The Cathedral of Desire

Nina Schuyler

Endless hours Netta worked at the Cathedral of Desire, packing things in boxes, trying to keep her head above the world’s relentless wants. At least today she wasn’t stuck in kitchenware but Wing #2, Section 24a, with the delicate birds. Though she knew the rules, no one was around except Claude, and he was so far down the aisle he looked like a miniature doll with flaming red hair.

She opened the cage, and a small, sky-blue parakeet hopped on her outstretched finger. Oh, now, this was nice. It began to whistle an up-and-down tune, and a warm day opened inside her, along with a long lawn, and sunlit trees.

The bird said, “Hello,” making her laugh, but then her wristband zapped, zinging her forearm, making the translucent blonde hairs on her thin arm stand upright. Quickly, she put the parakeet back in its crate, packed it in a cardboard box with air holes to be sent to Bobby Len Dover in Philadelphia, who had ordered it. Before she taped closed the box, she snuck in a note, I miss the rain.

As she walked toward Claude, she was alarmed to see his hands were a fleshy blur, as if he were performing a complex magic trick, turning himself into a kinetic inferno, seizing dog food, a red harness, a rubber ball, leash, rawhides, socks, water bottle, tossing them in a box, cramming in bubble wrap, taping it closed. Ten seconds—done.

“Claude?” she said.

“Can’t.”

His face was gray like dust. His upper lip quivered. Claude, a former abstract painter who laughed softly and sweetly after he spoke, as if he found the world delightful and wondrous, was drowning in panic.

She opened her binder and read the long list of desires for Maya Forley in Austin, Texas, but couldn’t focus. What if Claude had been sent to the Master of Efficiency’s office? What if he’d received a Warning? She climbed the ladder that stretched high in the air like an enormous rollercoaster and grabbed a rubber lizard, a tug-of-war rope, and a wire dog brush. When she climbed down again and packed the items in a cardboard box, a wave of Pleasure flowed over her neck, and though she tried not to succumb, she giggled with glee.

When the Pleasure dose dissolved, she felt Claude’s anxiety, and she imagined his heart beating as fast as hers like a little bird about to slam into a window. Last month, the Cathedral of Desire added live birds. Every day, it seemed, a new desire could be satisfied. Beneath the sound of rolling wheels of carts and ladders, the occasional cough or sneeze, she could hear the birds chirping and singing little patterns of sound, and she relaxed a bit. She’d boxed up one hundred parakeets and canaries last week (maybe). Time had become a concept only. In the Cathedral of Desire, there were no clocks, no windows, and no one was allowed a watch. When she had told Claude about her timeless state, he’d laughed his soft laugh and said, “So you’ll always be young.” But lately, Netta didn’t feel twenty-five years old. Her knees felt ancient and achy from crouching, climbing, lifting, and lowering of heavy boxes.

Claude’s blue uniform had big circular wet spots under his arms, and dark lightning streaks splashed on his front and back. The pocket on the front of his uniform was torn on one side, threads dangling. She glanced down and saw her pocket, too, was frayed at the edge. When did that happen? After she put a rhinestone blue dog collar and poop bags in a box, she slipped in one of her notes, I miss the smell of lavender-scented laundry.

When the bell blared, announcing the first break, she and Claude shut their binders and plunged into the current of Packagers pouring toward the Big Hall 2B. Dozens of assistants handed out steaming coffee and four food cubes— protein, vegetable, fruit, and carbohydrate. The Master of Efficiency had devised the cube idea. Netta found them surprisingly filling as if they ballooned in her stomach, but Claude was always famished. They sat at an empty table in the corner, and Claude let out a long low sigh as if he’d been holding it for hours.

“You’re moving incredibly fast,” she said. “Your rate must be in the high plus plus.”

He didn’t say anything.

“What happened?” she whispered.

He stared at the table. “Don’t want to talk about it.”

