Relatable?
"There's twelve baskets."
Arthur blinked at the yellow legal pad clamped under his thumb, the brand-new blue ballpoint pen stiff in his grip. It was eight-fifteen on his very first morning. The dull roar of commuter traffic on the highway hummed behind the rusted corrugated fence, and the salt marsh wind off the bay carried the reek of wet asphalt and low tide. He glanced down at the wood pallets sitting in the gravel by his boots. "What are you talking about? There's seven baskets."
"No, count 'em, Artie: one, two, three, four, six, eight, twelve. Twelve baskets."
Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache already beginning to burrow between his eyes before his first coffee had even gone cold. "You skipped five, seven, nine, ten, and eleven."
"Why would I count numbers that don't do nothing?" Sal asked, shifting his weight in his scuffed Red Wings and tucking a thick thumb into his canvas work vest. "If a number can't divide cleanly into halves or thirds, it shouldn't be taking up space on an inventory sheet. Seven is just twelve with bad PR."
"What? That makes no sense."
"Count 'em again," Sal said. Slowly this time, as if speaking to a dull child behind a chain-link fence, pointing a cracked grease pencil at the gravel he repeated "One basket, two baskets, three baskets, four baskets, six baskets..."
"Wait," Arthur said, holding up a flat palm to halt the pencil. "You pointed at that basket and called it 'six.' Why did you skip five?"
"Because five don't divide by nothing."
"It divides by five."
"That's trivial. Any peasant with a hand can divide five by five. That’s not a factorization, Artie, that’s just pointing at yourself in a mirror. Why would I waste a whole basket being five?"
"It’s not 'being five,' it’s the fifth basket."
"Well now it's the sixth, and it splits cleanly down the middle, so you're welcome."
"What about ten?" Arthur snapped, stepping into the dust to meet him. "Ten divides in half."
"Yeah. Into fives." Sal spat past his steel-toed boot to clear the taste. "You crack open a ten on my dock, Artie, and you got two filthy, prime, five-headed abominations lookin' up atcha like you owe 'em rent. I told you: halves and thirds of decent stock, or it don't clear the gate."
"Well, what about nine? Nine divides by three into three."
"How many threes do you think we got back here, Artie? Look at the manifest. Zero or one threes. That’s the allotment. One three gets you through the door, maybe hitches a ride on a power of two if it behaves itself. A three times another three? What is this, a church social? This ain't a three party. We're running a business."
Arthur looked down at the seven woven hampers sitting entirely harmlessly on the pallets, the gray morning light catching the rough splinters. "They're just hampers, Sal. It's my first day. I just have to write down what's on the dock."
"Hampers gotta obey the laws, Artie. You think the cosmos is a free-for-all? You get a job in Newark, you think you leave the order of the universe out in the parking lot? You ever hear about this broad, Janice Kepler? Way back, sixteen-somethings, fifteen-somethings, who the hell knows, back before the Turnpike. She’s workin' with this guy, Taco."
Arthur stared, pencil frozen midway to the pad. "Taco?"
"Yeah, Taco. Spanish fella. Wore a tin schnoz stuck on with tree sap. You know why? Got it sliced clean off when he was nine years old. Missed a carry-over in long division, and the nun came down from the chalkboard with a straight razor and went whack. 'No prime numbers in parish school.' That’s how they taught discipline back in the day, Artie. You mess up the factor tree, you leave your cartilage on the linoleum. Character building."
"I don't think that's—"
"So Taco grows up, he's missin' his sniffer, but does he learn his lesson? No. He gets a big brass stick, points it out the attic window over in Madrid or wherever, and spends forty years writin' down every time Jupiter takes a leak. Pure garbage. Numbers everywhere, fractions, decimals, dirt. Massive sheets of scrap paper. So Janice gets her hands on the books after Taco kicks the bucket." Sal leaned in close enough for Arthur to catch the full, potent aroma of black coffee, cigar stub, and diesel fumes.
