6.
Carl turned down the opportunity to interview for the arts commission. Just a phone conversation with one of the bosses there, Golda Gailman, was enough to convince him that he probably could not function under her. Forceful, interruptive, demanding. Yet, though he shied away from the opportunity to work for her, Carl sensed she was exactly the kind of powerful person necessary to accomplish anything in the public arts field. He wondered what kind of mask she would wear when bowing before the City Council, and scraping for funds. Or should I say scrapping? - he wondered. Probably both.
Besides, as several more weeks passed by on the planet of Purchasing, Carl could see that the perils of Cerise Chimera were definitely a rapidly unfolding series. He could sense something was about to break open, and wanted to stick around and see what transpired.
Yet, just when he felt Cerise was about to give up and cancel her show after only a three month run, Laura, the assistant director, mistress of all matters personnel, distributed a department-wide memo informing the staff that a new position had been created. A senior clerk would be hired to assist the contract aide.
Carl was stunned, and filled with a new, deeper respect for Cerise. Instead of giving in, she had gathered new strength. Instead of losing possession of what she could not control, she had won an even higher status. Cerise Chimera, administrative aide, had convinced the powers-that-be to grant her an assistant in her troublesome labors. The ultimate bureaucratic coup d'etat.
"As the memo copies fluttered from desk to desk," Carl wrote in his journal, "you could virtually see a wave of amazement washing through the office, mounting over cubicle walls, rushing across in-and-out baskets, freezing the keyboarding fingers into an inert hush. Within that sudden lull, the surge of shock withdrew, and left behind a gap in nature like that which Cleopatra created at Cydnus, a black hole of stillness, a disbelief where the entire floor crouched in the enchanted silence of wonder."
Later, telling me this story, Carl only wished he'd had the presence of mind, at that moment, to drop a pin onto the surface of his desk. He would wager you might hear it even where you sit, now, reading these words.