Message in a pocket

Amanda stuck her hand in her jacket pocket, the way she always did when she was trying to hide something, in this case, her total ignorance of the details of version 6 of the budget. She couldn't remember anything, the numbers bounced just beyond her memory's reach, yet she could recall every Wimbledon champion since 1884. Version 6 of the budget would fade into version 7, and she wouldn't remember any of it except for the fact that version 6 forced her to miss the mixed doubles final. Jamie Murray and Martina Hingus defeated defending champions Henri Kontinen and Heather Watson 6-4, 6-4.

The delay in her response to the CFO's question left a conversational hole just big enough for Justin to jump into, the keener. As he prattled on, her mind took the first train of thought out of the executive meeting room with its mahogany and heavy curtains that gave it a spacious casket feel, and into wide-open reverie.

Amanda's reverie was always the same. A blanket of grass, sunshine, a few unclean indulgences in a picnic basket. And sleep. Amanda always fantasized about sleep. A robot doesn't need sleep. Or sunshine. Or a picnic basket. The robots were plotting to take her job, but not just yet. They were still on the ground floor, bumping into each other, amusing the warehouse workers with their slapstick.

Was that cutting remark directed at her? If an executive lunged at her and cut off her finger, would she take the severed digit pressed against a bloody stump, and leave the meeting room without a whimper? Yes, of course she would. She absorbs the verbal attack without protest, along the orders to revisit the numbers. As if the numbers need revisiting. Why don't we just put the numbers from budget versions 1 through 6 in a drum and draw them? The numbers got more visits and revisits than her husband.

Her husband, Amanda thought as she caressed the paper he had hidden in her jacket's pocket. Michael's notes came with meticulous illustrations, his comic interpretation of the Kama Sutra that always looked like the safety instructions from the seat pocket of an airplane. The last one, entitled Escape with Me, featured sex furniture that bore more than a passing resemblance to an evacuation slide. Michael often left sexy notes in her jacket pocket, furtive pleas as hopeless as messages in bottles. He should know by now that she never wants sex during budget time, a process as gender neutralizing as a natural disaster. Survival comes first, especially for Amanda, a contract employee. Her work life was as precarious as the life-force of a woman in a coma, her life support buried in a line item that could be pulled at any moment.

Mustering up the energy to drill down into the bedrock of spreadsheets took an iron will, but Amanda's was beginning to rust, pelted year after year by the steady rain of numbers that flood and recede, flood and recede. Each cycle took a bit of her youth with it, as was its due, but she couldn't see it, the white was bleached out, the wrinkles frozen before they could make tracks. She could mess up an occasional low-stakes presentation, but she wasn't allowed to get old.

Amanda's outfit, selected especially for today's budget presentation to the executive committee, cost less than fifty dollars, taxes included, but she'd already received many compliments on it. It was a sundress that never saw the sun that she paired with a brand new all-business black jacket. The jacket was only partially emasculating, a blend of coal, air, water and petroleum that never wrinkled. Brenda looked, as her mother would say, well put together, at least to people who didn't speak in labels. The dress was made of stiffer stuff however, and it jutted out in odd places around her hips, making her look like a paper doll. But she only looked like a paper doll if she took off her jacket, and Brenda never took off her jacket. The last time she took off her jacket, her boss tried to read her body like braille.

Although she was standing at the front of the room anchored to a podium, the meeting had drifted away from her, its participants talking in circles among themselves. Amanda had seen this scene play out countless times. The executives would continue to follow financial tangents until they exhausted themselves, and she would be asked to leave with instructions to return tomorrow for a repeat performance with something new and improved.

There's no harm in looking at Michael's note, she thought. It would be her outrageous act for the day, a ritual long forgotten since she re-labeled the company artwork with sticky notes. LSD Company Picnic. Bondage by Nature. Riotous Pussy.

She took the note out of her pocket. This wasn't a message from Michael. Michael was an engineer; he always used graph paper for his love notes. This paper was heavy and had frayed edges, like parchment. As she unfolded the note she saw SOS SOS SOS in large letters across the top of the page with the remainder filled with Chinese script. She gasped, a sign the CFO interpreted as her acknowledgement of the gravity of the task that lay ahead of her.

Rather than return to her pod, as she left the meeting room, Amanda went straight to Anne Cheung, her pal in business development. Anne took the message and held it gingerly like it was a treasure from an archeological dig. She scanned the text and said she'd need some time to do a proper translation. It was written in Mandarin, and although some of the words were unfamiliar, she knew it was entitled Life. Anne would need some help from friends and family to decipher its message.

The translation arrived via email a week later, on the eve of version 11, the deadline for the final version of the budget, the day Amanda quit.

About the Author: This is the author's first foray into business flash fiction based on a true story. The poem Life is from the collection Iron Moon: An Anthology of Chinese Migrant Worker Poetry (translation: Eleanor Goodman) by poet Zheng Xiaoqiong