With difficulty you dredge up your voluminous wallet
and the girl behind the counter takes a deep breath.
The line behind you swells. The wallet just sits there
on the counter obscenely, half-open, like an obese drunk
exposing himself or herself to you and the girl who says
eww. You dip two fingers, then a third, into the vagina-like
folds of the wallet and rummage around for the required
item. This seems to take a very long time. So long, in fact,
that you have forgotten what the required item is, the girl
has grown very old, the line behind you has withered
on the vine and fallen off, and finally a blue library card
falls out, then a ticket to the Gardner Museum, a flurry
of band-aids, several bills, some coins, a yellowed corner
of napkin with a girl's name and phone number on it. Could it
be this girl's phone number, you wonder, the pointy teeth
of a spare key kissing your fingertips somewhere deep inside
the reaches of your wallet. You fish out the key and offer it
to the girl. Her old, mottled, gnarled hand, which is beautiful in a way that you never thought of as beautiful, closes around
the key with its promise, its heft, its glinting mountainous teeth.
