Some people dream of greatness, others dream of riches. I dream of just being left alone to do my job and to have enough to make my rent payment and other expenses. Thankfully, I have a job that allows both. At work I am a very small cog in among many other slightly larger cogs. No one pays any attention to me and I work really hard at not attracting any attention myself.
The application I filled out seemed pretty generic, although there were some very odd things listed under valuable skills. I wasn't interested in codes or weapons, explosives or subterfuge. I put books away for the head librarian in school. That's all, oh, and rubber stamped library cards. I never figured either would be of any help in finding me a job, but it was some spending money in my pocket and something to do during the day that didn't involved too much interaction with my fellow students.
The weird thing is that I never forget anything I read, so if a classmate would come in and start to talk about something he or she had read, chances were I could find the book, providing I'd read it. And I did read – a lot. When you're a wall flower and largely ignored, mostly due to your own efforts, there's lots of time for reading. The most I read, the more I remembered. It didn't matter if I like the story or not, once it was read, it got filed away.
Same thing with library cards, I could tell who did or didn't return books, check things out and when books were due back. My mother said I was weird and my dad stopped just this side of suggesting that I was touched by the devil. He just didn't like the fact that I could remember things and that I did really well in school, but lack the drive to anything about it.
Then that little man showed up one day with the applications and the next thing you know, I'm on a train headed for New York and some place called UNCLE.
From the very start, I liked UNCLE. They let you do your job and didn't pester you. I loved filing, so many facts and figures drifted through my fingers on a regular basis. I sort of learned how to turn that part of my brain off, just so it wouldn't get all chocked full of garbage.
One day, I was going through a stack of files and I found them. Our folders are color coded so we know in an instant if the contents inside are people, places or things and if any are misfiled. There are lots of subgroups from there, but all our folders are red, blue or green. So when I'm suddenly looking at a handful of yellow folders, I sort of caught my breath. These were personnel folders, higher personal and confidential. How they got into our stack was a mystery.
I glanced at the top one and I must have made a noise because the other girls in the room are suddenly looking at me. The name of the folder was Solo, Napoleon. The one beneath it was Kuryakin, I. N. Not only were these classified, they were Section Two classified. They could rip my eyes from my sockets for jus reading the front covers… well, there is the chance that I'm exaggerating, but you know what I mean.
"Hey, Meagan, what have you got there?" Sharon was our local busy body and gossip.
"Nothing." I sort of shield the files with my body, but it was too late. Sharon had honed onto these files like a bear to honey. "Hey, those are personnel files."
"I know, I'm just getting ready to take then to Mrs. Mulvihil so she can return them. " I out maneuvered her, only to have Tracy snatch them from behind my back.
"Holy cow, they're Solo and Kuraykin's files. What would you girls like to know?" Melissa had joined us as well. She out weighted me by at least forty pounds and I had to admit I was a little scared of her.
"You can't look at those!" I shouted and they all stared at me. Three years and I barely said hello to them and now I was trying to take a stand. It was a bit like a sponge trying to hold off a flood. "There's stuff in there that's private. It's a violation of security and their rights."
"Who the hell is going to know, about this, little girl, unless you tell them?" Melissa asked, her eyes narrowing.
"It's not right."
"Hey, girls, listen to this." Sharon already had the file spread out across the desk. "It's security's latest report on Mr. Solo's sexual misconducts. This is going to read like a 20th century Fanny Hill. There's got to be forty three names here."
I couldn't listen, I just couldn't. I love knowledge and I'm as interested in those two guys as anyone red-blooded women would be. But I didn't want to hear this. It was indecent, like being a Peeping Tom or something. These guys, all the Section two and three agents, they gave up all kinds of things because of their jobs, I just couldn't be part of this.
I was out the door and into the corridor before even realizing I was moving. That's when I plowed into something… well, someone. I didn't mean to hit poor Mr. Solo like that, but he was stretched out on the floor staring at the ceiling, a sort of dazed expression on his face.
His partner, Mr. Kuryakin, looked at me for a minute and then chuckled. It's not a sound you get to hear often and it was kinda nice. He held out a hand to Mr. Solo while I stood there blushing and stammering and wishing the floor would open up and swallow me.
