The New New Bobbi Commiskey

 

Kim Shable

 

 

            I am the new new Bobbi Commiskey.

            The old new Bobbi Commiskey quit after three weeks. She couldn’t stand the picture on her desk, the one of Bobbi Commiskey surrounded by children of employees past, wearing an elf costume that showed too much of her vericose legs. Above all their heads, a banner: Ho Ho Ho and Happy Holidays, Including Chanukah, Too! Glad to see that even in 1965 Credit General was socially conscious.

            She couldn’t stand the picture, and she couldn’t stand the backlash, the inevitable discounting of a rebound secretary. Bobbi Commiskey would never have filed it that way. Bobbi Commiskey knew all of our customer’s children and dogs—by name. Bobbi Commiskey, standard bearer. Bobbi Commiskey—bigger than Jesus.

            So she called me, the old new Bobbi Commiskey did, because she knew I was hurting for money. We had gone to undergrad together, majored in English, although it might as well have been a clown college for all the good it did us. I had just been fired from a job at the Super 8 as a laundry girl, forsaking the pursuit of the eight-fold path for the money that accompanied the two-fold bath mat. A heads-up—if you ever stay at a Super 8 motel, chances are your towels have been dropped on the floor before they were hung in your room. Sometimes, when it was hot, I would wipe my face with them. Just a heads-up.

            But I got caught practicing my wink in the glass door separating me from the rest of the motel—a girl ought to have a good wink, that’s my motto—and got fired. This story isn’t about the Super 8. It’s not even about me. It’s about Bobbi Commiskey.

            So. Anyway.

            We got together on her lunch break from Credit General, and she still had on her ID badge, the picture of her face all smudgy like it had just been sneezed on, and she tells me she wants out.

            “I am not Bobbi Commiskey,” said the old new Bobbi Commiskey.

            “Would you ever want to be?” I asked. We ordered Cokes and cheese sticks. The waiter had hoped for a bigger tip, so he pressed us into buying mushroom caps, even though I, as a general rule, do not eat fungus.

            “No. But that’s all they want. They want a new fucking Bobbi Commiskey. And I just can’t do it.”

            “You’ve only been there three weeks.”

            “It would take fifty years to be as good as Bobbi Commiskey.”

            “I doubt it,” I said.

            “You doubt it,” she said.

            “Yeah. I could do it. If I wanted to.”

            “There’s a picture of her on my desk,” she said. “They won’t let me take it down. The place is like a fucking temple, and she’s the cursed mummy.”

            “I could do it. If I wanted to. If you wanted me to. I could do it.”

            So that afternoon, the old new Bobbi Commiskey turned in her letter of resignation, and to it stapled a glowing letter of recommendation for me. Why they took the word of a failed faux Commiskey I have no idea. But they hired me that afternoon. And here I am, four weeks later, the new new Bobbi Commiskey, staring at that picture of her in the elf costume, grotesquely enthralled with the missing finger on her left hand, which is frozen forever on the shoulder of a young boy who stares at her with cake frosting glee.

 

            Michael Peters, I wish you nothing but ill will.

            Meteor shower, maybe, smash in the hood of your pretend sports car. A Honda, not a sports car. Not even a good color. I wish your underwear would tighten and snap you in half. I wish your toenails would grow overlong, creep up the length of your body and stab you in the eyes while you sleep. That’s how much ill will I wish you, Michael Peters.

            Michael Peters, my boss, my enemy, my white whale, he comes up to my desk today and tells me I have to go through the garbage again.

            “You have to go through the garbage again,” he says, just like that. “You threw away something important. We need to get it back.”

            “How do you know what I threw away?” Michael Peters is a tiny man, no taller than me. He has a mustache the same color as his skin, totally clear, so you can’t even tell he has it unless you’re standing right up next to him. His feet are tiny. He walks as if he were constantly hearing the “Sanford and Son” theme song in his head.

            “It’s missing from your desk. I can see where it used to be from here.”

            “You’re not talking about the old pro-rata wheels, are you?”

            “You bet your sweet bippy I am.”

