penelope chu, she's just like you
Post on 11-Mar-2016
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Penelope Chu,
She’s Just Like You
Suicide rates had crept to an astonishing low,
which is not to say that people were very much happier.
Had the psychologists bothered to make a press statement,
they might have told us that people simply didn’t feel like
putting in the effort.
Why bother?
Even now, Penelope Chu is gazing sedately from
her hairdryer to the tub and deciding, languidly, that she
may as well go to work. The cord would never reach
anyway and she has neither the time nor momentum to go
purchase an extension. She dries her hair and dusts a light
film of cover-up along the bridge of her nose before
stepping out from the seventh floor apartment.
Downstairs, she unlocks her mailbox…a uniform,
grey casket stacked among forty-four others in the corner
of the lobby. Just as she has every Monday for the past
two decades, Penelope discovers a letter – one clad in
loose fitted brown paper – post-marked from El Salvador:
from Santiago Martín-Romero, 89 Avenida Norte y Calle
13.
Santi: a child her family adopted when she too was
a kid. A lesson in responsibility.
By adoption, the Chu’s meant only this – a child
in misc. infectious climate in misc. corner of the world to
whom they sent a sum of $100, twice a year. Penelope’s
real brother, however (Peter Chu, who had been the
principal architect of this ‘afterlife insurance’, as he
referred to it) had long since entered treatment at
Northwestern Memorial to which every spare dollar in the
family was rapidly funneled thereafter.
Nonetheless, the doctors lost him and
nonetheless, every Monday, Penelope receives a letter
from Santiago.
Many of these correspondences contain pictures
in which her ‘adopted brother’, now entering his mid-
twenties, stands stone-faced in a surplus Harvard
sweatshirt, the lush sweep of valleys behind him. Or at
least they used to. Penelope has not opened the past
thirteen envelopes. She stacks them neatly next to the
newspapers, snug beside the bathroom door.
After thirty-two years, four failed relationships,
and her brother’s death,
after an MS in Accounting and her runaway cat,
after three move-ins in three counties,
Penelope steps outside having forgotten her coat,
clockwork turns back on one foot, and retreats into 94
Oakland. She will certainly be late for work.
On the gated patch of lawn, dew is clinging
to brittle grass -- water maintaining itself as millions of
distinct spheres – hesitant to embrace the slow
evaporation into morning’s haze. Penelope struts with an
anxious fervor to meet the L-train – she imagines the
motion of this tremendous mechanism beneath her feet,
rattling in the city’s grungy viscera as it rises towards the
surface. Like she does every weekday, morning and night,
Penelope finds Alvin waiting by the tracks.
Alvin does not have a bed, at least not in any
formal sense. He sits beside the Addison Street train
terminal, back pitched parallel to peeling advertisements
on the brick façade, fifteen meters from the news stand –
no more, no less. Beneath him, a torn Tempur-Pedic
mattress pad which he drags from station to station.
“they stole my dog,” he mutters, grumbles,
greeting Penelope Chu to the morning commute. She
drops a quarter – mistakenly Canadian – into Alvin’s cup.
“they stole my dog, dammit.”
Across the street:
men in suits jockey for position, waiting for the
light.
nobody will take a free sample from the teenager
in a banana suit.
Penelope admires the aimless flow of cracks
through the asphalt beneath her, then steps absently onto
the train which will take her to AllGood.
The corporation of AllGood Textile &
Garments has never known poverty. Leapt from the
wallets of Hiroshi, Dresden, & White, Allgood’s offices in
Chicago, Shanghai, Austen, and Berlin seemed to spring up
simultaneously. It was as though the very act of pouring
coins into the dirt had resurrected the buildings’ revolving
doors, only hidden beneath the earth.
AllGood was born from wealth and has no want
for it – AllGood cannot imagine an absence of wealth. It
manufactures ready-to-stich fabric, drapery, casual attire,
and bedding as well as specialty items: Halloween
costumes and clothing for animals. None of this brings
AllGood joy or despair. AllGood’s only desire is the even
flow of employees among its endless, fluorescent
corridors.
It is a Global 500 company.
It has an average annual revenue of 34,958 million
dollars.
It is the household name for high-end dog-wear.
What else could AllGood want?
At her desk, Penelope Chu spends too much
time thinking about other people’s beds. Not, necessarily,
in a sexual way (…) just imagining what that space might
be like: would there be floral print and throw pillows? Is
the blanket tucked & gently folded or scrunched sloth-like
in one corner? Perhaps knotted like the nest of some
undiscovered, exotic bird? Then there were the dimensions
to consider, the colors, the stains – will there be any stains?
coffee? wine? something worse? What about a duvet or
whatever those primped frilly sheets are called in French?
