Any comedian will tell you that laughter is most powerful in an inappropriate venue: classrooms, religious services, board meetings, and so forth.

Though their ongoing situation had dictated that Dobbs, Frazier, and Goldman accommodate one another's personalities as thoroughly as possible, Dobbs had so far been unable to quash his disdain for horseplay -- or even unnecessary conversation -- during his turn at the equipment; he took his monitoring shift as seriously as the professor did his lecture, the clergyman his sermon, or the businessman his presentation. It therefore came as no surprise when Frasier, beginning his "at rest" shift, suddenly recalled some half-forgotten joke from years ago and broke the silence with a single, barely-suppressed snort.

Dobbs sighed grandly and rubbed his temples, hoping a broad gesture of disapproval would put a succinct end to the matter, but Frazier's laughter, once instigated, was like an avalanche in its inevitability. Soon he was doubled up in his bedroll, cackling. Goldman, dressing in preparation for his own shift, watched Dobbs' growing irritation with amusement. In Goldman's opinion, the seriousness of their work was no excuse for a total dearth of levity.

Goldman waited until Frazier's laughter had almost died out for good before assuming a falsetto and, in his best William Christopher impression, blurting out, "This jocularity is most unseemly." Frazier's mirth was ignited anew; he flailed his limbs, sending his blankets every which way, and as his laughter reached an impossibly high pitch, he began to chant "Jocularity! Jocularity!" in an impressive falsetto of his own. Goldman was no instigator, but instead found great artistry in prolonging, which required impeccable timing and taste.

"He never said it, you know," said Dobbs after Frazier had calmed down again. This statement caught their attention; Dobbs rarely acknowledged their antics, preferring instead to ignore them when he could.

"What?"

"Father Mulcahy. Never said 'jocularity'. It's a myth. Like 'Beam me up, Scotty' or 'Play it again, Sam'. Never happened."

"You sure about that?"

"You should be resting," replied Dobbs. "Clearing your head of nonsense, not indulging it. What if the call came? And you, Goldman -- don't you have errands to run? You should have been gone already. What if the call came and you weren't here?"

The call. That was Dobbs' ace in the hole; its mere mention always sobered them. All of their work -- the monitoring, the recording, the dossiers -- was in preparation for the call, which might come at any hour. The call was everything.

There were two sets of sealed instructions for when the call came: the primary set; and a secondary set to be followed only if one of them were absent when the phone rang.

It would not be well-looked-upon if only two of them were there to answer the call. But it was a necessary risk, and so it behooved whomever was on the utility shift to finish his assigned errands as quickly as possible to reduce that risk.

"I'm going right now, Dobbs," replied Goldman quietly. He unlocked the door and heaved it upward. Daylight flooded the interior of the van. Before Dobbs could complain about the brightness, Goldman hopped down onto the pavement and hauled the door back down. The latch caught with a metallic click.

---

You wouldn't notice the van. It was a small panel truck, the sort commonly available for rental. Its dingy white paint was punctuated with streaks of rust and the ghostly remains of a dozen company names. It occupied two parking spaces on a particularly "vibrant" block of Atlantic Street, and it had rapidly become a part of the landscape. You wouldn't remember it if you were asked, any more than you would recall a particular parking meter or fire hydrant on that block. If you did see it, you would never be aware of the activities going on within; although Dobbs, Frazier, and Goldman would certainly be aware of you. Not to worry, though; to them, your passage along their stretch of sidewalk would be nothing more than yet another data point, to be dutifully recorded and forgotten about.

---

Goldman's first stop was the twenty-four-hour Chinese restaurant across the street. He preactically ran there, in fact, and might have easily been taken for an overenthusiastic connoisseur of Asian cuisine. This was not the case; in face, as far as Goldman knew, they didn't actually serve food there. There were never any customers and no aromas ever wafted from the silent kitchen. Sometimes an elderly man sat snoring behind the register, a flimsy Chinese-language newspaper draped over his chest. More often than not, though, there didn't seem to be anybody about the place.

In fact, Goldman was running to use their bathroom. They never seemed to mind. For that matter, his presence in the restaurant had never once been acknowledged, much less protested -- likewise for Frazier and Dobbs.

As for his swift pace, he hurried because he had no choice. Bathroom breaks were few and far between, for obvious reasons, and Goldman's body had adjusted well to the unnatural schedule. But nature would not be denied forever and, invariably, as soon as his feet touched solid ground his insides started churning violently like a dishrag being wrung out.

He perhaps made a little more haste today than prior days, spurred on by Dobbs' reminder about the call. When it came there would be no hesitation, only action. And if the call should come while he was outside, well, that was the end of everything wasn't it?

