A proofreader capped the “t” in a sentence about “tony Bennett College.” “Tony Bennett College.” He was fired.
That was before Elizabeth arrived.
In time every new reader was told the tale of the proofreader’s Tony Bennett error, usually over take-out food. The newcomers learned they could be fired for their errors. The longtimers laughed so hard they couldn’t eat. Except for the obese men. They could always eat.
The room parried its futility, fought against its marginality with righteousness. They discussed their endangered work, how no one cared about mistakes in books and newspapers, how editors and especially writers didn’t know what they were doing.
— If a carpenter used the wrong tool, he couldn’t hang a door properly, Proofroom Fats said.
He was on a roll.
— Always “he,” Sally said.
Sally had been in the proofroom the longest.
— There are typos in the Times’ headlines, Fats went on.
He ignored her.
— The New York Times fired all its proofreaders years ago, Sally said.
The room was a den for a dying breed. Nearly extinct. The room corrected errors no one would’ve noticed. Double quotes inside the period were moved outside the period, different than was changed to different from. The room scorned “between you and I.” The correct “me” sounded lower class to people who ached to sound classy. The room understood that all mistakes entered the language after being repeated enough, and someday they’d be correct, so eventually no one writing or speaking would be aware that over time and imperceptibly an array of former misfits had deformed and degraded the language. Language would become garbage. It’d spill out their mouths.
— Language is already garbage, Margaret said.
Margaret was either a meek woman or a snob. She hardly ever spoke. She didn’t like Elizabeth’s aggressiveness.
They worked in fear. They feared the reduction of their hours, they feared learning they were no longer needed, maybe only one or two of them, they feared becoming redundant. They were skilled workers, too expensive for the company to pay for what everyone knew was unnecessary. They feared being fired.
Some compliments were sent their way. A few. Their work, when it was good, was invisible. The room approached invisibility, like soundtracks in movies. Elizabeth liked movie music.
Two and a half hours later, Elizabeth was released. She made chump change and fulfilled her obligations to the room. She’d keep her objections to language and life to herself.
A man goes hunting for bears. He sees one, takes aim, and just misses. The bullet grazes the bear’s shoulder. The bear gets really angry and goes over to the man. He says, you just missed me, you tried to kill me, I’m really pissed at you. I’m going to make you go down on me. So the bear forces the man to go down on him. The man does it. He’s chagrined and runs out of the woods. A week later he goes hunting again, finds the bear again, takes really good aim, fires, but misses. The bear’s really pissed off. He goes over to the man and forces him to have sex with his arms tied behind him. The man comes back a week later, sees the bear, takes really careful aim, shoots, and misses the bear again. The bear goes over, he’s even more pissed off, and he sodomizes the man. The next week the man comes back, takes arm at the bear, and misses again. This time the bear goes over to the man and puts his paws on the man’s shoulders. The bear says, This isn’t really about hunting, is it?
The sun was lower in the sky, the feeble beginnings of dusk filtered through the dust.
It was less muggy. The start of another weekend. The hitters from Jersey and Queens, the bridge-and-tunnel crowd, were getting ready to flood the neighborhood. Some came running, some came racing in, piled into cars, weekend warriors cruising for pleasure, release, some joy in the commission of small-time crimes. In the summer, on weekend nights it was better to be inside.
Elizabeth knew her route by heart. Any change in her beat was an irregularity, not life-threatening, unless it was.
Imperfect strangers hurried by her. They took up space. They were full of themselves, of piss, like her. They came from disturbed families and controlled hideous feelings which controlled them. Their views of events developed from events and sensations they couldn’t remember. Nothing came out in the wash. Everyone performed circus acts of confusion and covered them over like cats cover shit in litter boxes.
Nothing human is unique.
Human beings were walking near her, heading somewhere to something. Life was just around the corner. Without want, their lives would collapse, no one would go anywhere, or do or make anything. Lust marked their hapless faces and misshaped them. They were generally lusterless and misshapen.
Lustful faces gazed anonymously into shop windows or at each other. Lips pursed and relaxed and opened and closed in exasperation and people breathed in and out, heavily, sighing, and they struggled to keep moving. Some walked with a lilt, life was a song they’d written.
Elizabeth reviled the song, pitied the suckers.
An upper-middle-class woman rushed out of a store onto the sidewalk. A little boy about three toddled after her, crying, Mommy, mommy. The woman ignored him and kept walking. He couldn’t catch up to her. She pretended to let him, he got closer to her, he stopped crying, and then she raced away again, leaving him alone in the middle of the busy sidewalk. He started crying again, sobbing, Mommy, mommy.
The bewildered little boy nearly fell into the street. Cars skidded and stopped. Mommy walked faster, and the distance lengthened, and the kid grew more hysterical and tripped over his stubby legs, as he tried to keep up and obliterate the violent gap.
— You can’t do that to that kid. I’m watching you, Elizabeth shouted.
She turned herself into a stern and forbidding character, an upstanding citizen, even as sweat coated her thighs.
The woman halted in place. She allowed the little boy to catch up to her. Elizabeth watched. The woman took her son’s hand. She didn’t look at him and she didn’t look back at the stern figure who’d threatened, I’m watching you. Mother and son turned a corner and disappeared from sight. The woman would beat him later, at home. She wouldn’t be surveilled by a City agency.
Elizabeth liked the role, vigilante, citizen executioner. She wanted to arrest the mother. She thought she should. They were enough like each other for her to yell at the woman without fear of the woman’s coming after her. She was able to intimidate her. She had to seize any opportunity she could.
What do you call one white guy with two black guys?
A victim.
What do you call one white guy with twenty black guys?
Coach.
What do you call one white guy with two thousand black guys?
Warden.
What do you call one white guy with 200,000 black guys?
Postmaster General.
It was not the best of times, it was not the worst of times. Comparisons were stupid. Reason was history.
Elizabeth breathed automatically. Her past and future gasped together. She exhaled a current of air, time. The atmosphere was a weight on everyone. Thick, wet air contained the city.
— If it’s the end, you might be relieved, one guy said to another.
They were walking in front of her, fusion candidates for a new order, a threat to the visible old order. They broke one mold, established another. They might become research scientists or rob banks. No one would be able to describe them accurately for a police drawing.