Anna in the Shadows - a short story by Adam Carlton

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‘Anna in the Shadows’ - by Adam Carlton

The scene is late at night in a litter-strewn, deserted corporate cafeteria, all formica tables and plastic chairs, dimly lit by flickering fluorescents. Anna is seated by herself at a table, maybe fifteen feet away.

She was there first; I just came in and sat - not too close out of politeness.

Anna is in her thirties, rather Scandinavian looking: blonde, pale and slim. She is always quiet, reserved, inwardly focused. The mostly male engineers - under their breaths - call her 'ice queen'.

I know Anna very slightly but feel an affinity. If they think she's haughty and superior, I know they're wrong: she's merely disoriented and confused.  She's been in many technical meetings I've chaired but she never volunteers much. Quietly competent, is how I'd sum her up.

I'm a VP with the company; she's a team leader - so there's an asymmetry of position here. Still, it's late and it's been a tiring day. All that awaits me is a desolate hotel room so I'm in no great hurry to depart. As for Anna, who knows?

I smile in her general direction and say sympathetically, "Busy day?" 

Anna responds at first monosyllabically but then it's as if a dam has been breached. She has no reason to trust me but somehow she does.

Looking down at the table, she confides that she finds everything at work difficult - not the technical stuff, she emphasises but the interpersonal relationships, the office politics. 

“What do people want from me?” she asks in bewilderment.

I wonder that she has to ask.

"Ever feel," I say, "you live your life on stage under too much light? Audience out there, but you can’t see or engage with them?"

I know someone like that. I’ve spent a long time trying to understand what it’s like being him. I’ve come to a tentative conclusion: being him is like being alone on a brightly lit stage.

He knows there is a shadowed audience but he can't really perceive them as other cognitive entities. He feels the emotion of the crowd - their approval or hostility - but only as a boundary condition on his emotional state, of which he is normally barely aware in any case.

When he is in conversation, he is like an actor extemporising to that shadowed audience. He declaims but he is not in dialogue. He is not tracking the audiences intellectually - it's as if their remarks are printed on a screen in front of him on the stage: depersonalised scrolling text. He bats his arguments back, or changes topics on a whim.

You might think he is terribly alone in this solitary echo-chamber. (His conversation partners are puzzled: they sense the lack of engagement with them - it sounds like a conversation but there is no conversing going on, no meeting of minds).

But he is emotionally aware in a subliminal way - although not tolerant of company and not seeking it. He finds close family immersion (in limited amounts) oddly comforting. 

A quick breath - agreement or fatigue, it’s hard to tell.

"I have my own story," she murmurs.

"I think I live in a glass observatory on a dark hill overlooking a bright metropolis - the world. Through the telescope, I watch the city’s flickering lights and busy streets, not with indifference, but with a confused awareness that I can’t hear the busy life within. The glass lets me see the world but not step into it.

"Visitors sometimes come up the hill. I welcome them politely, even with a certain formal charm, but to me they’re data. Their words stretch across my attention to be parsed; I reply.

"I'm confused by their reactions. They always seem nonplussed, sometimes argumentative, occasionally hurt. I try to avoid conversations."

She gives me a rueful look, the first genuine communication we've had all evening. “You think I do alright?” she says, “You think I manage my life with a competent, cool detachment? Well, it's been nice to talk to you but I have to leave now and pick up my child.”

I show my surprise; I know nothing of her personal life.

“No, I don't have a partner,” she says, defensive like I’ve forced my way through some personal barrier, “I'm a single mother; no-one here knows that.” 

She stands up to depart,  looking confused and dismayed; speaks quietly to herself: 

“How did I end up like this? I didn't plan it, I didn't understand anything, I just didn't know..."