[INTRODUCTION/SETTING THE SCENE]
That's just what they called it: the Mill.
It was a building where people went in, sat down for hours, and then walked out at the end. Some of them straggled outside to smoke, gnawing the filters of their cigarettes, hands moving sluggishly as they attempted to process the hours of the day and explain how they felt to the other blank-eyed smokers who stood beside them.
The parking lot was where these hapless escapees congregated, behind the dumpsters and beside the heaving growl of the central air unit. Some of them looked like kicked dogs, huddled into their coats, while others found momentary strength in numbers, complaining loudly and expansively to their comrades. Most just stood silently, staring into the bluer-than-blue sky, or off at the bigger building across the arterial, some firm with three names and what looked like ergonomic chairs at each desk. The winter was in the gray phase, when everything looked scuffed and corroded by the weird white markings of rock-salt and snow-sand. They felt their lungs, too, graying, like loose-leaf notebook paper gone to ash. Their eyes hung out of their faces.
It might as well have been Bedlam, but without the screaming and after the pre-frontal lobotomy.
Inside, it was worse. This was the Slow Season, and most of the people sat at their desks, hands on the home key row on their keyboards, staring sightlessly into too-bright monitors uncalibrated for hours of use. Overhead, garish rows of fluorescent lights stretched on for rooms and rooms, while stairwells were sinkholes of dark, flickering bulbs and breakrooms more of a storage space for vending machines and chairs with missing wheels or broken backs. Each room was structured as panopticon, with an overseer in the middle and their assignees grouped around them, all facing brick walls, so that the supervisor would be able to see their monitors. The Slow Season meant that everyone had just suffered through the crushing anxiety of Cut-Downs, where the wheat was scythed from the chaff, with blinding efficacy and seemingly no regard for circumstance. One grossly overweight woman, whom everyone knew had no acumen for the job, was kept on, while a young man who had just rented himself a studio apartment and was clawing his way out of debt had been told that he was “no longer needed.”
Desks changed every so often. They would come in to their position, only to discover, as though through some sort of dream logic, their desk was no longer their desk. Disorientation followed, and the onus of figuring out what, exactly, had occurred, fell on the hapless worker. He could always turn to ask the overseer, but they, likelier than not, would simply frost their gaze and point in a direction that the worker would then follow, hopefully, to some sort of answer. By the time the new location was ascertained (on another floor, but still facing another brick wall), the worker was considered “late” and suffered through the acid tones of their own supervisor as they sat down to prepare to do nothing for hours on end.
Most took up smoking just to be able to get out of the stifling atmosphere for 15 minutes at a time. These fifteen minutes were highly prized possessions. Some, especially those on the entry level, or the third floor, were in the unenviable position of having to ask their supervisor for an OK to leave. Cruelly, the supervisor would often either ignore their question, or simply say “no” with nary another thought. Their eyes, it's true, hardly ever left the monitors before them.
At five in the evening, the doors exploded with the rush of those freed from the innards of the Mill. Of course, there were some who had to stay behind, perhaps for hours, perhaps on a later shift. This, then, the optimal time to be there. Throughout the night, the third floor windows were illuminated. The hazards of being open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, even on Christmas Day. The Mill simply never slept.
It is a small city, perched on the edge of a harbor like a child testing its courage. The Atlantic turns into a widow in the winter, chilly and unforgiving and bitter, making itself a mirror for the world and showing nothing but bile and vitriol. Snow and ice crust the streets for months before melting into a gray sludge that looks like the residue of a painting after being attacked by turpentine. But this, the knothole of winter, the time after the old year's gone and the time before the new spring comes, this is the worst. The cold is unabated, the wind is hawklike and uncivil, and the hours leap by like whitetail deer before the sound of a hunter's rifle. The sun's passage across the sky is mortichnic, like tired clockwork performing a final time, every day.
