"An Office Nymph"
Warner alone in the office. Same as many other nights.
Phony constellations, each star a light bulb, take and lose shape on surrounding high-rise walls. Second-to-second configurations fill in to make overachiever nightlight pegboards. Warner derives sweet melancholy from being alone together with all other night toilers. His world feels whole. Full and stoppered like a bottle. Comfortably snug. Held tight by sex surrogate of career.
Nonetheless, something missing craves appeasement. Something missing in his idea of the world. In what he gives the world. Something with no respect for the pure liquid medium of his contentment. Invisibly fruitful within it like bacteria. Uncompromising, unabsorbent in it like a gallstone.
Hours later. Warner's body has assumed the topography forgotten below cityscape. Back stiff as a hill. Eyes, lagoons clogged with sand. Between his legs, estuarine ebb and flow. Subject to something unapprehended and remote as a moon.
He goes to the window. Searches all other lit windows for a woman's silhouette. Imagines her facing him. Becoming aware of him. Establishing a symmetry. Generating a field, charging the air, between them with romance and sex urge.
No luck. He turns from the window. More mindful of the emptiness he has reached into. Standing on the edge of it. No bridge across. He paces back across the office. Scented pages from a glossy magazine catch him in passing. Warner flips pages. Pauses at pictures of temptresses. Throat suddenly dry.
He goes to the water cooler. Drinks one cup. Then another. Eyes idly probe waters of the blue-tinted tank. A water nymph swims in them. Naked body the length of an open jackknife. Temptress eyes meeting Warner's, sizing him up. His eyes, open portals to the void left by unfulfilled carnality. The circumference of this void intersects the circumference of the void in his idea of the order of things. The water nymph has entered and fills the common gap.
Warner naively thinks: cities today blot out topography. Mythic creatures have lost old secluded haunts. Are forced to find new ones in places like after-hours offices.
The nymph treads water. Shrugs at him. As if at his theorizing. He is tired. Overridingly horny as only minds in isolation can get. Vulnerable. He wants her. His state of mind overshoots her size. Her minuscule gills. The shock of her sudden manifestation. She presses up to blue-tinted glass. Flattens and rubs her body up and down, up and down it like a climber up and down netting.
Warner thinks fast. But only along trajectory of desire. Realizes: his schematics of reality were incomplete, since she had no place in them. Maybe way to bring him and her together also exists. Only waiting for ripe time to enter his awareness.
He plants fingertips on glass. A circuit closes. Weight, size, and barriers lose meaning. He leaves his gravitational field. Enters hers.
Next day, Warner's coworkers arrive. Find lights on. But no Warner. Until one of them goes to the water cooler. Where Warner's body drifts. The size of a candy bar wrapper. Without even his tie loosened or fly open. After corrective measures, in balance at last. Between the x-axis of the physics he knew, and the y-axis of the physics he didn't. Meanwhile, a water nymph explores bay waters.
Warner alone in the office. Same as many other nights.
Phony constellations, each star a light bulb, take and lose shape on surrounding high-rise walls. Second-to-second configurations fill in to make overachiever nightlight pegboards. Warner derives sweet melancholy from being alone together with all other night toilers. His world feels whole. Full and stoppered like a bottle. Comfortably snug. Held tight by sex surrogate of career.
Nonetheless, something missing craves appeasement. Something missing in his idea of the world. In what he gives the world. Something with no respect for the pure liquid medium of his contentment. Invisibly fruitful within it like bacteria. Uncompromising, unabsorbent in it like a gallstone.
Hours later. Warner's body has assumed the topography forgotten below cityscape. Back stiff as a hill. Eyes, lagoons clogged with sand. Between his legs, estuarine ebb and flow. Subject to something unapprehended and remote as a moon.
He goes to the window. Searches all other lit windows for a woman's silhouette. Imagines her facing him. Becoming aware of him. Establishing a symmetry. Generating a field, charging the air, between them with romance and sex urge.
No luck. He turns from the window. More mindful of the emptiness he has reached into. Standing on the edge of it. No bridge across. He paces back across the office. Scented pages from a glossy magazine catch him in passing. Warner flips pages. Pauses at pictures of temptresses. Throat suddenly dry.
He goes to the water cooler. Drinks one cup. Then another. Eyes idly probe waters of the blue-tinted tank. A water nymph swims in them. Naked body the length of an open jackknife. Temptress eyes meeting Warner's, sizing him up. His eyes, open portals to the void left by unfulfilled carnality. The circumference of this void intersects the circumference of the void in his idea of the order of things. The water nymph has entered and fills the common gap.
Warner naively thinks: cities today blot out topography. Mythic creatures have lost old secluded haunts. Are forced to find new ones in places like after-hours offices.
The nymph treads water. Shrugs at him. As if at his theorizing. He is tired. Overridingly horny as only minds in isolation can get. Vulnerable. He wants her. His state of mind overshoots her size. Her minuscule gills. The shock of her sudden manifestation. She presses up to blue-tinted glass. Flattens and rubs her body up and down, up and down it like a climber up and down netting.
Warner thinks fast. But only along trajectory of desire. Realizes: his schematics of reality were incomplete, since she had no place in them. Maybe way to bring him and her together also exists. Only waiting for ripe time to enter his awareness.
He plants fingertips on glass. A circuit closes. Weight, size, and barriers lose meaning. He leaves his gravitational field. Enters hers.
Next day, Warner's coworkers arrive. Find lights on. But no Warner. Until one of them goes to the water cooler. Where Warner's body drifts. The size of a candy bar wrapper. Without even his tie loosened or fly open. After corrective measures, in balance at last. Between the x-axis of the physics he knew, and the y-axis of the physics he didn't. Meanwhile, a water nymph explores bay waters.
Jonathan Thomas
Reprinted by Permission, Hippocampus Press 2008
Midnight Call
