At fifty-five years of age he found himself on the shelf. It was an actual shelf in a warehouse on the Brooklyn waterfront. An entertainment production company rented it to store extra scenery and furniture. For a time he stored himself there too.
 
It was a cinderblock box built in a hurry and on the cheap. About forty feet wide, one hundred and twenty feet deep and with a very high ceiling- maybe thirty feet - give or take the steel truss that supported the corrugated steel ceiling. There were no windows, no ventilation, no heat, except a gas fire blower hanging from the ceiling near the truck bay door. There was only one human door, with its own roll down gate and padlocks.
 
Industrial spaces like this usually have some room, or suite of rooms that are used as offices for the desks and phones and paperwork of whatever spice importer, or auto-parts wholesaler is currently leasing the space. But this place was just a big rough and dusty room with towering industrial shelves.  There was a beat-up little bathroom with a toilet, a broken shower stall, and a sink the size of an upside-down cowboy hat. There was a little office fridge that the stagehands used for water, soda, sandwiches and beer on days they were tasked with warehouse work, unloading trucks and shifting pallets of stuff around with the forklift.
 
The aisles were clogged with pallets that wouldn’t fit on the overloaded shelves and with random bulky things that just didn’t fit anywhere. The floor space was reduced to a labyrinth of narrow passages. The vapor lamps in the rafters spilled a weak sick light through the dead air, past the clutter, to finally collapse exhausted on the dirty concrete floor.  It was dim and dusty and shut up tight as a tomb, but this tomb held not a pharaoh’s exquisitries for the afterlife but a hodgepodge of prosaica for this one.
 
The idea of sleeping here was grim, but he was in a serious predicament. He had a job with the company, but no apartment in the city. He needed the job, but home was a hundred miles away, about a two-hour drive. The job required that he work twelve, even up to fifteen hours a day. But if you drive four hours a day, as he would coming from home, and if you allow one hour in the morning to wake up and get out the door, and a couple of hours of personal life in the evening, it adds up to twenty hours, more or less… But wait, we haven’t accounted for sleep yet, and that’s one account that can’t go unpaid. By reducing the travel time from four hours to one-ish he could manage five or six hours of sleep a night, and sometimes more.
 
He would have liked to thank the company for helping him through this rough patch while he puzzled out a more permanent solution, but corporate managers are risk-averse when it comes to acts of extra-legal kindness, and camping out in the warehouse would be completely out of the question for reasons of legality, safety, and aesthetics. Making this place his secret pied-à-terre for even a short while was simply unthinkable.
 
Which is what made it possible. He had to create a hidden sleeping nest out of sight on a high shelf and leave no evidence of habitation around the room. As one of the stagehands he had the key, and he had a couple of brother stagehands in on the plan, including his immediate supervisor who he had worked with for years. Tommy had his back.
 
Yes, the amenities were sparse, but it did have free indoor parking, which counts for a lot in New York City.
 
The Bosses rarely visited this dusty pile of stuff optimistically deemed assets in the ledger. They relied on an inventory back at the office in Manhattan. On occasion they sent the guys and a truck to fetch items that could play in an upcoming scene: park benches, fake potted palms, walls, doors and windows, faux prison bars made of wood but painted to look like steel. Beat-up filing cabinets, wall cabinets, couches, counters, desks, mattresses, cheap dishes and flatware, café chairs, bar stools, old books, custom window blinds that will never quite fit any window ever again, huge rolls of used carpet, pipes, chain-link fences, bundles of newspaper, bricks and sand, an autopsy table, a TV news desk, smelly old army tents, a broken canoe, old tires, oil drums, police barricades, a street steam stack with safety barriers and blinking lights, and more, much more.
 
Often the picture in the book in the office looked OK, but the thing itself did not. The Art Department was expected to reuse this stuff as much as possible to help rein in the budget, but often the thing simply would not do and they had to build or buy a new one. The new one would end up here too. It was a warehouse of costly things of little value. The company was loath to throw it out because of the cost, but annoyed by what it cost to keep it.
 