Overall, Netta thought her rate was good. Maybe very good. But it could be bad. Lately, the Cathedral of Desire had been overwhelmed, as if a great roaring tsunami of desires that had been suppressed for years had somehow escaped and crashed down on them, rolling them in its waves. Yesterday the Chief of Packaging announced they’d fallen two days behind in fulfillment—unprecedented!—so their shifts would increase from ten to thirteen hours a day until the backlog was exterminated.

Claude sipped his coffee as if his chances at life were bound up with it. In a dusty corner of her mind, she heard a violin playing, a muffled rumbling of scales that sounded vaguely familiar. The music had started a week or so ago, (maybe), and it thrilled and alarmed her. It had been so long since she played her violin she had forgotten about it. But now the memories of it were alive and antsy, and she felt a deep ache in her shoulder where her instrument used to rest.

“Got into a bit of trouble,” said Claude, rubbing his face with both hands. She reached over and squeezed his hand, which was limp and clammy, and then gave him her dessert cube.

“Ah, a true friend,” he said, with a genuine smile. He popped it into his mouth and didn’t chew but let it melt. “Chocolate cake with a hint of vanilla in the cake batter.” His face lightened, and he had color in his cheeks again. “I’ve come to appreciate the smallest of things. If I could paint, I’d use a miniature canvas.”

“I envy the common fly,” she said.

He raised a dark eyebrow.

“You know, a fly can get out of here.”

He smiled sadly. He used to live in New York City, but when his paintings stopped selling, his parents cut him off and he had to get a job. In the beginning, he was elated when the Cathedral hired him, because he had no real skills except painting. But the beginning was far away, like Mars.

“Tell me a story about New York,” she said. He loved talking about the city, and she’d always wanted to live there and play in the symphony. She could listen to his stories of the city forever, even if he told the same ones over and over.

As he told her about the party that moved to the rooftop of an apartment on West 85th and Central Park, this time she imagined a warm night, a man playing guitar under the stars, and very beautiful people. Claude said that at the party his friend painted a night sky, filled not with stars, but little human heads.

“It was glorious.” He sighed loudly and set down his coffee cup with a loud clink. “I was moving too slowly.”

“Are you okay?”

“The shock. They’re really cracking down.”

He wanted to be promoted to Shipper because the trucks pulled up in the early morning, before the light, and with their engines still running, the Cathedral of Desire rolled up an accordion-like wall. The Shippers loaded the trucks with boxes and got to see the first sliver of pale yellow light and breathe the air, though one Shipper told Netta the air stunk of oil and exhaust. She reassured Claude he was making up for any problems with his astonishing performance.

He nodded glumly, and she was about to reassure him again, but the bell blared, ending the break. Everyone rushed for the exits, and Netta was jostled like a stick in a rushing river, in the opposite direction of Claude, to her next assignment.

Netta spent the rest of the afternoon packing cleaning supplies, and the hours went by pleasantly enough because of the violin music in her head, which had taken shape and sounded like Ralph Vaughn Williams’ The Lark Ascending. The song was beautifully played, each note soaring, ascending, tilting toward it, the thing she’d tried for years to accomplish but never had, but it was there, flickering. All those hours in her bedroom practicing this song, all those hours outside on the back deck of her house, hidden away in the college’s practice room, and those three magical years when she was hired by the Ohio Symphony and played the violin solo in The Lark Ascending. “Marvelous, Netta,” the conductor told her plenty of times. “You’re playing with the blood. You cast a spell on everyone.” But the symphony ran out of funding, the doors closed, and her musician friends scattered like dried-out leaves. She landed here.

Before she taped closed the box of Floor Polish Shine, she slid in her note, I miss watermelon. And with the bottle of Mold Killer, I miss pink tulips.

The notes didn’t harm anyone. Little scraps of paper, a message that there was more to the Cathedral of Desire than what met the eye. From the outside, the place looked like a big metal rectangle, incongruous, in her opinion, with the name ‘cathedral.’ But inside, with the 100-foot-high ceilings and the corridors that were impossible to see the end of, you felt your insignificance. All the world’s desires, waves and waves and waves of them, washed up on this shore, and when she thought about this she felt pleased to be part of something so profound.

