Office Supplies, Final draft
by Rebecca Sturgeon
“Don’t go nuts in there.”
It’s like they know me or something, Tracey thought. Still, Nora gave her the corporate card and sent her to Staples and only said they needed stuff for an office. All the stuff and bits and pieces that would make an office work. A real live, in-person office with people typing on keyboards and the soft whirring of a coffee machine, and a printer that never works and that everyone always complains about. A copy machine that you could program from your desk, but no one ever does because the software is buggy and it’s just nicer to walk over and talk to people anyway.
So, paper. Just decent copy paper. The recycled kind because Tracey cares about the planet — or she knows that’s a thing that she should do and recycled things are — better? Somehow?
They told her not to worry about ink and toners and all the things that go inside to make the copy machine work — the equipment people would take care of that. But something to write with, something to make marks on all those copies of things so people can carry them back to their desks and type in all the changes on their computers and drop the papers into the recycle bins at their desks — so the recycled paper can become paper again. Twice-cycled paper. Is it an infinite loop of paper? And if so, why are they so worried about trees on all the commercials.
Pens. And highlighters. And Sharpie markers in at least four different colors. Tracey limits herself to black and red pens, but does decide that for this prudence, she deserves to get the good pens. The gel ones with the little rubber sleeve that rests right against your knuckle. The ones that write so smoothly, so clearly, it would be impossible not to take anything they said seriously. She thinks of that long ago sign in a long ago break room written with a sad old Bic Stic — CLEAN YOUR DISHES PLEASE. No one ever cleaned their dishes. Why would they with such a sad, unfortunate sign?
Sticky notes. Tracey fills the front basket of her cart with memo size, standard size, tab size sticky notes in all the bright colors that are not yellow. Yellow sticky notes mean this is a boring place, a place where people are afraid to think outside the box, and where they are so cheap they won’t even have decent pens that could write on other colors of sticky notes.
Tracey pauses in front of a display of planners and planner refills. She picks up a full size binder, brownish-red leather with a little embossed logo in the bottom corner. She opens it and tests out the binder rings inside. Open. Close. Open. Close. So smooth, and so easy to open and close. She could work it even if she got carpal tunnel or hurt her wrist in the lid of the copy machine or something. She holds it in one hand over the shopping cart, pauses with it mid-air, then swings her arm around and places it back into the rack. She slowly walks away from the planners, hearing the smooth click of the binder rings in the sound of her hard-soled shoes.
All those small things that hold things together or attach things to other things — there must be a name for this category, Tracey thinks. If she were in a sewing store, she would call them “notions.” Tracey hasn’t been in a sewing store since the formal dress disaster of her second year of college. She shudders as an image of blue satin teases the edge of her memory. She navigates to an aisle filled with baskets of things, things hanging on hooks, small bits of things tucked in neat rows on shelves at the level of her knees. She holds a box of paper clips on her palm until the cool plastic matches her own body’ temperature. She runs her hand over the staplers until she finds one that fits just right. She puts three of these in the cart, along with a box of staples, binder clips, a little tray that holds bits of paper, a ruler, scissors — everything she can think of that would make this in-person office work again.
Tracey turns towards the registers at the front of the store. She is nearly there when she makes an abrupt u-turn, a red flush climbing up her neck. Three hole punch. She nearly forgot. She finds the three-hole punch and makes her way back to the registers. She unloads the cart in stages as the cashier swipes everything over the scanner and into a large plastic bag. A couple of times, she thinks maybe the cashier pauses, looking pointedly towards the self-checkout, but maybe this is just her imagination.
“I have so much stuff! I’m sorry,” Tracey says, with her best front desk smile.
The cashier nods and continues to swipe.
“I mean, you never think about what goes into making a whole new office, right? From the ground up? We’ve been at home for years and now — well — all this stuff!”
The cashier looks up briefly, raises one eyebrow and continues to swipe.
“It was so weird, right? When we all did our jobs from home?” Tracey leans forward. Leaning forward is the way to show you are engaged and warm.
