Flying Island

It is January 31, and the accountants, still smelling faintly of furniture polish and printer toner, sit at their desks with hands clasped, hands sliding fresh ink cartridges into fountain pens, hands balled into eager, moistening fists. The men wear black blazers with blue ties and the women blue blouses, a blue that is the shade of cornflowers and baby blankets, of sugar sand beaches and Silicon Valley. They are professional yet approachable, classic yet modern. For weeks, they have subsisted on wheat germ, watercress, juiced vegetables, cleansing their bodies of toxins and excess oils, freeing their minds of desire and bad intentions.  The waiting room has a new Boston fern and three glass tables, their tops wiped clean of fingerprints. Outside, the sun refracts off last night’s snow and paints the wall with golden tracers. The year is still, so new you can smell the plastic of its wrapping.   In tentative trickles, we come to fill the sensible black waiting chairs, ta...