At night in her small cot, she wrote to her elderly parents and told them she was fine. Not telling them she missed them or her violin, or Cleveland, Ohio, or her little black dog. She included a part of her paycheck because they had so little. She imagined her mother in the living room, soaking her aching, swollen feet in Epsom salt. Her mother always wrote back, We are so proud of you! You bring such honor to our family.

The next morning, when she saw the three gray-uniformed supervisors at the end of her section, she searched for Claude, who had said they followed him around like aggressive jail guards. When she heard them come toward her, she emptied herself out, and in that chamber of silence, there was a single command: work. When they were within arm’s reach, the command pared down to its essence and she saw her hands moving as fast as she’d ever seen them. So this was how Claude managed it, she thought.

“Netta Glogster?” The three stood beside her, assaulting her with peppermint, cigarette smoke, and sweat. “Employee number 16503?”

She hesitated. Was that her number? She’d never memorized it. “Yes?”

The short man had cloud-gray eyes and a small red birthmark above his upper lip. Could she run to the restroom? Rush to the Sleeping Hall and lie down on her cot? Where was Claude? In a moment of fantasy, she imagined they were letting her out so she could see the sky.

One of the men led the way, the two others followed behind her as if they thought she might try to escape. Could she? In her pocket she had one of her notes: I miss the game of hide and seek. The intercom began blaring awful discordant music that Research decided improved mood and productivity and blocked out the bird songs, which had been correlated to low packing rates. She was made anxious by the thud of her footfalls, as if she had changed into a 200-pound man. She couldn’t tell if she was walking, or if the guards were pushing her along.

Once, as a girl, she played hide and seek with the neighborhood kids, and she hid so well, high up in an oak tree, they never found her. Night came. Stars. She climbed down when she heard her mother frantically calling for her.

She could feel the other Packagers’ eyes on her, smell their fear, hear the thrum of her panic, or maybe it was her. She passed by the bicycle section. What if she grabbed a bike and rode away? In her feverish fear a memory bullied in, when she was ten years old, how much she wanted a ten-speed bike so she could ride up the steep hill and get a bird’s-eye view of her house below.

They passed the TV and radio section, the tinny sound of a radio. A news reporter’s voice said something about Florida, so much rain, everyone in boats.

The gray-uniformed supervisors led her to a gray metal door. Inside, behind a huge wood desk that resembled a moat, sat another gray-uniformed man with big gray eyes and a dark goatee. He didn’t stand, but she could tell he was a tiny man, and rather frail. She had a strange thought that if she wanted to, she could easily strangle him, and it might be necessary. His eyes seemed to see everything about her, as if they were shooting beams of light inside her, illuminating her inward world. She wanted to hide but didn’t know how.

“Have a seat,” he said.

His voice was stern, as if she was a misbehaving child, and thoughts of his fragility fled. She’d heard about the Master of Efficiency, a man who viewed the world through only one singular lens. She wanted to apologize for her transgression—was it the notes?—and, at the same time, she wanted to run out the front door. But, of course, that wasn’t the way it worked. She’d signed a contract to work a minimum of five years and filed it with the company, which filed it with the government: the New Economic Stability Program.

She was struck by the office’s utter bleak blankness. Nothing on the walls, no family photos on his desk, not even a bulletin board with fluttering tacked memos about the Heimlich maneuver. He had one manila-colored file on his desk, which he opened, and with exaggerated precision he removed a letter and handed it to her. Words smacked her eyeballs. Productivity low, failing, not adequate.

“When we first hired you eight months ago—”

Eight months! Years, it felt like, she was certain it was years.

“We are an esteemed and indispensable institution, not just in this country, but the entire world. As you might recall, we were the first to recognize the indispensable and vital role of desire as the major determinant of humanity’s fate. That might sound grandiose, but it’s the truth, and science has backed it up. The government has formally acknowledged our mission and classified it as extremely significant and inviolable.”