There's a joke that runs through the city like an old thread, stained like a smoker's teeth: “You could always go work at the Mill.” And most, if they're lucky, know what that means and have been lucky to escape it, but some are desperate and don't know, and don't have anyone to warn them. And those who do go, stay for a long time. Hardly anyone ever quits the Mill - you're either fired, or you're a lifer. Most have been there past the three-year mark, declaiming with ever-withering tones as the months pass, “No, this time I mean it. I'm out of here. This is my last year. No bullshit.” And all the others nod their heads in mock-sage agreement, knowing better. The year passes, and even through the warm bounty of the summer and the crisp of fall, the ague of winter descends again and the year's wheel turns, and they're still there, at their desk, strapped in and just a bit more smudged around the hollows of the eyes.
This is a place where questions, once asked, lie unanswered on the floor like dead leaves. Eyes dart from corner to corner as if seeing shadows move, or as if seeking shadows. The breath of every single worker at the Mill is rotted and stale, and they stink of fear-sweat as it saturates their clothes.
And when they are finally off of a shift, they proceed in rank & slumped-shoulder file to bars, bars of different colors and stripes, different drinks clenched in different hands, but always a drink and hardly ever a beer. They chase away the weird grit of despair that lodges in the cracks between their teeth and in the corners of their eyes with the cleansing burn of alcohol. Soon enough, they overdrink, and the anger worms its way back into their hearts and their fists clench anew as eyes slowly creep back towards the clocks on the wall. As last call approaches with a heavy, almost tender step, the only thing on their mind is how many hours are left before returning to their desks and once again snapping closed the shackles around their wrists and tethering themselves to their desks.
Well, it's either this or a life of crime. Or a life working at the convenience store down the hill, where you're more apt to be stabbed than you are smiled at, and you'll go home with less in your pockets than you had when you arrived. The fifth floor of the Mill is reserved for these kinds of arguments, when the heads of the company bother to address the concerns of those who work below. The fifth floor, indeed, is never trespassed upon, not even to make use of its bathroom. Most do their business quickly, though the stalls don't lock and the urinals don't flush, and paper towels are hardly ever in supply. The handles of the bathrooms are almost always wet with someone else's residue, and most workers use the pinched sleeve of their shirt or jacket to open them. Once inside, the noisome chamber affords little privacy or even sanitation. In a sublimely cruel trick, the flusher on the toilets is situated in such a way that one must reach through the horns of the seat to depress, or put the seat down entirely. This is a problem endemic to the men's room, but there are other problems, and most would argue, somewhat worse, to the women's. The fifth floor argues that they are lucky to have a separate men's room and a women's room. This, they say, is an expense and ill-afforded.
In the lower levels, the temperature is hardly ever regulated, and most of the workers there are seen wrapped in layers throughout the day. Some prefer gloves, though that does make it more difficult to type, and the overseers frown on inefficiency. So the first floor are called the “Bluefingers” because of the strange hue of their hands, due to the cold. This is ironic, because those who deal most consistently with rich, upper-crust clients are on this floor. It is an enviable position, if only because of the prestige, but no one wants to work there because those who do inevitably come down with the First Floor Sickness: an unexplained phenomenon consisting of a constantly running nose, pertussis-like coughing, and a strange, low burr to their exhausted voices.
•
A pale, membranous blue, lit spectrally, as if from behind. The sun, slunk already between buildings, and the waves going in and out of the harbor like murderer's knives.
The still quiet of between-holidays, a city emptied from its brim to its dregs. The crunch of snow underfoot like day-old pastries, the street itself with a thin crust of delicate icing.
A toothache, like a black hole in his jaw, and his mittened hand at the side of his cheek, rubbing ineffectually. This is a different kind of cold, one that does not respond to half-hearted friction. Best thing is to relocate the pain. He strips off his left mitten and uses the teeth on the left side of his mouth to bite down hard on his index and middle finger, already pinking in the frigid air. He bites carefully, pressing hard on the divot between the third and second joint, and applies more pressure. The cold air seeps in around his fingers and saliva trickles down the side of his chin like a dam secretly preparing to burst. He feels the slimy trail go gelid as soon as it leaks from the corner of his mouth - too cold even to launch itself from the rampart of his chin and shatter on the sidewalk.