"And Janice had the right idea at first, Artie. Beautiful idea. She says, 'The whole sky is just five perfect dice stuffed inside each other like Tupperware.' Clean. Symmetrical. You could pack it in a crate, tie it down with two bungees, it don't rattle on the highway. Then what does she do? She ruins it. She looks at Taco’s greasy notebook, she looks at Mars, and Mars is draggin' its feet by like two inches. Eight little squinty scratches on the page. And instead of doin' what any self-respectin' shop steward does—which is take the pencil, round the damn thing off, and put Mars back where it belongs—she breaks down and invents an egg."
"An ellipse," Arthur muttered weakly, his shoulders dropping under his jacket.
"'Oh, it’s an egg now. The planets are flyin' in squashed hoops.' I told the guys at the hall, Artie: that’s where the whole country went soft. The second you let Mars dictate the shape of an orbit instead of tellin' the sky how it's gonna be run, you open the door to fives, you open the door to sevens, and before you know it, nobody knows how many baskets are on the truck. Now cross out that seven and put down twelve before I get an ulcer."
* * *
By morning two, the novelty of the job had curdled into pure dread. The morning air off the marsh smelled of wet asphalt, sulphur, and stale diesel. Arthur stood in front of a flatbed truck parked near Bay Avenue, clutching the legal pad with a white-knuckle grip. He had a pencil behind his ear, another in his hand, and dark rings under his eyes that suggested six solid hours of staring at his bedroom ceiling trying to figure out how to resign after twenty-four hours.
Sal was leaning against an idle forklift, sipping black coffee out of a blue-and-white Greek paper cup, looking entirely refreshed.
Arthur took a deep breath, lined his boots up with the wooden pallets, and tapped the first wooden crate with his pencil eraser.
"One," Arthur muttered.
He moved a step to the right, his boots crunching in the cinder grit.
"Two."
Another step.
"Three."
Sal watched him over the rim of the cup like an inspector waiting for a boiler to blow.
"Four." Arthur took a breath, stepped right, and tapped the fifth crate.
"Five."
Sal froze. The paper cup stopped midway to his mouth.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Five!?"
Sal dropped the cup onto the forklift seat, lunged forward, and threw both hands into the air as if a live power line had just snapped over their heads. "What the hell are you doin', Artie? Stop. Put the pencil down. Don't touch nothin'. Did you just say five on my loadin' dock?"
Arthur didn't lower the pencil. His hand was shaking slightly. "Yes. One, two, three, four, five. It's the fifth crate, Sal. It came off the flatbed from Secaucus. There are five crates."
Sal slowly turned ninety degrees and addressed the empty cab of a Peterbilt parked thirty feet away.
"Look at this guy," Sal told the bumper. "Look at him. Yesterday wasn't enough. Day two. Day two on the clock. He goes home, sleeps on it, comes back with a brand-new eraser, breathes two lungfuls of Turnpike air, and boom—he’s handin' out fives like he’s Santa Claus on Broad Street."
He whipped back around, stabbing a thick, grease-blackened index finger directly at the notebook between Arthur's fingers.
"What did I tell you yesterday, Artie? What did I say about five? Five don't divide by nothin' decent. You write a five on that manifest, the whole shipment goes crooked. The axle’s gonna snap before the driver even hits the Pulaski Skyway. You want to explain to the dispatcher why four hundred pounds of dry goods are scattered across three lanes of traffic in Kearny because you had a personal craving for an odd prime?"
"It's not an odd prime on the highway, Sal, it's five boxes of brass fittings." Arthur's voice cracked. "They have weight. You can pick them up. If I take one away, there's four."
"And if you don't take it away, it's six," Sal quietly growled, tapping the fifth box with the heel of his boot. "Six crates, Artie. Clean split down the middle. Two threes, three twos, everybody goes home with whole numbers and nobody's gotta go to the hospital. Now cross that filth off your paper and put down a six before my blood pressure shoots a gasket through my forehead."