He picked up his pen and rapidly jabbed its sharp point on her file, making small black dots. “Desire is humanity’s engine, it’s the hope for progress, invention, evolution. Envy is another great propulsive force. We have an entire department devoted to cultivating it. Of course, there are banal desires, but these must be satisfied for the individual’s principal desire, the one that dictates his or her dominant creative activity, to emerge. If you are starving or unhappy, it’s hard to tend to your dominant desire, don’t you think?”

She nodded, not sure if he wanted her to answer. With his pen, he’d made what looked like a skull or maybe a pear.

“We must satisfy the frivolous desires so that ultimately each person’s overarching desire is exhumed.”

“What happens then?” she said, surprised to hear her voice, which sounded like an echo.

His face softened, and he seemed to be thinking of the most beautiful experience he’d ever had. “Transcendence,” he said softly. “A rare freedom.”

For a moment, they sat in stillness, and it felt as if together they’d open the gates of heaven. Then, abruptly, his face stiffened, and the gates vanished. “Or so I’ve heard. Humankind can’t reach the pinnacle of evolution without a desire to do so. The task of our great company, which is aptly named the Cathedral of Desire, is to fulfill humankind’s daily desires, so that one day the desire that will save us all will be found.”

She wanted to ask what humanity needed to be saved from, but there was no break in his speechifying. The black dots now looked like a cluster of flesh-biting fleas.

His face tightened further. “So, you must not think the Cathedral of Desire is some whim or silliness. From your actions and your erratic rate, it appears you regard the Cathedral of Desire in such a light. The Cathedral of Desire is not to be disobeyed. It won’t stand for it.”

There was a knot in his wood desk that looked like a small human heart.

“We could have started you in Documentation, as most new employees do, but we assigned you to Packaging because you seemed quite capable and it befitted our overall mission.”

She felt redeemed, momentarily. She was about to explain the violin music in her head, but he raised a hand. She saw he wore a beautiful gold watch that shimmered in the dim light. It faintly ticked, slicing each moment in half, then another half, another. She was mesmerized by the sight of it, by the sound of it. What time was it? What day?

“There are things bigger than you, things that will remain mysterious to you, perhaps forever. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said, wanting to add that she found beauty in mystery, but she didn’t think he’d understand.

He shook his head. “I don’t know what happened to you. Your numbers were very good, but about a month ago, they dropped drastically.”

What happened a month ago? Since she had arrived at the Cathedral of Desire with her one battered suitcase, her sense of cause and effect had dimmed or vanished altogether. Some part of her mind drifted in a dream, and now with the violin music playing ever so faintly, in time with the click of his watch … she lost her train of thought, and her gaze floated over to his white wall, where he’d hung a three-by-five-inch frame, ‘One loves ultimately one’s desires, not the thing desired.’

“This will be your first warning.”

She froze. The violin music instantly dissolved. Ice melted in her veins, an endless flow of cold.

“As you know, two more warnings and that’s the end.”

She stared at his ashtray full of cigarette stubs, hundreds of them. His pencil had teeth marks on it. When she did her homework as a girl, she’d bite her pencil when she was concentrating. Then it hit again, harder: A warning! She got a warning. What would become of her?

“And now, get to work,” he said, shutting her file.

The three gray-clad supervisors escorted her through the long dark corridors, turning here, there, she wasn’t sure where she was, more turns, and long hallways. Was this the way back to the cleaning supply section? She didn’t recognize anything, but then again it all looked the same. More turns and it seemed like they went one direction, then reversed directions as if they were taking her back to the Master of Efficiency. As she walked, the ice flowed to her stomach, her legs, her fingers. What did he mean and that will be the end? It was difficult to think.

Somehow, she was back at the cleaning supplies section. The supervisors left, and she opened her binder and stared at the page. Her parents needed the money she sent them. Thank you, darling! We appreciate it! her mother wrote in her trembling handwriting in blotchy blue ink. Netta kept waiting for the day when their names appeared in her binder, and she’d get to box their desires.

She put sponges and a lemon disinfectant spray into a box. Where was Claude? She needed to talk to him. Her head pounded with staticky violin music.

