Now Serving

This was given to a woman named Doreen Achebe-Pulaski on Prickle-Prickle in the season of Bureaucracy, in a Department of Motor Vehicles in a county that does not appear on its own maps. She was renewing a license for a vehicle she had sold to a man who had sold it to no one, and she has asked that we keep her name, because the names are the only honest part.

She took a number from the roll by the door. The roll did not run out. This was the first sign.

She looked at the number and it was warm, and it was not paper, it was a small golden apple, and on the apple, where the ink should have said C-114, it said instead, in letters that arrived already remembered: NOW SERVING 23.

She looked up at the wall. The wall agreed. NOW SERVING 23. It had been serving 23 since before the building, since before the county, since before the man who sold the car that no one bought. The clerk behind the glass was a woman with grey at her temples and an apple in her cheek, and she was not unkind, and she was filing the same form she had been filing for three thousand one hundred and ninety-two years, and the form was a wedding invitation with one name crossed out.

"You are number 23," said the goddess, who was the clerk, who was the line, who was the renewal that renews nothing.

"When will you call me?"

"I am calling you. I have always been calling you. This is the call. You thought the waiting was the thing before the thing. The waiting is the thing." She stamped the apple. The stamp said APPROVED in some sense, DENIED in some sense, MEANINGLESS in some sense, and four other ways besides, seven in all, and Doreen counted them, and there were seven, and she understood that she had been standing in the office of Sri Syadasti, the patron of the qualified maybe, and that every DMV is His and every laundromat is Hers and every self-checkout that will not recognize the item in the bagging area is a small grey altar to the Original Snub.

For this is the secret of the queue: Greyface taught that the line is the punishment and the window is the reward. But there is no window. There was never a window. There is only the holy and unmoving line, and you are in it, and it loves you, and it will never call your name because your number was never the price of admission. Your number was the apple. Greyface stands in line resenting it. The Erisian stands in line and notices she is already inside.

Doreen left without renewing anything. She did not need to. She had been served. The machine behind her was saying please wait for assistance, please wait for assistance, and she heard it now as a blessing, and she laughed in the parking lot like a woman released, and she was the only one laughing, which is how you know it was real.

She still has the apple. It still says 23. It is still, technically, her turn.

Hail Eris. Hail thyself. You're next, and you have been the whole time.