5.
There was more going on inside Carl Wilson than just waiting for Cerise to give up and leave. He was contemplating moving on, himself. Carl thought of Sandra's warning about talking, and decided that his constantly gregarious temperament might not fit into the department. This thought easily combined with his resentment from not being selected for the job, and left him feeling they would never select him, no matter how many failures went through their revolving door.
So he studied the employment bulletin each week, and soon noticed an open position as clerk for the Arts Commission. Decided to submit a transfer request. Two weeks after Cerise began her training with Sandra, the request was signed by the department head - as required by Civil Service regulation - Sharif Rakelford.
Sharif was a middle-aged, quiet, slender dark man, with a thin, elegant beard. As chief officer of the department, he operated mostly on the policy level, dealing primarily with the City Council, the City Manager, and other City department heads. Sharif delegated the day-to-day management of the department to his assistant director, Laura Schwartz, and she, in turn, left the actual buying and contracting in the hands of the principal buyer, two senior buyers, eight buyers, and two buyers aides.
Rounding out administrative staff came Kristin the analyst, and the contract aide. Then there was a clerical staff of ten clerks, word processors, and order writers; two were supervised by the contract aide, the rest overseen by one senior clerk, Sandra. In a city as large as San Miguel (hundreds of square miles of neighborhoods, streets, highways, public buildings, parks, as well as undeveloped agricultural land), the Purchasing Department was both understaffed and overworked. According to Carl, in this era of tightening budgets, it still is.
A few days after submitting his request, Carl was typing - as usual - when Sandra walked by, paused at his desk, and quietly left a copy of the signed transfer request on top of his in-basket. A sly smile played around the corners of her lips, and she almost spoke to him, but was interrupted; Cerise Chimera had hurriedly emerged from an office at the other end of the clerical pool, and was somewhat frantically gesturing to Sandra. One hand thrust into the air, waving a green and white computer printout. Carl's supervisor looked at him again, and this time she winked, once, before moving off to attend to Cerise.
He turned back to typing. Several bids - perhaps an hour - later, Carl noticed a movement in the doorway of his cubicle. Sharif. The big boss was quietly waiting, but Carl could tell his eye was on the copy of the transfer request lying on top the in-basket.
Rotating in the secretarial chair, the typist smiled at him. "Hello, Sharif. What's up?" In keeping with management's "openness" policy, everyone was expected to operate on a first name basis.
Sharif glanced at Carl, then back at the transfer copy, and again at the typist's face. "Doctor Carl," he said in his soft drawl, using the nickname he had chosen for Carl, "I almost think you aren't happy here, except that..." his eye traveled back to the document, "you put down that you are only interested in transferring to the arts and culture commission."
"Uh-huh."
"That's right, you're an artist, aren't you?" He looked up at the wall above Carl's cubicle, where the bid typist had posted collages made out of misprinted pages, samples of buyers' bad handwriting, and a Circus Vargas poster redrawn so that it now read CIRCUS PURCHASE.
"Yes."
"You work with collage?"
"Yes. But that is not my chief form of art."
"No? You paint, then?"
"Well... I paint with my typewriter, you might say."
The big boss thought for a split second, then smiled. "Ah, that's clever. So you are a writer. About what do you write, if I may ask?"
"Science fiction and poetry, mostly."
He seemed to relax just a touch. "So you don't write about us here in Purchasing?"
"No. At least, not yet." Carl lied, patently denying his journal, not wanting the department head to know that he would write down his very words tonight at home, as an exercise, before he went to work on his poetry.
"Hmm. In a way, that's too bad. There are plenty of stories here, I suspect. Not that any of us would want you to write them, mind. But they're here nonetheless."
Carl tried to smile politely, but could only hear how very, very quiet the room had become. My clerical colleagues are listening, he thought. Sharif glanced quickly over his shoulder, and suddenly the chorus of keyboard clicking resumed all around the room.
"Well," he said, resting one hand lightly on Carl's shoulder, "if you do have problems here that cause you to wish to leave, please let me know."
The typist looked up into Rakelford's eyes, and could not help but respond to his touch and subtle smile. "Yes," he said, softly.
In a pig's eye, he thought, as the big boss turned to go. I'll stick it out as long as I have nowhere better to go, and no longer.
As the department head moved away, ten pairs of eyes gazed at Carl from around the clerical pool. He rolled his own eyes and shrugged. Smiles flickered into life about him. From a nearby desk, Lisa Castro shook her head. "Carl, before you leave you must promise to get someone just as crazy as you to take your place."
He laughed. He would miss these women. Even now it was a struggle to get back to work, not to spend a few minutes talking with them.
But, as he turned back to his word processor keyboard, his thoughts were again interrupted by a quiet whisper. Lisa was hissing at him, and gesturing across the large room, toward Cerise and Sandra's offices. "Carl, look...."
Gazing toward the end of the room, Carl saw Cerise come out of her new office once again, clutching the printout paper to her breast, shaking her head. Behind her, Sandra followed patiently along the path toward the file room. She saw Carl and the others watching, and half smiled, half frowned.
Already into the third week of training, and Cerise still wasn't getting it. The demon of Carl's own disappointment chuckled with delight. He thought about what the department director had just told him. Yes. There are stories here, right under my nose.