“Her awful dream of packing boxes returned. She couldn’t remember the last time the violin music played in her head, and she sensed it was gone for eternity. The thought made her feel like a lump of clay.”

Her dreams were crammed with boxes, millions of boxes, and her binder of desires towered ten feet high, heavy and precarious. She had to roll the binder on a cart from aisle to aisle. In each darkened aisle, she found herself alone, the only one filling the world’s desires. She saw her reflection in a metal post—she was no longer young, but an old woman covered in cobwebs and as skinny as a whippet. In the morning, she woke exhausted and didn’t know how much longer she could live like this.

When she was assigned to the kitchen section, she saw Claude packing a toaster and told him what happened.

His eyes opened wide with fright. “Work near me and match my pace.”

His hands moved even faster than before, as if he was Jackson Pollack throwing paint here, there, every part of his body seemed to be involved, his feet, hips, arms, his head. She mirrored him, and eventually her mind turned off. A big gummy blank. When the bell rang, she looked at Claude, glassy-eyed. In the Big Hall, they couldn’t speak, as if they’d traveled far from their bodies, maybe to another world, and had yet to return. In stunned silence, they sipped coffee and chewed their cubes.

Mona suddenly appeared, smiling, radiating trouble. In a low, conspiratorial voice, she told them about packing things that were the wrong color, the wrong size, the wrong thing altogether—the latest actions of the underground resistance movement.

“We have other plans, too,” said Mona, her dark eyes flashing. She slid a folded square of paper across the table to Netta. Netta felt exhilarated and scared. She wanted to join the resistance, but she already had one warning. She pushed the square back to Mona.

“What’s wrong with you?” said Mona, snatching it, stuffing it in her underwear. She had a sense of authority, exquisite and frightening. She once drove a semi, miles and miles of road like a permanent black marker, and when she had to piss, she pulled over and watered the dirt. “When we get out of here, what the hell will be left of you?”

Her words were darts in the air, coming so fast that Netta had trouble focusing on them.

“Well?” Mona said to Claude.

“No idea,” said Claude, staring into space.

“Me neither,” said Netta, too tired to think of the possibilities.

Mona left in a huff.

That night, Netta found Claude’s cot and climbed in beside him, hugging his back. There had never been a rule against it, as far as she knew, nothing written down. The bed was a twin, so they could not roll from side to side without an agreement, but Claude said he didn’t mind.

“Whisper to me about one of those New York art parties,” she said.

A performance art piece in which a young man, shirtless, in a pair of raggedy jeans, stood in an art gallery. This was in Greenwich Village, circa the 1990s. Certain audience members were given balloons full of paint, and they threw them at the shirtless man. Splashes of yellow, red, green, blue, and pink, all over his face and chest, dripping down his pants, and on the floor, which was covered with white butcher paper. Claude threw a balloon full of maroon at the man’s shoulder. The artist called it Paint Man.

“Ah,” she said, her eyelids fluttering.

She slept well that night and had energy in the morning and kept up her rate; there were no zaps and the gray-clad supervisors didn’t appear at the end of her aisle. All was well. Except the violin music remained absent, so she hummed it, hoping to lure it back like a lover.

She wrote to her parents: Is the oak tree still in the backyard? I remember its blue shade and me serenading it with my violin. I made up songs, and Mama, you told me the tree loved it and its limbs grew to the sky. Papa, you told me I had to learn practical things like budgets and how to invest in the stock market. But when I played the violin for you, you’d sigh and close your eyes and all the lines on your face would disappear. You said all worries flew away.

Everything is fine here. The work is nonstop. Love, Netta. She included all of the money from her paycheck.

She sneaked into the cot with Claude. “Any sign of Gloria?”

Claude rolled over and faced her. “You didn’t hear?” He’d heard a rumor that she received her third warning. Sent to the basement.

She gripped him tighter. “Is it true?”

He bit his lower lip. “I don’t know.”

People sent to the basement were never seen again. They slept that night facing each other, hugging each other, as if some force might come along and tear them to pieces.

