Midway into Week Two, Clarissa Snow had spoken to a lonely retiree looking for part-time clerical work—“Anything!” he laughed — who kept her on the phone for twenty minutes; to a recently laid-off medical transcriptionist whose wrist tendons had been surgically severed to alleviate her pain; and to a man who wept that he had been looking for a job for two and a half years. “I’m sorry,” Clarissa Snow began whispering into her mouthpiece, “but I can’t help you. I’m just the receptionist.” At which point many of her callers said, “Let me talk to the other one, then.” They did this so frequently that the other receptionist had a little chat with her.
“How do you do it?” Clarissa Snow pleaded. “How do you talk to them? Nobody can help these people.”
“But they have no one else to call,” the other receptionist said. And then, more firmly: “We— … are the department of last resort. This— … is Human Resources.” Clarissa Snow nodded wearily. “Human Resources,” she wrote in her notepad. And under that, “Last Resort.”
For the rest of that morning Clarissa Snow made a fragile alliance with the tenets of mission and service that her job demanded. “Well, military service may be a viable job option,” she told one caller, “but is it the option for you?” “No,” she told another, “I don’t think a second opinion is always necessary, although it can sometimes be necessary.” “Yes,” she agreed with another, “divorce is a tough row to hoe, isn’t it?” For a while at least, she was getting the hang. It did not last.
“Can you help me?” Line Two said. “Because, you see, I’m at my wit’s end here.” It was a woman’s voice, flat and uninflected. It came from a pure, dead silence, without background noise of any kind, and it gripped Clarissa Snow’s innards like a fist. “So I was wondering,” the voice continued. “I was wondering if you could help me. Because, you see, you’re my last hope.” Clarissa Snow shuddered. The buttons on the phone console winked at her. She quietly slipped the handset into its cradle and told the other receptionist that she was leaving a little early for lunch.
Outside, it was high noon in midsummer. The air was thick, and you could see the heat moving through it, rising visibly off the pavement, corrugating everything in the distance, and lending to the concrete-and-steel permanence of high-rises and overpasses a disconcerting waviness. It was a sweltering day, an unbearable day, but a day borne nonetheless. Lunchtime throngs swarmed the sunlit streets in search of food. Clarissa Snow zigged and zagged among them.
From a pay phone in front of a mini-mart four blocks away, she called her Placement Counselor. While on hold, she pulled out a cigarette; she’d started smoking again. Her hand shook as she lit it. “Now, now,” Mrs. D. told her when she came on the line. “I want you to get a grip. Get a grip and tell me all about it.” Clarissa Snow begged for a new assignment — anything, anywhere, she didn’t care. “Why, of course, dear,” Mrs. D. said. “I can do that. I can do that for you. But you see—” And from the modulations and pauses in Mrs. D.’s voice, Clarissa Snow knew that she, too, was lighting a cigarette, pausing now to draw the smoke into her lungs. Clarissa Snow inhaled with her. “You see, that puts us in quite a pickle.” She was their best girl, Mrs. D. said, their cream of the cream, and what would it look like if their cream of the cream curdled on an assignment? Then she wouldn’t be their best girl anymore, would she? No, Clarissa Snow had to agree, she sure wouldn’t. She dropped her cigarette on the ground and stepped on it. She thanked Mrs. D. for the pep talk and hung up.
A bank of tall, narrow trees stood along the edge of the mini-mart parking lot. Their topmost leaves shimmered in the sun, and Clarissa Snow — for sheer want of knowing what to do next — stood peering up at them as if they were her last hope. She then searched her bag for another coin, dropped it into the pay phone, and made another call. She was briefly put on hold. And when the other receptionist thanked her for holding and asked how she might help her, Clarissa Snow told her everything.
II.
Autumn in the city was crisp and clear and bright. It was a time of year when the windows in the high-rises flamed yellow-gold and the sunlight burnished every reflective surface to a painful gloss: the marble columns and cornices of building exteriors, trolley wires and turnstiles and door pulls, the brass filigrees on handrails and drinking fountains and trash receptacles. Windshields of passing vehicles flashed like gunfire, and broken bottles glittered in the street. The air was scattered with needles of light that made Clarissa Snow squint.
She was sent on a four-week assignment to an insurance company. Her job was to type and edit a Secret Report for the Executive Vice President, and this was her routine. At 8:00 a.m. she took the elevator to the Claims Unit on the twelfth floor and unlocked the door to an office that had been converted to file storage. Sagging boxes filled the room, leaning in precarious columns against the walls and each other. Just enough space remained for a desk and chair and computer and printer. She spent the day typing and revising and editing the Secret Report, and at 5:00 p.m. she delivered a computer disk and a manila envelope with her revisions to the Executive Vice President’s Assistant on the twenty-ninth floor. Between 5:00 p.m. that day and 8:00 a.m. the next morning, someone would slip an envelope with new copy and revisions under the door of her office.
The Executive Vice President’s Assistant was a tiny, no-nonsense woman, impeccably attired and of indeterminate youthfulness; she looked like a dour little girl playing dress-up for the day. She instructed Clarissa Snow not to socialize with anyone on the twelfth floor. “I’ve memoed them to not talk to you,” she said. “Eat lunch alone,” she told her. “Take your breaks outside the building or in your office. Keep your door locked. This is a Secret Report. That’s why we hired an outsider for the job.” She placed one of her perfect miniature hands — pallid and smooth — upon one of Clarissa Snow’s, which by comparison seemed a vast, bony landscape of knuckle and joint. “The Agency says you’re their best girl,” the Executive Vice President’s Assistant said. “So we’re counting on you.” Clarissa Snow nodded conspiratorially. She was thrilled with the secrecy. It excited her.
Although no one on the twelfth floor was supposed to talk to Clarissa Snow, adherence to this directive broke down quickly. During Week One of her assignment, Claims Unit employees winked at her in the elevator and put their index fingers to their lips in gestures of complicity. After one of the Claims Analysts mouthed a silent “Good morning!” to her in the ladies’ restroom, other employees began to greet her in hushed tones. “How are you!” they whispered. “Fine! Thank you!” Clarissa Snow whispered back. Soon the Claims Unit Manager was knocking on her door, inviting her to potlucks in the lunchroom. “We know you’re not supposed to,” he’d say, then, looking up and down the hallway and dropping his voice, add, “Do it anyway!” He was an affable, red-faced man who wore wide, ugly ties, but wore them with irony; there was an ongoing contest among the men in his unit for who could wear the ugliest ties. The Claims Unit employees held birthday parties and years-of-service celebrations and maternity leave bon voyages on a regular basis, and they invited her to all of them. When she didn’t show up, they came looking for her, knocking urgently at her door: “Are you all right in there?” They were kind and solicitous, eager to make her a part of things, and Clarissa Snow wanted none of it. She did not want to partake of their lives. She attended their gatherings under duress, making a brief appearance before returning to her Secret Report, often laden with paper plates of macaroni salad or potatoes au gratin. But for the most part, they left her alone. They did not take her aloofness personally.