These questions, or rather, this series of modifying
images so preoccupied Penelope’s thoughts that very rarely
could she recall someone’s name upon their first or even
second encounter, but rather kept a catalogue, knowing
co-workers and clients simply as Boy: Bed w/No Sheets &
Deep Blue Pillow or Mournful Housewife On the Side Nearer the
Window, Husband’s Socks Atop the Unwashed Blanket.
This was not a big deal – at least not under normal
circumstances – but in the office, it was a problem. She
could pull off conversation just fine.
‘Morning, everyone!’ ‘Of course, sir.’
‘I’ll get right on that.’
It was the memos that killed her; the messages and
notifications. Consider, for example, this morning, when
Penelope discovers an envelope left at her desk, post-it
atop reading:
Urgent: Please deliver to Peter Ruben.
-MGMT
– and off she goes hovering around the lunch
room like a nervous hummingbird, stopping the rare
passerby.
“do you know if Mr. Ruben’s come in yet?”
“hey, have you seen Pete around today?”
Who the hell is Pete? Does he sleep in a twin or a
full?
It’s a disaster. Forty-seven minutes later, Penelope
knows Peter Ruben no better than a ghost. She’s told to
ask someone in HR. She’s told to ask the guys down in
shipping, but doesn’t know how to address these men
either.
How long can she keep this up? It’s too late to
ask names now. Sooner or later, a supervisor will realize
her incompetence and she’ll be back on craigslist within
the week, eating Uh-Oh Oreos from the sleeve. It’s
through apprehensions such as these that the office
succeeds in flooding Penelope’s mind. Every day it’s there,
waiting, and like a Venus flytrap, Penelope muses, everything
will be fine, right until the moment it isn’t.
People have seen Peter Soffer. Peter Killen is
downstairs in IT and Peter Pevsner works in Public
Relations, but nobody knows a Pete Ruben. Penelope
ducks back to her cubicle, hunching low in the adjustable
chair – she is very fond of cubicles. They’re comfortable.
More importantly, she knows that no one shares in this
affection; everyone loves a lover, a friend, a dog or a cat,
but without Penelope, no one would care for the cubicles.
She grips the edge of her desk, pushing and
pulling, rolling herself to press gently against the plastic
shelf before pushing away. She stares at the ceiling and
counts three missing tiles. She stares at the computer. She
stares at the envelope, which still rests atop a paper heap.
She spins around and, for a moment, locks eyes with the
woman seated across from her. Plump Lady Who Tucks the
Blanket in Each Corner, Neglects the Sheet Hidden Beneath.
Penelope mouths, scarcely audible,
“excuse me,
do you, Did you by any chance see who left this
envelope on my desk?”
Her co-worker hears the question, but decides it’s
possible that she didn’t. Her co-worker keeps her gaze
focused neatly on her monitor, absently pecking at keys.
“Sir, I know the numbers haven’t gone up, but
they haven’t declined either.”
Penelope whirls a semi-circle, wrapping the phone
cord taught across her chest for a moment, then releasing
its tension as she spins past the desk. Briefly, she considers
pulling the wire around her throat, but the voice on the
other line hardly seems like someone worth dying for.
“In today’s economy, no one’s sales are getting easier –
maintaining your numbers is a fiscal improvement.”
Penelope says.
“Well, I’m sorry you feel that way, but I assure you,
AllGood Textile & Garments is as devoted to serving your
business’s needs as always.” Penelope says.
She stares sedately across the office to an
inflatable clownfish, flapping vacantly where it hangs from
the break-room’s air vent.
“Sir, I assure you, people are buying more clothing for
their dogs today than ever before. This year alone, over
$55 million dollars were spent on pets – more than a
quarter of that market is devoted to apparel. That demand
will have to be filled and if your store isn’t reaping the
benefits, someone else will be.”
“No, sir, I’m afraid I can’t do that, but if you’d like, I can
connect you to my supervisor.”
It’s nearly 5. So very, very close to 5.
“Alright, sir, I’m sorry you feel that way. If you have any
questions or concerns regarding our conversation, please
feel free to call back – just ask for Penelope if you’d like to
speak with me again.”
She has already begun shutting down her
computer. She slides Peter Ruben’s undelivered envelope,
snug among her other papers, into the pocket of her tote.
