a Black kid, and I suppose he thought I was mocking him. I wasn’t, I was only curious; I was grinning only because I didn’t know what other expression to wear.

At the time, being pushed to the ground did not seem to do me any harm, but lately I have come to suspect that it caused some undetectable yet profound damage that hindered my advancement. In school I failed to complete many assignments and girls shunned me, perhaps sniffing incipient failure. Women are good at sniffing—hence the carpet. Ultimately, I wonder if the fall from the bicycle did not impair that part of the brain that has to do with being successful and making money. I wish I could meet up with the guy now and tell him I meant no mockery. I suppose there are any number of people I have antagonized over the years—maybe even my parents. Children so often just end up being in the way.

Where was the turning point—failure to go to college? Failure to learn the box step at Saltmarshes’? Refusal to get interested in the things my parents showed me? Perhaps I should have gone to work in the rope factory. That might have done me a world of good. The bottom line, the great torpedo of success for my life, seems to have been: fear. Fear of social obligation, commitment, confinement in offices, bosses. Sharp-shod women.

Now, of course, I no longer fear these things. I welcome them, and would most certainly welcome office parties and cocktail evenings, morning meetings, strategy sessions, gatherings of like minds in pursuit of worthy endeavors and, of course, monetization. I don’t believe I am alone in my hobby, and if I could only bring a group of us office-fans together, who knows what we might accomplish? I’ve been considering holding weekly coffee klatches, by invitation to select office-holders in my buildings. I’d have to invest in coffee makers and coffee and pastries or other snacks, but this could well be a potential “ice-breaker.” Only, what if no one came? I’m not sure I could handle that.

It must be after midnight. I am lying on the floor of my office at 1408 4^th. It’s a dim, frowzy old warren, the kind of place where one senses that important business was transacted once, but those times are long gone. I’ve been working late more often; I become engrossed in something and let time get away from me, and anyway, there is nothing and nobody waiting for me at home, and my offices are more like “home” to me, now. As evening falls corridors grow still, footsteps fade, silence descends. But not total silence; new sounds emerge, like little night creatures after a day of hiding. A ping here, a pong there, a clank. Distant voices, echoes from the alley. In the Lyon Building I have heard a man talking as if dictating, late into the evening, and in the Tower Building the sound of typing. Who does either of these things anymore—and why are they doing them at night?

Mostly, what I hear in my offices at night is a continual soft rushing sound, like a river or the wind. The building breathing, or the energies of all the tenants, past and present, still circulating through the hallways and offices and the spaces in between. Some more successful types might consider this line of thought unhealthy, but I’ve become comfortable in my offices after hours, and I like to lie on the sofa and listen as the night deepens. I feel I might hear things that would help me see my way forward, I hope that maybe some of the energy of past occupants might settle on me and offer clues on monetization and what to do about this agent.

She’s on to me. I know it; that “ah” when I told her I was in data services: I suspect she has done some investigating and discovered that I have no “firm” after all. It’s possible that she found out that my office activities don’t pay. She may have discovered that I used another agent to get two of my offices. People have been ruined for less.

I put my fingertip in the agent’s shoe holes and feel the smooth, hard indentations, and consider the force of the leg making the holes as she kneels and sprays the carpet, frowning in concentration. I get a strange but not altogether unpleasant feeling, the feeling of being watched, of being a subject of interest by someone I barely know, for reasons equally unknown. After examining and feeling the holes for several minutes, I lie down, breathe the scent, and in a few delicious moments feel well-gratified. I fall asleep.

At first, my dreams are serene, soothing. I lie in an alpine meadow staring up at the drifting clouds. My lover lies beside me, she holds a daisy to her lips and blows on it, then turns to me and smiles. Some time later, voices yell as if from a deep well or an elevator shaft, a woman’s voice emerges from the babble and says in a sharp voice, Get to work!  Heels clack on linoleum, shadowy legs walk toward me, thin and storklike, but strong. I told you to get to work, she says, sharply. She wears a white mask stretched tightly over her sharp cheeks, but even so I sense that she is smiling. Her breath rasps as she looms over me. Then, she bends slightly and grinds a heel into my hand. Her black eyes glitter, her breath rasps, louder, louder.

I just heard a distinct clack, like a high heel. I feel I have to make a move, I can’t lie here all night. The thing is, I may be getting worse. Yesterday I woke on the floor of my office in the Lyon Building. The carpet there smells at least as good as the one in the Tower Building, and I suspect she’s been in that office, too.

The kid who pushed me—where is he now? I feel I would like to find him, make amends. The girls in my class who shunned me—where are they now? Perhaps one even works in one of my buildings. Wouldn’t that be something! What ever became of Mr. and Mrs. Saltmarsh—she, who wore high heels and viewed her pupils with cool disdain? I don’t believe I ever heard her speak, in three years of classes. Perhaps she was reading failure in our faces, or perhaps entertaining other thoughts. I hope they found it worthwhile. As for me: even on a sliding scale, I figure my net worth is declining.

I have begun to consider a solution to my dilemma vis a vis the agent: I will engage her to find number five. Five offices would give me one for each workday, and it would give me more space. These papers are piling up pretty fast, and I don’t seem to be able to make as much headway through them as I’d like. Some days, I barely make any at all. I’m certain that once she discovers the magnitude of my activity, she will see that I am living up to my billing. Maybe, she will then find me even more a subject of interest. What is man without hope?

It comes to me that maybe what I really have to do is escape. Can somebody help? Maybe someone whose hobby is helping people. No, I’m afraid I’ve got too much invested, here. I have to work this through. And what better place than right here, in my office? But if escaping is what I need to do, then shouldn’t I be getting out of here? It may not be that simple. Lately, I’ve been overcome by a strange lassitude. I feel like a rabbit hypnotized by a snake. Is it her—my foolish hope that…? Well, it’s a nice thought, but in my more sanguine moments I suspect that it’s something in the carpet.

She’s still out there, I know she is. I can hear her clearly now—she just cleared her throat. It may have been a slip-up, but I suspect it was intentional. She is alerting me to her presence. Perhaps she is putting on her mask, preparing herself. I feel that our relationship has now passed a watershed. I cannot lie here motionless forever, so I’ve resolved on a plan of action. In just a moment or two I will stand, move silently to the door, and open it. She will enter and I will gently guide her to the two holes. When she inserts her heels into them, I will have my answer.