Comfort Station

7:00 A.M

Mo Mowgli was late again.

Why was it, he thought, standing there in the rain pouring down on him from the sky, which was above the city, that he couldn’t seem to get to work on time anymore? Was it that he had lost that finely honed sense of purpose, almost of passion, which had ever inspired him to do his duty at whatever the task life had put before him? Was that it? Was it?

It was true his dreams of responsibility had not come true, regardless of the many correspondence courses he had taken. He had learned to be a detective through the mails, and still possessed the handcuffs, though he couldn’t seem to find the key anymore. He had studied hotel management by mail, had boned up in the same postal manner on air traffic controlling, library science, brain surgery, interior decoration, and post office operations. In the privacy of his own home he still occasionally walked around with his earphones on, the last legacy of his radio broadcaster course, now and again tripping over the trailing wire and catapulting into some portion of his meager furnishings. But with all of that preparation, all of that theoretical expertise, and with a soul more than willing to face the constant piling-up of crises and emergencies he knew faced those in positions of responsibility — who had troubles enough at home — where had life chosen to place him in the greater scheme of things?

He was the custodian of the Bryant Park Comfort Station.

Ah, well, he thought, as he hunched his shoulders against the rain drenching an already-drenched city, here too there was executive responsibility of a sort. For wasn’t the Bryant Park Comfort Station the very center of Manhattan, the crossroads of a million private lives, most of them troubled? It was.

So why couldn’t he get to work on time? It was a problem.

Looking now to his left along West 42nd Street, Mo saw at last the Crosstown bus coming his way. He would be no more than five or ten minutes late today: not good, but better than his recent average.

Perhaps if he lived closer to midtown it would be easier to get to work on time, but somehow Mo couldn’t bring himself to move out of the little apartment uptown, the meagerly furnished three rooms in which he lived alone, except for his correspondence courses and a cat called Bitsy, who occasionally came in from her usual haunt on the fire escape to eat roaches and condescend to join Mo in a saucer of milk. So it was that every morning he took a bus down Ninth Avenue to West 42nd Street, where he transferred to the Crosstown bus for the straight run to the Comfort Station. Usually arriving late.

It didn’t always matter if he was late. Most of the time there was no one around at seven in the morning anyway, no one to care if the Comfort Station was open or closed. But every once in a while Mo would alight late from the Crosstown bus to find some poor wayfarer hopping up and down on the sidewalk out front, his agony mirrored in his expression, which was agonized. At those moments of emergency and crisis, Mo always acted with instinctive speed and precision, unlocking the door, switching on the lights, assuring himself there was sufficient paper in the stalls, and at the same time feeling deep inside the gnawing knowledge of his own failure, his own inattention. He should have been here on time; it was his fault and no one else’s that the poor wayfarer had been reduced to hopping up and down on the sidewalk for ten minutes or fifteen minutes or even twenty minutes. At such times, Mo promised himself never to be late again, but his resolution never seemed to last very long: the next day, or the day after that, he would be late again.

As he was this morning. It was already past seven, and he was still at Ninth Avenue, blocks from his assigned post. But here, in any event, was the bus. It pulled to a stop, the bifurcated door opened, and Mo stepped aboard, grateful to be out of the pouring rain, drenching an already-drenched city.

“Hello, Mo.” It was Fred Dingbat, a driver Mo knew well.

“Hello, Fred,” Mo riposted, dropping a token into the box. Looking down the long length of the interior of the bus, Mo saw that there were no other passengers, a not infrequent occurrence at this hour of a Tuesday morning — or even a Wednesday morning, actually — particularly when it was raining, which it was doing now.

Mo sat in the first seat on the right side, where he faced the driver and could talk to him even while the vehicle was in motion. Against the rules, of course, but the bus company generally blinked at such bending of the regulations. Bus drivers were human, as the company understood, and liked to have some company while driving the bus. A little harmless fraternization with the passengers was considered all right, so long as it didn’t become too blatant or interfere with the driver’s performance of his function. He was, after all (the driver), in command of two point four tons of green machinery, rolling through the mighty city, surrounded by cars, cabs, trucks, pedestrians, bicycles, mounted policemen, wheelchairs, and the Cattleman Restaurant’s stagecoach: he had to be cool and calm at all times, in control of both himself and the juggernaut he was driving.

As though divining Mo’s thoughts, Fred commented, “The drive for more flexible bus routes is among the more significant advances in the theory of omnibus operation in the megalopolis patterns of latter twentieth century life.”

“I’m glad you brought that up,” Mo countered. “The overlapping radii of responsibility in, say, your field and mine is going to prove increasingly important in the years to come, a fact the general public is still very much not aware of.”

Fred chuckled appreciatively. “You’re so right,” he urged. “But try to get the politicians to see it that way.”

“Well, they have problems of their own,” Mo designated, and once again the old suspicion reared its ugly head. Was that why he hadn’t found responsibility in life? Was that why the Bryant Park Comfort Station was, thus far, the apex of his career?

The fact of the matter was, Mo Mowgli had no problems at home. He wasn’t married, which meant he couldn’t commit adultery, nor could his wife. Nor could he have generation-gap problems with his children. Beyond all this, he wasn’t haunted by anything from his past, not even in the war. Any war.

It seemed so unfair. Just because he didn’t have personal problems at home, just because he wasn’t haunted by a grim reminder from his past, was that reason enough to keep him forever on the fringes of executive responsibility? He was willing, God knew, he wanted to do a good job.

Mo subsided into a morose silence. Fred, understanding something of the situation, returned his attention to the task of driving the big green bus and allowed Mo his moment of introspection. It must be a terrible thing, Fred thought, to be haunted by the lack of a past.

His bald pate covered by a bushy mass of brown hair, Mo Mowgli was perfectly ordinary looking in every way.