Blank: A Work of Flash Fiction

During her lunch break, while she sits in the stifling heat of her rusted white volvo, Ingrid Anderson, age twenty-three and one month, draws a tiny black star on the skin just above her navel with her pen. She has no particular reason for doing so, except perhaps that as she was untucking her green Oxford button-up from her khakis she happened to catch a glimpse of her pale white stomach and it looked unnaturally blank.

Behind her, across an acre of shimmering asphalt, the Maple Valley Health Administration Building rises in five stories of reflective black glass and steel. Very new and very modern. Ingrid works in the middle of the second floor with the other temps and can see none of these windows, just the mauve fabric wall of her cubicle and the sheets of paper which she is supposed to transcribe into the new digital database. Ron Pierson. DOB 6-14-1953. History of diabetes and heart disease. Currently prescribed Glumetza, 500 mg, twice daily. Etc.

Ingrid leans back in her seat, closes her eyes, and considers taking a bite of her mealy Granny Smith apple: the only thing she has for lunch today besides a little bag of dry cereal because she didn't have time to make a sandwich this morning and that was all she could find to grab in her—that is, her mother's—cupboard. She can feel sweat surfacing between her shoulder blades and beneath her arms and wonders vaguely if it will stain her shirt. On the seat next to her is a thin white envelop postmarked from Whitmore Graduate School. It has been opened so carefully that if someone were to glance in the window and see it resting casually on the fake leather they would never notice the slightly rough top edge or see the tell-tale sheet of paper on the floor beneath the passenger seat. They may not even see Ingrid, who after three months on the job has learned the art of being invisible, blending in with her office chair or her car seat or the blank walls of the cubicle mouse-maze, because maybe if no one notices her, maybe even she will forget that she works here, that she is shuffling in the line of the unskilled labor force, widening the time gap between college graduation and her first “real job.” Because she is in the real world now and better make the most of it.

But none of this matters because only a fool would wander around peeking in car windows in this weather, and in nine minutes, Ingrid's half-hour lunch break will be over and she will tread back across the radiating heat of the parking lot, scan her employee card at the side door, and climb up the stairs to her mauve cubicle where she will enter information about Esther Godwin's recent hysterectomy and Kevin William's health insurance, which she is not to disclose to anyone, anywhere, under any circumstances.

There on the second floor, Ingrid will sit next to Patrick, one of the other temps, who still has a year left of college and who talks like a philosophy professor, slowly and deliberately, as though everything he's saying is a profound reflection on human existence, even if he's just telling Ingrid that the photocopier is broken. And Ingrid will sit in the faded office chair that is permanently stuck on the lowest height setting so her shoulders barely rise above the plane of her desk, listening unwillingly to Patrick ponder about post-it notes and what is the plural of pancreas and how indecipherable is this doctor's handwriting. And slowly, she will feel herself sinking, pushed down by the steady drone of the air conditioner, flattening into her chair because gravity has suddenly become too much, has increased three-fold or ten-fold, and her arms and fingers and head have been filled with sand and are impossible to lift. At that point her eyes will slide out of focus and no longer be able to read the words on the screen, which is now nothing but a square of white light; the stapler and paper clips and pens around her will blur and dissolve into the grayness of the desk and the mauve cubicle walls will lose all texture, as will Patrick and Ingrid herself. For ten blissful seconds she will think of nothing but sleep.

Until Ingrid becomes aware of a growing pressure in her lower abdomen, reminding her of the many cups of coffee she drank that morning. And so with a monumental effort she will place her hands on her knees and stand up, remaining for a moment hunched over the desk, not yet able to fully shake off those iron shackles of gravity. She will point her feet towards the bathroom, and they will carry her there, weight and sleep evaporating slowly like steam from her back. The mauve cubicles walls and the forest green carpeting will regain their distinct textures, until Ingrid can see each coarse, individual thread in sharp relief, the reality of the office breaking back in.

The bathroom is large and clean and has an automatically dispensing air freshener that smells like rotting flowers. Ingrid will enter a stall, untuck her shirt, unbutton her pants, and set free the coffee before walking up to the sink to wash her hands, doing her part to “keep our work environment healthy and happy.” For a moment, she will stare vacantly into the mirror, then, hands still wet and soapy, slap herself across the face, twice. Right cheek then left cheek, lips slightly parted like she is about to scream, a sudden glint of desperation in her eye.

Is this my life? Will Ingrid speak out loud or will the roar come from inside her own head, the words pounding against barriers of skull and skin? Is this my life? Louder this time, or at least more forceful; Ingrid will realize that her knuckles have turned white from gripping the edge of the sink. Then the words will recede, slowly, like a wave.

When she emerges from the bathroom and sits back at her computer, her cheeks damp-darkened like sidewalks after rain, she will turn to Patrick and ask whether he is aware that she has a star tattoo above her belly-button.

And Patrick will look at the girl who has never volunteered personal information once in three months and say, no, he didn't know, and for once have nothing more to add.

Then Ingrid will nod to confirm the veracity of her statement, sit in her broken chair, and spin around to face the computer screen and the health insurance policy of Robert Saganski.

But as of yet, that dam has not been breached. Ingrid Anderson, age twenty-three and one month is sitting in her rusty volvo, staring at a Granny Smith apple and feeling sweat trickle down her torso in a growing network of rivers and tributaries, wondering when her life is going to start.