Losing It by Emma Rathbone Page B

husband.
    â€œDid anyone jump overboard?” I said.
    She shrieked with laughter. “No, hon,” she said.
    â€œWas all the food free?”
    â€œIt was, it was. And get this, there was a different ice sculpture inthe shrimp every night. I said to Ken, I said, ‘What do they do with the old ones? Lick ’em?’”
    I laughed. “That’s right,” I said. “They just lick them down.”
    â€œThey say, ‘Now lemme get that shrimpy ice thing. I wanna lick it!’”
    We both cracked up, with her elbowing me in the ribs a little. I thought I had found a kindred spirit, and later I would be a little crestfallen to realize that Jeannette had this dynamic with pretty much everyone and would laugh at anything you said as long as it was under your breath and in a secretive manner.
    I met Wes again. He was on the phone and gave me a polite nod. Ed Branch was tenderly pruning an office plant. I was introduced to a paralegal roughly my age named Allison Block. She looked up from her salad in a friendly way and shook my hand over her desk. I met James Kramer for the first time. He was on the phone and waved us away.
    Just like that the flurry of activity was over and I was sitting at the front desk, by myself, in the quiet. I could see a pebble walkway through the glass front door. I was on the ground floor of the building, and something about the awning outside, and the way the light slanted in, gave the impression of the room filling up with shade from the ground up, like an aquarium would with water. Everything was becoming submerged: the taupe sofa, the coffee table, a picture in a heavy brass frame. I swiveled around in my chair. I checked my e-mail. I contemplated quitting, if not tomorrow then the day after that. Because what was I doing in this staid, afternoon-y place when what I should really be doing was working at a restaurant or something like that—a place with people myage and alcohol and energy and lines that could be crossed? I probably would have made up some excuse and found a way out, if it wasn’t for what happened the next day.
    It was about three in the afternoon and I was sitting there, looking through a calendar featuring North Carolina’s flora and fauna when Jeannette swished by and asked me to take a file up to one of the lawyers, someone I hadn’t met before.
    His office was upstairs and at the far end of the building, next to a line of windows that overlooked the train tracks. It was deserted in that part, except for an abandoned copy machine and some dusty boxes of files and a secretary’s desk to the side of the door, where I saw that Caroline, the old lady, was now sitting. She appeared to be dozing in her chair, the same prairie dress bunched up around her neck, her head lolling to the side. I crept past and knocked. No answer. I knocked a little louder.
    I was about to walk away when something stopped me. I stood and looked at Caroline and the crumpled way she was sitting. Her head was lying back against the chair. Her mouth was open. She was positioned like a rag doll that had been thrown from across the room and happened to land that way—one hand resting in her lap, the other dangling down by her side. Her legs were lolling open under her dress. She looked deflated, inanimate. My eyes rested on her chest, searching, I realized, for the rise and fall of breath. I didn’t detect anything and my heart started beating faster and I was just raising my hand to cover my mouth when there was a voice behind me.
    â€œShe’s not dead.”
    I turned around. It was a man a little taller than me. He had aponytail. He looked to be in his forties and had thick brown eyebrows and a forehead that cropped out over the rest of his face.
    â€œOh, sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t—”
    â€œNo, no, it’s fine, I do that a lot, too. Not stare at her,” he said quickly. “But, you know, wonder if she’s