After a long day’s work, he took the Subway to Brooklyn, got off at York, and climbed the stairs to the street. It was 9:00pm, dark, cold and windy. Snow was coming. Turning west he walked down the hill towards the river, down an old cobblestone street veined with vestigial train tracks from one hundred and fifty years ago when heavy industry and commerce dominated the waterfront.  It was a canyon of hulking brick buildings, dark above, but glowing at street level with a lively new identity. There was the furniture outlet, the Art Bookstore, the Taqueria, the twenty-four hour Gourmet Emporium, the art bar, the Wi-Fi cafe, the dance studio school, and the construction site for a coming soon skyline vista condo deluxe residence opportunity - now showing.
 
But then he passed the piles of rubble, the last working streetlight, and turned the last corner at the riverfront onto a desolate street still untouched by Brooklyn’s renaissance. The reason for this was undoubtedly the electrical power station that filled one whole side of the block and cut it off from the river. The high fences, topped with razor ribbon, were posted with ominous warnings of danger, death, high voltage and criminal prosecution for anyone foolish enough to approach the humming transformers and network of high voltage terminals within.  Across from this was nothing but a row of dark, closed up warehouses, and halfway along the row was an especially anonymous roll-down gate with no signage and no street number.
 
He scanned up and down the block for activity. Not a soul in sight. That was usual at this hour, but he was wary of the occasional cop car idling in the distance in case its occupants, in their diligent boredom, might decide to see what that guy up the block was up to. It’s not that he wouldn’t know what to say to them, he just didn’t want to be clocked by anyone, not even by the sorrowful homeless folks that haunt places like this. There is a common metaphor that describes such people as having fallen through the cracks. This place is clearly a crack. It is a forlorn middle-of-nowhere in the middle of the most densely developed place on earth. And it is here that people who don’t have a pot to piss in might stop to take a dump in peace. That is unless the cop car is idling up the block. In that case they shuffle on through as quickly as possible, doing their best to look like someone with someplace to go.
 
He opened the pair of padlocks that pinned the gate to the steel track on either side of the door and struggled to raise the security gate.  It was obstinate with rust, a good dose of grease was overdue, but with a burst of exertion he prevailed, and as it gave way it let out a terrific screech that reminded him of the anguished last gasp of a pterodactyl being slaughtered with an axe. It was odd that he could be reminded of something that had never happened in the history of the world, but he was. He looked left and right, but there was no one else to hear it.
 
Behind the gate was a heavy steel door with more locks. Once inside this he pushed the exterior gate back down, shut the door and locked himself in. He hung the outer gate locks and keeper pins on a big nail just inside the door as these could only be used from the street side. It was dark. He felt his way through the little passage to the big space and crossed to the breaker panel to switch on the overhead lights.
 
There was his car, just like he left it. Tommy and Owen knew where the keys were hidden, so there was always someone to move it if a truck needed to back in to the loading bay. Otherwise it could sit there all week. The trunk served as his clothes dresser but he left nothing in the passenger compartment that would offer a clue to who, how or why this car was here. There was a small table and a couple of chairs by the little fridge near the door to the water closet and that was fine because it fit the needs of workers having a sandwich and a coffee before hopping into the forklift, but other accouterments of domesticity needed to be well hidden.
 
The shower wasn’t really broken; it simply had no knobs on the valve stems, so with vise-grip pliers clamped to each post one had excellent control the water temperature.  Between uses, however, the pliers were hidden in a nearby file cabinet and the shower curtain was removed. For good measure a half dozen large but empty cardboard boxes were piled up in the stall to further obscure its utility. All toiletries, shampoo, soap and towels were tucked out of sight every morning.
 