Usually, it took weeks to receive a return letter from her mother, but this time she wrote right back. Your papa is in the hospital, his heart or pancreas or spleen, they aren’t sure. He can’t collect the bottles and cans in the neighborhood for the recycler, so we’re so grateful for the money you send. I don’t leave the house except to see your papa. He looks ancient in that blue gown. Such harsh hospital lights. The birds no longer fly but walk. Something is in the air that I don’t understand. It’s best you’re in the Cathedral where you’re safe and sound.

Love, Mama

PS: The tree is still alive, though it’s seen better days, which is true for all living things.

A week went by, Netta worked in the linens and towel section, the computer section, the arts and crafts section, and the household furniture section. To great fanfare, the Cathedral of Desire opened a new section, babies, ages three to six months, and though Netta had yet to work there, the cavernous place echoed with their coos and cries and babbling. Along with the bird songs, she managed to get through the day, even though Claude was moved to the East-B22 wing, and she no longer sat with him at break time.

At night, she slept with Claude, but her dreams changed again. Snow fell, and she stood at a window, watching it fall all over the streets and the little houses. When the wind picked up, the snow blew horizontally, and the flakes stuck to the window. She took a magnifying glass and saw they were not unique at all, every single one was the same. The same shape, the same design, same pattern. The discovery made her nauseous, and she had to hold onto the windowsill as she watched the snow falling all over the universe, falling to its end.

The dream coated her waking hours with a strange residue, as if she’d been sprayed with something malignant. Her pace became fitful; sometimes packing one box per eight seconds flat, sometimes one box per thirty seconds. From all her lifting and boxing, the pocket on her uniform now hung like a desperate little flag.

Later she would understand it was a test. It’s true that when you’re living your life, it’s hard to realize the world you’ve been thrown into. She was assigned to the music section, and all day she packed up instruments, a tambourine for Malcolm Camferd in Houston, a recorder for Jill in Seattle. Happy for these people who desired these things, she happily slipped in her notes, I miss the rustle of leaves; I miss the light in August. A heavy piano keyboard for Ginny Tuft, I miss my mother’s vanilla cake. Drums and cymbals for Anna, a flute for Winny Greer, I miss the big tree in my front yard.

Each instrument delivered her deeper into the lush memories of the Ohio Symphony, which made her realize those were the very best years of her very short life. They wouldn’t leave her alone, these memories, they called to her, asked her where she was, why did she go, when would she come back. She tried to ignore them by furiously packing bongo drums, sheet music, a clarinet, and in that franticness, she didn’t prepare herself for what happened next.

When she picked up the violin, a beautiful violin made of maple from the Yugoslav area, she felt as if she was clutching her very being. She held it, cradled it, loved it, loving it so tenderly she sobbed, “There you are!” Nestling the violin under her chin, she touched the bow to the strings. One note, she told herself, one lone note, her ears longed to be filled with it. With great care, she stroked the bow on the string and what rang out was pure and good and it shook her, unleashing another note, but this one didn’t sound very good, nor the next or the next. She tried to find it, but it kept retreating and she wasn’t with it, and it had been so long since she played. She tried again and again, her fingers aching from pressing down hard on the strings, those eight months stole all her calluses, but she had to keep going and to find it, she once had it—

The violin flew out of her hands.

A gray-clad supervisor held the violin by its neck.

The Master of Efficiency’s office was filled with thick, blue cigar smoke. His tone was ominous and severe. She longed for her violin, she needed to play it because the notes were eluding her. Shy little notes, playing hide and seek.

His eyes narrowed, he licked his lips. For a long time, he read her file as if he didn’t quite understand it. The small wall hanging was gone, and he had three ashtrays full of cigar and cigarette butts.

“We are promoting you to Desire Designer,” he said finally.