Goldman dashed into the restaurant, passing the sleeping cashier and making directly for the restroom. He attended to his various functions, briskly and expeditiously. Afterward, he took a moment to remove the clothes he had donned minutes earlier and wash his body as best he could, public restroom soap and paper towels being what they were. This indulgence was not strictly permitted -- and indeed Goldman felt the twin pressures of guilt and wasted time at his back -- but he suspected that Frazier and Dobbs performed similar ablutions. The van would have been unlivable otherwise.

He considered his reflection in the cracked mirror. He'd managed to keep his hair reasonably clean, but it wanted cutting badly. He would have luxuriated in a shave, as well -- he didn't care for the way he looked with a beard -- but that was out of the question.

Once his personal needs were attended to, Goldman commenced his official duties. First was the mail. Every so often, at indeterminate intervals, their computer would respond to some unknowable aggregation of data by printing out a page of incomprehensible figures with an address at the bottom. It fell to whomever had the next utility shift to send the sheet to its nameless addressee. Goldman walked four blocks along Atlantic Street, turned onto Cedar, and continued another six blocks before he found the mailbox he sought.

They were to use a different box each time; in this, and in all respects of their daily routine, it was important to avoid forming a pattern -- even at the cost of extra time spent away from the van. Goldman knew the locations of every mailbox for twenty blocks in each direction. This was the first time he'd come here, though. As he dropped in the envelope, he stole a quick glance at his surroundings. This place was much different from Atlantic Street. The buildings seemed newer, or perhaps just cleaner. On the opposite corner was a chain coffee shop doing a brisk business. Throngs of college-age kids with complicated haircuts slouched to and fro.

"Got the time, buddy?" The voice cut through Goldman's momentary trance. He turned to see a middle-aged man in a nice suit. He carried a leather briefcase and a sheaf of manila envelopes. Goldman, distracted, had been blocking the mailbox.

"Excuse me?" he replied, backing away.

The businessman hastily stuffed his envelopes in the box. "You got the time?"

"Oh." In a manner of speaking, he did have the time; was wearing a timepiece, even. But in the van they reckoned time in a different fashion, and his chronometer reflected this. He therefore had no useful answer for the man. In fact, he had no idea what time it was according to the ordinary clock, apart from the fact that it was morning. "No. Sorry."

"No problem," said the businessman, feeling around inside the slot to make sure none of his correspondence had gotten hung up. Satisfied, he pointed across the street. "To be young again, huh?"

"Sure," said Goldman. He caught himself fidgeting. Nonessential conversations with the public were discouraged.

"It's amazing how much time you waste."

"Uh-huh."

"And how much time they'll all waste before they get it together."

"Yeah."

"Course, you could never tell them that and have it do any good."

"Nope."

"Nope." The man in the suit sighed and sauntered off down the street. "Have a good one," he called back over his shoulder.

Goldman collapsed against the mailbox, his pulse pounding rapidly in his head. He was relieved to have shucked off this conversational tether. The businessman's amiability made it even worse; there was no telling what their course of action would be once the call came, nor whom it would involve, so it was best to avoid forming opinions of individuals -- even random strangers.

He wiped beads of sweat from his upper lip. Best to seek refuge in the routine; finish up the errands and return to the van.

---

The dry-cleaning store was fifteen blocks from the van, but in the opposite direction. Goldman stepped up his pace to make up for the time he'd lost at the mailbox.

Their spare clothing went to a different cleaner each week. A laundromat would have been faster, cheaper, and more suited to their kind of couture, but of course none of them could spare the time to sit and watch the machines. A laundromat was also a breeding ground for idle conversation with bored strangers. At the cleaner's -- any of them -- it was an exceptional day when the clerk greeted him with anything more than a disinterested grunt.

He gathered up the plastic garment bags with their tangle of paper-coated wire hangers and paid, as he always did, with a credit card. It had no logo and the account number was only five digits, but it always worked and had never been declined. Goldman had no idea what the limit was, or if it even had one.

Next was breakfast. Any one of a dozen interchangeable fast-food outlets would do. Goldman ordered the usual miscellany of breakfast sandwiches -- bagels , mostly, as Frazier and Dobbs preferred them -- and greasy hashbrowns. He paid with the enigmatic card once again. As he exited the place, awkwardly juggling the food, the dry-cleaning, and a tray of coffees, he had occasion to wonder for the first time who had decided that ham, sausage, and bacon were the best complements for a bagel. "No one named Goldman, that's for sure," he muttered.

---

Sometimes there were more places to go, more supplies to obtain, but not today; with the procurement of fresh clothes and morning sustenance, Goldman's errands were now discharged. The remainder of his shift would be spent detailing his conversation with the man at the mailbox. Then would come his turn at monitoring; his shift always followed Dobbs'.