The cashier pauses briefly with a three-ring binder dangling from her hand. “Some of us still had to go to work.”
Tracey feels the hot flush creeping up her neck. She fumbles with the corporate credit card, rubbing it between her fingers. “No, I mean, yes, I mean of course you did. And it was so . . important . . .so . . . essential . . .what you were doing. I mean, thank you. And we couldn’t have survived. I mean, this whole thing wouldn’t be possible without — just — thank you.”
The cashier shakes her head and continued to swipe. Tracey drops the corporate credit card and spends several minutes fumbling to pick it up from where it had landed, flat on the floor near the cart’s back wheels. She makes a mental note to start taking care of her nails again. Cutting them this short made sense when she was just at home, but now she realizes she would need them again for things like picking up dropped credit cards, or tapping on the ends of a counter while she waited for her purchase to be rung up. She straightens up, clutching the card tightly in her hand.
The cashier mumbles the total as she places the last item — a box of brightly colored push pins — into an overstuffed bag. Tracey holds out the credit card. The cashier nods towards a small terminal and Tracey fumbles the card into the slot. There are deep ridges in her palm from where she clutched the card. Tracey signs and retrieves her card. She carefully places the overflowing bags into the cart and pushes everything out to her car.
At least she remembered to have the car detailed. When she opens the trunk, it is perfect, not even a piece of dirt or anything. She fastens the net across the front of the trunk and lifts the bags over, taking care to tie together the handles of each bag before she moves on to the next one. The last thing she would want is some stray box of pins or paper clips rattling around in her trunk driving her crazy until the next time she had a reason to open it.
Tracey returns the cart, stacking it neatly with the others. She gets into the front seat of her car and fastens the seat belt. Tracey puts both her hands on the steering wheel and freezes. The blood leaves her face. Her whole body goes cold and she starts to shiver. She glances up into the rear view mirror and sees tears streaming down her face. Tracey drops her hands and leans forward into the steering wheel. She cries until a small wet spot forms on the front of her trousers, until she can’t breathe through her nose and the little bit of mascara she put on in the morning is washed completely away.
Tracey starts the car and drives slowly back to the office. She drives in silence, with no conscious awareness of herself or the route she takes to get there. As she pulls into the parking lot, she spots Ezra and Pete standing on the walk outside the building door. Ezra waves when he sees her car and points vigorously to a spot just next to the door. Tracey pulls into the spot and pops open her trunk. Ezra and Pete walk to the back of the car and start pulling out bags.
Tracey sits in the front, hands wrapped around the steering wheel.
“Hey,” Ezra calls, “You trying to fumigate us back here?”
His face fills her side view mirror. Too-soft lips curled around too-small teeth. Colorless eyes flashing behind his hipstery glasses. Tracey can’t move for a second. She holds her breath and squeezes the steering wheel.
“Tracey, the engine is running.” Pete appears at the driver’s side window.
Tracey’s heart pounds, pushing the red flush back into her face. The skin of her face throbs as she switches off the engine. “Sorry,” she whispers. “I didn’t know.”
Pete puts his hand flat on the driver’s side window, right at the level of Tracey’s cheek. He pats the window gently. “It’s okay, Tracey. It’s all okay.”
Pete picks up several bags and joins Ezra on the stairs leading up to the office door. Ezra says something to Pete, nodding in the direction of Tracey’s car before they disappear into the building. Tracey walks around to the trunk of the car and picks up the last bag. Glue sticks, staplers, and a three hole punch. She shuts the trunk and walks up the stairs to the building, keeping her eyes locked on the door handles so she will know what to touch when she gets there.
Tracey spends the rest of the afternoon moving the supplies from the pile of plastic bags behind her desk to various parts of the office. She places a pack of black pens in the top drawer of every empty desk. Only about a third of the desks were occupied. When she approaches a desk with someone at it, she pauses and clears her throat before she gets close enough to touch the desk or the chair. Some people jump a little, shrinking back away from the drawer as Tracey approaches, holding out the pens like an offering. Others barely move, just shifting enough so she could lay the pens on the desk. Tracey takes a little extra time at the empty desks, breathing and waiting for her hands to stop shaking.
