Someone turns a key on a flat, vertical square, which flaps down like an oven toaster. Inside there’s a push-button lock, and the same someone quickly puts in the code and pulls out a tray of coins and bills stacked discretely. These are dumped rather carelessly into a canvas bag held by the other hand. The empty tray returned, the flap relocked, the apparent serviceman ties the bag and walks facelessly away.
We see now the fuller vending machine lit up modestly aside its cousin, selling hot drinks. A red light on the latter designates that the bouillon is not available--used up, out of stock, disabled, who’s to say? The former doesn’t need such lights, as items are either shown in their spiral-gated corrals or empty, and a customer could even press the wrong combination to see that spiral turn a result of nothing.
A nurse about to go on break does exactly that, fumbling with her phone and cigarettes and pocket change, swearing too familiarly about another mindless order. She searches for more coins but gives up for the need to get outside.
The machine contains eclectic things: cigars (not cigarettes), tiny stuffed animals, animal crackers, charm bracelets, wet-naps, Capri-sun juices, phone cards, beef jerky, hacky sacks, assorted nuts, dark sunglasses… All at different prices, naturally.
And baby’s breath, wrapped loosely in breathable cellophane, barely making a sound on its descent. A burly guy in a hockey jersey dials that up and delicately puts the little bouquet into the basket of other things he’ll bring up to the third floor. The elevator, too, opens upon button-command to box up the man and his things like a gift.
Bursting out of the same, however, is far less happy man--or anxious, to say the least. He jams a bill into the vending machine again and again, not remedying the manner in which, predictably, the sweat-moistened legal tender is being rejected. A grandmother waddles over from another corridor and, at her grandson’s tugging her this way, lines up behind the frustrated man. He turns to her to see if she can change the bill, and she obliges, rather slowly for his purposes. The coins she gives makes the difference, and without gratitude he grabs the thing that drops and hides it in his jeans, like contraband.
The grandson wants a stuffed lion that isn’t first in the queue, and doesn’t understand why procuring it would require the purchase of the stupid-looking kangaroo in front. The grandmother, tacitly realizing the rude man hadn’t exchanged the bill for her coins, calculates she doesn’t have enough for two, yet at the same time sees a baby roo in the mama’s pouch, and smiles that it’s the better choice. The boy stomps away, having learned how stubborn men behave. Grandma buys a coffee and hot chocolate instead.
Others come, some to window-shop, some to order by routine. The lobby isn’t comfortable, but still the sitting satisfies a need, a snack or magazine to read. One gal hits and kicks the damn machine that doesn’t return her money, having put something in only to realize there wasn’t anything worth buying. An opportunist, once she’s left the scene, saunters over from a bench and presses buttons from the most expensive--those cigars, which stay in place--to the next and next, a pair of baby shoes worth the coins that refused to be reused.
A waiting room is that, and time only sometimes cooperates. Hunger comes and goes, a candy bar is eaten but another’s thrown away, the coconut inside past its expiration date, in all likelihood. There’s still another baby’s breath that may not survive the night. Count what currency is left and, yes, there’s just enough. It tumbles like a pillow, as does a mouse that has eaten through the cellophane behind.
Keep cool--it’s not a rat or scorpion--and somebody from maintenance would hardly blink at this. No one, at the moment, is around. The trough is deliberately hard to see; the rodent could be anywhere, even through a hole to munch on something not so sweet. Then here’s that angry man again on the prowl for more of what becomes his brand. He doesn’t hesitate to push that same bill in--this time taken in one try. Pressing buttons for a Kit Kat, he punches through the shield and grabs the baby’s breath. Noticing the clinging mouse, he whips the whole thing down and stomps unmercifully.
His phone rings and he stands still for once as a faint voice tells him something. He doesn’t take the Kit Kat, offered as his right, and instead begins to weep.
Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2017)
May we, for purposes unscreened,
personify the lowly, less-than-tested,
deemed mundane, Bulovka hospital
vending machine, baby ward primero…
I’ve served such strangers M&Ms
and pretzel bends; my partner brews
the same in heated plastic cups; we
joke that everything we do upchucks…
like Hrabal getting antsy over there,
feeding pigeons from the fifth floor:
life could tell you no one’s fooling fate
when one upends and others fly away…
but back to those who pace today,
dads for moms and sundry in our pay-
day: we understand the angst of all
who figure any outcome could befall…
Back to we, for purposes unweaned:
sieze provisions of a stanchioned, stoic
being, giving value for some change
and vying, after all, for dreams to be…
Daniel Martin Vold Lamken (2017)
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