Rather than backtracking, he took a different, more circuitous route back to the van. This was not strictly necessary; varying their behavior on a day-to-day basis was considered sufficient caution, but Goldman tried to exceed the standards when he could. Missing the call would be catastrophic, but less so than if carelessness disrupted their work before the call ever came. That, and the route he'd chosen would take him by the park, which was pleasant so long as he didn't allow it to become a distraction.

Goldman made meticulous progress down Park Street, struggling to avoid dropping his burden of food, coffee, and dry-cleaning, and careful not to make eye contact with his fellow pedestrians. Despite his efforts, he was still half a block away from the intersection with Atlantic when his prudence was overcome by implacable physics and everything started to slip away from him at once. Leg muscles trembling, he carefully lowered his cargo onto a convenient bench. He stretched his aching fingers. Across the street was the green expanse of the park, accented here and there by colorful flowerbeds and even more colorful jogging ensembles.

He turned to find himself in front of a nondescript convenience store, the poorly-lit sort with darkened windows, strange music wafting out from within, and a cryptic name like MART. He wondered whether they would begrudge him a plastic grocery bag to better manage the food and coffee.

Goldman came out of MART clutching not only the plastic bag but a box of doughnuts that had caught his eye at the counter. A dozen: four chocolate, four cinnamon, four powdered sugar. An unauthorized purchase, to be sure, but apparently not illegitimate enough to trigger a denial of the credit card. Goldman's illicit buy had buoyed his spirits immensely; during their entire tenure in the van, no one had ever brought back dessert. Indulgences were discouraged. Even so, Goldman suspected that this was the sort of protocol breach that even Dobbs could get behind.

He rearranged the dry-cleaning, placed the coffee tray and fast-food sacks in the plastic bag, and was about to do the same with the doughnuts; but as you might imagine, their inflated status as a talisman of indulgence and frivolity made them too great a temptation. "In for a penny, in for a pound," he began, though his recitation of this shopworn mantra trailed off into unintelligibility, unable to contend with a mouthful of cake and cinnamon.

The doughnut eased the hunger pangs he had conditioned himself not to notice, but more significantly, it awakened a love for sweets that had lain long dormant. He needed to try a chocolate and a powedered sugar, and he sank slowly onto the bench under the weight of inevitability.

These latter two doughnuts he consumed more slowly and deliberately, savoring their familiar flavors. A red convertible drove by and he watched it until it turned a distant corner.

He studied the sidewalk at his feet. Near the curb, a dandelion had forced its way up through a crack in the concrete and now basked in its hard-won freedom, its yellow blossom a miniscule reflection of the sun overhead. He looked away. Goldman possessed a well-cultivated distaste for metaphors, and the dandelion posed an imminent threat. He focused his attention on the park instead.

While he'd been in MART, one of the park's many vacant benches had gained a tenant: an achingly beautiful girl in denim shorts and a pink bikini top, which contrasted with her dark skin in a manner Goldman found immensely pleasing. She lay lengthwise across the bench, reading a book and languidly absorbing the abundant sunlight. Her brown legs dangled off the end and her bare toes traced idle patterns in the grass. As if sensing his gaze, she turned away from her reading and looked back at him. Their eyes met. She smiled. In fact, to Goldman, she almost looked as though she might not recoil in horror if he crossed the street and struck up a conversation.

Conversation? He abruptly broke eye contact and stuffed the compromised box of doughnuts in with the rest of their breakfast. What if the call came, moron, he screamed silently at himself, what then? I bet it did. I bet when you go around that corner, the van won't even be there. Then where will you be? He gathered up the clothes and food and, affecting a calm he didn't feel, walked swiftly to the corner, trying to avoid the appearance of panic.

He exhaled sharply, unaware until now that he'd been holding his breath. There in that far distance, in its accustomed spot was the van, a barely-perceptible square of dirty white that towered over the other cars on its block. He hadn't missed the call after all. Well, there would be no more of this nonsense. His compromising of protocol had been inexcusable. And, though he felt a proper shame, he would confess everything to Frazier and Dobbs. It would make a useful lesson for all three of them.

Goldman turned for one last look at the girl. She had closed her book and was sitting up straight, looking right at him. He gaped at her for a long second -- her smile was so inviting -- then turned back toward the van. His gaze slid back and forth; the girl, the van, the girl. Her bare shoulder looked like it would be warm to the touch. He forced his head downward, trying to clear his mind, and his eyes came to rest on his hands. They still bore traces of powdered sugar; damning evidence of the morning's deviancy. It was too much. He took off in a loping run toward the van, arms flailing, the trailing ends of the dry-cleaning bags flapping madly behind him.

Behind him, in the park, the girl shook her head and went back to her book.

The Van on Atlantic Street
Desmond Warzel