If You Believe In Me

Little Miss Tinkerbelle, that's me. Or that was me, twenty years
ago. Our school play, Peter Pan. It was a pretty hip grammar school, I
guess. The Weil school it was called. How could I forget the blackboard
reading, "We Encourage Independent Learning?"

But back to the play. I was Tinkerbelle. The stage was a ship, an
island, the Victorian home of the Darlings, yaddayaddayadda. Fun? Sure
it was, although flying takes it out of you. I still have the wand.
Didn't get to keep the fairy-wings, and I didn't want the dress.
Comfortable enough, but it looked like tinfoil. The wand, though, was
and is something else. Crystal and throbbing with rainbows. My daughter
is always wanting to take it out and have a look. I let her play with
it, supervised.

Captain Hook. Who played Hook? One of the teachers? Of course! It was
Mr. Violet. He was our history teacher from grades 5-7. He took part in
those Civil War reenactments every summer. It was while playing General
Beauregard during the first Battle of Bull Run that he got that hideous
scar on the left side of his face. Except he didn't have the scar. Hook
did. I think. And of all the teachers in the yearbook, he's the one
that looks most like Hook. So it must have been him.

Some of us may peak early.

I was sitting behind the wheel this morning, waiting for my drive-thru
coffee. The window was rolled down for cash-for-caffeine exchange. The
wind bit into my bones and my early Monday blahs threatened to become
fatal. But I protested, the cold can't hurt me. It can't hurt a
fairy.

When I got to work there was a long plastic canopy I had to walk
under. Three quarters of the building are closed. All non-essential
staff persons are home or working on their second jobs. When I first
walked under this plastic sheeting, the sounds of water dropping made
me nervous. I was afraid that some of the asbestos would break through.
Now I hardly hear anything.

Once in the office I felt ever so much better. The walls are white and
with the bright lights you can tell that they're mostly clean.
Underneath the paint the walls are brick. Some people have asked why
they didn't leave the brick exposed. But I've seen pictures of how the
building used to look. Back when it was a factory. When the kids used
to work on the assembly line. And there was a lot of water damage, so
you wouldn't want to look at the unpainted brick.

Sometimes I might hear something. But I'm sure it's my imagination.
Mr. Carle, my boss, was rubbing his left hand with his right when I
came in. The left hand is plastic. He looked pensive.

"Good morning, um, Ted," I said. He prefers his first name but
something about it just doesn't seem natural.

After a moment lost in thought he slapped his hands together and
looked at me. The clapping produced a thud rather than the usual sharp
sound.

"Hi, Lydia. Did you have a? Well, I don't know."

"A nice weekend? Not bad. Kayla's fever went down. She's still out of
school today but she should be ready tomorrow. She's a real
trooper."

"Good, good. And your daughter, is she feeling better?"

"Oh. Yes, she is."

I started walking to my desk, but it didn't seem to be where I'd left
it on Friday. In fact, all the desks were gone.

"We're going to try something different today," Mr. Carle said.

I stared at the new emptiness of the office, "Where is
everybody?"

Or at least the deeper emptiness.

He said, "They're around. We have work to do. Let's get to it."

"But without my computer or the adding machine or any of the
other?"

He smiled. His gold-rim glasses slid down his nose and he let them
fall into his hand. Most days he wore blue contacts.

"You'll do fine. Like I said, we're going to do things a little
differently today."

My coat was open. I re-buttoned it, since there was no place to hang
it at the moment. And I wasn't sure I'd be staying in.

"Come with me upstairs," he said, a hand twisting the doorknob.

"Where upstairs?"

"Further upstairs than we are right now."

He stood there in the doorway, his arm outstretched and pointing.
Indicating what? The way up, I suppose. As I followed his "ladies first
gesture" I saw old pipes that were about ready to fall off the wall. I
couldn't even tell if they were for plumbing or heating. It seemed that
the stairwell hadn't been used in years. I had never even seen the
inside of it before.

"Ouch!" I cried.

"Are you coming dear?" he asked.

"I'm behind you," I said to his back, "Just got a splinter."

He turned around and crooked over to get a better look. His fake hand
gripped my real one as he gave it a clinical look. It felt
strange.

