Under the Wave
by Alexandra Atiya

It was my second day of work and already the fact was clear: I was outstripped by my colleagues, the fellow graduates who had take up jobs in a small newspaper office, who had within them an instinct for gossip sharper than mine.

I had been called into the boss's office. He was a stout man by the name of Leonard Keen;

he was bald and wore tweeds which hung roughly around the edges. He knew not our names, but this did not mean he greeted us unkindly—in fact, I found something paternal in his expression, despite the fierceness of his clenched jaw.

When he opened the door to his office I was introduced to a mass of papers. Papers spread across the desk and down onto the side tables and down further to the floor. Papers sat on the filing cabinet, and on top of the drawers which lay open. Papers were stacked along the windowsill. He made his way over to the window to open the blinds and as he did he asked me to shut the door; behind it sat another neat stack.

He gestured towards an armless wooden chair and settled into a plush maroon seat across the desk. He studied me for a moment in the half-light and said,

"Frank likes you. He hasn't said why." He began rifling through the papers on his desk. "He gave me a copy of your resume, but—I recall it was rather thin. Frank handles all the hiring you see."

I knew not what to say and so I simply thanked him for this opportunity. My words were awkward and disingenuous, I realized as I spoke them, and Leonard's eyes narrowed. He brought one plump, liver-spotted hand to his chin.

"What did you study?" he said.

I told him that I had studied English, and after a moment's uncomfortable pause I added, "And a little Latin as well."

He broke into a smile. Surrounded by the window and the mountains of paper, the feline curve of his mouth became sinister. "We haven't any use for a dead language," he said.

With that he concluded our meeting. I left his office, sealing the door behind me, and returned to the commotion of the newsroom. It was filled with dozens of small figures on the telephone. I returned to my desk, where I sat quietly, full of the strange realization that I had no work to do. I felt a tap on the shoulder.

The figure of Frank stood above me. Frank was, quite simply, the palest creature I had ever seen. He had round black eyes and pallid skin, a thick mass of graying hair which was still streaked with black.

"Alex," he said. "Will you stay on tonight? I'd like you to see the presses."

And so I stayed until long after all the others had left. Moonlight slowly filtered into the empty newsroom. Just after twelve I made my way down the stairs into the basement.

It was a labyrinth of grey concrete. I thought it fitting that the lowest register of the office be so unadorned, but in truth I found it difficult to find my way, and it was only after several wrong turns that I came upon the blue door that signified the presses.

As I cracked it my ears were filled with a petrified scream. I pushed the door open and I saw two men—one with a perfect clean-shaven head, the other with an aquiline nose and a thick crop of curly black hair. Each smoked a cigarette. The black haired one stamped one out on the floor as he lit another, while the other left it dangling from his lip. Each held a strip of film to a board exuding yellow light. One board hung from the wall, the other was spread across an immense table which stretched across the length of the room.

I turned to study the presses themselves. They functioned as if the interior of a watch. A series of circles turned and screeched as they pulled papers across them; the newsprint flew at a speed which made it nearly invisible. At the end the final circle flipped each paper out, neatly folded, into a stack.

Here, beside the growing pile, sat Frank. He rested upon an overturned crate, his legs stretched out before him. Frank exercised peculiar control over my imagination: when I first met him I considered that he was a physical contradiction, for he was the palest, yet seemingly strongest, man I had ever met. He wore only black garments and he had a pathetic complexion and sallow black eyes. Yet in his white arms, pressed against his shirts, in the force of his legs, in the chin and in those deep eyes which due to their blackness looked deliberately yet always imprecisely, there was some sense of the monolith.

He was reading from a small book without lettering on the front. I had seen it upon his desk on the day of my interview. Surreptitiously then I had opened it and found it to be a volume of disordered poetry, written in no language that I had ever encountered. As I approached, Frank dropped the book into his lap and smiled.

I left that evening with a renewed hope. As I traveled home my mind soared and considered unimagined things, but when I returned I found a small envelope awaiting me. I had been summoned to serve jury duty. It was to begin the following Monday.

When I told Frank the next day, I saw a slight shade of disappointment pass across his face, but then it turned to an expression of bemused satisfaction.

On the Monday, I wound my way down to the end of the train. I climbed up from the underground I stood and I beneath the court building, a monolithic structure that seemed to emerge directly out of the earth. Inside I showed the first of a series of anonymous officers my summons. He directed me to an elevator at the back of the lobby. I went up and followed the signs into a small windowless room on the eleventh floor. The room was paneled with wood, and rows of chairs were sat bolted to the floor. Slowly, the room filled with stranger after stranger. Business men and homeless men alike entered. Women followed. All of them stood slouched and dreary, as if the shades of female sensuality dissipated upon entering this peculiar cell. I took a seat towards the back, and a rough man with blue eyes and coarse hands filed in beside me.

