Miss Viola Brolly surveyed the office with dismay. The desk was nearly invisible under a mound of unsorted correspondence, a typewriter waved a single sheet of bond like a plea for mercy, and books were stacked everywhere. Everywhere that is, except the bookshelves, and Brolly didn’t even want to know what was on those shelves. Removing her coat, she hung it on one of the two coat racks. Why such a small operation required two, was beyond her. She pulled the advertisement from her smart patent bag, smoothing the edges of the newsprint.
SECRETAR NEEDED
TYPE STENO $3
JOHNS CO
1100 4TH FL STE D
Brolly squinted at the frosted glass window. Had it really said “D?” Perhaps she had gone into the wrong suite by mistake. Perhaps there was a tidier and altogether less musty workplace that needed her skills.
“Oh, hello. I didn’t hear you come in,” the man wore a suit that ran short in the arms.
“No doubt they’ve been turned a time or three,” she thought, her eyes roaming over the ink stains on his lapels, then halting on his straw hat. “Straw? In the winter? How gauche. And to wear it inside. He is either very forgetful or fancies himself a genius,” she shuddered at her own thoughts.
“You are here about the Secretar job?” he looked so eager, she could only nod. “Don’t let this room dismay you, Miss___?”
“Brolly,” she ventured, “Am I permitted to organize and dust?”
His face lit up like a ten-stick candelabra, “Yes, yes, move things to where I cannot find them.”
“And you will not holler and throw things about?” As if she had been heard, there was a thump and a dull snap from the back room. “Mr. Johns?” it took her a moment to spot him. He was crouched behind the desk, knees drawn into his chest like a child.
Behind her, a man came through the door, “Anything for me in the mail?”
Brolly turned, then startled. It was as if Mr. Johns had himself taken a turn in the copy press, for there he stood outside his office door, and there he crouched behind the secretar desk.
“Very sorry Brolly, forgot the hat,” he removed it, clasping it to his breast, “I’ll be out for a bit. Just put the mail on my desk.” He rattled through the door, clipping it shut behind him. Through the figured glass, Brolly could just make out his silhouette. Then there were footsteps, and the doppelgänger was gone.
“Mr. Johns, what is the meaning of this?” Brolly removed her coat from the rack.
“Wait, wait,” Johns sprung up out of his crouch, “There are rules against meeting oneself.”
“Meeting oneself!” Brolly stuck an arm in her sleeve with indignation.
“It can cause fissures in the fabric of space-time. There’s a rule against that too.”
“That’s what you do then?” Brolly paused, her coat still half-on, “You’re in textiles?”
Johns blinked at her, “Textiles? I mean yes, textiles.”
“And you and your facsimile don’t holler and throw things about?”
“I promise you Brolly, I shall treat you like a queen,” Johns gushed, “A queen who takes dictation, of course.”
Brolly looked at Johns, then removed her coat. Perching on the edge of the hard-backed chair, she straightened her back and rested her fingers on the typewriter’s keys. “Go ahea - wait,” there was something already typed on the bond, and she advanced the paper.
“attn time traveler,” was typed across the sheet. As she rolled the paper out, another message appeared at the bottom, the letters misaligned and sliding off into the right margin, “quit while you can.”
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Recently I came across a list of some of the Most Loved Books (or so the article said). I decided to read some of the lesser read of the most loved, and started with Cold Comfort Farm. I was sure that I'd never read this book before, up until the part about the scrub brush. I very clearly remembered being obsessed with this subplot and only finishing the book because I had to know if the scrub brush ever got used. It took me a while before the rest came back to me.
Oh. I hated this book.
I especially hated passages like this:
“For it is a peculiarity of persons who lead rich, emotional lives, and who (as the saying is) live intensely and with a wild poetry, that they read all kind of meanings into comparatively simple actions, especially the actions of other people who do not live intensely and with a wild poetry. Thus you may find them weeping passionately on their bed, and be told that you - you alone - are the cause because you said that awful thing to them at lunch. Or they wonder why you like going to concerts; there must be more to it than meets the eye.”
-Stella GibbonsAnd now, however many years later, I still really want to know if that scrub brush ever got used. I also don't dislike the book. It's funny. I mean, if one has to be in a book, it might as well be a comedy.