May Season Studio Archives
by Gintare O.
The box had been Karen’s problem since Tuesday, which meant Genny had stopped thinking about it by Wednesday morning, the way you stop thinking about anything that has been moved to someone else’s cube.
She came in at 7:58. She put her coat on the back of her chair. She set her coffee on the left side of the desk, away from the docking station. She opened her notebook to the page she had left off on, which was Tuesday’s running list of catalog entries pending review.
The notebook smelled like flowers.
She had not noticed it at first. She had opened the notebook the way she always did, without looking at it, and had started reading her own notes before her brain caught up to what her nose had already registered. She paused. She closed the notebook. She opened it again.
There it was. Not strong. Not unpleasant. Faintly sweet. Faintly floral. The kind of smell you got from a hand cream sample, except it was not on her hands, it was on the paper.
She lifted the notebook to her face and inhaled, which she immediately regretted because Blake had just stood up from his cube two over and could see her doing it. She lowered the notebook. Blake did not look. Blake was looking at Karen, who was at the far end of the floor correcting someone.
Genny set the notebook down on her desk.
She thought about the box. The box had been on her desk for about forty minutes Tuesday morning before Karen had pushed it to her own cube with her foot. It had smelled like this. She had noticed it at the time. The notebook had been on the desk next to the box.
That was the chain of events. The notebook had picked up the smell from the box. That was a thing that happened, with strong scents. Her grandmother’s house had smelled like cedar for forty years because of one closet.
She got up. She went to the bathroom. She washed her hands, even though her hands were not the issue. She did this because it felt like the kind of thing that should help.
She came back. She opened the notebook. It still smelled like flowers.
By Thursday she had decided to ignore it.
This was a strategy that had served her well at MSS in general. There were a number of things at MSS that did not bear close inspection, including but not limited to Karen, the elevator that occasionally skipped the fourth floor, the email server that knew when you were drafting a complaint and timed out before you could send it. You learned, as an employee, which things to look at and which things to leave alone. The notebook smell was a thing to leave alone.
She wrote in it. She made tick marks next to the SKUs she had reviewed. She drew the small box she always drew next to items that needed Karen’s sign-off. The notebook performed normally.
Karen did not mention the box again. The box was no longer in Karen’s cube. Genny did not ask where it had gone.
Around 2:30 Thursday afternoon, Karen stopped at the edge of Genny’s cube on her way back from the printer. She did not say anything. She stood there for a beat, looking at Genny’s desk, and then she moved on.
Genny waited until Karen was out of sight. Then she put the notebook in her top drawer and closed the drawer.
She worked the rest of the afternoon without it. She used a Post-it for the SKUs. The Post-it did not smell like anything.
At 4:58 she opened the drawer to pack up.
The notebook still smelled like flowers. The inside of the drawer smelled like flowers. The pens in the drawer smelled like flowers, faintly, the way her sister’s apartment smelled like her sister’s perfume two days after a visit.
She closed the drawer.
She went home.
Friday she took it home.
She did not intend to. She had meant to leave the notebook at the office over the weekend. She had thought about it as she was packing her bag at 4:55, and had decided yes, leave it, and then at 4:58 she had picked it up and put it in her bag without thinking about it again.
She noticed this on the way to her car. She was halfway across the lot before she realized she was carrying the notebook. She did not turn around. She kept going.
At home she set her bag in the front hall, the way she always did. She made dinner. She watched two episodes of a show she had been meaning to finish for a month. The notebook was in her bag in the hall. She could not smell it from the couch. She could not smell it from the kitchen. She told herself this meant it had aired out.
Around nine she got up to look. She knelt in the hallway and unzipped her bag and put her face close to the notebook.
It still smelled like flowers.
She thought about throwing it away. She thought about this for a long time, kneeling in her hallway with her bag open. The notebook was not just a notebook. It had her last six months of catalog work in it. It had three SKU corrections she had not entered into the system yet. It had Karen’s initials next to two product groupings from August, which she had been holding onto in case Karen ever claimed she had not approved them.
She did not throw it away.
She took it out of the bag and set it on her kitchen counter, on a paper towel, the way you would set down something you wanted to dry out.
She took a shower. She washed her hair. She washed her hands twice. She stood under the water longer than usual, which she told herself was because it had been a long week.
When she got out she walked past the kitchen counter without looking at the notebook. She went to bed.
She did not smell flowers. She did not smell anything. Her sheets smelled like her sheets, which was nothing, which was the correct outcome.
Saturday she did errands. She did not think about the notebook.
She bought groceries. She picked up a prescription. She returned a sweater she had bought the previous weekend and had not worn. The sweater had been a mistake. The store clerk processed the return without comment, which was the only kind of return Genny enjoyed.
When she came home Saturday evening she put her groceries away and noticed, as she was unloading apples into the bowl, that the notebook had not bled into the counter. There was no residue on the paper towel. The paper towel was clean. The counter underneath was clean. Whatever the smell was, it was inside the notebook, not coming off it.
This made her feel better in a way she would not have been able to explain, because it meant the smell was contained, which meant it was the notebook’s problem and not the apartment’s.
She slept normally.
Sunday morning she sat down with her coffee to plan her week.
This was a routine. She kept a list, by day, of what she was going to handle, including catalog work she had not finished Friday and any errands she needed to remember. She did this on the kitchen counter, with the notebook, every Sunday morning. It was one of the small things that made the week feel manageable.
She picked up the notebook. She brought it to the table. She opened it to the next blank page, which was about three quarters of the way through.
She wrote the date at the top. She wrote Monday. She started a list. Catalog Q4 imports. Email from accounting about the SKU prefix change. The Halloran product line, which Karen kept asking about and never giving direction on.
She turned the page to start Tuesday.
A folded card slid out of the back of the notebook.
She had not seen it when she had been worrying about the smell. It must have been tucked behind the back cover, between the cover and the last sheet, where she did not normally look. The card fell into her lap when the notebook bent open.
She picked it up.
The paper was thick and cream colored. The kind of paper that was not stationery. The kind of paper used by attorneys, or wedding planners, or institutions with crests.
It was folded once. On the front, in oxblood ink, in a handwriting she did not recognize, was her name.
Her full name. First, middle, last. Spelled correctly.
She sat with it in her lap. She was not afraid yet. She was the part of afraid that comes before fear, the part where your brain is still cataloging.
She thought about Karen. Karen used black ballpoint. Karen abbreviated middle names when she used them at all. Karen did not own paper like this.
She thought about Blake. Blake did not know her middle name.
She thought, briefly, about the box.
The notebook on the table in front of her, open to a half finished list for Monday, smelled the same as it had all week.
She put the card down on top of the notebook, name side up, and did not touch it for the rest of the morning.
Continue Reading: ONBOARDING / 02 / THE INVITATION
AUTHOR’S NOTE
at may season studio, scent complaints are logged with facilities and closed within five business days. complaints without a clear point of origin are closed faster.
written and designed by gintare okrzesik, creator of may season studio. a fictional corporation exploring beauty, bureaucracy, and quiet corruption through narrative design.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Begin with:
Professional Development - Genny and an old colleague, and who is mapping whom
Service Request - an ordinary ticket on Genny’s floor, handled correctly
The Annual Review - how the company evaluates the people it is watching
Part two arrives next Friday.
Ah! I had not read this one before, so am now learning the origin of the card. Well, not the origin, but how Genny first encountered it. I'm guessing that if she threw it out, it would reappear. And she knows it, so she doesn't bother trying. I think this is the most interesting part of the story for me: how everyone who works there has normalized not knowing about things that affect them directly.