There were endless hiding places and so now, from desk drawers under tarps and commercial bins tucked in the shadows, he pulled out his microwave, a radio, coffee maker, a lamp for the table, and the extension cords and power strip to plug it all in and charge his laptop. He made the bathroom real again. He had his soap and towel and toothbrush. He had a plate, a bowl, a couple of cups, knife, fork, spoon, etc. Canned food, coffee, and other provisions were squirreled away securely out of reach of the vermin that enjoy eminent domain in waterfront warehouses the world over.
 
Once he was all set up he could relax. He turned off the harsh warehouse lights at the panel and returned to sit in the little circle of warm light cast by the table lamp. The rest dissolved to black. It was better that way. He ate microwaved soup with crackers and cheese. The radio kept him company and he played with the laptop computer.  He drank beer and smoked cigarettes. It was too cold to take off his coat, but he was comfortable enough.
 
It was completely quiet for twenty minutes at a time, and then the big blower on the ceiling kicked on and ran for ten minutes or so, making far more noise than heat. First came a loud click, a pause, then a big whoosh as the gas flame ignited. The fan motor growled on and cranked up to a muscular whirr. Bars of blue flame, like a restaurant’s broiler could be seen through the grill in the machines underbelly, but not felt.  The motor’s vibrations set the sheet metal housing rumbling in the deep sound registers, the sound of fan blades and air filled the middle registers, and the whine of the motor topped off the high end. It was perfect white noise in harmony with the darkness that enveloped his little puddle of light.
 
Normally he would want to get to sleep by 11:00 to get up at 4:30 to be on location by 6:00 am. But tonight, with snow coming, the schedule had changed at the last minute. “Going to cover” they call it, so instead of filming outdoors in the weather the shoot would be in the nice warm studio. That changed everything for Tommy’s crew. What would have been a difficult day had turned into an easy one. He was to report not to the location at 6:00 as previously planned, but to the studio at 10:00. This was a lucky break. He could have an extra beer and get some extra sleep. He could relax a little.
 
But still he preloaded the coffee machine to make it a one-button thing in the morning and carefully cleaned up the dishes and food garbage so there was not a trace to be found, not by people or by those fucking little floor mammals that would be coming out later.
 
He sat back down with another beer and stared at the radio for a while. He slowly realized that it was annoying him. Annoying him a lot. He snapped it off. He gazed into the cold silence. He worried about the time and money he needed to sort out this mess. He pondered where he had gone wrong in life to now be sitting alone in the dark, his options so limited, his dignity so frayed. When he was young, in moments of reverie, he had tried to imagine where he would be later in life and this is not what had come to mind.
 
When he was a child he was given the book The Little Engine That Could. In it the littlest locomotive takes on the daunting task of getting a trainload of toys over the mountain to the children in the valley beyond. By tenacious effort it fulfills a noble destiny and makes happy children where there would have only been pitiful toy-free ones had it not summoned up the fortitude to reach the top of the mountain. And as it crests the ridge and points its little cowcatcher into the valley below it’s all joy, joy, joy; a breezy glide to a triumphal celebration of blessed accomplishment.
 
It’s nice, like an Aesop’s fable on the virtue of perseverance. Little boys and girls are exhorted to face the learning curve of life with courage. But for those still hopefully ascending the toe of that curve, be advised that the metaphor gets the geography wrong. At the top of the hill there is not a lovely slope to a verdant valley but a rough terrain-ed plateau. It’s pretty flat, but there are ups and downs along the way and that breeze is more in the nature of a persistent headwind against which you must push. You can’t see very far ahead because the air is quite hazy and you certainly can’t see the horizon, but maybe that is for the best. Children may or may not get toys along the way, but since you are the adult now, no one gets them unless you buy them.
 
