Installation 1: New Girl

On Phoebe Person’s first day at The Museum, she wore a wool skirt with atapered jacket and tights. She thought it was a very smart look. It was an artsy look – fashionable but intelligent; serious but with a touch of the laissez-faire. It was a lot of responsibility for one outfit to carry.

Phoebe was the new administrative assistant for the museum’s Marketing and Public Relations Department. She was to assist Carlotta Cole, Marketing Director, and Julia Brandywine, Public Relations Director. At her interview for the job, which took place in a room Carlotta called the Early Romanticism Conference Room, Julia was a no-show. After several minutes spent clicking her nails on the high-gloss conference room table, Carlotta conducted the interview herself, explaining that Julia was often “absent.”

Phoebe spent her first morning in Human Resources, filling out paperwork. She messed up her dental form and had to ask the HR assistant, Terry, for another one. Terry was seven months pregnant and wrapped up in an enormous sweater that must have required dozens of skeins of yarn. Terry was not glamorous and she made Phoebe feel slightly worried – was Terry what all of her co-workers at The Museum would be like? Sitting in the windowless office staring at the white walls (no artwork!), Phoebe wondered if she’d made a mistake leaving her administrative job at Abner, Grearson and Finch.

At 11:30, Carlotta stuck her head in the door of the HR office. She wore green eye shadow that extended up to her eyebrows and a navy blue pantsuit.

“What the hell is going on in here?” Carlotta asked Terry.

“I can’t help it,” Terry said, hastily closing the game of Solitaire on her computer. “She’s doing the forms. Everyone has to do the forms.”

“All morning?” Carlotta asked. “I haven’t even had a chance to show her around the office.”

“I’m finished,” Phoebe said and handed over the forms to Terry.

“Good,” Carlotta said. “Julia wants to go to lunch.”

Julia Brandywine was a slim woman, with a clavicle that brought to mind the delicate handle on a tea cup. She had a close crop of dark hair and tired eyes and she took Phoebe’s hand in her cool one to give it a weak shake before letting it drop. She smelled of cigarettes, cough syrup and expensive perfume.

“Missed your interview but glad to have you on board,” Julia said.

“Just got back from London last night. Exhausted.”

“Thanks,” Phoebe said.

“Chinese?” Carlotta asked and turned to go get her coat.

Over lunch at a Chinese buffet, Julia ate one tiny shrimp and pork egg roll and smoked a cigarette as Carlotta tried to extract a stray eyelash out from under her contact, smearing her mascara onto her cheek.

“I’m so excited to be here,” Phoebe said.

“You’ll get over it,” Carlotta said.

“I’m worn out,” Julia said.

“Julia has a boyfriend in London,” Carlotta explained to Phoebe. “He’s nineteen and Julia is… How old are you now, Julia?”

“I’m in my thirties,” Julia said.

“Well into your thirties,” Carlotta corrected.

It seemed as if Carlotta and Julia didn’t like each other very much. Carlotta picked through her sweet and sour pork, making comments about animal fat and Julia rolled her eyes. Phoebe thought about how fabulous it would be to have a boyfriend in London. She imagined herself getting off the plane, wearing her wool skirt and tights, and running into his arms. Perhaps she would be wearing a beret. Perhaps her boyfriend was French, not English…

“I finally convinced John to install a home theater,” Carlotta said. “I can’t go to the movies anymore. I can’t sit by strangers and let them breathe on me. They always smell like fish and bring plastic bags full of popcorn from home."

Their server stopped by to ask if anyone needed a “to go” box for their food.

“I don’t believe in the bloody things,” Julia said.

"If I eat any more of this MSG,” Carlotta said. “I'm going to go into a coma."

“I’ll take a box,” Phoebe said. Glamor was one thing but free food for someone making an administrative assistant’s salary was quite another.

Once back at the museum, Phoebe put her food in the refrigerator of the staff kitchen. She took a pen out of her purse and marked the box with “P.P.,” despite the fact that no one would know who the initials stood for.

"That takes care of lunch tomorrow," she said to a blond woman with large reading glasses pushed up onto her head.

"That's what you think," the blond said and walked out with her cup of green tea.

Next, Phoebe learned about her responsibility to photocopy and distribute each and every newspaper article that mentioned The Museum to every director and curator. Carlotta referred to the task as “doing the clippings.”

"But why do you do this?” Phoebe asked.

“Because we need to know what’s being said about us,” Carlotta said. “Plus it makes it look like Julia is doing her job.”

Julia had gone home for the afternoon with a headache.

As Phoebe made 20 copies of each article referencing The Museum from papers as varied as the Birmingham Post-Herald to Luxembourg's Tageblatt, she thought about how wonderful it was to work at The Museum, even though there were so many articles to copy and no one had bothered to make copies for the past several weeks. For nearly two hours she was largely uninterrupted until suddenly the copier jammed and started to shake just as the door to the copy room (actually an old closet) swung open. A young man with shaggy hair and glasses poked his head in. Phoebe saw that he was carrying a stack of papers.

"The copier's broken!" she cried, waving him off.

"Do you need help?" the man asked, pounding the gyrating machine with his fist.

"No, I'm fine, but I've got a lot of copying to do, so if you don't mind going to use another one--"

The man looked at her, perplexed. "Should I come back?"

"I said the copier is fucking broken!" Phoebe snapped, worried she wouldn’t get her copying done and would disappoint Carlotta and make Julia lose her job and not be able to fly to London to see her teenage boyfriend anymore.

The man hovered near the door, one hand outstretched as if to lift one of the paper platens on the copier and get to the root of the problem.

“Let me deal with it,” Phoebe said, trying to keep all her piles of copies from drifting to the floor.

The man fled the closet. After Phoebe cleared paths A, B, C and F, checked the paper supply and allowed the machine to perform a mysterious cleansing ritual during which it made a whirring sound for five minutes, she was able to continue making copies. She put her hands to her flushed cheeks and took deep breaths. It wasn’t like her to be so rude to anyone, especially a new co-worker, but she wanted, more than just about anything she’d ever wanted in her life, to be a success at The Museum. Because wasn’t this what she’d daydreamed about while copying legal briefs at Abner, Grearson and Finch? The clean white walls and slate floors. The art in the galleries peeking out at her as she slipped down the hall in leather boots on her way to her desk with a mocha latte. Knowing conversations with curators about the Renaissance or the exact nature of Van Gogh’s mental problems while snow drifted down outside… And if having all that meant standing in an old janitor’s closet making hundreds of copies of tiny articles that flapped to the floor and tangled in a web of delicate newsprint, so be it.

It was only her first day. Things would get better.

NEXT