Trouble at 4393-15
Jennifer Mills
[extract]
I suppose I should tell her from the start: they like that. Well it started, I’ll say, because stories must, one afternoon on the railway station. 4393-06 through 18. It was getting on for afternoon and I was pretty tired, cause we start at the crack to beat the traffic. I was working with Emil, who’s Israeli but we don’t argue cause what would be the point, and besides that’s all the way on the other side of the world and anyway my family’s from Syria and we have more arguments with the English and the French and the Americans than the Jews.
But the doctor will not want to hear my opinions on the Middle East. I will carry on from: It was getting on for afternoon and this was the last lot of machines to get through. But there was trouble at 4393-15. A man was sticking his hand up the chute, cursing. He looked funny like that, like that TV vet guy inseminating a mare, only the machines are big and rectangular and not very mare-like. The man stood up as I was approaching and started on tactic #2. I should mention at this point that I have seen this little exchange between man and machine one thousand times without mishap, as the lady doctor will not know that vending machines are forever malfunctioning and men are forever getting angry with them. Tactic #2 is to tilt and shake the machine and bang your fist on its front in a little dance, like a cat attacking a boot with a mouse inside, safely snuggled into the toe. When I was a kid I used to have a cat that did just that, but she ran away. Oh, of course the doctor won’t want to hear about the cat or she will start asking lots of awkward questions about my childhood. The dance (unlike the cat’s) always ends with one or two kicks to the machine’s flank, accompanied by much swearing.
When I got there, pushing my trolley laden with boxes, the man was up to the kicking part, and I cleared my throat. He looked around.
‘Fucking thing took my fucking money,’ he said, looking warily from me to the stack of boxes at my feet.
‘Please don’t kick the machine,’ I said politely, indicating the sticker above the coin slot which warns that tilting the machine may cause it to fall over on top of you, and you can die, and there’s a little picture of a stick-man being crushed by a big rectangle, though I have never known of such a thing happening in real life or even in the stories of the other stockies, the closest being a story that old Spiros tells who has been working there forever about a guy who got his arm stuck up the chute during tactic #1 and Spiros had to call the Fire Brigade and the man threatened to sue but it got settled out of court and now he lives in the Eastern Suburbs in a house with four bathrooms, and at the end of the story Spiros always says, ‘What would anyone want with four bathrooms?’ and puts up his hands and shakes his head sadly at all those bathrooms. It’s his favourite part of the story, but if I go on like this the doctor will start writing in a little book about my mind wandering and I’ll be sent for tests.
No, I will say, I pointed at the sticker and then I said ‘Please write a letter to the company,’ and I told him the address and the number of the machine, and he wrote them down. That seemed to make it better, and he calmed down until I opened up the machine and started restocking the cans. The man didn’t go away but was watching me. I could feel him watching, like a ghost or a spirit of some cranky old relative, except there is no way I will say that to the doctor because it makes me sound very crazy indeed, but that’s what it felt like. When I got to the last box the man very slowly began on tactic #3, which is arguing with me.
£3.00