TAKE A NUMBER

The office is packed when I walk in. It might be any office, Egypt Air, LinkDSL, but that is unimportant. What matters is that the well swept floor and flat screen TV mounted on a central pillar do little to disguise the underlying shabbiness of the establishment. What matters is heat which drips down men’s spines, discolors a plaid or paisley arm pit, or pools in a crotch. What matters is the hunger nestled in each belly, just below the religious guilt and social pressure. What matters is that the office is packed when I walk in.

A man indicates towards a black dispenser, a bureaucratic toilet paper roll used to wipe away fecal inefficiency and foul individuality. I take a number. I am 0664. A chime calls my attention to a license-plate-sized digital display mounted on the wall behind the counter. The display says 0550.

I stare at the display. A minute goes by, and then five. A few people enter. A few people leave. A chime. 0551. One man leaves. I do some quick calculations in my head, and follow him out. As an afterthought I grab another toilet paper number as I walk through the door. I am 0664, and I am 0667. My heart swells a little at this act of rebellion. I feel more dynamic and alive, and with that I go to run errands. I come back after the shadows have shrunken and shriveled in the ascending sun and then begun to grow again. The display says 0621. I head back out for a walk to pounder why others did not simply do the same. When I return again the display says 0658, and I go inside to wait.

Twenty minutes go by, and then the chime summons me to the polished, plywood, Promised Land. I approach the counter and show the gate keeper my number, 0664, and he nods his approval. Pleasantries are exchanged. Explanations are exchanged, and finally funds are exchanged. As I head out the door I look around.

A dusty, potbellied man on my left picks his nose. He does not hide it, neither does he flaunt it or dare those around him to meet his gaze saying, “Yeah, I’m picking my nose in public. Want to fight about it?!” It is a simple act. He picks his nose. In another dimension he might have coughed or tied his shoe.

Next to the dusty, potbellied man sits a dusty old man. The dusty old man does not pick his nose. He does not cough or tie his shoe or do anything accept stare at the ground and wonder what he is doing, an old man, in this crowded office with a distant number in his pocket. He was not there when I first arrived. He was not there when I came back from running errands. It is a very distant number.

I reach into my right, front jeans pocket, down below my tattered wallet, pull out a crumpled piece of toilet paper and hand it to him. Instinctively, he reaches up and takes it. For a moment he looks confused, not quite sure what his body has done in his mind’s absence. Then, he looks annoyed, perhaps wondering why some rude American kid has just handed an old man his pocket detritus. I smile at the old man. I am myself again, and he is 0667. In this office in, this moment it is a name with more sway than any held by old aristocracy. I walk out into the street. Behind me a chime. 0666.