Non-Fiction

14:20. As I stare blankly at the clock on the computer I hear the incessant tick. 14:21. I spin my chair enough times to keep the room spinning after I stop, distracting myself for one patron-less minute. 14:22.

I wonder why a digital clock ticks. I close my eyes and watch it melt. It’s my dream of the number two hidden amongst lines of binary code causing a complete system failure. It’s the absence of every repetitive job requiring buttons and screens. It’s freedom.

I reach for a rubber band beckoning me from my desk in the small booth. I bite the rubber band, and it becomes a rubber string. I bite small chunks off the string and spit them across the booth until the rubber string becomes small rubber rectangular cubes scattered across the floor. The clock ticks 14:23.

I haven’t been here for half an hour, and I want to leave. I want to go home. I want to listen to the voice of my love. I concentrate, and I hear her moan. She draws it out long, and I notice the car next to me has squeaky breaks.

An old woman rolls down the window of her car. She’s tied a purple scarf over her head, like a bonnet. She’s wearing what looks like a wedding ring.

I slide her ticket into the rectangular, money-grubbing machine. It screeches at me, and the clock reads “$6.00.” I punch in a code stamped on the back of the ticket, which informs me she was visiting the dentist today, and the clock reads “$5.00.”

“Five dollars,” I say as if I too have been programmed. She hands me a ten. I realize the ring is on her right hand. She fumbles a little, but has a sweet demeanor about it. I imagine her life.

She grew up during the Great Depression. She didn’t know that cheddar wasn’t supposed to crumble until after the war. Her sweetheart was a soldier. When he came home, he was cold, distant, and callous. She stuck with him. They had two kids, but he was a drunk, and would yell at them and even hit them. When their oldest was twelve, she divorced him. She got a job as a secretary at a law firm in Minneapolis and put her children through the University of Minnesota. Now she’s retired, lives in a small house in Fridley, and calls her kids often.. Today she told them about her visit to the dentist. I hit the enter button. The machine screeches at me again. I give her a five-dollar bill and wish her a good night. The clock reads 14:25.

The sign on my window says, “Attention Patrons. Validation stamps from Fairview Medical Center and The Radisson Hotel are not honored at University of Minnesota facilities.” The sunlight bleeds the image of the words and the letters backwards on my side of the window. I read it several times and find it difficult to retrain my brain to read forwards.

I tap my fingers. I should be doing something constructive, but every time I try, another patron interrupts. A co-worker once said, “This job would be great if it weren’t for the customers.”

In the often short periods I have between one patron to the next, I have just enough time to daydream about my bed. I meditate on the comfort of my down blanket. I imagine the body of my bride-to-be, warm and naked, pressed against me. The soothing red glow of the lamp casts a greenish silhouette of her face over me on the wall. She smiles. I smile. The room melts. The walls drip. The drips become ones and zeros. Lines of code interrupting my perfectly organic daydream. A car has blocked my escape route. I think it’s a Lexus.

The man in the car probably isn’t thirty yet. He’s wearing a black suit, a white collared shirt, and a red tie. His dark hair is slicked back. He tries to identify with me by using some generic college student colloquialism; “Hey, dude,” or, “’Sup, man.”

He was born into an upper class suburban family. He thought he was cool in high school, because he sold (and did his fair share of) all the great recreations known to suburbanites: weed, coke, and ex. He got a job at a bank and made some extra cash on the side by keeping up the old high school business—until he got caught with a gram of cocaine when he was high and speeding. He found himself a high-priced lawyer who got the charges dropped to a misdemeanor. This guy’s never seen a consequence in his life. How does he get off trying to identify with me?. He asks for his receipt. His company will reimburse him. I hit enter. The machine screeches at me. I smile robotically, give him his credit card and his receipt, and wish him a good day. The clock ticks 14:27.

Big brother is watching. Little brother is in the upper right corner of my booth. I look at the center screen, and I’m watching me too. Is that what I look like? I look so mechanical. I’m bolted to the chair. I move with the utmost efficiency. I wave to myself. Okay. I am still human.

