False Start #30
Joy is never expected.
She walks into a bureaucrat’s office without notice, demanding that all is expedited, flinging forms about like confetti in the whirlwind of her desires, while the bureaucrat falls all over himself, unable to muster his usual indignation, attempting to reconcile her wishes, suddenly finding the mundane tasks that plagued his life sweeter, full of more meaning than he had ever imagined, curling his lips with a smile.
But as she signs the last of her forms and he notorizes them for her, the bureaucrat realizes that Joy will not stay. Soon it will be just himself and these papers and stamps, these provisions and protocols. He sifts through them looking for loopholes to call her back, or just looking so that he might shorten the time until she returns.