442
GERALD ROSEN
please," she said, as she rose from her seat. "The colonel will want
to speak to you."
She picked up her book, smiled again as she placed it in the
top drawer of her desk, and walked into the adjoining office.
Through a glass window in the wall, I could see her speaking to a
man in a business suit with two silver bars on each shoulder. He
rose from his chair, squinted a peek at me through the window,
nodded knowingly, and entered the office beyond his, the third in
the line.
Through the glass of two windows I watched
him
confer with
a corpulent, silver-haired man, who wore a silver leaf insignia
mounted on each of his shoulders. He too walked up to the window
in the wall, looked me over, and went into the office beyond.
In a minute, he bounced out of the fourth office and into the
captain, who bounced out of the third office and into the WAC,
who bounced out of the second office and into the cueball.
"You can go in to see the colonel now, lieutenant. He's waiting
for you."
"Just step this way, lieutenant," she said, as she walked over
to a strange-looking object in the comer of her office. I had never
seen anything like it before.
It
had four wheels and it resembled the
kind of movable beds (or tables, perhaps) which the hospitals use
to wheel patients to and from surgery. Only it wasn't flat on top, but
rather boxlike. As if a kind of telephone booth had been mounted on
the table top of the cart. Or a confessional.
"Just lie down here, lieutenant, and I'll wheel you in."
"What?"
She shrugged her shoulders and gave me an I-only-work-here
look. Then she grasped the two bicyclelike handlebars at the rear of
the cart and tipped it forward until it reached about a forty-five–
degree angle and the foot of the box rested on the floor. She was
able to do this because the forward two wheels of the cart had been
set about half-way back under its base, rather than at the front.
I walked around to the foot of the cart to lower myself in, but
before I did I noticed a large sign which had been affixed to the
outside of the foot of the box. On it, there was neatly painted a single
word. IN.
When I lowered my body into the box and crossed my arms on
my chest I couldn't help but feel
that
I had lain down in my oWn