What was happening to her? He strode to his closet and retrieved a new uniform, this one forest green. A new feeling washed over her, she’d never seen such a beautiful color, and she wanted the uniform, she ached to put it on and start this new job. Maybe that’s where Gloria was, not in the basement but wearing a forest green uniform. Maybe Claude would eventually end up there, too. They could be happy there—maybe.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

The Desire Designers worked on the second floor. She would study people’s past purchases and determine their future desires. Her list would be given to the Desire Manufacturers who would take it from there. “It’s a very important job,” he said. “It’s more important than Documentation or Packaging, so we expect you to work harder than you’ve ever worked.” He looked at her file again, then slammed it shut.

The gray-clad supervisor escorted her upstairs and into a room full of big wooden tables. About a hundred people were hunched over stacks of papers, diligently jotting notes on notepads. No one looked up when she entered. The supervisor led her to an empty wood chair, gave her a stack of papers, and told her to read the files carefully and thoroughly.

How would she know what someone would want? She supposed she was looking for patterns. She opened the first file: Jane Battleman in Hackensack, New Jersey, a woman who had recently purchased blue dish plates, yellow dish towels, anti-aging cream, a pink bathrobe, a short story collection by Borges, and a figurine of a bull.

Netta pictured Jane in her kitchen, cooking dinner—parmesan chicken with lemon green beans—and serving it on her blue plates. She had a husband, two kids, or maybe one, and at dinner, they talked about the day. On and on, she constructed the life of Jane, her joys, her sorrows, her dreams, the long bubble baths she took at night, reading Borges. The little black bull sat on her dresser, watching it all.

When the bell rang, announcing the end of the workday, Netta hadn’t written one new desire for Jane. She couldn’t fit it all together, couldn’t make a coherent picture. Why Borges? Why the bull? Did they hold a hidden meaning?

Two more days went by. She made a list of fifteen possible desires for Jane, but when she wrote the last one—a sky-blue silky scarf—she quickly scratched it out. How would she know if Jane would want this color? Or a scarf at all? She thought she detected a pattern, though, for the life of her, she couldn’t articulate it. And if there was a pattern, wouldn’t it be best to break the pattern so something surprising happened? Some door inside opened? An undiscovered aspect of self emerged? Wasn’t that important? On the fourth day, she slipped Jane Battleman’s file to the bottom of the stack and started with a new one, Garth Strawsky in Kansas City. From his purchases of two pairs of gray sweatpants, a Crash-n-Snatch video game, expensive wine, and cheap beer, she pictured a bachelor, but there were signs he was interested in someone—the purchase of gold loop earrings—or maybe they were for him.

Maybe she wasn’t supposed to find a pattern, but a necessary truth about Garth, something permanent, an absolute truth, regardless of circumstances and the passage of time? Was there such a thing? Did she have a necessary truth?

In the morning, a gray-clad supervisor appeared and told her to come with him.

“There’s been a mistake,” said the Master of Efficiency. There was so much smoke in his office she could barely see him, though it looked like he was standing. The smoke wafted, and in the clearing she saw he was standing, and, indeed, he was a tiny man, maybe four feet tall. His face was bright red and he kept turning an unlit cigarette round and round with long elegant fingers. “A clerical error,” he said. “I knew something wasn’t right, but it was there in your file. How could you be elevated to Desire Designer after that stupid violin stunt? It caused a work stoppage of seven minutes. People stood there, listening as if they’d drifted off to another dimension.”

He lit the cigarette, which seemed to add so much smoke that she could only make out his two glittering gray eyes. A chill came over her. It felt like she was caught, a trap snapped on her foot, and it was only a matter of time before she was taken whole.

“Two warnings.” The cold eyes seemed to be the ones doing the talking. “And you are forever banned from the musical instrument section.”

She expected to feel something, but she felt nothing.

“It should be three, but I was overruled. One more and it’s the end.” He shut the file. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Should she protest? “Is there an appeal process?”

“No.” The eyes blazed. His watch ticked. “Don’t you have anything else to say?”

From the intensity of his eyes, she could tell he wanted something from her, but she wasn’t sure what. She tried to muster some feeling, but there was nothing. Maybe she was in shock; or confused. She shook her head.