The ladder he used to get to the secret sleeping loft was kept on the other side of the room for a reason. The location of his nest needed to be remote from casual discovery. If the ladder was left in place someone might climb it. The particular shelf in question appeared to be loaded up with bulky opaque objects of little interest. There was an amateurishly styled Tiki bar left over from an Hawaiian themed Frat party scene, Bags and boxes of painted Styrofoam bricks and rubble from a simulated building collapse, and several fake tombstones, also of Styrofoam, but skim-coated with plaster and expertly painted to look like solid granite blocks. If, from 20 feet below, that shelf was being appraised by even a keen observer it should appear so unambiguously comprehensible and its stuff so little needed, that there would be no inclination for a closer look. Without a ladder at hand any residual curiosity will dissolve. That was the theory at least, a little theatrical misdirection.
 
Yet up behind that wall of stuff was a small hidden space that was carpeted and furnished with a mattress, a milk crate, a lamp, clock, and a book. It was a cross between a tree house and a monk’s cell, depending on his mood, which was not so good tonight. He never really read the book - he was always too tired- but it’s being there, next to the clock, made the scene feel reassuringly normal.
 
He tried to sleep but it didn’t go well. He dozed off a little, but then the blower kicked on again and he was back. You can’t hurry up and sleep. You can’t sleep harder or faster. One falls asleep. One cannot leap asleep. So he lay there and waited for nothing to happen, for nothingness to happen.  There were weird little sounds in the distance. And then the blower kicked on again.
 
Another metaphor he had picked up more recently says that at about fifty-five years of age a man is starting to circle the drain. To be sure, it is imperceptible at first, but ever so gently the flow begins pulling to the left (northern hemisphere) in what seems to be a wide arc, an arc that seems to be becoming… a circle? How curious. Perhaps it is no surprise that at about this time in life even those least inclined towards metaphysics begin to marvel at the cyclic aspect of time. Eventually you may notice a sort of dimple in the smooth water off the port beam. Yes, it’s smooth sailing for some time and you even pick up a little speed, but you notice the circles become a little tighter each time and the gyre is speeding up. The dimple deepens. Your speed increases. The dimple becomes a hole in the water, a deep hole, a swirling vortex, an abyss, and you know the rest – it ends with a gurgling sound.
 
He’d heard lots of guys in their middle years invoke this metaphor - if more simply - in discussions on loading docks and over meatball heroes at lunch. They compared plans for retirement and plots for some sort of modest third act in the funnel of time that remained.  They arranged their affairs into ever-tighter circles. Their ambition was no longer to charge up the next hill, but to negotiate a dignified retreat from this one. By talking about it some seemed to seek to prove to themselves that they had it figured out, and some seemed to have actually done so, but he was neither of these. He knew he didn’t know what was going to happen next, and he suspected that when it came right down to it none of them did either.
 
He had worked for this company for years, but the show had just about run its course and it didn’t take a soothsayer to see it. It might not be just an apartment he needed to find, it could be a job too. When that day came some of the workers would jump smoothly to other shows, some would languish in a demimonde of under employment for a time but eventually land on their feet, and some would just fall away never to be seen again. So which of these was he?
 
At about 2:00 am the fish wholesalers next door began their daily racket of trucks and lift-gates, forklifts and ice machines. The simple cinderblock wall next to his head could not much muffle the sound of grumbling diesels and backing-up-beeps. Over this dull din the Chinese workers shouted urgent songs at each other at the top of their voice.  He knew no Chinese, but he could picture the trucks backing up in tight spaces and the teetering loads on forklifts - loads a bit too big, on forklifts moving a bit too fast. Men in high rubber boots worked with streaking precision flinging fish over ice and ice over fish while others hustled the bins to the trucks and the foreman shouted to hurry up and get it right this time. They worked as if their lives depended on it, like sailors in a storm scrambling to save the ship beneath their feet.
 
He must have gotten some sleep. The clock said seven. Theoretically he had more time, but another clause in the laws of sleep is that sleep cannot be banked, so he got up and climbed down to the floor. He switched on the coffee and turned on the radio. The table lamp was still on because it is always night here. He crossed to the electric panel and turned on the overheads to signify day. The radio talked of accumulating snow and commuter delays so he went to see for himself.
 