“Alright sir, you have an excellent evening.” Penelope says.
After hours, AllGood is vacant. The
conference rooms sit silent. Its halls are still, no longer
vibrating with purposeful trotting, with hard clacking soles.
The end of the day is always the same: same torrent of
naked exhaustion as dozens of employees eagerly leave the
building behind. AllGood’s doors spinning faster, the
sudden urgency of families, friends, and beds summoning
the beleaguered workers. Very often, this routine exodus is
AllGood’s preferred portion of the day – so much motion,
energy, the people’s rising awareness of the building
around them as they shuffle belongings back together.
Then quiet.
Static hum of fluorescent lights, a few left on for
the thin trickle of janitors.
The endless pacing of each evening’s security shift
– fading remnants of a workday’s climax. These final, worn
employees are all that remains, maintaining AllGood
through the night.
There is a general assumption among people
that they will, at the very least, not allow one another to
come to harm due to carelessness; that they will finish
what they start and can be depended upon. It is an
assumption that they want what is best for one another.
In Penelope’s dreams, this is not the case. Roads
are left half-paved, houses half-built. Doctors try their
hardest, most of the time, but let a patient slide every now
and then. The food is often undercooked. She might be
driving across a bridge and suddenly discover it was only
mostly finished, the cement slipping suddenly out from
beneath her as she wakes.
(!)
Penelope slides out of bed and teeters through her
bedroom door, towards the bathroom. This is a common
occurrence for Penelope, who often cannot fall asleep
without a hot cup of tea. Tonight, however, after she
washes her hands and turns off the bathroom light, she
finds her eyes too saturated to navigate the dark between
her and her room. She feels for the rim of the door,
sweeps one foot, then the other, forward in a delicate arc
only to brush against a sensation of dry paper.
The scattering of envelopes interrupts silence. A
shifting like leaves.
Letters from El Salvador – a handful unfastened,
but most tightly sealed – carpet the living room. Penelope
has nearly made it back to her bed before her eyes adjust,
illuminating there (among the brown paper wrappings.
papers & stamps) pictures of Santiago, his stern lips
upturned by the dozen atop her false-wood floor.
Penelope rides the Red Line eight times, drops four
quarters into Alvin’s cup.
She imagines Peter Ruben when falling asleep. She wakes
up 15 minutes before her alarm and doesn’t turn on the
news all weekend.
Her inspection of the interoffice mail-slots has
grown into custom. Today, while Penelope stares once
more to the enormity of names – many now imprinted on
her mind as no more than letters on paper labels -- she is
longing for last month’s Halloween ‘party’, wishing
everyone in the building would don their costumes
permanently. It would make them so much easier to
recognize, after all:
Oh, Mr. Ruben? He’s the Vampire from Distribution.
He’s the Pirate in Marketing.
It could be so easy.
Penelope drags her eyes wearily along the list of
names. Richards, Roth, Rothstein, Rosen, Rowe, Russell,
Russell. There are two John Russells and no Peter Ruben.
Why would anyone need two John Russells?
Penelope returns her gaze to the top of the boxes
and begins to recite the names once more. If only she
knew about management’s personal mail slots on the floor
above. If only someone would be so kind as to inform her.
Tracing the parched seam of Ruben’s letter,
Penelope imagines which of her supervisors will be the
first to discover her failure --- “Did you not see the word
URGENT, Ms. Chu?” – “For Christ’s sake Chu, can you
still not find your way around an office? We can’t afford to
keep training you.” --- it would be Woman: Sleeps Five Hours,
Pencil Straight Beneath a Grey Blanket – it would be Thin Man
with Plaid Pillows who’s Linens Reek of Ash.
Someone was bound to notice the undelivered
letter.
Penelope draws her cropped fingernail just
beneath the lip of the envelope. There could be some clue
inside (perhaps)…anything that might indicate where Peter
was hiding. With a single slip of her hand this whole ordeal
could be so much simpler…
But what if someone noticed? What if Mr. Ruben
stormed into the office, demanding to know which idiot
had violated his personal correspondence?
Penelope tucks the letter beneath a pile of
incoming documents to be reviewed. Safe for now.
An insectile droning saturates the air, though
no individual cubicle seems to produce a sound. Pipes
mumble dreamily. Rebar, entrenched just behind the
drywall, grind unhappily in their sockets. AllGood is
listless – another day like another day – it seems to shift
down to its foundations, sinking gradually, indiscernibly
deeper into the earth.