She was escorted to Section 67B, South Wing, tools and equipment, and as she passed each aisle, she searched for Claude but didn’t see him anywhere.

The Packaging Officer called an all-hands meeting. Rumors were circulating and they must stop. They distracted from the mission and created unnecessary worry. “If we hear you are a rumormonger, there will be consequences,” said the Packaging Officer.

As Netta walked back to her section, she saw Mona and asked her if she knew what he was talking about. Mona told her a woman named Maddie was sent to the basement, where she died. Some say she was executed, others say she had a heart attack. Still, other rumors speculated that she lacked the will to live and collapsed, dead on the spot like a deflated balloon.

“My God,” said Netta.

“It’s a rumor,” hissed Mona. “They’re trying to scare us to death.”

“You don’t believe it?” said Netta.

Netta caught her eyes and saw Mona was afraid, and so Netta felt afraid, or maybe afraid of Mona, afraid of what she might do and what might happen next. Then Mona seemed to find her defiant self again and stood straighter. “The officials traffic in secrets. They’re the ones who create the rumors to turn us into meek, obedient, scared children.”

“What’s happening with the resistance?” whispered Netta. She told Mona about her two warnings.

Mona frowned. “You’re a liability now.” Netta would be watched closely. “The resistance can’t risk having someone like you.”

When they heard the voices of supervisors, Mona rushed away. Nell went back to packaging shoes. When the supervisors passed by her aisle, she snuck a note into a pair of brown shoes, I miss hail. The landscape grows black.

For three days, Netta looked for Claude but couldn’t find him, not in any of the nearby sections, not in the Big Hall, not in his cot at night. Had he been promoted? Demoted? Her awful dream of packing boxes returned. She couldn’t remember the last time the violin music played in her head, and she sensed it was gone for eternity. The thought made her feel like a lump of clay.

Each day, she had less and less energy. Each day her binder of desires grew heavier, until one morning she could not lift it. She lay in bed and thought of writing her mother, but was afraid to get a letter back, telling her that her papa was worse. Or that her mother was now ill. She tried to stand, but it felt like a ceiling had lowered on her head and she was bumping against her diminishing possibilities.

A supervisor came by. “Get up or you’ll miss feeding time.”

But she wasn’t hungry and wished she could lie in bed and stare at the wall. She trudged by the Big Hall and the cacophony of voices, through the main corridor, and in the dim light she kept going, through the maze of desires, turning left, then right, right again, not knowing where she was going except her legs and feet seemed to have a destination. She imagined she was a migrating bird heading south for warmth, escaping snow. She imagined she held a map inside. Or maybe she’d been unhusked by the world, and this was what remained.

She found herself holding a violin. It nestled in its spot on her neck, and she closed her eyes and gently stroked one string. A soft note rang out, pulsating her, waking the dormant music circulating in her blood, and the bow threw itself on the strings fervently, passionately, and her nostrils flared, breathing in the fragrance of music, her body leaning and swaying.

As she played, she sensed movement nearby, but didn’t stop, even as the heavy footfalls resounded, even as the men’s voices cried out, even as she began running like a breath expelled, she still played, she would never stop playing, running down the long, dark aisles, running faster, playing faster, not sure where she was going, even as the violin was yanked from her cradling arms, she kept playing, running down the endless aisles, passing by shelves of miniature cars, dolls, vases, and paintings done in oil, in watercolor, playing her invisible violin.

Even as she was led down the steps to the basement, down to the bowels of the building, darker than dark, as dark as winter midnight, she played, her invisible bow making the strings sing, and the music built inside her, lifting her feet off the ground, carrying her up the stairs, and she soared to the ceiling, high above the desires below, and she kept playing until the front door split right down the center and she disappeared in the mysterious night.

Occasionally violin music wafts through the Cathedral of Desire, and the song is so beautiful and so sad, everyone stops and listens, certain the ceiling will collapse or the world is not what it was yesterday. Then the supervisors come along and start yelling, “Back to work, back to work!” The work resumes slowly, tentatively. It takes a long time for the music to fade.