Gildenheart -4- The Office (Patreon)

Phyllis led him along a hallway chattering. “I wonder what Mr. Spaight wants? We hardly ever even see him. And well, usually when he wants to see someone it’s not good. Sorry to say that.” She added the last after glancing at Gordie’s face.

What am I going to do if I get fired? Gordie wondered. I don’t even know what my job is and I’m about to lose it?

The hallway opened out into rooms filled with lockers and then one large room with benches where women were working at sewing machines. It took Gordie a moment to realize that’s what they were.

The noise in this room, with dozens of women and girls sewing was incredible. Phyllis pointed down another hallway toward a door with a window in it. “Mr. Spaight,” she yelled directly into Gordie’s ear.

Nodding, clutching his time card, he set off for the door. He still wore the heavy coat and the hat, though the room was much warmer here and most of the other girls had gotten rid of the heavier clothing and some were wearing just blouse and skirt.

But it would be silly to take everything off if he was about to be let go. When he finally reached the door, he hesitated. Was he supposed to knock? Doing so seemed safer so he lifted a hand and knocked. Maybe a little too lightly. Would anyone hear that? He knocked again, noting this time how tiny his fist seemed beside the door frame.

The door opened. A tall man wearing a white shirt and red tie stood there. “Miss Gordon,” he said. “Come in.”

Why am I so scared? Gordie wondered. He doesn’t have a 37mm aircraft cannon. He stepped inside and moved out of the way as the man closed the door.

“Miss Gordon, please have a seat.” Mr. Spaight gestured at an armless, backless stool in front of a large wooden office desk while he moved behind it to sit in an upholstered swivel chair. He sighed and gestured with his hands. “Vickie, what are we going to do with you?” he said in an obviously managerial voice.

Gordie didn’t know what to say so he kept quiet. 

“No suggestions?” Mr. Spaight seemed both amused and distracted.

He’s looking at my chest, Gordie realized. He glanced down himself and was reminded of why a man might be looking there, even with things covered in at least four layers of cloth. I’m stacked, he reminded himself, resisting the impulse to wriggle under the boss’s gaze.

“You are the worst seamstress in the building,” said the manager, still staring half a foot below Gordie’s chin. “Phyllis tells me that she had to show you how to thread a bobbin again every Monday. A day and a half off work and you forgot.”

Gordie turned bright red.

Mr. Spaight continued. “So we moved you to shipping. All you had to do was fold shirts and put six of them at a time, all the same size, into boxes.” He glanced up, causing Gordie to cringe. “You couldn’t handle that either. Boxes with five or seven shirts of random sizes, some folded, some not, made up about half of your product.”

Gordie felt the floor sinking under the stool. He hadn’t felt so low since he’d flunked penmanship in the third grade. It’s not my fault, he wanted to protest, Vickie is the one who must be a moron.

Spaight suddenly stood up and stalked back and forth behind the desk. “Miss Gildenheart says we should spank you, to get your attention.”

Gordie stared. Was the man serious? He felt his chin begin to tremble. Oh, no! I’m not going to cry! Who was this Gildenheart person? Gordie opened his mouth but the only sound that came out might have been a sob.

“Miss G. says you’re doing it deliberately to get attention and because you know we can’t fire you.” Spaight tried to scowl but instead his eyebrows shot upward and he almost smiled.

Gordie felt a giggle escape, thought it might have been another strangled sob.

Spaight rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Give me your time card, Miss Gordon.” He took the offered card quickly but when his fingers touched Gordie’s soft hand something happened.

Gordie looked up quickly, directly into Mr. Spaight’s eyes. He wants me, Gordie thought. He wants me bad. Gordie opened his mouth slightly and touched the tip of his tongue to his upper lip. Why on Earth did I do that?

Mr. Spaight moved quickly to one of the other doors in the room. “Stay there, Miss Gordon,” he commanded before leaving, taking the time card and a stricken expression with him.

Gordie sniffed and used one end of the scarf Phyllis had tied around his neck to wipe a tear off his cheek. Unable to sit still any longer, he squirmed on the stool. He felt two hot, hard spots on his chest where Mr. Spaight had been staring. Worse, he felt a warm place between his bottom and the stool.

He closed his eyes and shook his head. What’s happening? he wondered.

After several minutes left alone in the manager’s office to fidget on an uncomfortable stool, Gordie realized that the heat in the room was part of his discomfort. Fumbling at the buttons for most of a minute, he managed to open the heavy overcoat but then realized that the strap of the handbag crossing his body from shoulder to hip prevented him from removing the coat.

He pulled the strap off over his head, briefly tangling it in his mass of curly blond hair, before finally placing the bag on the desk in front of him. Then he shrugged out of the overcoat and let it drape down to the floor, covering the stool. “That’s a lot more comfortable,” he said out loud.

He started to take off the lighter jacket, too, but then remembered the items he had shoveled from the top of the dresser into the bag when he left Vickie’s room in the boarding house. Hadn’t one of those things had been money? If he lost Vickie’s job, he might be needing money.

“I really don’t know how to sew but I think I could handle folding and packing shirts,” he said. Even if Vickie couldn’t, he finished silently.

Opening the bag in front of him, he peered inside. Several pieces of jewelry caught his eye first. A necklace, a pair of earrings, several bracelets and a ring lay atop the paper money he had seen earlier. When he pulled the cash out of bag, the jewelry and several coins slipped deeper into the purse.

Why did I think this was money, Gordie wondered, staring at the multi-colored paper in his hands? The ink wasn’t the usual mostly dull green color of the American money Gordie had seen all his life. Instead each slip of paper sparkled with brilliant blue, red, and gold. And they came in different sizes, too.

