the guez

     I was working this week’s semi-corporate editing gig in a suite sandwiched between miles of identical office cubes. When I took my break, staring at the coffee machine, trying to decide which flavor of coffee would make the job more palatable, I heard a gasp and an “oh!” from around the corner. A woman came into the pantry, saw me and said, “I thought that sign outside the door said ‘ poetry ’! But then when I looked closer, it only said ‘pantry.’ I was so disappointed.”      I blinked at her, waking a bit from my fog. “I wish it said ‘poetry.’” I said. “We should replace it with an identical sign that says ‘poetry’ and see if anyone notices.”      “That would be so great!” She walked over to the door sign and scraped at it with a fingernail. “Hmm, it’s not paper. Looks like they had it engraved into the plastic.”      “Well,” I said. “We could get a piece of paper the same exact size and – “      “OR we could get another piece of plastic and find a way to burn the

I do this thing, sometimes, when I meet new people, of not saving their number in my phone. You may ask, as others have, how I am able to call those new people. It’s easy, really. I simply find their number in my recent call log, and press “Send.” Simple. That is how I accidentally prank-called the 94th precinct police station. You know sometimes when you call a friend, and they pretend they're a pizza delivery place, and so you play along, imitating their funny accent, and order a pizza that isn't actually palatable? It was like that. Only with cops. But it’s not really my fault. Who would know that Brooklyn cops sound like that? I mean, they really sound like that. And who would know that they don’t have a sense of humor enough to laugh after they say you’ve called the ninety-four-fourth precinct, and you respond in a terrible approximation of their accent- (but in a singsong version) that you are sooo disappointed, because you wanted to talk to the ninety-third-