Secret Life
The moon, like a cross section of rounded bone, rose into a deep blue-black sky. Crickets broke into song. The quick brown shadows of nighthawks began to glide over the building. Then, faintly, quiet and yet so clear, a sound came from the top of the building. A knife against a glass. A pen against a coffee mug. An exhalation of breath. A softly muttered curse. The scuffle of feet—a lunge, a thrust.
On the roof, the owners of the victorious and vanquished companies met in hand-to-hand combat: two identical fat men in dark suits. They sweated as they swore and swung at each other. Grappled. Gouged. Bit. Their ever-more-numerous wounds did not seem a part of them—caused by the other and thus somehow part of the other, each wound hurting the giver.
The morning would find them huddled together on the roof, as peaceful as if they had died in their sleep, conquest finally complete.
Interlude 1
The company that occupies the first through fourth floors of the building has a secret name. This name is never spoken aloud and almost never written down. A few people have seen its syllables, at night, in confidence. The name glows a fiery gold when looked upon. Those who see it are said to be changed forever. Some leave the building immediately. Others rise so fast in the company that they ascend to the fifth floor and few ever see them again. The secret name of the company is older than the company itself. It will remain long after the company is gone.
The Vine
The office building was a long rectangular box with miserly vents and faulty air conditioning. The inhabitants of the building breathed air that their predecessors had breathed years ago. Some argued that breathing this air perpetuated a sense of tradition in all employees. Most said it made them ill.
One day a woman on the fourth floor began to grow a vine in her office. At first, she feared the cutting, taken from a patch of soil near the great gloom of the south, would not grow for her. But she so hated the austere look of her office—the gray-white ceiling tiles, the brown, worn carpet, the pale gray desk and old brown chair. The instant she placed the vine in a corner, on top of a filing cabinet, she felt better, as if she could breathe again.
Her boyfriend laughed when he saw the vine. “Like a pig with pockets,” he said, looking around her office.
They were having lunch. He worked across the street as the assistant manager at a bookstore. He always smelled of lighter fluid for some reason. She liked his looks but not his manner.
“I think it’s a breath of fresh air,” she said, determined to fight cliché with cliché.
In the silence that followed, they ate their sandwiches and stared at one another. She thought about the shopping she had to do after work.
Something mournful had entered the room.
At first, the vine blanched and would not bloom. Even with the support of a trellis, even with enough potted soil and the direct light filtered through the murky glass of her window. She felt guilty, gave it more soil, added fertilizer, bought shades for the window so she could regulate the sunlight that fell upon its leaves.