            Michael Peters, may your ear hair grow long enough for a comb-over. “The wheels from 1968 through 1983?”

            “So, you know what I’m talking about, then.”

            “Those wheels are so out of date—when would we ever use those? When do we ever use the pro-rata wheels?”

            “To prorate policies.”

            “But what does that even mean?”

            “Listen, what if we had an old policy from, like, 1974, and they canceled it today? How would we prorate it without those wheels?”

            I open my mouth to speak, but before anything comes out, he points a sausagey little finger at me. “I don’t like your attitude, young lady. Bobbi Commiskey would never have stood for this. She would have shown me the respect I deserved. And she never would have thrown those wheels away.”

            “She never would have thrown anything away. There is gum from 1974 in my desk. 1974. I wasn’t even born then.”

            “Bobbi Commiskey…” Sweet God, sweet merciful God, no no no. “Bobbi Commiskey…” It’s coming, it comes, it approaches, the Why Bobbi Commiskey Had More Integrity in Her Missing Finger Stump Than You Will Ever Have speech. You can practically hear the Star Spangled Banner thrumming behind him as he speaks. “Bobbi Commiskey was an integral part of the corporation before your parents were born. And do you want to know why?”

            I say nothing.

            “I said do you want to know why? I’ll tell you why. One word. Integrity. She cared about this company. This company would have been nothing without Bobbi Commiskey. Do you understand me?”

            “She was just a receptionist, sir.”

            “No. You’re just a receptionist. She was a secretary. But she was more than a secretary. She knew everything about this company. Everyone’s name. Everyone’s birthday. The whereabouts of every account. Client information. She stayed late every day. She threw parties for the kids. She—”

            How big is Michael Peters’ penis, do you think?

 

            They say Bobbi Commiskey cut off the ring finger on her left hand because she thought she’d never need it. They say she did it right here at work, stuck her finger under the blade of the paper cutter and just hacked it off, went back to work, like nothing. They say if you look hard enough at the carpet in the copy room, you can still see some of the blood. They say a lot of things about Bobbi Commiskey, though, so I don’t know what to believe.

            The pro-rata wheels are back on their rightful hook on my cubicle wall. I had to touch someone’s mayonnaisey sandwich to get them out. I hate pro-rata wheels. And I hate Bobbi Commiskey. I hate her stupid desk, which I may not rearrange, according to a list of rules that were handed to me by Michael Peters on my first day of work:

1.     YOU MAY NOT remove the photograph of Bobbi Commiskey

2.     YOU MAY NOT rearrange her files and/or her desk, and/or her cabinets

3.     YOU MAY NOT reprogram the telephone speed dial buttons

4.     YOU MAY NOT appropriate things left by Bobbi Commiskey for your own use

5.     YOU MAY feel free to bring in a decorative calendar or wall hanging (provided it fits in the space allotted by hangings and decorative touches left by previous secretaries, namely, Bobbi Commiskey)

 

            My job: make calls. Balance figures, presumably prorated. Make calls about the figures. Accept calls: Thank you for calling Credit General Phoenix Reinsurance Services, may I help you? Go down to accounts receivable. Figure time sheets. Don’t touch anything. Plan the Christmas party. Plan the children’s Christmas party. This seemed to be how Bobbi Commiskey spent most of her time.

            This year, the company party will be at the Raintree. The children’s party will be at Sea World. The whales would be gone this time of year, but they keep sharks or something all year round. And a big slide. We were promised a big slide.

            The children get gifts. Last year, it was Puffalumps. Big, Christmas-themed Puffalumps, in the shape of mice and hippos, all with Christmas hats. The Jewish kids got toy guns, because there were no Chanukah Puffalumps. This year, they’re all getting Transformers, even the girls. Screw them.

            As I pore through the catalog of suitable adult gifts—which would a Credit General employee appreciate more, embroidered Credit General towels or stamped cork Credit General coasters?-- Possibly Gay Man ambles up to my desk.

            “I need to go through Bobbi’s files,” he says.

