She opens the bedroom window to let out the stuffiness, but it is stuffy outside too, another hot, stagnant day approaching. There is no airflow between inside and out. She pushes the screen aside and sticks her head out the window. It feels like just another room out there.
She turns on her radio to Motown Tuesday, which used to be Motown Monday, an arrangement that made a lot more sense, phonetically speaking. She gets in the shower just as “Heat Wave” is fading out, Martha Reeves wailing yeah yeah, yeah ya-hah, while the Vandellas sing quietly, burnin’, burnin’, burnin’ just underneath. While she closes her eyes and lets the water pummel her face, the morning DJ comes on.
“That was a little Martha and the Vandellas— we all know something about heat waves around here, am I right? Well, it’s only getting hotter, ladies and gentlemen. Our own meteorologist, Jenny “Sunshine” Samson tells me this is only the beginning. Stay inside with your head in the freezer today, kids, and don’t come out until October! Jenny will join us with the full weather report in just a little while. Let’s start our next block of Motown hits with a little more Martha— there’s nowhere to run, kids, so stay right here!”
The bass and horns kick in, and Iris tries to separate Martha’s song from the Vandellas’. This is what she always does with the girl groups. If she listens only to the background vocals, it’s a different song. This one becomes more mournful, just the two voices in unison, repeating softly, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, ooooooohhh. She opens up and lets the water fill her mouth. She swallows, though the water is considered poison here, provoking natives and transplants alike to fill their shopping carts with the bottled kind. It tastes all right to her. She turns the shower off and bends over in a quick jerking motion to wring out her hair; her jaw feels loosened from her skull.
She blow dries her hair and combs it smooth, puts on a dark green shift that zips up the back and has a straight neckline that makes her head and neck appear suspended above her body. It is a severe look that suits her today. Before she leaves the apartment, she stops at her dresser and picks up the little radio. It doesn’t belong to her, she thinks, so she slips it into her bag, thinking it might be time she gave it back.
On the way into work, she stops for gas. She swipes her debit card, shielding her eyes from the already oppressive sun to make out the words on the screen. She enters her pin and waits, until the word “Declined” appears. Unsure if she’s read it right, she brings her face in closer, cupping her hands between her temples and the edge of the screen. Her check hasn’t cleared yet. She cancels the transaction and uses her credit card instead, a too-often-used standby whenever she’s short. She tries not to think about what new heights her minimum payment due might reach next month.
When she pulls into the office parking lot, she is immediately struck by the number of cars, one next to another and another. She has to circle around to find a spot for the first time in as long as she can remember. She jerks the parking brake back too forcefully and turns the car off. She sits for a long minute, until it is too hot, before getting out, sliding sideways between her car and the black pickup truck next to it, parked on a diagonal, just over the line.
Inside and up the stairs, Iris sets her hand on the doorknob and fiddles with her keychain. She unwittingly turns the knob slightly while still isolating the office key, and the door opens, swinging slowly inward. She freezes. Her eyes dart to the lock, which doesn’t appear to be broken. Still, her breath is caught in her throat. She gives the door the smallest push with her index finger, and it swings all the way to the wall and bounces lightly on the doorstop. She sets her left foot inside, then her right, one step at a time, the lavender carpet fibers bending under her weight. The lights are on, as she left them. She closes the door, sets her things beside her desk and sees her computer in screen saver mode, a red ball traveling slowly across the screen and bouncing lightly against each edge. She breaks up this serene tableau with a slide of the mouse and her desktop appears, adorned with the usual files and folders. The phone is where it is.
But there is something off. There is a new smell in the air, like metal, or smoke, a smell she can’t decipher, if it is even there at all.
Then she shifts her gaze away from her desk and sees it on the wall in her own handwriting: I will never be thirsty. Words that were previously hidden behind the water cooler, the water cooler that is now gone, poof. Iris stands up straight, her vertebrae unlocking so she stands taller, her neck stretched like a bird’s.
She goes up to the wall and runs her finger across the words, fixed like another coat of dried paint. She continues down the hall to the conference room. The round table and chairs are gone, the printer and fax machine too— just empty power outlets gaping their electricity.
She checks the storage room, flicking on the light and then flicking it quickly off again when she finds it bare. It’s all gone.
She checks every room, one by one, turning slowly around and around, scanning the emptied spaces.
She buries herself deep in corners where desks, boxes, file cabinets, and electronics once sat.
She goes back to the empty storage room and runs her hands along each white wall. Then she stands back to examine the shared wall, and finds it smooth, top to bottom, end to end, until her eyes settle on her small spy hole. It gives her a moment of calm, seeing a second thing she has made that is still here.
But it doesn’t last long, as she readies herself to open her boss’s door. First, she checks all the other rooms again. There has to be something, she thinks. How many bits of paper shoved in drawers, fat file folders and coffee mugs, wastebaskets filled with empty ink cartridges and broken pencil lead, particle-board and wood, picture frames and plants and pens and confetti shaken from hole punches and stacks sky high of receipts and records and things that must be kept, referred to, filed away or not, things broken and things fixed, things forgotten and things used, picked over, touched, all the germs and dust and stray wires that poke, sharp things and dull things, and there has to be some trace, she thinks, if only in the air, something she could feel clinging to her skin. But the space grows more vacuous every time she looks, checks back one more time, tries her luck that something might appear this time, anything she might have overlooked— all the things, things, things that blocked her, that amounted to a ruin growing up around her, are just air now.
And there is one place left to look. She kicks the pumps off of her sweaty feet. Though the air conditioner still blasts, it feels so hot, and Iris is panting with exhaustion. She stands in front of her boss’s closed door. She wraps her hand around the knob, taking care to remember everything that she’s doing. She doesn’t want to skip a crucial step.
Holding her breath, she turns the knob and steps inside. She lets her air out and stands slumped in the doorway. Her face betrays nothing. Her shock reserves must be tapped out, because she has no reaction to finding what she had to have known was waiting here.
She travels the perimeter of the office, scanning the walls for any sign of a trap door. Or anything. It doesn’t have to be a clue, just an object, any one thing, because it is starting to feel so empty that she doesn’t feel that she can ever leave. She will always be looking. She turns around and around, until she is dizzy, and the room seems to tip ever so slightly sideways. She thinks for a moment that maybe looking at it this way will do the trick, will tell her where to look. She finally stops when her legs wobble, threatening to pitch her down onto the floor.
She stumbles back out to the lobby, where her own desk sits untouched, business as usual. Then she notices that the phone on her desk, the phone that has barely rung in weeks, that anchors her desk, that is the main component of her job description— it’s unplugged. The wire hangs slack off the end of the desk. She picks up the receiver out of habit and grips it in her hand, listens, but of course, there’s only the sound of plastic pressed to her ear. But the motion gives her a moment of clarity. She finds the socket in the wall and when she gets a dial tone, punches in the speed dial code for her boss’s cell. A second after she dials, a soft chiming tune sounds in her ear, followed by a soothing feminine alto, I’m sorry, the number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please try again…