#creative liberties

It had started as a glib comment on your first day.

“You the new desk jockey?” a soldier walking by had asked as you booted up your computer for the first time.

Surprised, you burbled, “Oh, yes! So nice to meet you.” You scurried around the desk to shake his hand, but he was already halfway down the hall.

Desk jockey. Apt, you supposed. More than half of the people who worked on this base were soldiers, medics, or other specialists that regularly saw combat. The rest, like you, were administrative. It was natural for the warriors to look down on the pencil-pushers like you, sitting in a cushioned chair all day while they hunkered in sniper’s nests or breached enemy bases amidst sprays of bullets. They were more important in every way that mattered.

But after several years in this industry, you knew that nothing happened on those battlefields without mounds and mounds of paperwork. Equipment had to be ordered or requisitioned; flights needed to be booked and paid for; missions had to be scheduled around any number of factors; permits needed to be filed to secure space to stage vehicles; and each op required approvals beforehand and reports afterwards. Administration sure as hell wasn’t as sexy as parachuting out of helicopters with definitely-compensating-for-something machine guns, but it was every bit as crucial for international peacekeeping.

When Kate Laswell hired you as Operations Coordinator for Task Force 141, you were beside yourself with joy. Naturally organized, impeccable attention to detail, great people skills – you were born for this role.

So while it was a bit disheartening to be relegated to “desk jockey” mere minutes into the new job, you took it on the chin. Give it a week, you thought to yourself, not smugly, but with the confidence of a woman who had never handed in a late assignment in her life. They’ll see what I’m capable of.

And they did. Kyle and Johnny came around to you right away, eager to answer your questions and grateful for your hard work. They explained that your predecessor was a combat vet who only took the job when he was discharged.  Kyle described the man’s work ethic as “whatever the opposite of above and beyond is… below and within?” which had led to mission complications more than once.

The Captain took a lot longer to warm up. He at first mistook your sunny attitude for absent-mindedness, observing you circumspectly as he waited for the other shoe to drop. But the only things that dropped were meticulously annotated reports on his desk, with executive summaries and arrow-shaped stickers where he needed to sign. If there was one thing that could earn his trust, it was competence. Once he saw your clerical prowess, you became one of his favorite people on base.

The jury was still out on Ghost, who remained an enigma almost certainly on purpose. But somewhere along the way, you liked to think that his grunts of dismissal turned into grunts of indifference and eventually grunts of acknowledgement.

So, as the months went by, you self-deprecatingly referred to yourself as the desk jockey. Then a few of the soldiers started saying it like it was your name, especially as your reputation grew. (“Your admin doesn’t know where that file is? Ask 141’s desk jockey, she’ll know.”) It didn’t take long for Johnny to shorten it to DJ.

And just like Gaz and Soap and Ghost, you gained your own callsign. You liked to think of it as one of those terms where the original meaning had evolved past its etymological roots. No one remembered that “laser” and “scuba” started as acronyms – they were just words. And you were just DJ.

Well, very few people on base would preface your moniker with “just.” You were a tour de force, streamlining and updating and improving everything you touched. Operatives complained that their report submission software is slow? There’s a memo on Price’s desk the next morning comparing alternatives with pros, cons, and costs. Backlog of hard copy files from 1978 – 1985 that needed digitizing? The portable scanner started going with you everywhere as you blazed through file after file during downtime. That grumpy guy in the office down the hall bitched about running out of K-cups for the Keurig? Now dark roast and decaf are on auto-ship, with a new, rotating flavor added each month.

As you settled in, you found opportunities to make things easier for your team. You distributed printed calendars before the start of each month. Technically they received them by email as well, but you figured they might want to leave a hard copy on their bureau to glance at when they were trying to plan their days. As you learned more about each of them, you began to add custom doodles along the borders: cartoonish bombs for Johnny, the mascot of Kyle’s favorite football club, smiling roaches for Gary, little skulls for Ghost. At first you were nervous they might find it unprofessional, but Johnny was so delighted he started showing it to his colleagues in other departments (“Bet yer admin dinnae do that for ye”). It became another one of those quirks the 141 was known for.

Laswell always commented that she didn’t know where you got the energy, but the answer was simple. You loved the 141 – the boys, you called them, like you were their mom. They were brave and generous and funny and hard-working. They saw you and appreciated you, accepted you into their little found family. And on an even more basic level, you all got on like a house on fire. Kyle was a huge gossip who loved to dish about anything he overheard in the gym or cafeteria. Johnny was easily the best storyteller on base – frankly you would listen to him read the phone book with that accent – but he was also a surprisingly good listener. Price might come off as gruff, but you bonded over a shared love of classic films and threw friendly jabs back and forth like old pals.

And then, there was Ghost. You had a soft spot for him, knowing he’d had a hard life although you weren’t privy to the details. He had never been rude to you, even if his demeanor was aloof. Your foremost goal was never to be an added stressor. You didn’t need recognition or a smile or a pat on the back; you were perfectly content being just as much of a ghost as he was, as long as it made his life easier.

