Chapter One
Reconstruction of the Previous Day (4)
Meanwhile, when the meeting concluded, the Director gathered his folder and stepped back into the corridor.
He passed through the Correspondence Hall on his way to the office. He passed by the communal writers’ desk.
A small scrap of paper caught his attention.
He recognized the hand - his own, the one he had earlier pasted to the ad for the pen – he picked it up with the faintest smile. He recalled that the pen back in his office was waiting for him to test it out. He put the scrap in his jacket pocket.
Back in his office, he put the scrap of paper on his desk and uncapped the pen.
He tested the nib.
He wrote a line.
He wrote another.
And then, because the phrase on the scrap lingered, the pen was new, the mind sometimes needing only a small playful prompt, he used the invitation as dialogue and wrote a little scene. As a test and a lark. As the first ripple of something that did not yet know it would become of institutional consequence.
He then placed the small scrap ‘Here, try this.’ into the Chance Decisions Drawer of his desk with all of the other paper slips from fortune cookies and other scraps with criptic statements on them that he used like the I Ching or runes or tarot cards. When required he would pull one out of the drawer, interpret it and act upon it when a new situation that does not have a known policy solution needed a decision.
He was called to another meeting and left the written scene incomplete. As he left, he happened, with his sleeve, to brush the ink test off the desk and to the floor unnoticed.
Within the hour, the janitorial team arrived.
Surfaces cleared, dusted, swept.
And so the fragment was lost but not missed in the most believable way possible: through ordinary routine.
to be continued…