"And did you end up having the meatloaf?"
Lunch? Meatloaf? How could he ask such stupid irrelevant things when this kid was about to go nuclear? Brute. A weird word, a stiff antique word, but it was the one that flew into Aoyagi's mind. Was the guy still human? If so, he was a brute.
Aoyagi glanced at Kropik a moment and in that instant he missed everything. As the two bureaucrats looked at each other, the boy's eyes scanned down the list he had been handed. His expression never changed not even when his eyes reached the bottom of the paper. If either man had seen that they would have snapped back like they'd been punched. But they were deep into a stare and their expressions were almost identicaclass="underline" dislike, disdain, and disrespect that went back forever and into every nook and cranny of their decades spent together in this office.
"What is this shit?" The boy held out the single sheet of paper and waved it up and down. "I don't know any of this stuff." His voice was accusation and question in one.
Now they looked at him and the men were more confused than at any other time on this job. Kropik had made a mistake? Turned over a wrong file? Impossible! And to his namesake, no less! Once his initial astonishment passed, Aoyagi could barely contain his glee. This was one big booboo! Their superiors would know about it before the day was over and Kropik's ass would be toast.
As if to rub in the mistake, the kid looked at the paper and said in a loud whine, "I don't know anyone named Andrea Harmon. And I've never been to Crane's View, New York. Is this some kind of joker What about my mother? You said I would remember what she was like!"
He was looking at Aoyagi and vice versa. Neither saw the change on old Kropik's face when he heard the names. His mouth opened and closed as if he were about to start chewing but decided not to. When words failed, he did something he never ever would have, should have, could have done in any other situation: he reached across his desk and yanked the file out of the boy's hand. Snatched it right away.
Aoyagi gasped. The boy stood up and pointed an angry finger at Kropik. "What the hell's going on here?"
Aoyagi stepped forward and placed a hand on the boy's shoulder to calm him. He didn't know what else to do. Something big and mysterious was happening here but he was dumbfounded. His colleague had always been as dull and habitual as a hundred-year-old Galapagos turtle.
Old Kropik ignored them both as he concentrated on the paper. Seconds later his mouth began moving again, and this time it went so fast that he looked like a chewing hamster.
The boy saw it first and laughed. "Your friend's going freako!"
Eyes on the page, Kropik slapped a palm against his broad forehead and began rubbing it furiously back and forth, back and forth. Was it a nervous breakdown? Had he gone mad?
"Andrea!" he shouted. "You should have told me! If only I'd w ,, When his voice disappeared, his chin began quivering again.
"So where's my file? Huh? And what's his fucking problem?"
What was Aoyagi supposed to do? The kid was the job, Kropik was his colleague. He didn't care about either of them, but cowardice saved him. Cowardice and nothing else. Kropik would retire soon – maybe even today, from the looks of things. But if the kid weren't served, Aoyagi would be in trouble. Word would get out. He'd be summoned upstairs. Anyway Kropik seemed all right – he was just having a little fit but nothing deadly or anything. After one last look at his head-slapping, eyebulging, chin-shivering co-worker, Aoyagi went to a file cabinet and slid open a drawer.
Earlier Kropik told the boy he didn't need his name because everything was known. But he didn't explain what he meant by that. As an employee of this office, when a customer arrived, you opened any file cabinet drawer in the room. Without knowing the name or anything about the person, whatever file you pulled was the correct one. This mysterious process had deeply frightened Aoyagi when he'd first begun work years ago, but like everything else he grew used to it. Open a drawer, let your hand fall on a file-Bingo. Simple as that. My hand on your secret history.
So while old Kropik continued to frown, grunt and burble to himself, Aoyagi went to a different cabinet and opened a drawer. But when he reached in for a file something went wrong. For the first time in his long career, something stopped him from touching anything. Something very strong and final. You can't come in here, it said. Period.
"You can't go in there." The boy said behind him.
Empty-headed, empty of anything after the shocks of the last few minutes, Aoyagi simply turned and looked at the boy. "Why?"
"Because he already has my file in his hand. It's the correct one."
They both looked at old Kropik who was crying now – huge fat tears streamed down his cheeks.
There was no expression on the boy's face, nothing in his facial cast-no pity, curiosity, not even derision when he said, "He saw the color of my hair. He heard my name. You'd think those would tell him."
Aoyagi remembered something. Once he was in the men's room next to Kropik as they did their standing business together at the urinals. For some reason he had unthinkingly looked down at Kropik's dick when he was finished and shaking himself off. The other man had absolutely carrot-colored pubic hair. Aoyagi had never seen such colorful pubic hair on anyone. It was one of the only interesting things he had ever discovered about Kropik but he sure as hell never mentioned it.
Now like a hammer blow, the memory of that color came back when he heard the boy calmly say, "He still doesn't know it's me. Look at him!"
Old Kropik was talking to the paper. His eyes pleaded, his lips said words with many syllables. He was asking for forgiveness, he was trying to convince. Who knows what he was saying but he was certainly enthusiastic.
Aoyagi didn't want to say it but did. "You're him, aren't you? And he's looking at his own memories."
The boy nodded, pleased to be recognized. "Finally someone here gets it."
"But Jules had no CHOICE, Mother!" Old Kropik shouted to a longdead woman who had never liked him very much, truth be told.
"How could it happen? How could you not know yourself?" Aoyagi said it more to himself than to the boy.
"He's been here too long. He forgot what it's like to be human, doing this job. That's why they sent me. It's his last day."
A good deal of Aoyagi's carefully dyed hair stood up. "That's how it ends? That's what'll happen to me? They'll send ME down here to get me?"
The kid shrugged. "Could be. When you were little, didn't you always want to know what you'd be when you got older? So maybe when you grow up you're not supposed to forget that little kid. Isn't that what this job is all about anyway? Remembering what it was like?"
Aoyagi was able to stand long enough to see the boy lead old Kropik out of the room. He had watched so many human wrecks leave here. One day it would be him, led by a younger him he wouldn't even recognize when he entered the room. This room, this office where people came to reclaim what they thought they had lost, but which had only been waiting for the right moment to get them. Get them good.