Four chaplains in an authoritarian army are playing poker. It’s forbidden. A colonel walks into the room and they quickly put away the cards. The colonel takes a Bible and asks each one to swear he wasn’t playing poker. The priest puts his hand on the Bible and swears he wasn’t. The Buddhist monk puts his hand on the Bible and shakes his head no. The minister swears he wasn’t. The rabbi places his hand on the Bible and asks, Have you ever seen a person play poker alone?
Earl wasn’t at the door in front of the post office. Geraldo, the guy with the patch over one eye, was guarding their position. It was a heavily contested beggars’ site. It’d belonged to Earl and Geraldo, the Hispanic pirate, for a while now. Elizabeth had been leery of Geraldo and partial to Earl. Now she favored both with small donations.
Earl was an elderly black man. He’d lost his job years back and could never find another one. He’d lost his wife, his children. He’d been robbed of everything. Sometimes in the summers he worked in hotels as a dishwasher. That’s probably where he was now, unless he was in the hospital. He was sick a lot. His brown skin turned gray in the winter.
— Don’t have change now. Later maybe, she said.
— OK, Liz.
— Where’s Earl?
— Don’t know.
— He hasn’t been around. Is he in the hospital?
— Don’t know. I’ll see what I can find out.
The line was long. It was always long. But the post office was air-conditioned. The woman who heard voices coming from her post office box wasn’t there. She was plagued, a movie star down on her luck. She rubbed orange rouge all over her white cheeks and wore lace gloves. Always a sign of derangement. The woman complained loudly and bitterly about the roles that were taken away from her, she protested vehemently, glaring into her postbox, against the post office. It was holding back her mail, it was losing her mail. It was the government’s fault her movie career had stalled. It was a government plot. Everyone on line sort of sympathized with her attack on the efficiency of the post office. You didn’t have to be schizophrenic to nod in absentminded agreement.
The mental movie star wasn’t around.
Elizabeth stood on a line. There was no movement.
— Put more people on. I have to go to work, a woman yelled.
— Yeah, yeah, let’s get moving, a man seconded.
— This is terrible, Elizabeth said.
— Patience is a virtue, a woman said to Elizabeth.
— I have no virtues, Elizabeth said.
Nothing happened. The line grew. Air conditioning didn’t help. Everyone became hot under the collar. Elizabeth used to go to the manager’s window and ask to speak to the supervisor, but it took time to roust the supervisor. She hated wasting her life on line. Everyone did.
There were three windows open out of six. There was a new worker at one window, a young, eager, and good-looking black woman. Elizabeth sympathized with workers on their first day on the job.
Elizabeth wanted to mail a small package and buy a book of stamps. The new worker weighed the package. She pulled open a drawer and grabbed a book of stamps. She struggled to lift up a few loose stamps for the package. Then she dropped all the stamps on the counter and took the package off the scale.
The new worker couldn’t grasp the stamps, she couldn’t pick them up off the counter. Her extremely long nails curled under and hit the surface of the counter. she couldn’t put her fingertips on the stamps. The nails repelled her from doing that. She tried using one nail, like a shovel, and then she used two nails, like tweezers. Finally she resorted to sliding the stamps off the counter with her palm — fingers out, nails curling to infinity — into her other palm. Somehow she pasted the stamps on the package. The young woman beamed triumphantly at Elizabeth.
The line now snaked three times around the post office. It was the new worker. She was supposed to speed service. She was hindering it. Teeth clenched, Elizabeth walked to the supervisor’s window. She rang a bell and waited. An overweight white man in a cheap suit came toward the window. He walked very slowly. He had mustard stains on his maroon tie.
— Yes? the manager said, already annoyed.
— There’s a new woman working a window.
— Yes?
— She’s OK, but I don’t know what the civil service laws are about discriminating…
— Discriminating?
— About personal stuff…
— Personal?
— The woman has very long nails. I don’t know if this is discriminating, long nails. It’s not discrimination… it’s about regulations… The point is, she can’t pick up the stamps.
The manager was bored. He listened without comprehension.
— See the line? Elizabeth asked, exasperated.
— I see it.
— It’s very long.
— So?
— The new woman can’t pick up the stamps. She physically can’t pick them up and put them on the mail and something should be done. I don’t know what the regulations are about personal dress…
— Dress?
— Nail length.
There was a long pause. They were at an impasse.
— I’ll check into it, he said, finally.
— She could do a good job, she just needs to be told that long nails aren’t…
The manager wanted her to go away, to evaporate, to shut up. Nail length probably wasn’t itemized under the dress code. It wasn’t simple like smoking in the workplace.
People with long nails have them to show they don’t do manual labor. They might also imagine that dead cells jutting out of their fingers is attractive. The young woman hadn’t realized the post office required light manual labor. Elizabeth didn’t know if the young woman could do a good job. She gave her the benefit of the doubt. She didn’t want her fired for the length of her nails.
Lesbians cut their nails short. Hands and nails were a dyke thing. Let them take over the post office, Elizabeth thought. She’d phone Chris. Chris wouldn’t want to work in the post office. No one did. It was disabling because everyone thought you were disabled.
Elizabeth grabbed her mail from the postbox and raced out. She hoped the new worker hadn’t seen her talking to the supervisor.
A man smelling of cheap perfume rushed in. His face was pink. He brushed her body with his body. He’d been freshly shaved at the barber. He was round and pink. He brushed against her twice.
— Sorry, he said.
— That’s OK.
— Sorry, he said again.
He looked familiar.
— Who’s that? Elizabeth asked Geraldo the pirate.
— Don’t know. I’ve seen him before though.
Elizabeth dropped two quarters into Geraldo’s worn paper cup. She’d heard about an Anglo-Pakistani writer visiting New York. He noticed a black man holding a cup on a platform in the subway. The writer dropped a quarter into his cup. The man said, That’s my coffee, idiot.
Subways were fast. She could read on the subway. Elizabeth rode the subway during the day. Not at night. Large men spread their legs across two seats. Small men also took up two subway seats. They did it differently from big men. Small men hunched and pushed their bodies forward, shoving as much of their bulk forward as they could, they even bulked up, made as much of themselves as they could. Some big teenaged girls took up two seats on purpose and very fat people took up two, sometimes three seats, not on purpose. But subway riders hated them anyway. She did.
Sitting next to one of the big or small men, squeezed between two strangers, Elizabeth forced her fury down. She could choke on it. She could become violent. She squeezed into whatever space was available. She made them as uncomfortable as she could. She was uncomfortable too. She was crushed between strangers. It was a violation of the unknown kind. Her knees were locked together. She was perched on the seat, the way she sat on the toilet. She couldn’t breathe. She might explode. She could just as easily have thrust a knife into the guy’s chest and cut out his heart as asked the civil question, Will you please close your legs?