They reminded him of nothing so much as the pound notes he had seen during an assignment in the UK. That’s why I thought they were money, he decided. Closer examination showed the denominations marked at each corner. The mostly red notes were £1. The blue notes were £5 and the one gold note was marked £10. Each value physically larger than the next smaller denomination.

Gordie tried to add up the values but kept losing track. He bit his lip in frustration after trying to count how many slips of paper he had in total. He closed his eyes, trying not to panic. Maybe I can’t do the job of folding and packing that Vickie couldn’t do either, he thought. 

He opened his eyes and examined the money more closely. If he was in New York, why did he have so much British cash?

One side of each note was in a primary color and showed the face of a bearded man. Gordie squinted, trying to read the inscription below the image. “It’s not in English!” he finally realized. Frederick IV Rex he made out as the first part. “King Fred?” England had never had a King Fred, had they? The rest of engraved title seemed to be abbreviations like “Emp. Mun. Mar,” and “Nov. Ang.” and “Pro. Fid.”

The back side of each note featured some architectural or mechanical design: bridges, locomotives, castles, farm machinery. The rest of the printing on the notes looked, not exactly blurry but indistinct. Maybe I need glasses? he thought.

Tears began to trickle down Gordie’s face. I’m not only a girl now, but a genuinely stupid one who seems to live in a different time and maybe even a different universe. Did that bogie kill me and I’m in hell?

He wiped his face with a pink sleeve, then dug back into the purse, pulling out the jewelry which turned out to be several rather fine looking pieces. Gordie was no expert but the weight and sparkle of the pieces convinced him that they were probably worth more than the cash.

But I don’t even know how much a pound would buy here. In my world, a pound was less than two dollars and two dollars wouldn’t buy a cup of coffee most places. He looked around the room again. Everything looked antique, maybe prices were antique, too. 

He fingered the jewelry, debating as to whether he should put it on. He finally decided to do so. The stuff belonged to Vickie didn’t it? And wasn’t he Vickie now? Or was he Sarah Gordon, the name he had read on the time card? He frowned, that hadn’t been as hard to read as the banknotes. Bigger type or just a familiar name? 

At least the Gordon part was familiar; his Air Force self had been named Gordon Victor. Was that where the Vickie part came from? That made no sense at all.

The bracelets went on easily enough. Three of them, yes, one, two, three; simple circular bands with braided detail, two gold and one silver-colored. He put all of them on his left wrist and the ring fit the pinkie on his right hand. It had a small blue crystal that he wondered if it might be a sapphire.

The necklace wasn’t hard to put on either and it had three blue stones matching the ring. The earrings had hooks like question marks and dangled sparkles in gold settings. He found the holes in Vickie’s earlobes and slipped the earrings on. Too.

I wish I had a mirror, he mused. Then realized his mood had improved enormously after putting on the jewelry. I feel…? I feel more… in control?

He neatened up the stack of paper money, resolving to try to count it again later, feeling sure he could if he weren’t so stressed out.

Another dip into the bag brought out a brown leather billfold trimmed with blue cord. The cash from the desktop went into the little compartment, joining several other bills there. A built-in coin pouch held a dozen or more coins of various sizes and metals. All but one of them had the head of King Fred, the exception being a small bright yellow coin with the antlered head of a deer on one side and some network of some sort on the other. The inscriptions on all the coins were difficult and frustrating to try to read and Gordie gave up.

Two of the coins were bright red gold in color and very heavy for their size. I know I’m going to get cheated if I try to buy anything, Gordie thought. I don’t know what anything is worth and I can’t count the change.

Diving into the bag again produced a hair brush, a comb and a large circular object that turned out to be a cleverly built cosmetic case with various dry powders and brushes to apply them. Gordie had next to no idea about the workings of make-up and after a glance in the mirrored lid at Vickie’s face, he set the compact aside.

A velvet bag brought from the bottom of the purse turned out to contain more gold coins, some jewelry and loose gems (!?) and two tiny notebooks, each no larger than Vickie’s dainty hands. 

Gordie spotted the word “Bank” in gold on the cover of the dark blue book and opened that one first. The first page had a lot of cursive handwriting at the top that might as well have been in Sanskrit. Unlike some people a bit younger than him back home, Gordie could read cursive but apparently, Vickie could not.

The rest of the first page and most of the rest of the book was filled with numbers which Vickie could read individually but Gordie could not make any sense of them collectively except that the string of numbers got progressively longer further into the book. Almost every line seemed to be written in a different hand or even different color ink.

It reminded Gordie of a check register or maybe a spreadsheet. There were the little pound signs throughout. It’s a record of a bank account, Gordie decided. Maybe Vickie doesn’t need this job after all?

The other plain black book turned out to contain lines of what seemed to be initials followed by numbers and sometimes stars. It was all written in the same messy hand, in pencil, with block capitals and some letters or numerals written reversed, and sometimes a line had numbers first, followed by initials. While the book itself was lined like notepaper, the writing had trouble staying properly located.

Gordie had the feeling that Vickie had written in the black book herself but what was it supposed to be?

Another small cloth bag in the bottom of the purse contained a pair of silky panties and two folded over sanitary napkins in paper envelopes. Yikes, thought Gordie.

The bottom of the bag held more coins, pencil stubs, lint, scraps of paper and two small pearl earrings. Gordie carefully put everything where it should be and refilled the purse, musing on what he had found and especially what all that told him about the previous occupant of the body he now owned.

Just what had happened to Vickie? Had her consciousness been put into his body? Had she died with his body in some other world? How had he come to be where and who he was?

Magic? Super-science? God?