Arthur blinked at the yellow legal pad clamped under his thumb, the brand-new blue ballpoint pen stiff in his grip. It was eight-fifteen on his very first morning. The dull roar of commuter traffic on the highway hummed behind the rusted corrugated fence, and the salt marsh wind off the bay carried the reek of wet asphalt and low tide. He glanced down at the wood pallets sitting in the gravel by his boots. "What are you talking about? There's seven baskets."
"No, count 'em, Artie: one, two, three, four, six, eight, twelve. Twelve baskets."
Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache already beginning to burrow between his eyes before his first coffee had even gone cold. "You skipped five, seven, nine, ten, and eleven."
"Why would I count numbers that don't do nothing?" Sal asked, shifting his weight in his scuffed Red Wings and tucking a thick thumb into his canvas work vest. "If a number can't divide cleanly into halves or thirds, it shouldn't be taking up space on an inventory sheet. Seven is just twelve with bad PR."
"What? That makes no sense."
"Count 'em again," Sal said. Slowly this time, as if speaking to a dull child behind a chain-link fence, pointing a cracked grease pencil at the gravel he repeated "One basket, two baskets, three baskets, four baskets, six baskets..."
"Wait," Arthur said, holding up a flat palm to halt the pencil. "You pointed at that basket and called it 'six.' Why did you skip five?"
"Because five don't divide by nothing."
"It divides by five."
"That's trivial. Any peasant with a hand can divide five by five. That’s not a factorization, Artie, that’s just pointing at yourself in a mirror. Why would I waste a whole basket being five?"
"It’s not 'being five,' it’s the fifth basket."
"Well now it's the sixth, and it splits cleanly down the middle, so you're welcome."
"What about ten?" Arthur snapped, stepping into the dust to meet him. "Ten divides in half."
"Yeah. Into fives." Sal spat past his steel-toed boot to clear the taste. "You crack open a ten on my dock, Artie, and you got two filthy, prime, five-headed abominations lookin' up atcha like you owe 'em rent. I told you: halves and thirds of decent stock, or it don't clear the gate."
"Well, what about nine? Nine divides by three into three."
"How many threes do you think we got back here, Artie? Look at the manifest. Zero or one threes. That’s the allotment. One three gets you through the door, maybe hitches a ride on a power of two if it behaves itself. A three times another three? What is this, a church social? This ain't a three party. We're running a business."
Arthur looked down at the seven woven hampers sitting entirely harmlessly on the pallets, the gray morning light catching the rough splinters. "They're just hampers, Sal. It's my first day. I just have to write down what's on the dock."
"Hampers gotta obey the laws, Artie. You think the cosmos is a free-for-all? You get a job in Newark, you think you leave the order of the universe out in the parking lot? You ever hear about this broad, Janice Kepler? Way back, sixteen-somethings, fifteen-somethings, who the hell knows, back before the Turnpike. She’s workin' with this guy, Taco."
Arthur stared, pencil frozen midway to the pad. "Taco?"
"Yeah, Taco. Spanish fella. Wore a tin schnoz stuck on with tree sap. You know why? Got it sliced clean off when he was nine years old. Missed a carry-over in long division, and the nun came down from the chalkboard with a straight razor and went whack. 'No prime numbers in parish school.' That’s how they taught discipline back in the day, Artie. You mess up the factor tree, you leave your cartilage on the linoleum. Character building."
"I don't think that's—"
"So Taco grows up, he's missin' his sniffer, but does he learn his lesson? No. He gets a big brass stick, points it out the attic window over in Madrid or wherever, and spends forty years writin' down every time Jupiter takes a leak. Pure garbage. Numbers everywhere, fractions, decimals, dirt. Massive sheets of scrap paper. So Janice gets her hands on the books after Taco kicks the bucket." Sal leaned in close enough for Arthur to catch the full, potent aroma of black coffee, cigar stub, and diesel fumes.
