The Secretary

The secretary had learned to make herself invisible. Not literally of course, if anyone cared to look they would see her, but no one ever bothered too. She sat quietly behind her desk, handed out paperwork, and gave out ‘hellos’ and ‘goodbyes’ and ‘sign here’s’ like the peppermints she kept in a mug on her desk.  

She didn’t realize that she was invisible until she had been working for two years, and realized that people didn’t meet her eyes when she talked to them. Instead they seemed to look right through her, like she was insubstantial, transparent. Sometimes when she reached out to take sheets of paperwork from them, she would purposefully brush her fingers against theirs, just to remind herself that she was real. 

In the beginning she tried to make herself visible; she dressed in bright colors and vibrant patterns, she talked loudly and tried to make eye contact with everybody who came into the office. It didn’t matter, though, if she was loud and bright, because she soon realized that people didn’t want to see her, so they didn’t. 

So instead of trying to make herself seen to those who refused to, she made herself even more invisible. She wore muted colors and left her hair long and loose and forgot how to smile like she meant it. 

In the beginning it was rather lonely, but she learned how to appreciate being a wallflower. It was peaceful, her invisibility, and kept her safe. She didn’t have to pretend to be someone she wasn’t, in her soft muted cocoon of invisibility. Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to be seen, to have to engage with people beyond her quiet greetings. It would be too tiring, she decided, and retreated further into her veil of anonymousness, until people stopped looking at her on the street and in stores as well. 

And when people stopped noticing her she stopped noticing them, until she grew pale around the edges, like she was turning into the ghost she believed she was. 

***************

He saw her. 

He saw a woman who had closed herself off from the world. Someone who believed that she wasn’t enough, so she made herself less and less until she almost disappeared.

He saw beauty hiding behind a self conscious smile that didn’t meet her eyes, and he imagined how lovely she would be if it did. 

He saw the hunger behind her cool blank gaze, a longing that denied its own existence. 

He saw.

*************

“Hello,” he said, “how are you?” 

The secretary looked up, surprised, because no one ever asked how she was, never said anything besides what was required for their brief interaction. 

She wondered if he was talking to someone else, but she was the only one there. 

“Fine, thank you,” she said, the words as unfamiliar as another language. “Can I help you?”

He smiled. She had been looking at his mouth, as she always did with people who came into the waiting room, because she couldn’t bear to look into their eyes. He smiled, and she looked up startled, and his eyes were smiling too. 

“Yes, please,” he said, “I have an appointment with Mr. Chevall in twenty minutes.”

“I see,” she said, concentrating on the letters on her computer screen so she didn’t have to look at his disconcerting smile again. “Please sit down, it’ll just be a little bit.”

“Thank you,” he said, and she felt it, the smile, warm against her forehead like it was a tangible thing. 

When she heard him walk to a chair and sit down she looked up again, feeling profoundly foolish. He was looking at her, and she started, because she couldn’t remember the last time someone had looked at her like they really saw her. 

He smiled again when she looked at him, and she felt her face flush softly, the shield of her invisibility pushed aside. She felt the inexplicable urge to apologize for her presence, and she wished fiercely that he would look away.

He didn’t. She did, even though something deep inside her protested at that, and she scolded herself in her head. Stupid, she thought, remember you’re invisible.

“What’s your name?” 

She jumped slightly in her chair and looked up, startled. It was him, and he was clearly talking to her. She swallowed, flustered, feeling the flush that had begun to fade rise again. “My.. ah, Layla,” she said, embarrassed at her own awkwardness. 

“Layla,” he repeated, and her name sounded unfamiliar when it said it, like it was wrapped in honey and soft blankets. “What a beautiful name.”

“Th-thank you,” she whispered, and looked away before her traitorous face could show her emotions.  

She was terrified that he would say something else, but before he could the phone rang to tell her that it was time for his appointment. “You can go in now,” she said, without looking at him, her voice short and tense.

“I’ll see you,” he said, and she looked up at him as he walked away, wondering why she found herself wishing he would stay. 

****************

Layla, he thought, and a song played softly in his head. 

Layla, he thought, and imagined running back into that waiting room, shoving the desk out of his way, and lifting her up from her quiet lonely life into his arms. Taking her out of that sad little room, and barring the door behind them.

Layla, he thought, and imagined those shuttered sepia eyes that couldn’t hide the burning life behind them.

*********************

The secretary had a secret. Sometimes, when she had no work to do or paperwork to file, she would write in a plain black notebook that she kept hidden behind her sheaths of crisp white printer paper. If no one was waiting for an appointment, and she had no chance of being seen, she would pull it out self consciously, and write down fragments of poems, or half formed thoughts. 

She knew that the writing wasn’t good, and every time she did it she felt a rush of unsurety, like she was a child doing something she knew she shouldn’t. And yet at the same time when she wrote she felt the ache that built up in her throat from all her unsaid words start to ease, and it chased away the ghostly tails of loneliness that sometimes crept up on her. 

Because she knew no one would ever read what she wrote she didn’t hold back, or worry about proper formatting. Sometimes she made columns of words that rhymed, then made them into sentences that were shyly extraordinary. Sometimes she wrote about the way the sun slanted in through the blinds and fell in golden stripes along the chairs and table with the magazines. Sometimes she just wrote all the things that wanted to say to the people she came in, and the things that, in her imagination, they said back to her.

After he left though, she couldn’t think of anything to write. She wanted to get her emotions out onto the paper before they overwhelmed her with their unfamiliar intensity, but she found herself staring at the blank paper, unable to put to words what she was feeling. 