He unlocked the door and pulled up the gate. The screech of the pterodactyl seemed muted this time, less shrill. The reason was revealed to be a two-inch blanket of snow now coating the hard surfaces of stone and concrete and thus dampening the sound’s acrid edge. The city had been softened in both sound and sight. The feathery clumps of snowflake still floating earthward had flocked up the power station. The chain-link fences were now lace curtains, their overall diamond pattern topped with a froufrou of fluffy razor ribbon. The long swags of power line were like white velvet ropes and the terminal heads wore white berets. The litter-strewn street, having donned a wedding dress, was now serene and beautiful, it’s scars of neglect all gone.
 
He took a long breath of the cool air. It was not really cold, and no wind, just soft and clean and peaceful. He resolved to pack up and get out quick to stroll through the city with camera in hand to make photographs of what he found along the way. Maybe he would hike over the bridge and walk the whole way instead of getting there fast by train. He took another deep inhale of the fresh air but he did not step out into the snow. No footprints. Not yet. He pulled the gate back down and relocked the door.
 
The coffee was done. He sat and sipped. The radio was giving the morning summary of the calamity of humanity, the latest tally of fear and ignorance, anger, and hubris we call the News. It didn’t take long to have heard enough. He turned it off. He sipped the hot coffee and it was good, but the cool snowy air was better, so he commenced the morning ritual of packing up his stuff and stowing the appliances back in their hiding places. He chose today’s clothes from the trunk of the car and left yesterday’s in the laundry bag. He de-realized the bathroom. He loaded his backpack to meet the needs of the day and made sure his camera was powered up and ready to go. A small bundle of last night’s food garbage and beer bottles was tightly tied up and made ready for a nonchalant toss in a dumpster up the block (mustn’t leave it here). He moved the ladder back across the room and trundled a few gondolas of book boxes into haphazard positions on the floor where the ladder had been. He gulped the now cooler coffee and stood back to appraise the scene. He was dressing the set. The table seemed too empty so he put some work gear on it:  a spool of steel cable, wire cutters, turnbuckles, thimbles, and nico-press sleeves. As a final gesture he stood a few feet back and casually tossed a pair of work gloves on top. It told the story. He sat and rested for a bit. He sipped.  His eyes swept the room for overlooked clues. It looked good. He was ready to go.
 
The sudden screech of the gate hit him like an axe to the chest. His heart skipped a beat. An fMRI of this moment, were it possible, would show an amygdala gone super nova. Fight or flight pegged the needle as an array of possibilities burst like fireworks in his mind all at once in slow motion.
 
Could it be an unfortunate soul was looking for a spider hole in which to shelter from the snow, and the alcove of the doorframe was all they sought?  They would pull the gate three-quarters down and fall asleep. This lowest level of intrusion could easily be shooed away by a firm voice through the door if it came to that. There was no peephole, but he would not open the door in case it was the next possibility, an opportunistic vandal or thief testing the door for easy access to a little mischief, or whatever else they had in them. He had to be careful because they were unpredictable. The worst were quite feral and often ran in packs. Thankfully that was quite rare. And then there was a more sophisticated sort of miscreant, who, if engaged in conversation might attempt to talk the door open under false pretenses. He would not be buying any of that today and in any case the door was solid and could not be breeched. Remain quiet and whoever it was would probably get bored and move on.
 
If he felt the circumstances compelled him to employ the firm voice through the door option even an aggressive individual could do little more than shout insults. He would not argue or exchange threats. He would fall silent. When whatever taunts were hurled at the door drew no response such a thug would begin to wonder if the silence meant that the police were already coming, or that a gun was being loaded on the other side of the door. They would move on. While such a scenario would be a bit unnerving and delay his departure for reasons of tactical caution, it was manageable.
 
Of greater concern were the people who did have keys, and they fell into three categories: The friends who knew he was there, the other workers who did not, and the bosses.
 
The first group was no problem of course - they were the happy option - but they would have called, so he could pretty much count them out.
 
