Point of View
I wrote this sixty years ago in a dingy newsroom after a day of firsts in my fledgling cub reporter career. First time phoning in a story under deadline pressure. First time interviewing a big shot, the president of a railroad whose switches were being dynamited by its labor unions in a bitter contract war. First page one byline, which I did not believe I had earned since the rewrite man typed the story. First faint praise from the cigar chomping assistant city editor: “Not a bad first outing for a rookie. Of course you get the byline. You’re the reporter, you were there. Rewrite men don’t get bylines.” As the day wore to a close I twirled copy paper into my old Royal to memorialize another part of the day…
The burly vendor occupies a kiosk just to the right of the lobby entrance doors. It is one of those all-purpose office buildings: law firms and government agencies and companies whose names on the directory give no hint of their purpose.
The vendor laughs light-heartedly with the ageing secretary who has just purchased a soft drink. She says it is just what she needs for “my girlish figure,” as she puts it. Almost unconsciously she pivots that figure a little to the left, little to the right, on an imaginary catwalk. Whether by nature or artifice, it is worth noticing.
Not, evidently, to the vendor. He stares at some mysterious point above her head with a small secret smile on his laughing lips that has nothing to do with the contrived mirth he exhibits for his customer. You’re in a hurry. The man’s forced laughter grates on your heat-taxed nerves. For some reason you restrain a biting remark about the byplay.
The secretary completes her preening ritual and takes her soft drink away. The vendor continues to stare at that same midair point above your head with bland gray eyes, no longer forcing a laugh. The small smirk remains firmly in place. He utterly ignores you.
Like chill bony fingers on your shoulder in a catacomb, it hits you:
The man is blind.
You step carefully into the same spot occupied by the flirtatious secretary and say, “Gimme a Coke, please.”
“A Coke? Yes, sir!”
He manipulates the paper cup and ice dispenser and levers of the drink machine with none of the fumbling motions you might expect from one who is sightless. There is a slight furrowing of the brow and a vague puzzled look in his blank gray eyes as he navigates the invisible map of memory in his brain.
Now you see the sign on the wall behind his head that says this kiosk is operated by the state council for the blind. You think a wry thought directed at yourself that failure to observe closely is a form of blindness all its own.
But thank whatever guardian angels you own for sealing off your unspoken rude remark about can’t you see I’m in a hurry. Words that never could have been recalled, and that would add to karmic debt for this lifetime.
The burly vendor has never seen the architecture of the place though he works here every day, fixing his eyes on nothing above his customer’s heads, forcing himself to laugh at worn-out jokes and flirtations.
You wonder how much of his immortal soul he would trade just to be able to rest functioning eyes on a “girlish figure.”