Just a few moments after the entire room filled, a lanky, silver-haired bureaucrat appeared out of a panel at the front. He had a bony face, and he wore a pair of half-glasses pushed down the length of his nose. At the front of the room sat the relics of a short wooden desk and a tall silver microphone. Leaning into the microphone the bureaucrat began to speak. He had a familiar drawl. He said that his name was Norman, and he began to rattle off a list of rules regarding when we could eat, smoke, and use the bathroom. He told us that we must sit quietly until he called our names. Last he said—"And none, absolutely none of you in this room, may speak on the phone."

This struck an unusual chord for the figure on stage before us seemed somehow far removed from any concern as modern as that of a mobile phone, and he received no response from the audience. He took a seat behind the desk and began to tap his pencil upon it.

He called no names in the first hour. Another hour passed and he slipped back into a door in the paneled wall, which was invisible after he closed it. In his absence the crowd rustled and sighed, but he promptly returned. After another hour he stood before us and announced that we might begin to eat lunch, and sections of the room left and returned again.

At around three he ceased to tap his pencil upon the desk. He stood up, and sidled over to the microphone. Grabbing it around the head he drew it close to his mouth. He breathed heavily for a moment and then said,

"I appreciate your patience. You people are the only thing standing between civilization and anarchy. And you're doing a fine job."

He laughed to himself.

At precisely that moment the first phone rang. Rather, it did not ring but it played a song. A dark-haired man towards the front of the room pulled it to his ear. The melody was abruptly interrupted by a conversation beginning—

"Hello!? What did I tell you? Did you find her?

Norman leaned into the microphone and spoke harshly, "Sir, I said, no use of the telephone…"

The man ignored him. Norman repeated himself. No answer. Then he lowered himself to the floor and approaching the man said, "Sir, I said, no use of the telephone!" His voice, less personable without amplification, sounded older and rougher. The man gave no reply. He sat impenetrable, as if he were not in the room at all.

I looked around me, and I began to notice that others had taken out phones as well. Soon another voice behind me began booming, "Yes, it's me. No, I am at jury duty—" Then a woman's shrill cry, "You've gone out! Who's watching the child—"

Without warning the entire room exploded. Each person opened a phone, and disappeared into a different world; I was left behind among the shouts. The voices were no longer distinguishable from one another.

Poor Norman ran from seat to seat, now fully enveloped in the crowd. Like a frightened bird he flitted about, screeching his protest. He received no response.

The only one who did not speak, I noticed, was the man who sat directly beside me. In his eyes was a distant expression, as if he remained in fact in another place.

The uproar of our little cell grew louder and louder until at last Norman sprinted to the front of the room and yelled into the microphone that we were all dismissed, and ought to leave at once. None of us would be called to serve. The rows of strangers began to file out, person by person, still speaking to themselves. The chatter continued in the elevator and down into the street.

I have never owned a phone, and I prefer my solitude. After the day's events, I wandered through the city until nightfall, preferring to take the bus rather than climb back down into the cramped quarters of the train.

I stood leaning against the bus shelter when to my surprise a familiar figure appeared. Halfway down the block walked the man who sat beside me in the jury room. I studied him as he approached me. I felt within me an impulse to speak to him, but I did not. Past him I saw the bus flying down the street.

The bus arrived. As it did he slipped his phone out of his pocket. It glowed. He opened it, “Hello—” he called. Then silence. We boarded the bus, and he walked to the final seat. I took the one directly in front of him.

As the bus pulled forward he remained silent, though I could hear the heavy sound of his breath, and feel gently the movement of his fingers along the back of my seat. He was fidgeting. At last he spoke:

“You’ve lost your job.” He paused.

“You’ve lost everything.”

“You’ve lost them both—”

Then he began a strange monologue, recollecting a tale of intrigue whose principal characters were “Aidan” and “Eli.” He asked repeatedly what how long they’d been involved. After a period of silence he screamed, “Three months!” and emitted a low moan.

The bus whipped across the park. Tacitly, I pulled out my notebook and began to write. I marked what he said, word for word.

At last we stopped on the first avenue. Several alighted, and the bus started again, at which moment the man interrupted himself to beg the driver to halt.

Suddenly, I could hear the voice on the other side. It was a woman’s voice. It reached a scream.

“I’m on the bus,” the man said softly. The unintelligible screech grew louder. He turned to climb down the steps and as he did he noticed me. He locked his gaze upon me, and then glanced at the notebook which lay open on my lap.

“No,” he said, and repeated it. “No. No one can hear me.”

That night I slept soundly, and I awoke early to return to the office, where first thing I knocked on Frank’s door.

He called me in and I found him perched upon a stool in the corner. He was reading a competing tabloid.