"You'll live. It's just plain old unvarnished wood. Lucky for you, I
had the owner remove all the paint along these hallways and staircases.
Toxic stuff. And the building inspectors were going to let him skate on
it too. Come on then. We only have a few more steps to go."

He opened another door at the top of the stairs. A different light
poured in. Brighter than the iodine lights over us, but only somewhat.
Was it natural or artificial? I wasn't sure.

"All right. You fell behind before. Now I must insist that you go up
ached of me."

"You insist? Mr. Carle, you've been acting peculiar all day. Could you
please tell me what this is about?"

"I don't think that will be necessary. You'll figure things out soon
enough. And it isn't today that I've been acting strangely."

My feet felt heavy. They were trying to tell me "Stop!" but I didn't
know how. No, the only way to stop this, whatever it was, would have
been to call in sick that morning. And I had thought about it, but you
never want to use up all your sick days, especially if you can't point
to anything wrong.

When I stepped through the door, something crunched and sifted beneath
the soles of my shoes. Gravel. Grey pebbles mixed with what looked like
volcanic ash. This was the roof. He hadn't lied. We were further up
than the office, as high as you could go.

And now I knew why the light seemed strange. All around us, and above,
were panes of frosted glass. A not-so-little glass house perched on the
roof of our building. It would be wrong to call it a greenhouse. Wrong
because there was nothing green within it. No plant life existed in
here. I wondered why I had never noticed this place from the ground.
One sometimes misses things when one is in a hurry. But there was and
is something more to it than that.

"Well this is," I searched for the right word, "different. You were
right about that."

"I'm always right. I have to be right. It's a sickness."

"Okay. But where are the others? I thought they would be up here as
well."

"Oh, but they are."

I gave him the blankest stare.

"Take a look around. Do you see those large shafts of cardboard
leaning against the walls?"

Now that he mentioned it, I did see them. Or I had seen them before
and just now acknowledged them. They were white rectangles, about six
feet long by two wide.

"Now take a closer look, Lydia-belle."

I crept up to see them better. Human shapes were drawn on them. Well
some were just shapes, shadows in dull light. Others were quite
detailed. I saw one with glasses and red sideburns, a dress shirts
tucked into cowboy jeans.

"This looks like Rob," I said.

"Imagine!"

Rob was an intern. He grew the sideburns because Hank, a
sixty-year-old supervisor, had kidded him about not being old enough to
shave. Three rectangles over, I saw something that resembled Hank's
paunchy body, slumped over in sleep on his feet.

"These are very good likenesses," I told him, "Did you make them?"
Could he have that much spare time?

"Yes. And then I unmade them."

"Excuse?"

He sighed and rubbed his neck. A few large pieces of cardboard fell
over.

"This is as much of a staff as I need right now. My heart isn't in the
business at the moment. Often I forget what exactly it is that we
do."

"Oh. Oh I see! You're retiring?"

"For a time. I might return to the high seas." He rubbed his hands
together.

"Well, we will miss you>"

"You don't get it. I'm not leaving everything in place. That isn't how
things work. I'm returning my employees to the design stage. Only later
will I know what I'm going to do with everyone."

All this made me itch. I needed to get back down to the first floor,
to the real outdoors. Home.

"I think I'll be going now."

He let the words go by, deep in thought. Then he shook himself loose
and peered at me.

"No. You have to stay here. You'll be a plan for a person too. But
you'll be a little more aware."

I laughed, "Mr. Carle, it sounds like you're saying I'm about to turn
into a drawing."

"Something like that. But as I said, you'll be more conscious than
they are. I have to admit, you're a little special among the people
here."

"Damn right I'm special! I used to be a fairy."

"And I used to be a captain! The most feared presence on all the
seven? My point is, you're not the only one who's come down in the
world."

With that, he opened the door again. On this side it was red, the
brightest color I could see. He stepped through and disappeared. I
tried to follow him. Whichever way I pointed my toes, though, I would
just miss the direction of that door. For a while I paced around the
glass cage. Until a few minutes ago, by my watch.

This isn't the place for me. He thinks it is, but it isn't. I want to
be out there. I want someone to hear me.

Right now I am staring at the drawing of Rob. Looking into his
sketched-in eyes. I'll go through them one-by-one.