A middle aged man in a blue uniform came into the Chelsea. He was small, with a little round stomach, balding, with a tuft of black hair sticking straight up from his forehead. Apparently, he couldn’t get his shampoo machine into the hotel because a moving truck was parked in the way. He started complaining to Dennis, one of the bellmen, in a thick Brooklyn accent: “Why’d he park his truck there? It’s a puzzle! Now I can’t get in. What am I supposed to do, haul the machine down the street on my back?”
“No, don’t do that,” Dennis said.
“It’s a puzzle, ain’t it? Him parking his truck there like that.”
“I think they just need to carry some furniture in,” Dennis explained. “And then I’m sure they’ll move the truck.”
The carpet man didn’t want to hear it. “I’m telling you, it’s a puzzle! Can't understand it. Don't know what to make of it. Never will figure it out. It's a puzzle!”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Dennis said, sensing the futility of continued explanation.
“It's like when I was a kid. My mother give me a puzzle. The Grand Canyon. It was one of those with all the pieces. So many pieces. Two thousand pieces it had! Imagine that. A real puzzle!”
“A jigsaw puzzle,” Dennis said.
“That's what they called it. Two thousand pieces! What a puzzle!”
“So did you put it together?”
“No!” the carpet man said, annoyed. “Of course not! It was a puzzle!”
(Copyright Ed Hamilton 2006)
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