At the end of the day, she folds all the plastic bags into a neat stack, and tucks them in the front corner of the bottom drawer of her desk. The drawer is empty except for the bags. She pictures it several months in the future— filled with extension cords, surge protectors, plastic bags, and other detritus that was too useful to throw away and too useless to actually, well, use. She kneels down and puts both hands flat on the bottom of the drawer. It feels cool, soothing against her hands, covered as they are with tiny paper cuts and scrapes from wrestling open all the drawers and cabinets of a long-abandoned office.
“Good work today, Tracey.”
Tracey stands up abruptly, cutting open the skin on one of her knuckles as she does. She covers the abrasion with her other hand. “Thank you, Nora.”
“The phones will be installed tomorrow morning. Can you be here to make sure everything works?”
“Of course I can. What time?”
“8am, I’m afraid. I wouldn’t ask — only no one else knows how all the lines should go.”
“It’s no problem. I’ll be here.”
“Thank you, Tracey. We wouldn’t have this space without you. I hope you know how much I appreciate you.”
“Thank you, Nora.”
Nora turns and starts walking towards the door. She pauses, half turned back towards Tracey. “I’ll be working from home tomorrow. Chris will, too, I think. You can manage the office?”
“Well,” says Tracey, “I am the Office Manager.”
Nora smiles. “You’re a gem, Tracey.” She walks out, her perfect Spring-weight trench coat billowing behind her like a cape.
Tracey pulls her hand away from her bleeding knuckle. A line of blood is drying over her knuckle and onto the back of her hand. Tracey walks into the kitchen area. She washes her hands, humming “Happy Birthday” twice while the warm water flows. She gently dries her hands with paper towels, grateful that she decided on the softer kind, even though they cost more. She pulls the first aid kit from the cabinet where she stored it earlier (bottom shelf so it was easy to reach for everyone) and sits down at the kitchen table with it.
Tracey opens the first aid kit, and her heart drops. Everything in the kit is wrapped in plastic, vacuum-sealed. She sighs and walks back towards her desk to grab the good scissors — the ones she set aside for herself. She returns to the kitchen and sets to work cutting open all the plastic seals in the kit and re-packing all the items in their correct spots. Once this is done, she pulls out one bandage and places it over her knuckle.
Before she returns to her desk, Tracey walks through the whole office, checking that everyone had, indeed left for the day. She swings the scissors by the handle as she walked, humming to herself as she wanders up and down the rows of cubicles.
Back at her desk, Tracey closes the still-open bottom drawer, tucks the scissors into her desk caddy, then gathers her coat and bag. She stops just inside the front door and flips open the alarm panel. Her fingers hover over the keypad, but she could not make her hand move. She pictures the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. Coming to this office, stocking drawers, answering the complicated phones, chasing down copies and emails and, eventually, travel plans and hotel accommodations and conference registrations. She imagines waking up from an alarm, instead of from the full light of morning finally reaching her bed. She feels herself getting into her car every morning, navigating the complicated interstate entry ramp and the half-functioning traffic lights. Tracey pictures the last two years, sitting at her kitchen table, or on her couch, sipping tea as her apartment gradually filled with the scent of baking bread or whatever soup she was making in the Crock Pot. She feels the warm breezes blowing through her hair on her long lunchtime walks through the parks and forest preserves.
Tracey takes a deep breath in and exhales.
She drops her hands, holds both fists tight to her sides and tenses her whole body.
Tracey relaxes, tucks her coat and bag snugly under one arm. She lifts the other hand, softly, like a hula dancer. She presses the button marked “Fire” and glides through the doors as the sprinklers open and deluge the office, destroying everything in floods of stale water.
This is a full short story draft developed as a part of the 500Words Short Story Project. It may continue to evolve beyond its current state.