I count my fingers. Ten. Good. They’re all there. I test the stamp I use to endorse the checks on my forearm. It works. Good. I test it on the palm of my hand. There’s still ink on the pad. I test it on my neck. I test it on my forehead. I test it on my leg, my stomach, and my chest; anywhere that won’t offend the camera.
I call her Noni. It’s a childhood nickname of hers. I look at my hand. She drew on it last night. It says “NONIOIOOIIOOIOIIO” starting from the back of my hand near my thumb, wrapping around my palm. I imagine the Ns turned on their sides and it says “20210100110010110.” She stands inside the binary code. She offsets the program and brings me my freedom. She melts the clock.

The honk of a car horn to my left sets off a series of ones and zeros in my brain. A middle-aged man with a handlebar moustache laughs loud and warm and cracks a dim-witted remark about daydreaming. Everything is blurry as melted forms harden and regenerate. I smile. He seems like a nice guy. The plaid shirt and the truck tell me he works for maintenance of some sort.

“How are ya?” I say with as much cheer as I can muster.

He says something like, “Great! I get to go home,” and he laughs.

The machine screeches at me as I feed it his ticket. He asks if he can have a receipt. He’ll be reimbursed.
He grew up on a farm. He learned the value of a dollar and a hard day’s work at a young age. He was ecstatic when he was old enough to get a job that paid minimum wage. In high school, he drove a Trans-Am he bought from a local junkyard, and fixed up himself. When he graduated, he sold it and got a truck. He then moved to the big city and joined a workers union as a machinist. He never scabbed off a strike. He married and had a son. When his son started going to school on a full scholarship, he got a new job at the University so they could meet up and have lunch sometimes. Movement is sometimes all one needs to be free. A one talks to a zero talks to a zero talks to a one somewhere behind the enter button as I poke it with my middle finger and the machine screeches at me. I give him his change, a receipt, a smile, and wish him a nice night. The clock ticks 14:29.

A distressed woman leaves her mini-van to yell at me because the line is too long, and she needs to pick up her kids. Her car is behind only two others. She says she’ll just give me the money and her ticket if I can let her out in front of everyone else. I tell her it doesn’t work that way, but still she insists. I tell her there’s a weight sensor, and that it’s literally impossible for me to do that. She is not listening. She starts yelling louder. Then, finally, there’s the number two. I snap. I call her a bitch (among other things), and she stomps back to her mini-van.

I do a ticket and money exchange with a University professor. He zips past. I collect toll for a young travel agent, and he’s on the go. I awkwardly take the money and the ticket in complete silence from the bitch who, less than a minute ago, was three cars back. She sneers. I roll my eyes. She zooms out of the garage. The clock ticks 14:32
I am the robotic arm. I am the almighty gatekeeper. I am the clock that is almost impossible to melt. I need the number two.

Her real name is Norah. When I am at work, she’s NONI; she’s 2021. She’s my freedom.

A car pulls up to my window. It is decorated in stickers. There’s a five-point star in a circle on the windshield and an Obama sticker on the back passenger window. Inside is an older man covered in piercings and wearing a fishing hat. His name is Gary. Unlike every other patron, his book is open and full. Other patrons, I have to write the book when I meet them. But Gary’s book is already written. He’s one person out of hundreds, probably thousands of people who ever gave a damn about what I think. The first time he came through, he said, “I’m sorry, what was your name again?” as if we had been introduced before. Astonished, I told him.

We discuss the recent election. We talk about why I’m in school, and why I work at the parking garage. We talk about his job at the hospital. He looks at me square in the eyes and squints slightly. He pushes his head forward slightly, and he imagines my life.

Scott was born in Minneapolis. He didn’t live there long enough to remember anything important about it, because his family moved to the suburbs before he was in school. He never got along with his classmates. His closest friend was his neighbor and was only his closest friend because they were neighbors. When the family moved to the country in fifth grade, he thought everyone there was a dumb, redneck yokel. He left high school early to go to college. He did well enough until he transferred to the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities. At that point he became reclusive and depressed: a combination of homesickness and finding his place in a new habitat. He failed once, but got back on his feet. He met a woman. Skepticism left over from past disaster relationships made him skittish, but he soon realized she was the woman he would marry. She became the most powerful motivation he’s ever experienced. She is his place in the world.

I give Gary his change. There’s a long line of people behind him. They’re angry and honking. I don’t give two shits about them. He wishes me a good day and drives off. I don’t even glance at the clock.