When your probationary period was up, you were given access to petty cash for miscellaneous office expenses. Through careful budgeting, you were able to spend most of it on little treats for the team: sports drinks, protein bars, and a stash of candy that you distributed liberally when someone stopped by to chat with you.

Birthdays were your favorite, because you loved celebrating people rather than what they could contribute. You knew everyone’s favorite baked good (recorded on an ancient piece of looseleaf tucked beneath your cup of pens) and would bring enough for folks from other departments to share. Everyone had important work to do, so the festivities had to be efficient: a card handed over in the morning signed by the staff, their favorite flavor of cake stationed in the breakroom throughout the day, and an optional activity in the afternoon, like guessing which of several baby pictures was the birthday boy. Two years ago, you had organized a mini roast for Johnny that people still circulated clips of.

Not everyone enjoyed these extravagant displays. Some soldiers on base, especially the older ones, called them frivolous – which, you supposed, was true.  But what’s so bad about frivolity between deployments, little respites of silly, normal things before plunging back into the whirlpools of war?

Ghost would participate in the parties, lean against the far wall with his arms crossed and an amused gleam in his eye, but it was obvious from your first day on the job that he would never wish to be the center of attention himself. He even made Kyle pass along the message that he did not want a “pin the mask on Simon” game (okay, you made one “pin the cigar on Price” poster and everyone got scared they were next…) or anything else in the breakroom for his birthday. Of course you wouldn’t do that! This was about celebrating him, on his own terms.

So early on the morning of his birthday, you snuck into the locker room with a skeleton key Price had let you borrow to set up his surprise. You quickly taped up the goofy ghost and skeleton decorations –purchased online from a Halloween depot – and placed his gifts on the top shelf: a bottle of scotch, a dish of blackberry crumble, and a slip of paper stylized like a coupon that said, “good for one free smack to Johnny’s head.” You hoped that if nothing else, the silliness of it would make him smile.

He never commented on it, so you had no idea how it went over. But when you did the same next year, you saw him leaving with the bottle of scotch gripped in one hand and the Tupperware container in the other. He tipped his head towards you and held up the bottle as though to say “cheers,” and you smiled like an idiot for the rest of the evening.

The toughest part of your job – emotionally, at least – was when the 141 went away on missions. They could be gone for anywhere from a few days to a few months. The office became dreadfully dull, like a regular 9 to 5 instead of your dream job, during those periods. There was still plenty of work to do, as periodic reports and requests trickled in from the field, not to mention your years-long reorganization project to clean up the previous admin’s mess. And of course, you worried terribly that one of them may not come back. When they finally returned, it always felt like Christmas morning to you.

In short, being hired as the Operations Coordinator for the 141 – becoming DJ – was one of the best things that had ever happened to you. Relocating to the UK to work on the base was so worth it. You vowed to never, ever rest on your laurels.

But at the end of these long days, after the work you completed with skill and with joy, you returned to a quiet flat that stank of stale air and too-old leftovers. The space was untidy, with mounds of laundry everywhere and mail piled up that you had been meaning to open. It was like the moment you walked through that door, a switch flipped. You didn’t need to be cheerful and capable and overachieving. There was no one to impress, no deadline to meet. Certainly no one to come home to.

For a long time, you had blamed your lack of a love life on being overweight. Although you did your best to dress in a flattering and professional manner, your oversized belly and undefined chin and flabby arms were all you saw when looking in the mirror. Who cared if you had a pretty face, when your body looked like… this? Your self-image issues were not helped by being around gorgeous, sculpted super-soldiers with muscles like Atlas.

But that was an excuse, wasn’t it? Plenty of fat women had partners. Plenty of women who threw themselves into their careers had partners. So what was wrong with you? Why did you spend your weekends desperately lonely and spiraling, playing video games to escape, praying for Monday so that your life would be infused with purpose again?

Therapy was helping, slowly but surely. Although it was difficult, you did your best to put yourself “out there,” wherever there was. The effort felt Sisyphean, but at least your headstone could say you tried.

~~~~~~~~~

It was a pleasant Wednesday morning when it happened.

You were in a good mood, having treated yourself to a smoothie at a new place that just opened along your route to work. The drink had a dreadful name, something like “fruity fingerbang” or “erogenous elderberry,” but it tasted delicious. Balancing the drink in one hand, you scanned your badge for entry and rushed to the elevator.

The team had just recently returned from a three-week mission in the Middle East, which meant all sorts of reports and documentation were rolling in. You planned to focus on closeout paperwork for the majority of the day with little breaks to inventory the supply closet.

When you arrived on your floor, you were surprised to see a manila envelope in the center of your desk. Your workspace was always immaculate; you never left for the day without putting everything in its place. Whatever this was, it must have been delivered very early.

Placing down the smoothie, you flipped it over to see who it was from, but there was no writing on it anywhere.

You had an ominous feeling when you unbound the string and slipped out a sheaf of papers, filled front and back with paragraphs of text. No letterhead, no memorandum header, just a bold, centered title that read:

CHAPTER ONE

But it was the line underneath that made your brain short-circuit: