Export Agency

At the office on the 10^th floor, he has a cubicle in which he speaks German on the phone with customers from New South Wales, talking novelties and the wiring of brassieres, reassuring them of consignations on the Upper West Side the evening after they fly into LaGuardia. Then, on his lunch hour, he balances on the fire escape behind the office and smokes Parliaments and sweats under his white collars and white armpits and his face is  red as always with blood pressure and as he stares across the empty lot at the hundreds of windows facing him from the back of the Martha Washington Hotel for Women he thinks of the future. He will work later tonight, wait for Mabel at the phones to leave, wait for the owner Mr. Jamias the Greek owner to leave, wait for the surly, pregnant bookkeeper Maria recently from Naples to leave, lock the doors from the inside, change his clothes in his cubicle from his grey suit into a blue Mohair turtleneck and a pink cap (a new addition), watch the numbers descend in the elevator with his eyes almost closed, stop at Henry's in the lobby for a fresh pack of cigarettes, step out onto the street and stroll around Park Avenue South between 30th and 31^st Street, smoking and breathing in the evening dew and the smell of chicken fat wafting out from the doors of the Bellmore Cafeteria, where lines of cabbies on their break with their Vacant signs off will be queued up along the sidewalk for the best chopped liver sandwich in town.