mouse claw
In between tasks or even during tasks you stop what you are doing and for perhaps two minutes at a time you do not work. While not working you look at photos of people on the internet actively not working, enjoying themselves, maybe on holiday, or people just being somewhere with other people they like, or where there are no people at all, places where there is certainly no work. When they are not at work they can write about things that aren’t right in front of them. They write very well about things that happened to them a long time ago, or about things they made up; often it is hard to tell the difference between the two. You cannot make anything up. Tired, you reach for the familiar and minimal. They are pushing at something, passing through doors you never previously noticed. You have chosen not to read people who write about work. You are idle.
If the phone rings while you’re not working, you feel discovered, embarrassed. You expect to hear somebody asking you what you’re doing. But nobody ever asks you that unless they want you to do something else. So you go on for a few minutes more than you should. You make the browser window smaller, hunch your shoulders around the monitor. You think about the times when you weren’t working for days on end, and how pleasant that was, though it never occurred to you at the time. Back then everybody wrote about work and how hard it was and how tired they always were, how they never had time to write. You’re sure that there must be a way of reading this room, this chair, this desk, this screen. You feel certain that a better person than you could take what this is and turn it into something worth sharing. But what are you supposed to think about when all you are supposed to think about is work?
You look at your holiday photographs. You look at the surface of the water and you remember how it felt to swim in water so calm and warm. You think about how your legs hurt and your shoulders hurt and the muscles at the base of your thumb hurt. You take your hand off the mouse and rest it on the edge of the desk and begin to play about with the strip that runs along the flat side of the surface. You have never really been sure what your workspace is made from, but it is certainly wipe-clean, stainless and scratchproof. What you are pulling at is a long piece of grey plastic, approximately two inches wide and as long as the desk is long (which is very long). You’ve been pulling at it a little every day for no other reason that it is actually coming away from the desk a bit at a time. It began parting from the corner of your bank of desks and can now be lifted maybe half an inch away from the button of your chinos, on a good day.
Today is a bad day. You push the tips of the second and third fingers of your right hand into the space between the desk and the strip. It is pleasant to find that the strip then parts further from the desk, flexing backwards in a gentle arc which separates the object of your intent further still from its place in the world. Withdrawing your hand, satisfied, you find that your two prying fingers are covered in a resinous substance that has stained them black. Opening and closing your fingers in a gesture reminiscent of a child’s impression of scissors, you note a new difficulty in separating the fingers. More significantly, it appears quite impossible for you to use the computer mouse with the fingers of this hand without leaving a resinous residue on the two buttons which are effectively the trowel and mortar of your chosen profession.
This being the hayfever season, you recall that you left the house this morning with half a packet of tissues in your pocket. Unfortunately, the tissue does not improve the situation: your right hand is now covered with flecks of white fluff and torn crepe, giving it the appearance of a small, unhappy creature, tarred and feathered.
You lock your expression and put on your jacket and put your right hand in the pocket of your jacket (fingers clenched to avoid staining your good grey corduroy) and go to the bathroom to wash the resinous substance off. Happily, there is nobody else in the bathroom upon arrival. Activating the flow with your elbow, the column of aerated water feels not warm but hot and cold at once. After several applications of pink liquid soap, you realise that the resinous substance will not be washed away: the more you rub it, the harder it gets, until a few minutes later you come to realise that the second and third fingers of your right hand have actually set together.
Somebody else comes into the bathroom. You turn and go into a stall and close the door and sit on the toilet. Your heart is beating and you think about crying. You look at your hand. The resinous substance has formed a sort of black putty in between the two affected fingers. Pressed with a nail it feels soft, like the silicon sealant used around the rims of bathtubs, only it is also black, like the same seals thick with mould after years of exposure to standing water and steam. You take your keys from your pocket and try to cut away at it with the tip of a good Yale, but the metal teeth can find no purchase. You put your fingers in your mouth and bite away at the resinous substance, but the taste is so foul that it makes you retch into the toilet bowl.
You remain in the bathroom stall for some time. Eventually, you decide that you will make your excuses and go home for the day. You will tell nobody what has happened. Returning to your desk with your hand in your pocket, you realise that everybody else in the office has gone home. The sky outside is dark. You go back to your desk. You slip your two fingers between the desk and the plastic strip and you pull the strip all the way back. Beneath the plastic is something black inside the desk. It is wet and springy to the touch, tensed like a muscle; its fibres part to accept your whole right hand, which comes away blackened and glistening under the pale florescence of the office.
Sitting at your desk, you are pleasantly surprised to find that the solidified cast of your right hand now fits perfectly around a computer mouse. Your attention fixed on the monitor before you, you fail to notice the black roots of the desk gently winding themselves around your legs.