"And Janice had the right idea at first, Artie. Beautiful idea. She says, 'The whole sky is just five perfect dice stuffed inside each other like Tupperware.' Clean. Symmetrical. You could pack it in a crate, tie it down with two bungees, it don't rattle on the highway. Then what does she do? She ruins it. She looks at Taco’s greasy notebook, she looks at Mars, and Mars is draggin' its feet by like two inches. Eight little squinty scratches on the page. And instead of doin' what any self-respectin' shop steward does—which is take the pencil, round the damn thing off, and put Mars back where it belongs—she breaks down and invents an egg."
"An ellipse," Arthur muttered weakly, his shoulders dropping under his jacket.
"'Oh, it’s an egg now. The planets are flyin' in squashed hoops.' I told the guys at the hall, Artie: that’s where the whole country went soft. The second you let Mars dictate the shape of an orbit instead of tellin' the sky how it's gonna be run, you open the door to fives, you open the door to sevens, and before you know it, nobody knows how many baskets are on the truck. Now cross out that seven and put down twelve before I get an ulcer."
* * *
By morning two, the novelty of the job had curdled into pure dread. The morning air off the marsh smelled of wet asphalt, sulphur, and stale diesel. Arthur stood in front of a flatbed truck parked near Bay Avenue, clutching the legal pad with a white-knuckle grip. He had a pencil behind his ear, another in his hand, and dark rings under his eyes that suggested six solid hours of staring at his bedroom ceiling trying to figure out how to resign after twenty-four hours.
Sal was leaning against an idle forklift, sipping black coffee out of a blue-and-white Greek paper cup, looking entirely refreshed.
Arthur took a deep breath, lined his boots up with the wooden pallets, and tapped the first wooden crate with his pencil eraser.
"One," Arthur muttered.
He moved a step to the right, his boots crunching in the cinder grit.
"Two."
Another step.
"Three."
Sal watched him over the rim of the cup like an inspector waiting for a boiler to blow.
"Four." Arthur took a breath, stepped right, and tapped the fifth crate.
"Five."
Sal froze. The paper cup stopped midway to his mouth.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Five!?"
Sal dropped the cup onto the forklift seat, lunged forward, and threw both hands into the air as if a live power line had just snapped over their heads. "What the hell are you doin', Artie? Stop. Put the pencil down. Don't touch nothin'. Did you just say five on my loadin' dock?"
Arthur didn't lower the pencil. His hand was shaking slightly. "Yes. One, two, three, four, five. It's the fifth crate, Sal. It came off the flatbed from Secaucus. There are five crates."
Sal slowly turned ninety degrees and addressed the empty cab of a Peterbilt parked thirty feet away.
"Look at this guy," Sal told the bumper. "Look at him. Yesterday wasn't enough. Day two. Day two on the clock. He goes home, sleeps on it, comes back with a brand-new eraser, breathes two lungfuls of Turnpike air, and boom—he’s handin' out fives like he’s Santa Claus on Broad Street."
He whipped back around, stabbing a thick, grease-blackened index finger directly at the notebook between Arthur's fingers.
"What did I tell you yesterday, Artie? What did I say about five? Five don't divide by nothin' decent. You write a five on that manifest, the whole shipment goes crooked. The axle’s gonna snap before the driver even hits the Pulaski Skyway. You want to explain to the dispatcher why four hundred pounds of dry goods are scattered across three lanes of traffic in Kearny because you had a personal craving for an odd prime?"
"It's not an odd prime on the highway, Sal, it's five boxes of brass fittings." Arthur's voice cracked. "They have weight. You can pick them up. If I take one away, there's four."
"And if you don't take it away, it's six," Sal quietly growled, tapping the fifth box with the heel of his boot. "Six crates, Artie. Clean split down the middle. Two threes, three twos, everybody goes home with whole numbers and nobody's gotta go to the hospital. Now cross that filth off your paper and put down a six before my blood pressure shoots a gasket through my forehead."
41-45, F