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Can I help you? Says the older guy, the black of his suit sucking in every flicker of light in the vicinity. The red-blue-white flashes from the patrol cars give the scene an eerie feeling, some sort of strange nightclub in the early hours of the morning, when all that's left are drunks stumbling on the dance floor or at the bar and couples making out, just silhouettes faintly drawn against the darkness of the walls.
I begin to wonder if any of these people knows why they are here. Aren't you supposed to explain why you need help when you call 911?
We were called, Jordan says, Maintenance.
Maintenance? Says the man.
Maintenance, I say, It's about a door.
The man nods, understanding, and says, Yes, the door.
He looks at us carefully, head to toe, stopping for a moment on the tape I am holding in my right hand. He is about to say something when I interrupt him.
Oh, I say, So you know what we're talking about.
Yes, I got a call earlier tonight... he starts, but suddenly the lieutenant calls up, Captain!
Oh, Captain my Captain.
So that's why the other cops didn't know anything. The people in the boardroom didn't call the police. They called a police captain. Talk about leverage.
The Captain says, Excuse me, and walks to the lieutenant, who alternates between his radio and talking to him.
Seven people that have no clue of what they are doing, and the one guy that knows isn't telling. I think of the movie Brazil, the bug in the typewriter, and suddenly I see, clear as day, here in this micro-climate of bureaucracy, exactly how individuals are smart, intelligent, funny, reasonable, and in general good-intentioned, but put a bunch of them together and you get the most obnoxious, reactionary kind of creature known to man: an organization.
Something is lost in it. People are disorganized. To have people truly organized, you need to squash what makes them different. If you have an organization, people are secondary. We need a different kind of arrangement.
That's what we need.
The Captain says something that I don't really listen to while lost in my faux-revolutionary daydream, and I shake my head.
Sorry? I say, I didn't catch that.
The Captain looks at me, slightly annoyed.
Jordan glances at me and says, thank you, sir.
She says sir as if she's saying, Mr. President, but I know what she's really saying. It's all in the context, isn't it?
The Captain smiles. Certainly, he says, then adds: An officer will go up with you.
He walks away, in brisk steps like I imagine Tolkien's dwarfs would take.
I look at Jordan, and say, What?
She says, We can go up now.
I look at her.
Let's go.
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