Comfort Station

1:00 P.M

Mo Mowgli sat at the tiny desk in his tiny office just off the main operating area of the Bryant Park Comfort Station, crossroads of a million private lives, and counted paper towels. The detail work in this job was a hundred times more than any layman would ever understand.

Actually, Mo’s “office” was the area designated on all official whiteprints as the “storage closet,” but several months ago Mo had attached a two-by-four to the rear wall of the closet to serve as a desk, and it was here, ever since, that he had made all his executive decisions.

It sometimes seemed to Mo that middle management didn’t fully comprehend the problems of the men in the field. Otherwise, surely they would have given him some enclosed area of his own here at the Comfort Station, and not expect him to merely stand around out in the operating area all the time, leaning against the wall.

For, consider: Not only was Mo more productive when he had an executive area of his own, not only were his decisions more certain, more rapid, and more likely to be accurate, but inside the storage closet here he could avoid those embarrassing incidents with individuals who come to the Comfort Station to meet new friends and who frequently mistook the motivation in Mo’s seemingly aimless hanging around. Mo had been invited to join many festive occasions as a result of this mis-apprehension, and had found the social whirl around him, while not exactly tempting, nevertheless disruptive of orderly executive thought. He was better off, he decided, in the closet.

The sort of swinging, amoral social activity which centered on the men’s room behind the main branch of the New York Public Library, also known as the Bryant Park Comfort Station, was in no essential way different from the kind of swinging, amoral social activity centering on other kinds of watering spots throughout the city: singles bars, for instance. The only essential difference was that in the Comfort Station virtually all the participants were men.

There were good reasons for this. Airline stewardesses in New York City tend to cluster in apartments on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, on and around West End Avenue, three and four girls sharing each apartment, the apartments familiarly known to those in the know as Airline Stewardesses’ Apartments. Secretaries, on the other hand, who tend to live in Queens and Brooklyn and other places outside the city, do their metropolitan carousing in the aforementioned singles bars, on and around Third Avenue in the Upper East Side. Which, as is obvious after only a cursory glance at a city map, leaves the center of the island — 42nd Street — to men.

Now, quickly scanning his wrist chronometer, which announced to him a time of seven minutes past the hour of one post meridiem, Mo Mowgli decided the moment had arrived for another of his periodic checks throughout the entire operational area. First carefully putting everything on his desk in order, as was his invariable habit, he got to his feet, left his office, and proceeded across the main floor in the direction of the stalls.

Stalls 1, 2, and 5, Mo saw, were at the moment employed in their primary function. Entering the unoccupied stalls, one after another down the straight rank along one wall, he checked swiftly for a sufficiency of paper, for a maintenance of sanitary standards, and for a continued proper functioning of all equipment. Finding all in order, he turned to the stand-up equipment on the opposite wall, familiarly known to the crew at Plumbing Supplies as “urinals.” These, too, passed muster, Mo was pleased to see, their silent white porcelain perfection a mute testimony to his continued dedication to the task life had given him in lieu of the responsibility he craved.

Three of the “urinals” were in use at the moment, and Mo was about to turn away and return to his office when it struck him that one of those three men looked vaguely familiar. Doctor Greenbaum? No, but nevertheless familiar. Where had he seen that neck, those slightly hunched shoulders, those slightly parted feet, that neat haircut before?

Here! Right here! Mo snapped his fingers in surprise when he realized that the customer currently paying attendance on “Urinal” Number 4 was the exact same customer who had been paying attendance on “Urinal” Number 4 two hours ago, when Mo had made his last check of the operational area.

The poor man must have kidney troubles, Mo thought, and was about to turn away and retire to his office when a sudden suspicion entered his mind with the weight of intuitive truth. Was this customer present again or was he present yet? In other words, had he been standing there at “Urinal” Number 4, unmoving, for the last two hours?

It seemed impossible, and yet ... Somehow, Mo suspected there was more to this situation than met the eye.

Still, he did not respond with any overt action. Years of dealing with the public had taught Mo to be cautious and circumspect in all dealings with the public until such time as he had all the facts at his command and was prepared to act with the assurance that he was definitely making the right move. Any other course, as he well knew from his years of dealing with the public, would be folly. Therefore, he moved with caution and circumspection in dealing with this representative of the public, so as not to be guilty of folly.

He pretended to use “Urinal” Number 3.

A glance to the right was sufficient to demonstrate that the individual under scrutiny was not actually employing “Urinal” Number 4, but was merely standing in front of it, just as Mo himself was not actually employing “Urinal” Number 3, but was merely standing in front of it.

Another glance to the right was sufficient to demonstrate to Mo that the individual under scrutiny had a vague, faraway, glazed look in his eyes, and that his lips appeared to be moving slightly, as though he were whispering to himself. Mo cocked an ear, but could hear nothing.

Was the individual under scrutiny perhaps suffering from some sort of illness? Should a medical specialist be summoned at once from the contemplation of the shambles he had made of his own life to give succor and assistance to the individual under scrutiny? Or was he perhaps, this individual under this scrutiny, a nut: the sort of unfortunate who sits beside you on the bus, starts twitching his lower jaw, and commences a long, belligerent, one-sided conversation with Harold Stassen?

Tentatively, Mo reached out his right hand and, with the thumb and first two fingers, tapped the individual under scrutiny tentatively on the forearm, while at the same time with his mouth Mo said: “Excuse me.”

The glaze over the individual under scrutiny’s eyes crumbled to confusion, and he babbled, “It was a long time ago that I remembered my mother got the phone call—”

Mo, quickly retracting the hand touching the individual under scrutiny, said, “What?”

The individual under scrutiny blinked. “What did you say?”

“I said excuse me.”

The individual under scrutiny looked hopeful. “Are you trying to pick me up?”

“Oh,” Mo said, in some personal distaste, stepping backwards with alacrity from “Urinal” Number 3. “You’re one of those,” he said.

“I am if you are,” the individual under scrutiny said. “On the other hand, I’m not if you’re not.”

“I’m not,” Mo said.

“Too bad,” said the individual under scrutiny. “It might have made a nice change of pace.”

Mo, not at all easy in his mind, retired to his office and said no more.