It was hot in the parking lot; heat welled up from the pavement in baths. Guy pushed through the glass door of the Office into the dim cool of the hallway and paused to ground himself. He could picture himself here, coming into work every morning before anyone else. He looked at the crumpled note in his hand and started to the left. In fact it was rare that the faded blue carpet was not trampled by a river of feet, that a sea of faces did not fill the halls and spaces with words, phones ringing, elevator bells chiming - but Guy did not know that. He took the abnormal quiet without question. Then, on a whim, he did a thing he liked to do: he stopped walking, stilled his breathing and closed his eyes.
What can be heard? Listen, and sound after sound will fill the quiet until it teems with noises you would never have noticed. First Guy felt only the draft, an awareness of the space around him. The carpet felt firm underfoot. Then he noticed a low humming, probably an air conditioner, or - that was it, the fluorescent lights. He could hear someone talking down the hall. A phone rang behind a door; an elevator bell chimed. Guy suspected there was a sound he had missed. He sensed a churning in the air, or in the middle of him: a restlessness, a dimness. Did he hear it or feel it? Was it a sound, or was he just thirsty, hungry? And then, did he know? - but wait - yes of course, of course. It was a rapid, steady, fluttering sound, all around him, all around. It was in the draft, the lights, the floor; it was behind the doors and in the rafters. It was a sound that had never unnerved him before. It was the faint chorus of a thousand ticking clocks.
Guy opened his eyes.
There was a clock on the wall a little way down the corridor and another in the room across the hall. He began to walk, and the clocks sat or hung everywhere he looked, everywhere. He would not have believed it in a story. There were all kinds of clocks: simple round ones with black numbers and white borders, others with pictures of waterfalls behind the hands. There were portrait-sized ones with gold-painted frames and cream fabric backgrounds. There were silver spherical ones for paperweights. The banter of the clocks sunk into one level note, unnoticeable until first you notice it. Guy looked at his own wristwatch with a new feeling, and felt his stomach sink uncomfortably.
"You're not late," a voice corrected him. He turned to the room he had almost passed, a spacious window office occupied by one large, square glass desk and a black leather chair. In the chair sat a Mr. Jonathan Cravens; thus the gold nameplate read in straight black letters. "So you made it," Mr. Cravens said. "How d'you like coming in on holidays so far?"
"It's not a problem," Guy assured him.
"Pretty quiet, isn't it? We had to clear this wing so pest control could bomb it."
"Termites?"
"I don't know what. Happens every couple years. They come up from the foundations. I swear they'll get us in the end."
"You mean... the insects?" Guy half laughed.
"It's a damn waste, closing down," Mr. Cravens told him. "Waste of time, waste of money. But folks should be coming back again now we can breathe."
"I heard some phones," Guy agreed. "I mean people talking on them."
"Mr. Rhododendron was going to be here to show you the ropes, but he took the week off. I don't know how that man pays his bills. He's your supervisor, I'm not."
Mr. Cravens emerged from behind his desk, pushed past Guy in the doorway and started down the hall. They turned down another hallway, then another. They ducked through a door and cut through a conference room, descended a flight of stairs and climbed two flights later. At long last, as the hall was just making a right-angle turn, Mr. Cravens stopped. "This is it."
There was an alcove in the corner furnished with one long brown table, a storage cabinet, and three rolling chairs. One of the chairs was broken. Mr. Cravens nodded to the row of cabinets that lined the hall around the bend, stretching into empty distance. "That's your kingdom," he said. "It's not much, but the pay's not bad."
There was a silence, so Guy gave a laugh to tide it through. Then, thoughtfully he added, "This is where I'll be spending my time from now on." That struck him as slightly profound. Time itself is profound, Guy often thought - that one thing should stop being what it was and turn into something else. The place where you are is so real, so tangible; that is, until you leave it. Then it dissolves into memory almost as if it had changed phase - not from solid to gas, but to immaterial. Sometimes when Guy was lying in bed, he would realize that by tomorrow afternoon, bed is the last place he would be. No more warm covers then. "Moments are fragile," he liked to tell himself. "They change."
"Granted it's not the most titillating way to spend your time," Mr. Cravens retorted heavily. "But time is money, and as I said, the money here's not bad."
Guy opened his mouth, stopped. "I never get it when they say that. If time were money, bored people would be rich."
"That's clever. Call me when you're one of those bored people looking for a job."
But that is what I am, Guy thought. Still, he was impressed at the importance of money here. It's the subculture, he decided, the vernacular. And if you want to succeed, you've got to follow the tracks of the successful. He added money to a list in his mind, things to talk about when getting new people to like you.
Mr. Cravens slid open a drawer and snagged an invoice. "They're filed by the upper left corner," he said. "Only the last six digits matter."
"It's a pretty long number," Guy observed.
"They say when it gets all the way across the top of the page we have a bonfire - but that never happens."
"The number? or the bonfire?"
"Useless thing," Mr. Cravens muttered at the invoice. He turned to Guy. "You like filing?"
"I've never done it. I mean, not full-time."
"Yeah. Well let me tell you something about this piece of paper." Mr. Cravens held the sheet by one corner and gestured with it as he spoke, its flailing body crinkling with emphasis. "There is absolutely no point in holding onto this invoice." He laughed at himself. "Maybe I shouldn't be telling you this. But no one's really formal at work anyway, except for the first week. And for all I care, this could be toilet paper. No value to anyone; nothing's valuable, in the long run."
Guy remembered his mental list. "Nothing," he egged, "except money." Again he laughed.
"No, that's just a system," Mr. Cravens told him. "These things only matter because there's a system behind them. They don't mean anything of themselves."
"All right, then except for...."
But Mr. Cravens was putting the paper back into its drawer, wrong side down.
"Over here you've got your account information," he pointed, "and in that cabinet you'll start the five-hundreds. We're almost out of space here, but don't worry yet. You should be okay for six months, maybe a year. You're supposed to take calls too, but... we'll see about that." He chortled despite himself at a brown rotary phone on the table.
"Who will I be talking to?"
"Whoever's on the other end!"
"Shouldn't I know what to tell them?" Guy pressed.
"Mr. Rhododendron is back Monday," Mr. Cravens said. "Talk to him, not me. God knows, I'm not your supervisor." He started back down the hall, and after a brief hesitation, Guy hurried after.