The second group was a mixed bag. It might be fine, but it could go sideways. He might nonchalantly stand his ground and offer some pretense for his presence and they might think nothing of it. But if the individual was nosey by nature they might penetrate his obfuscation. If so the question would be if that person was inclined to be laissez-faire about this unauthorized use of company property, or were they of a more authoritarian mindset and take it personally. He might need to concede that it is breaking the rules and that breaking the rules is wrong. He might find himself arguing from the rather shaky position that while it might be technically wrong, per se, it wasn’t wrong wrong. He might find himself pleading his case to an unsympathetic judge, and a self-appointed one at that.  And on top of all that, whoever it was, friend or foe, it meant that knowledge of his secret would be released into the wild and there was no telling where it might go from there.
 
Yet it was the third group that was the most serious threat. He doubted he could blithely deflect their questions. They were in a position to know if someone was out of place because they do the placing. “What are you doing? Are you on the clock? Who told you to?” It could unravel as easily as pulling a loose string of yarn on a hand-knit sweater. He really needed to avoid bosses.
 
This constellation of thoughts bloomed in the blink of an eye and it did not make a pretty picture. Of the lines connecting the dots, some ran towards the door, some ran away. The choice of which line to take depended on the next sound: Would it be keys? He moved a little towards the door to listen.
 
There were two dead bolts to open and that took quite some time because generations of imprecise duplication had devolved into keys that had to be wiggled, jiggled, coaxed and cajoled before they would click past the catch point. It could take half a minute, maybe more for the less adept, and both locks were like that. Even with practice you weren’t so much opening the lock as picking it. This was actually an unintended security feature because if you didn’t know it would work when you get it just right, you would just give up. The mechanism had a secret handshake. This bought him some time…
 
But the sound of the keys did come next, and muffled voices too. There was more than one, maybe three people, and they were coming in. The key was being aggressively worked and wiggled as if by someone already aware of the difficulty, and the raised voice that began complaining about it was clearly the Set Decorator.
 
He snatched up his pack and dashed to the panel to kill the lights. He gently eased the toggle over to lessen the loud snap a breaker switch makes. The exit sign stilled glowed deep red light into the room.  He crossed back to the table to grab the coffee cup clue (still warm) and moved back into the shadows between the pallets piled high with shrink-wrapped gak. Back here it was truly dark, so he plucked the little flashlight from his belt and zigzagged between the gondolas looking for a plan.
 
If the Decorator was the one struggling with the lock it meant that they didn’t have Tommy or one of the other foreman in tow to do it for them, which meant that the decorator was the one closest to the ground here - low man on the totem pole as they say - which meant the others were higher up, they were bosses.
 
This was hide-and-seek without the fun. He could hide on floor level somewhere, but the possibility of being discovered in a craven crouch beneath a desk or a tarp was an image agonizing to behold, so he gulped back the last coffee, stuffed the cup in the pouch on the back of his pack, tossed the pack on his back and clenched the light in his teeth and climbed. An adrenalized athleticism informed by ancient arboreal instincts catapulted him to his shelf. He climbed like a freaked-out monkey. He vaulted the tombstones, and flopped onto the mattress and froze just as they entered the room.
 
He fought to regain his composure, but for the moment his senses were off-line. He worked to control his breathing and slow his heart. All he could hear was the surge of his pulse in the carotid artery by his ear, and all he could see was a dark tunnel that sizzled with artifacts of phantom light caused by the electrical storm in his brain, or maybe it was just the background radiation of the big bang. Does it matter? He fought for calm. He slowly breathed more slowly, and slowly a little more so.  He got a grip. He gently slipped off the pack and sat up to better get a listen to the proceedings below. The Decorator had managed to find the breaker box and turn on the lights. He did not dare raise his head for a look for in turn he might be seen by them.
 
They were indeed three in number and he recognized their voices. It was the Production Manager, the Decorator, and the Art Director.  They were on a scouting expedition to appraise the state of the warehouse first hand.
 