Penelope inputs data from a form, uploads to the
server, and answers her phone.
A co-worker discerns data from the server, fills
out a form, and answers her phone.
The inflatable clownfish flutters above unused
vending machines.
What is the function of an employee if not to
work? A corporation if not to earn profit? As long as
they’re here, they might as well.
What is the function of anything if not to
function?
Beyond the windows, grey clouds are hung low
from the sky, so low you might think to touch one. So low
you might forget that there’s nothing there.
Watching raindrops trickle and slip down
windows of the Red Line, pressed flat by the wind,
Penelope is placing bets on which beads will reach the
edge first – there to linger a moment by some unknown
magnetism -- and spin back into the stencil grey air which
has formed them. Currently, the raindrop on the left is
winning. Or perhaps it’s losing. All she can say is that it
will almost surely reach the end of its journey first.
As the elevated train thrusts blindly into the dark,
carrying her home on the constancy of its rail, Penelope
begins singing a song in her head.
Shoo Fly, don’t bother me.
Shoo Fly, don’t bother me.
Shoo Fly, don’t bother me…
I’m in love with somebody.
She couldn’t possibly hit the notes if she were to
sing this out loud. It would sound terrible -- a slinky could
better carry a tune. But in her head, it’s really quite lovely.
At Addison Station, there is no sign of Alvin (that
tramp). His mattress pad sloops against the thin plastic
façade of a ticket booth. There is no cup left beside it, but
a cardboard sign which reads:
Homeless. Need Money for New Dog. God Bless.
Penelope looks out to the front of the platform.
She looks to the back. With troubled math she conjures up
her donations of the past several months -- $31, she
estimates. She must have given Alvin $31 since she began
commuting, working for AllGood.
On the six block walk from the station to her
apartment, Penelope glances down every alleyway. She
stops into the corner deli to purchase a chicken breast sub
for dinner – with a Vitamin Water, it costs over nine
dollars. Penelope imagines the contents of Alvin’s paper
cup: it doesn’t seem like it will ever be full.
In the lobby of 94 Oakland, Penelope unlocks her
mailbox, retrieves a brown paper envelope, and begins the
slow walk upstairs.
Opening the microwave, Penelope discovers
the second half of a sandwich from the night before. She
removes the forgotten remnants, slipping them briskly into
the garbage bin, before placing her current sandwich onto
the same, red-speckled glass plate.
The apartment is cold, but not cold enough to
merit turning up the heat. Santi’s letter has already been
placed evenly atop to the reformed stack of Santi’s letters.
It is unopened; left indistinguishable among fourteen
others, save for the date penned studiously in the upper
right corner. For a moment, she wishes her ‘brother’
would stop writing, but a wave of remorse intercedes
nearly as fast as the thoughts coalesce. Penelope sits as a
table for two. Eats half her sandwich. Watches NBC’s
Nightly News. The remaining food is covered with cling-
wrap and placed on a vacant shelf in the fridge.
Penelope’s begun to pick through her tote bag,
searching for something unnamed – a mint to follow
dinner, some documents to review before morning. It is
the letter to Peter Ruben she finds in her hands:
She weighs the heft of it on a palm.
She tests the seal, only firm along its very edge.
She holds it to the light, scanning for discernible
words.
(‘release of claims’
‘do not consider’
‘AllGood Textile & Garments’)
Penelope knows she’ll never get away with this.
She’ll be fired. She’ll be out of a job. She’ll end up
searching for Alvin in the city’s damp veins. Still, even if it
were all to crumble down – if the bridge were to fall out
beneath her – it wouldn’t be worth dying over.
She breaks the seal in a less elegant motion than
planned. It tears slightly in the corner. She withdraws a
single paper, folded twice at even length.
Mr. Peter Ruben,
I regret to inform you that this letter confirms our decision to eliminate the position of Office
Relations Manager. Consequently, your employment with AllGood Textile & Garments is
terminated, effective immediately.
Human Resources will supply you with all information relevant to the status of your benefits
as well as the release of claims document necessary to receive two weeks’ payment.
Payment for your accrued PTO will also be included in this final paycheck. You may receive
this check on our routine pay day, Friday.
Please do not consider this termination to be a reflection of your work. Your contributions to
our organization over the past seven years have been exemplary. Unfortunately, your services
are no longer required and we cannot rightly keep you on staff.
From all of us at AllGood Textile & Garments, thank you for your time and commitment.
Samantha Creston
Regional Director of Management and Budget
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