"Are you all right, Napoleon?" He yanked Mr. Solo to his feet with a grunt. "Taken down in the very prime of life by a mere child. You need some more gym time."
"Where are you headed in such a hurry, Miss…?" Mr. Solo was smiling at me and his hands were sort of traveling all over his suit jacket, like he was checking it out for damage or something.
"Um, Sheasley. I work in File and Records."
"I see, well, read any good files lately?" he was being so nice after I knocked him down and I thought about what was happening inside my office and I burst into tears and headed for the nearest bathroom – one of the few places I could go to escape in them.
"Napoleon." I could hear Mr. Kuryakin saying as I ran away.
"I didn't say anything."
I stayed inside the ladies room for a long time, long after my tears had dried up and my breathing grew calm. I really hated that I'd let those women bully me. I really hated not having the courage to go to right to Mrs. Mulvihil and tell her about the files. Or of even saying anything to Mr. Solo or Mr. Kuryakin about the files. I wasn't sorry about running into Mr. Solo, that had been kinda nice. My sweater still smells of his cologne and I remembered how kind his eyes were.
I knew right then and there I had to resign. It was the decent thing to do. I had enough money in the bank to tide me over until I could find something else. But to do that, I had to leave the ladies room and I just didn't feel quite ready to take that plunge. If I waited another hour, it would be quitting time and I could just wait out the shift change and leave them. I'd never had to see those women, I couldn't call them ladies, not after that, again.
My eyes started to well up again when I thought about leaving. I really did like my job and it was so unfair. The bathroom door opened and I started to make a break for the stalls when I saw Mrs. Mulvihil standing there.
"Meagan, so this is where you've been hiding." She walked over to me, her high heels making a funny tap tap on the tile floor as she moved from the carpet to the tile floor, wet a paper towel and came back to sit beside me. "You had Mr. Solo very worried." She handed me the paper towel. It was rough against my face, but I didn't care.
"I… I almost killed him, Mrs. Mulvihil."
"I can assure you it takes more than being knocked to the floor to kill Mr. Solo. He's pretty resilient that way." She waited for a moment and then took one of my hands. "What's really the matter, Meagan?"
I was trying to be so cool and controlled about all of this, but then the dam burst and I just started crying. Somehow I choked out my tale of woe in between sobs. The next thing I know she's patting my back and making soft little shushing noises to me.
"I don't want to go, but I have to leave. I'm sorry."
"Leave? Why do you need to go?" The voice came from the doorway and I don't know what startled me more, that it was Mr. Solo or that he had violated scared territory, i.e. the ladies room.
"Mr. Solo," Mrs. Mulvihil gasped.
"That's okay, Illya's standing guard." He was to me in just a couple of steps. Of course, he didn't have to worry about being hobbled by a skirt either. "Why do you need to leave, Meagan?"
"There were personnel files and they were yours and Mr. Kuryakin's and I tried to stop everyone from reading them, but I couldn't and I just ran… and I knocked you down and I'm really sorry you had forty three sexual encounters last month."
"Forty three?" I heard Mr. Kuryakin say from the other side of the door. "Talk about fiction. Can you even count that high, Napoleon."
Mr. Solo frowned and sat down, taking my hand. "Meagan, those files were a plant."
"A plant? No, then they would have been green, these were yellow."
"I mean they were false. We were looking for someone to promote from within and you passed. Congratulations."
It wasn't exactly the sort of test I'd ever want to take again, but Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin are good bosses. They're gone a lot of course and I worry about them, but so far so good. Mr. Solo took me out dancing a couple of times, just to show me there were no hard feelings about tricking me the way he did. Even Mr. Kuryakin took me out once to the museum to a show of Russian artists and again to see a play. It was a little confusing and I was never quite sure why that Hedda lady killed herself. I think he was trying to show me that one person can only take so much before she has the option of opening up or closing down entirely.
And I am opening up, slowly, now that I'm a Section Two secretary, people see me, even when I try to hide. And for the first time in my life, I'm okay with it. I'm not thrilled, preferring a quiet corner to the center table, but I have a feeling with Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin behind me, almost anything is possible.