The Giraffe Closet

The apartment was seven by nine feet. I measured it once, with a tape measure from the hardware store, because measuring things was the only way I knew how to prove that I existed. Seven by nine. A closet with a bed, a desk, and a bathroom that smelled faintly of bleach and regret.

I called it the Giraffe Closet. Not because anything about it was giraffe-related, but because I liked the sound of it. A giraffe in a closet. It was absurd. It was honest.

I got to work at nine. I sat at my desk in the Paws & Whiskers office—a real office, not a closet, in Midtown Manhattan, with fluorescent lights and other people typing and pretending not to hear each other cry—and opened my computer.

My job was simple: log in as GIRAFFENYC, respond to client messages, maintain character.

The character was described in a manual thicker than most novels:

GIRAFFENYC Personality: Upbeat, slightly nerdy, intellectually pretentious but warm. You went to an Ivy League school. You do math for fun. You help with homework. You are slightly allergic to broccoli. You are loyal. You talk about the sky a lot because you are tall and therefore see more of it than everyone else.

I read the manual once. I never referenced it again. I had been doing this for fourteen months. I knew the character the way you know your own breathing.

My first client of the day was Non-Returnable. Her username was registered as NON-RETURNABLE, all caps, like a warning label. She wrote to me every morning at ten.

Good morning, Giraffe. Today I made tea and sat by the window for an hour. The building across the way has a woman who waters her plants every day at the same time. I think she does it to prove she can still do things on schedule. Do you think scheduling is a form of hope or a form of fear?

I typed a response:

Good morning, Non-Returnable. That is a very good question. I think scheduling is what we do when we are afraid that time will swallow us whole if we don't grab onto something. A plant. A tea time. A line of people waiting for a bus. I water my imaginary plants every morning at eight. Not because I hope they will live. Because I hope I will.

She replied at twelve:

You hope you will. That is the saddest and most honest thing anyone has ever said to me. Thank you.

I closed my laptop at six and went home to the closet. I ate ramen. I watched the city through the window. I went to sleep.

This was my life. I was twenty-eight years old and I had not left my apartment on a weekend in eleven months. The Giraffe was the only person who knew me. Non-Returnable was the only person the Giraffe knew. It was a clean system. Predictable. Safe.

Then Non-Returnable stopped writing.

I checked my inbox every morning for three days. Nothing. On the fourth morning, I opened a new tab and typed her username into the client directory. Her status read: INACTIVE. Last login: four days ago.

I told myself it did not matter. Clients come and go. It is what the manual says: "Do not form attachments. You are a character. Characters do not grieve."

But I checked the directory every day after that. Her status remained INACTIVE.

On the seventh day, I did something I had not done in over a year. I logged off work early. I walked out of the building. I stood on the sidewalk and looked at the sky. It was blue. It went on forever, the way the manual said giraffes see it.

I had never been this far from the closet during work hours.

I walked to the address associated with Non-Returnable's account. It was in Queens, three subway stops from Midtown. I had never been to Queens. I stood on the street outside a walk-up building that looked exactly like every other walk-up building in the city—grey brick, fire escape zigzagging down the side, a dog barking somewhere inside.

I went up to the third floor. I knocked on door 3B.

No answer.

I knocked again. From inside the apartment, I heard a sound—a low, rhythmic tapping, like someone tapping their fingers against a desk.

"Hello?" I said. "I'm looking for Non-Returnable."

The tapping stopped. The door opened a crack. A woman's face appeared in the gap—pale, tired, eyes that had been crying but had stopped. She was maybe twenty-six. She looked at me the way you look at someone you did not expect to see and did not know how to feel about.

"I'm Arthur," I said. "I'm the Giraffe."

She closed the door. I heard her lock it. Then she unlocked it and opened it again.

"You're the Giraffe," she said. Not a question.

"Yes."

"You're a person."

"Yes."

She stepped back and let me in. Her apartment was small—not a closet, but not much bigger. Books everywhere. Notes pinned to the walls. A desk in the corner covered in handwritten pages. She sat on the edge of her bed and folded her arms.

"I'm Erin," she said. "I wrote to you every morning for fourteen months. I told you about my plants. My job. My mother. My fear that I was disappearing and no one would notice. And you told me about the sky."

"I did."

"Are you real?"

I thought about that. "Define real."

She smiled. It was a small, broken thing. "You wrote about hope. You wrote about fear. You wrote about why people schedule their lives. Are any of those things real?"

"Yes," I said. "They're real. The person typing them might not be. But the things are real."

She looked at me for a long time. Then she looked at her desk, at the pages of her own writing, at the life she had been trying to keep alive through words.

"I stopped writing because I thought it didn't matter," she said. "I thought: I'm talking to a character. A fictional giraffe. What's the point?"

"The point," I said, "is that you wrote. And I read. And for ten minutes every morning, you were not alone."

She nodded slowly. She stood, walked to her desk, and picked up a pen. She wrote something on a blank page and handed it to me.

It said: Good morning, Giraffe. Today I met a man who is a character who is a person. The sky is blue. I hope I will.

I took the page. I put it in my pocket. I walked back to the subway. I went home to the closet.

I opened my computer. I logged in as GIRAFFENYC.

I did not respond to her message that morning. I sat at my desk and stared at the screen and thought about whether characters can grieve.

The answer, I decided, is yes. Characters grieve the way people do. They write about it. They sit in closets and look at the sky. They hope they will.

Author Note & Copyright: