The woman put her handbag on the counter with both hands, carefully, as though setting down something breakable. It was April 6, and I had already told three people where to wait before I recognized the folded request she held. I remembered its torn corner, not her face. She had come about a record that had not arrived. This time she did not ask where it was. She asked whether anyone had read her complaint.
"I can check," I said, reaching for the ordinary log. That was still how I understood the problem: an overdue task, something misplaced between one person and the next. Beside me, Ellis stopped sorting the mail. The woman looked from him to me. Her coat cuff had a dark line where the lining had separated, and she kept pushing it back into place with her thumb.
"I can't keep coming here," she said. "I don't get paid for standing at this window. I lost another morning today." She flattened the request on the counter. "Last time I wrote it all down because somebody said that was how to get an answer. Now you're going to look in the same book and tell me you don't know."
I wanted to explain that I hadn't been the person who gave that advice. The distinction rose in me before any useful answer did. I swallowed it and asked her to wait while I checked the written complaints. Ellis said my name softly, but I was already going to the shared cabinet. I unlocked it with my key and found the manila envelope on the lower shelf, where he had said it would be.
He came to stand beside me. I took the sheets out without unfolding them all at once. Six, still together. I opened each far enough to see the dates and requests, then found the complaint that matched the slip at the window. There was no forwarding cover with them, no attached response. "Did these go anywhere?" I asked. Ellis looked toward the counter before answering.
"Not yet."
"You said that afternoon."
"Keep your voice down." He placed two fingers on the cabinet door, preventing it from swinging shut. "I was going to settle the dates first. Then the training-transfer recommendation came up. Six complaints sitting there would have made it look as though I couldn't handle the work I was asking to teach."
I held the woman's sheet between the others so I would not lose its place. "These aren't about how it looks."
"I know that. I'm explaining why." He glanced again toward the window. "Once the recommendation was farther along, I could send them with the explanations. I didn't expect her to come back like this."
That last sentence changed the room for me. Until then I had been counting missed Fridays and unfinished covers. Now there was a woman waiting within sight of us whose lost wages had not figured in either of our calculations. I had put my initials on a confirmation four days earlier, and she was standing there because the work behind that confirmation had not been done.
I went back to the window carrying only her request slip. I could not promise a result or tell her a review had begun. "I found your written complaint," I said. "I can't verify that it's been forwarded for an answer." Her face tightened, not in surprise but in recognition. She asked who could verify it. I said I needed to take the matter to my supervisor, then stopped short of pretending I had already done so.
"So I still don't have an answer."
"No. You don't." I wrote down the request information she had brought and gave her back her own slip. It was less than she had come for. She buttoned her coat, picked up her handbag, and moved away before I could dress the exchange in an apology that would have required nothing of me.
When the line thinned, Ellis asked whether I intended to make a report. I told him we had to correct the summary. He said we should talk when we could talk properly. I returned the six sheets to the envelope and put it back on the lower shelf, with him watching. Nothing had disappeared. That was a small comfort I could still manufacture, and I used it. When I locked the cabinet, I understood that I was no longer waiting for an errand to be finished. I was choosing who would be allowed to keep waiting.