            Possibly Gay Man is possibly gay. I’m not really sure yet, but once, at an office outing, he told me he would turn gay if Ricky Martin asked him to, so I think that’s a good sign. And he always wears a belt. “You mean my files,” I say. “I work here now. Bobbi hasn’t worked here in like six months.”

            “Yeah, but Bobbi organized the files. So I need to look through them.”

            “You mean my files?”

            “Yes. Bobbi’s files.” He enters my cube like a tyrannosaur and rifles through the A-G cabinet. “Bobbi once told me she had a file in here on the clients’ favorite sodas. Do you know anything about that?”

            “No, I—”

            “Do you think it would be under Coke? Or soft drinks? Which one?”

            “I have no idea.”

            He looks at me with sandpaper eyes. “Of course you don’t.”

            “Who are you taking to the Christmas party?” I ask as he continues rooting through Bobbi’s—my—files.

            “Doesn’t matter. It’s a work thing. We’ll be there what, twenty minutes? I tell you what, though. If Peters doesn’t bring Bobbi Commiskey, I’ll shit my pants.”

 

            The phone rings later.

            “Thank you for calling Credit General Phoenix Reinsurance Services, may I help you?”

            “Michael Peters, please.”

            “He’s not in right now.” He’s in, he’s so in, sitting in his office, filing his nails, I can see him from here. “Can I help you?”

            “This is Dr. Durocher from Hillcrest… I was instructed to call him in case of emergency.”

            “Emergency to what?”

            “Bobbi Commiskey? Does that name sound familiar to you?”

            “What? What happened to Bobbi Commiskey?”

            “Nothing, nothing serious. It’s—well. It’s that I can’t tell you. I should really wait to talk to Mr. Peters.”

            “I’ll get him, he just walked in, hold, hold on.”

            In Michael Peters’ office: “Phone call. Hospital. Bobbi Commiskey.”

            He jumps. I hover around my desk while he takes the call, dusting her knickknacks, running my hands over her stash of candy boxes in the corner of the cube. To give out to visiting clients, I guessed. The chocolate inside would be white and waxy.

            “Heart trouble? Yes. I knew about the heart trouble.” A pause. He scratches his clear mustache, his peek-a-boo mustache. His eyes look watery. “That’s all? Congestive heart failure? That’s not so bad. Right? Just having trouble getting around then, right? For observation, that’s the only reason? Right?”

            Poor, poor Bobbi Commiskey. Not even a next-of-kin to call in case of emergency, she has to call her old boss. My heart, it breaks for you, Bobbi Commiskey. I open one of the chocolate boxes and pop a candy in my mouth, only it’s not a candy. I spit the piece into my hand. A finger. Bobbi Commiskey’s ring finger. Chopped off at the joint.

 

            It’s not until the day before that Michael Peters tells me about the elf costume. The kids want their presents from an elf, not a woman in a suit and heels. We are a family company. And Bobbi Commiskey never complained.

            It’s her elf costume, too, worn out in the behind, faux fur trimmings yellowing with age. It smells like menthol cigarettes. There is no way I’m wearing this, I tell him. Oh, you’ll wear it and you’ll like it, he says. Merry Christmas.

            Now I’m standing at the bottom of the big slide at Sea World—it’s not even that big, it’s like medium big, not super big, not like it was described to me over the phone—and handing out gifts to the bundled up baby seal children who reach the bottom. A couple of kids have tried to hit me up twice—tough luck, fatso, I know who you are, I wanted to tell this one little boy, Possibly Gay Man’s boy—whoops—but of course I just smiled and said Santa’s Elves Know All, and plus I can see the Transformer in your pocket. Someone snaps my picture, smiling at him like that, my hand on his shoulder, saying, through clenched teeth, end of the line, boy.

            After awhile all the kids have gotten theirs and are clustered around this one mascot, the only one Sea World could dig up for us—Mamu, Shamu’s wife, you can tell it’s a girl because she’s wearing an apron—and kicking her. I guess I would be, too, if I were a kid at a Sea World outside, in the winter, and not a good Sea World, Sea World of Ohio, and there weren’t even any sharks or anything, just penguins and this one really sad porpoise in a heated tank. You could feed it fish, but this fish cost extra, and they would freeze to your mittens if you touched them, so it’s just going to starve today.