P:  “Well yeah, I see what you mean. It’s a lot of shit.”
 
D:  “Yeah well. I mean, a lot of it is useful. But we just need more space.”
 
P:  “Well that’s not gonna happen.”
 
D:  “Well, then, we re-asses. We decide what is truly worth keeping, and we schedule some clean up days.”
 
A:  “Whose car is this?”
 
D:  “Huh?”
 
A: “Whose car I wonder?”
 
D:  “No name or note?”
 
P:  “Oh a teamster probably. Probably a teamster.”
 
A: “Yeah right. Fucking teamsters!  Even I don’t get free indoor parking.”
 
P:  “Should have been a teamster.”
 
D:  “Maybe someone’s here.”
 
A:  “No one’s here. The lights were off… HELLO!…”
 
D:  “No, I mean, maybe they went for coffee or something.”
 
P:  “Well I hope you’re right because the gate wasn’t locked. Not good. I hope they don’t just leave it like that. I’ll have a talk with Tommy.”
 
D:  “Oh, I don’t know, those guys are pretty good about that stuff.”
 
A:  “And it’s dusty. No one’s been here. There were no footprints. I distinctly remember because I was looking at how perfect the snow looked. There were no tires, and no feet.”
 
P:  “OK! - Guys, guys!... Sherlock! Enough about the car! Back to the point. Please, I’m sorry.  I’ve already seen enough and I want to get back to the office before the meeting. You’ve got to go through this stuff and throw out what we really won’t use. It’s time to purge. Get the guys, go through it, make a list.”
 
D:  “We can lose a lot of that carpet.”
 
A:  “There is stuff. The Tiki bar is a safe bet I guess. I’ll go over the list.”
 
D:  “We should toss out that rubble from the building collapse up there. That will free up a lot of space.”
 
A:  “Do you know how many scenic-hours it took to make that stuff?
 
P:  “What about the canoe?”
 
D:  “That canoe cost - what - like four thousand dollars?”
 
P:  “Tell me about it!”
 
D:  “Don’t blame me! Denny insisted on a wood one. It was a big thing. You remember. But I think we can sell it.”
 
A:  “Riddled with machine gun holes?”
 
D:  “You can’t tell me it’s not worth something.”
 
P:  “OK, look. Just make a list: what goes, what sells. When in doubt put it on EBay and see. Give me a manpower budget for dumpster days and get ready to pull the trigger. But don’t make a big thing of it.”
 
D:  “OK. Will do.”
 
P:  “And look- and this is not for publication - but it’s looking like we’re not getting renewed, so I want to be ready to get out of here.”
 
A:  “So it’s true.”
 
P: “Nothing’s true and you didn’t hear it from me. Just get ready. Give me a breakdown for the whole thing but get started with the obvious stuff.  Start cleaning house.”
 
D:  “OK.”
 
P:  “Now let’s get out of here. I’ve seen enough. The traffic is just getting worse and I got to get back.”
 
A:  “The shelves alone are worth a lot. Another production will snatch them up.”
 
P:  “We will have a fire sale when the time comes but for now not a word about this to anyone. Don’t tell the crew. I don’t want the rats leaving the ship too soon.”
 
D:  “I guess I should get the lights. I hate those power boxes. You’d think they’d have a switch by the door.”
 
P:  “Oh just leave it. It’s a pain in the ass - this whole place is a pain! But we are going to lock the gate.  The locks are hanging on a nail by the door. I saw them. They left them there. They can’t leave it like that, even if they just went for coffee.”
 
A:  “That will be funny! The look on their face when they come back and find it locked.”
 
P: “Give them something to think about.”
 
And abruptly they left. The gate shrieked down, the pins woggled home, and the locks clanged shut. He was locked in.
 
His life merged with metaphor and reality became a symbol of itself.
 
 
 

© Thomas Hudson Reeve 2017