He looked down at his window sill—a broad inner ledge formed by the covers of the heating apparatus and, in Nagashima’s case, completely stacked with dossiers, with folders, with innumerable, unmemorable documents. (Just yesterday he had been informed once more that it was forbidden to cover the heating vents in this way, but where then could these papers possibly go?) The false docket—such a strange name, like some treacherous Dutchman—that Ismet wanted was there, he knew, must be there, but he would never find it. He would lift them all, examine each title, his fingers would become frantic, his palms moist, but he would not find it. This had happened so often now that he sometimes did not look at all. The papers had ceased to be—had perhaps never been—quite real to him. If he actually believed in the existence of the file, then he might find it.

Once he had almost believed in these files and their dockets; had come, indeed, to the Organization as full of assiduity and goodwill as the refinements of his upbringing would allow. But his goodwill had glanced off the Organization like calf-love off a courtesan—the Organization did not require or even notice it. Unrequited, it had become a somewhat humiliating burden, furtively borne. Nagashima sighed, shifting but not unsettling this weight.

He began to turn over the first pile of folders. Ismet’s file wouldn’t be there—but here was the set of vouchers someone had wanted last month, that woman, also of Ismet’s section, the one with the face like a cliff. Nagashima put the vouchers in an old interoffice envelope and sent them to Luba, having heavily scratched out his name on the envelope as former addressee.

“If I had high cheekbones like yours,” said a chubby little girl named Gabrielle, “I’d do my hair like Greta Garbo.” She came to stand next to Luba at the mirror where she was making up her face. Through an oversight, the ladies’ room had an inordinate share of windows, but the fluorescent tube over its mirrored counter gave a light so ghastly that it was rumored to have been systematically chosen as the result of a time-and-motion study.

Luba, whose ability to admire her own image, however poorly illuminated, was a match for any time-and-motion study, went on applying rouge. She looked pleased. “It is the planes,” she said.

Gabrielle looked toward the window. “Planes?”

“The planes of the face.” Luba was growing rosier with every twirl of her fingers. “Garbo has planes. I see her in the street. No makeup, old clothes, nothing fashionable. Only planes. She is the friend of a very close friend.”

“I can’t use that.” Gabrielle was examining Luba’s powder-box. “I have it specially made. My skin is too sens—”