            So I go and change. They’ve gotten all they can from me, there are no more Transformers, and I even gave away a couple of Puffalumps I found in the storage closet. I fold the elf costume up and put it back in its box, this hand-decorated circular box with Christmas trees painted all over it, the words HAPPY X-MAS painted in script on the top. Bobbi Commiskey would have been here. Still in the hospital, though. The adult party is in just a few hours, enough time for us all to run home and put on our spangly gowns and ties, and hurry back to the Raintree, where we will be greeted by stacks and stacks of cut glass Credit General ashtrays, free for the taking, that’s for all your hard work.

            Michael Peters is going alone. On his RSVP he crossed out “and guest,” so I would know not to order that many more shrimp cocktails.

            When I come out of the bathroom the kids are like it’s the elf, get her, the elf!  So I run to my car and head out, knowing, as Sea World recedes in my mirrors, that Bobbi Commiskey would have stayed there and taken it like a man.

 

            At the Christmas party I meet Possibly Gay Man’s wife, a tall woman with shoulder blades like a tackle dummy, her body draped in a sparkle-infested muumuu. Lovely to meet you, she says. I always wanted to see who could replace Bobbi Commiskey.

            “No one could replace Bobbi Commiskey,” I say, before anyone else can, and bite the head off a shrimp. I lay the body in my cut glass Credit General ashtray and move along. I start to disembowel another when Michael Peters claps his hand on my shoulder.

            “Missed you at the kids’ party today,” he says. He is wearing a rented tux.

            “I was there. I was the girl in the elf costume.”

            “I know, but you took off afterward.”

            “Listen, they were going to kick me. Didn’t you see what they did to Mamu?”

            He laughs, his mustache sparkling in the dim light. “I don’t blame you. I just wanted to let you know. Um. That you did a good job there. Nice… nice job.”

            I feel like the beauty queen atop the biggest float in the awkward parade. “Thanks, Mr. Peters. I appreciate it.”

            “I think Bobbi would have been proud.”

            “Thanks.”

            He looks at me through his little mole eyes, squinty already and made squintier by the cheap champagne I ordered from Sam’s Club. “Listen. I know I’ve been kind of hard on you. But I was wondering. Would you ever… you know. Go out with me?”

            “Not if you were the last can of food during a hurricane.”

            He sighs. “That’s what I thought.” Unspoken: neither would Bobbi Commiskey.

 

            On our message machine on Monday, a call from Dr. Durocher: Bobbi is stabilizing. Everything looks fine. Some damage to the heart, but nothing he can’t fix. On my desk: an eight-by-ten glossy of me with Possibly Gay Man’s son.

            “Great picture.” Howard, from Accounts Receivable. He got one, too. Everyone got one. “It’s going to be part of the new prospective employee brochure, that’s what they tell me in publicity.”

            Michael Peters waves his at me as he walks by. “Great. We should frame it, huh? Get it up on the desk?”

            I spend the afternoon dealing with the fallout of the elf picture and collating get well letters from employees, ex-employees, children of ex-employees, all for Bobbi Commiskey. Michael Peters will take it over to the hospital after he gets off work today. The letters all read the same: Thank you so much, Miss Commiskey, for being a part of my childhood or working life or daily grind. Some are written in crayon by the last wave of children ever to know her, Possibly Gay Man’s son, his friends, the whale-kickers. One kid drew a picture of her, gave her back her ring finger, if only in peach-colored crayon.

            Bobbi Commiskey, I put your finger in the filing cabinet under losses. I hope you don’t mind.

           

            I never hear it directly from anyone, not from the doctor, not from Michael Peters. But there is a box of black armbands on my desk this morning, and I will distribute them dutifully, without a word. A turn for the worse, it must have been. Unforeseen damages. Michael Peters already has one on when I stop by his office. Without a word, he hands me a placard, a new silver placard to replace the old one: my name, and then, secretary.

            Bobbi Commiskey is dead.

            Long live the new new Bobbi Commiskey.