Gwendy's Magic Feather

16

GWENDY SLEEPWALKS HER WAY through December 17, 1999, her final day at the office before Congress begins its three-week holiday break. She spends the first fifteen minutes convincing Bea that she feels well enough to be at work (the day before, the panicked receptionist was ready to call the paramedics when she found Gwendy vomiting into her trash can; luckily, Gwendy was able to convince her that it must’ve been something bad she ate for breakfast, and after agreeing to go home forty minutes early, the older woman finally relented) and the next eight-and-a-half hours resisting the urge to rush home and check on the button box.

She hated to leave the box back at the townhouse, especially after the scare at her kitchen door the night before, but she didn’t have much of a choice. No telling how the X-ray machines at the security checkpoints would react to the box, and perhaps even more worrisome, no telling how the box would react to being X-rayed. Gwendy didn’t have a clue what the inside of the button box looked like, or what its innards were made of, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

Before she left for her two-block walk to the Capitol Building, she hid the box at the back of a narrow crawlspace underneath the staircase. She stacked cardboard boxes full of books on each side and in front of it, and laid a pile of winter coats on top of it all. Once she was satisfied, she closed the crawlspace’s small door, locked up the townhouse, and started for work. She managed only to return home to check on the box twice before finally making it into the office.

Gwendy’s last day passes in a blur of faceless voices and background noise. Several phone conferences in the morning and a pair of brief committee meetings in the afternoon. She doesn’t remember much of what was said in any of them, or even what she ate for lunch.

When five o’clock rolls around, she locks her office and sets off to deliver Christmas gifts to a handful of co-workers—a set of scented candles and bath salts for Patsy, a cashmere sweater and bracelet for Bea, and a stack of signed books for Bea’s children. After well-wishes and hugs goodbye, she heads for the lobby.