A smile, she finally wrote, can change everything. Then she shut her book and shoved it into her desk, where the words burned softly, along with the beat of her heart. 

******************

He came back two days later, when she had convinced herself to forget him, and the feelings she felt, when she had slipped back into her comfortable shroud of invisibility. The minute she saw him come through the door she felt her heart jump into her throat, and she felt herself come into focus slightly.

“Hello, again,” he said, and smiled that disarming smile that made her heart beat an unfamiliar tattoo against her ribs. 

“You’re back,” she said, and then blushed fiercely at the foolishness of her statement. 

“It would appear so,” he said, and even though she was concentrating hard on her blank computer screen, she could hear the humor in his voice. 

“Can I help you,” she asked, trying frantically to sound cool and detached, to find her safe anonymity again. 

“Just another appointment,” he said, and instead of sitting down to wait, he leaned against her desk. She could feel the heat from his body across the space of the desk that suddenly seemed very small. It’s just your imagination, she told herself fiercely.

“So, Layla,” he said, and she started and looked up at him at the sound of her name, that wasn’t quite her name because on his tongue it turned into something exotic and beautiful that most definitely was not her.  

“How are you?” he asked, and she stood up suddenly, because if she was sure if she stayed a second longer all of her carefully built walls would come crashing down and she would naked. 

“I have to go,” she mumbled, turning around, and blindly stumbled towards the women’s bathroom, her heart beating traitor over and over, and yet she was not sure which part of herself she was betraying. 

******************

He watched her go, and wished that he could track down whoever made her believe that she did not deserve to be seen, and slowly strangle the life out of them. 

He watched her go, and decided that he would not leave like all the rest of them did. He would stay, he swore to himself, until she realized that he wasn’t going anywhere. 

*******************

The secretary finally came out of the bathroom only when she was sure that he must be gone, only to find that he wasn’t. He was still standing on the other side of her desk, and he was holding something in his hands. For a minute she didn’t know what it was, and then she realized and all of her breath left her as though she had just fallen from a great height.

It was her little black book, the one she wrote in, the one she had forgotten to put away properly earlier that day and left lying carelessly on her desk.

“No,” she breathed, and he heard her and looked up.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and to her surprise his voice wasn’t mocking, he wasn’t laughing at her. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking by his expression, but it was soft and contrite. 

“I shouldn’t have picked it up,” he said, “It was just lying there and I-.”

“Please,” she said, cutting him off, “Just give it back.”

He hesitated, and she reached out for it, and their fingers brushed. She remembered in that instant, all those times years ago when she would purposely try and touch people, to convince herself that she was real, and how long it had been since she had done that. She knew that it had never been like this though. A soft rush that went through her fingertips to the ends of hair when their skin touched, a slow hum that filled her core like a hummingbird was trapped inside her.

“Give it back,” she said, her voice strangled in her throat.

He didn’t.

“What don’t you say them?” he asked.

“Say what,” she whispered, trying to pull the book away, but he was stronger.

“All the things you write about in your book,” he said. “You have so many things to say, Layla, so many beautiful things.”

She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t let herself believe what he said. She shoved down the hope that rose inside her, that maybe, to him, she wasn’t invisible after all.

“Layla,” he said, and she looked at him, and his eyes were everything she feared and longed for. “Don’t be afraid to share yourself with the world.”

The world doesn’t care, she thought, but she only said, “Please give it back,” hating herself for the tears in her voice.

He gave it back, and turned toward the door to leave. “I’m sorry I upset you,” he said, and the apology was genuine in his voice, “But not at all sorry I read your book,” and he smiled at her as he shut the door.

After she could breathe evenly again, and her heart wasn’t pounding in her chest anymore, she turned on her laptop and checked the schedule of appointments for the day. He wasn’t on the list, and she looked up, staring at the place where he had been, the hummingbird in her chest singing again. 

*****************************

When he came back, the secretary wasn’t surprised. She had known that he would, and tried to prepare herself, figure out what she was going to say, but now that he was there, standing in front of her, all the words she had carefully planned deserted her. 

“You’re back,” she said, again, and then, “Why are you here? I know that you don’t have an appointment, and didn’t have one last time.” 

He smiled. “You figured me out, have you?” 

“No,” she said, “I just-”

“Layla,” he said, cutting her off, “You need to get of here.”

“What?” she asked, confused.

“Let’s go,” he said, and held out his hand, “I see you, Layla, and I see that every minute 

you sit here and let life go on without you, you’re fading away a little more. I don’t want to watch that happen, and you don’t want it either.”

She couldn’t breathe, it was what part of her had always wanted to hear, and yet it terrified her.

“I can’t,” she whispered, “I don’t know how.”

“I’ll help you,” he said, and a wild, reckless part of her wanted to believe him, to take his hand.

“I don’t even know you,” she said, and at the same time her heart was telling her that it didn’t matter.

“What’ll you do, Layla,” he said quietly, “what’ll you do when you get lonely, and there’s nobody by your side? You’ve been hiding for too long, and you know it.”

The words sounded strangely familiar to her, and suddenly a memory came to her, of being small and in her father's arms as he danced around a room with her to a song that had her name. 

She couldn’t speak, but that was okay, because he was holding her hand, and she couldn’t remember how it got there. 

“Come on,” he said, “I’m right here.”

And she did, she stood up and walked to the door of the waiting room with him, and knew that she would never come back. She hesitated at the doorway, afraid suddenly, of not being invisible, and she would have turned back, then, if it hadn’t been for him.

But he was there, on the other side of the door, in a world where she could be too, if she just let herself go. And so she did, because he saw her and could catch her, if she needed him too. 

And maybe the secretary was invisible, but Layla was not.