A carhorn, and headlights flashing - he's inadvertently crossed into the street at a green light. The driver, an old man with white hair and a Burberry coat (with matching red-plaid hat) is gesticulating angrily at him. He stops, standing directly in the road, staring at the man. The car is a shiny black BMW 5-series. There is not a single spot of rocksalt or sand on it, not even in the wheel-wells where plump, satisfied tires rotate on finely-greased axles.
The driver rolls down the window. He notes that the man is also wearing a scarf that matches his coat. “Whaddaya doin? Are you fuckin retarded?”
Re-tah-ded. He doesn't recognize the accent. He shrugs and blinks, fingers still in his mouth. He removes them, gingerly, and the toothache gleefully reasserts itself. He notices the weird, nearly topological crescents of tooth imprints on his fingers.
“Toothache,” he says, by way of explanation, but his voice is quiet and the wind pulls the sound away from his lips before it has a chance to reach the irate driver-man's ears. Drooping ligaments of saliva are still attached to his fingertips from his mouth.
“GET OUT OF THE GODDAM ROAD!” The driver is turning purple. Like Veronica Salt, or whoever, from Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. Maybe he'll explode. He laughs a little, wondering where the driver-man has got to go that's so important.
“Are you late for a very important date?” He asks, tossing out his voice like a lasso. He does not move from the spot he's stopped. A weird rash of light has grown in his eyes, making him appear almost feverish. “You should check your pocket-watch!”
The man has rolled up his window again. He is now holding the heel of his hand against the horn. The sound obliterates anything else, for blocks around. The whole world becomes the F# of the horn.
He opens his mouth, saliva still dripping from his teeth, and looses a sound to harmonize with it.
One of his shoelaces has come untied, he notices idly. It lays like an old, dead worm on the asphalt, after a spring rain. He cuts off his sound, and stoops down to fix it.
Redandblack birds fill his vision. It feels like he's falling through a strange, wet, leaf-pile. The pain of the toothache, finally freed, explodes throughout his entire body as the car slams into his side, rupturing his skull and shattering his bones.
The sound of the horn continues to echo, pitch-shifting, like a scream unsure of itself, and then finally pinches off.
•
He wouldn't have done it if there had been someone there to see. He wouldn't have done it if his daughter, who looks to be about the kid's age, had been in the car, or in the state, for that matter. He wouldn't have done it if he hadn't just left his ex-wife's house, dropping off the kids' Christmas presents. His ex-wife's house, his old house.
He adjusts the chunky Rolex on his right wrist and turns the seat-warmers up. A not entirely unwelcome heat seeps up and into his buttocks, rising through them. He catalogues the various aches:
right knee
third digit of right ring finger (where the ring used to be)
knife-edge of left hand, near to wrist
indigestion
a rough tickle in his throat (post-nasal drip, perhaps)
rattling in the lungs
He'd light up a cigarette, but he promised someone he wouldn't. His hands are shaking slightly, and his nose is running.
He wouldn't have done it if it weren't so late in the day.
He wonders if there's blood on the front fender. He wonders if he bent the fender. The goddam mechanic won't be in until the new year, which means he'll have to drive the Benz, which is a year older than he'd like it to be and doesn't have the seat-warmers.
“Fucking hell,” he grumbles. There is nothing about this season he likes. He drives past buildings liberally festooned with tinsel and blinking lights and ho-ho-hoing plastic Santas lit electrically from within. He doesn't like the cold, and he doesn't like the lines you have to wait in just to get a coffee. He'd go to the Dunkin Donuts instead of the indepedently-owned local shop, but they don't have the kind of beans he likes.
He is the kind of man who changes his clothes three to four times every morning before he leaves the house. He can put them out the night before in order to conserve time, but by the time he gets up, showers, and gets ready to go to the office, he feels differently, and staring at himself in the mirror, he just doesn't feel right somehow. As if he knows - can see himself hours ahead - having a miserable day. He is possessed of a certainty that if he changes what he's forecasting, changes into a new suit of clothes, the day won't be as bad. He knows this is entirely erroneous. He does not care.