I standing, explained to him that I had a novel idea: that we should run a column of comments made into cell phones, revealing the personal matter, without context, that one could pick up on the street.

Frank approved. Write it for me and we’ll print it, he said.

“We’ll call it OVERHEARD.” And he laughed a private laugh.

I went to my desk and realized that for the first time I had the semblance of work to do. I began:

“The white-haired man who seemed a sage (riding upon the crosstown bus) was in truth not so wise…”

And I printed a description of him and his crystal gaze, along with the full narrative including the names of the men in question, and a small note on the sound of the woman’s screech.

I filled the bottom half of the column with comments overheard in the jury room, the flesh of which was fabricated.

As I dropped the column on Frank’s desk, Frank did not look up from his paper.

The column ran the following day, and in the next few weeks it grew into a wild success. Unexpectedly, it became popular in nearly every neighborhood. The column spread through the networks of the city; soon each paper featured a column like mine.

Frank and Leonard each thanked me. My hours changed. I read with Frank down by the presses each night, but during the day I was not obliged to stay in the office. Instead, I walked the streets.

My work now was cursory. The other graduates immediately subsumed the column, and I only contributed a very occasional entry. They wrote detailed, well-researched bits, smuttier than even the job demanded, and they were also, to my surprise, verifiable.

In the aimless days I began to notice a change. As the column grew beyond what I imagined, so did the number of interns who were applied to the task. I started to see them in every corner of the city, the nameless creatures which scurried about like rats. They were often sloppy in their work, and exposed themselves. This was the moment that I enjoyed—when the person realized the audience, when the man became aware that he had released something into the public domain.

One night as I drew towards the office, I saw Leonard emerging from the building. He walked quickly down the steps, and though the street was dimly lit I could see that he was speaking into his phone.

I stood back and watched him. He turned; I saw two young men with clean-shaven, cherubic faces appear behind him. Each wore a dark suit and tie. One held a small notebook and pen in his hand. Each wore a little black cap, a white shirt, and shiny black shoes.

I could hear nothing, however, and so I moved in closer. I concealed myself on a stoop and listened. I could hear from Leonard’s mouth the word, “drunk” uttered harshly, and as soon as he said it I watched them pull closer. They encircled him. Then one pronounced,

“Notorious editor Leonard Keen:”

And the other repeated it back to him as he wrote. “Notorious Editor Leonard Keen:” he screamed, in a dull, warbled voice.

“She’s a drunk!”

“He says of his wife,”

“In conversation with his mistress—”

I, astonished, watched them. They formed a triangle now, with Leonard in the center, each of the two men shadowed behind him.

I wished to say to them, be more discreet, but something in the obscured glow of their faces seized me. I studied their costumed mischief, and it became somehow alluring.

Leonard now turned to face them. As he did a devilish smile spread across the face of the primary speaker, and the other tucked his notebook into the breast of his jacket. His neck reddened and his back tensed. For a moment they paused, each of the two figures facing Leonard, who was examining the strange concord between them. It seemed that they stood beneath a wave; in the dimly lit street they froze as if they faced a pressure that was to me unfathomable.

One of the men gently stroked his chin and rubbed his fingers over his lips, and when he did I perceived something strange in his gesture. I drew in further. As I did, I realized that the two figures were not in fact men, but women. Despite their costumes, they were female, their lips full and slightly painted, their noses short and rounded, their ears pierced with silver studs. With their hair tucked into their caps they had framed themselves as men, but now the mischievous boyishness of their milky faces turned to an impish cruelty. Leonard stood and then without warning struck one. Her cap fell to the ground and the great mass of blond curls tumbled down upon her neck. Without reaching for each other they knelt to the ground, turned and disappeared down the block.

Leonard turned away, and I knew then that I had drawn too close. Instantly, he saw me. His eyes locked on me and he began to growl, “You—You!”

I started to back away but the voice grew louder, and then implausibly, deeper—I realized it moved in concert with another. I turned and above me loomed a grey-haired figure. It was the man from the jury room, whose original words I had stolen.

“You! You!” he cried, and raised his arm above me. I ducked beneath him and began to sprint down the street. I ran, taking at each corner the most improbable turn, until at last I felt secure enough to glance behind me. I stopped, turned, and then felt the heavy blow upon the back of my neck. I fell.

I awoke to find the street still dark. I was able to stand. I checked my belongings—I found that I was missing nothing but my notebook. I glanced about and I saw the spine of the book lying on the ground, all of the pages torn from it. I left it there, and slowly I walked home.

I slept poorly, and I returned to the office early to find Frank standing atop the stairs. When he saw me he stopped. He leaned forward and draped his arms over the railing.

“Alex,” he shouted. “Leonard says: You’re fired.”

“Is that the end of the column?” I said.

“No,” he replied. “The column will continue.”

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