Clerk by Guillermo Saccomanno

Author:Guillermo Saccomanno
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Letter
Published: 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

29

LATER, JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER NIGHT OF HIS LIFE, he turns off the computer, stores his office supplies, puts on his jacket, takes his overcoat down from the coat rack. He checks the time. Enough. He’s waited long enough. One more moment and he’ll fall apart, he thinks. If she comes out of the office and finds him still here, she’ll think he’s a driveling idiot. It would be best for him to hurry, to depart once and for all. He’s in the process of putting on his overcoat when she appears at the office door. Wait for me, she asks. The clerk’s legs buckle.

Would he like to walk with her, she asks.

He smiles, spellbound.

After a few blocks, she takes him by the arm. As words and gestures tumble out one after another, everything seems like a dream come true. It pains him to think that what’s tragic about a dream is that it can’t become reality. That’s called waking. Because once you develop a taste for the dream, life becomes intolerable if it doesn’t happen again. And then you feel more miserable than before, when you didn’t know that dreamlike happiness.

If only he could stop thinking, he says to himself. They walk along in the frigid, foggy night. They step around the last, straggling employees and the homeless, huddling in doorways and arcades, wrapped in their grimy, ragged blankets, in cardboard boxes where they take refuge from the polar temperatures. Some stake their posts beneath still-lit windows. Shop windows. Clothing. Furniture. Notions. Small appliances. Dishes. Tools. Jams and preserves. Cosmetics. Audio. Toys. Liquor. Pets. The clerk and the secretary look in a veterinary window containing pets: dogs, cats, rabbits, parrots, multicolored fish. Newly cloned, a sign promises. Two-year warranty.

Beneath the shop window, the homeless fight over a carton of wine, pushing, laughing. At first the battles are a pretense, then a genuine row. A woman socks a drunk. She takes his wine. The drunk comes back at her with a punch in the mouth. The woman lets go of the carton. It falls. The wine spills. Enraged, the guy kicks the woman. The others begin to cover themselves with their rags and cardboard boxes; they grumble. The guy stumbles closer to the group. By piling up on one another, they conserve heat for the night. A cold drizzle falls. It’s colder than last night. Below zero.

He takes the young woman’s hand. They walk by those who are lying down. An old woman, her face crossed with brown and black scabs, reaches out a dirty, wounded hand to beg. He pulls the young woman away. The beggar asks him if his little whore is so expensive that he doesn’t even have a penny left for a poor old lady. The band of gargoyles laughs at her wit. The old woman heaves with laughter.

With the sprawling crowd behind them, he asks her what kinds of movies she likes. Comedies, the young woman replies. Romantic comedies. She recites her favorites. He likes comedies, too, he says.

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