This is the example.  I went to the key guy to have a key made for the lock on my door.  I had lost the key or misplaced it.  I really don't know what happened to it.  When I opened the drawer, stuck my hand inside and felt around - no key.  I looked everywhere else.  No key.  Then I found myself in the situation.  The situation in which I had to go out whether I wanted to or not.  I had to go out to the key guy's and get another key.  That's the way it was.  This is the example.

When I got to the key guy's store, the liquor guy was hanging around there, and he and the key guy were chatting.  Neither of them even gave me a glance when I went in.  That's how the key guy is with his customers.  He's the only key guy for a long way around, and he knows that when you need a key to open a lock to get in someplace, chances are you really need it.  He knows that you're not likely to just accept the mishap and forego getting into the place you locked up because if there weren't something important in there, you wouldn't have locked it up in the first place.  So if when you show up, he happens to be chatting with the liquor guy whose place is right next door, you have to wait.

As I sat on the chair in his place and waited, I was thinking:  all right I have to wait.  I had to go out and come over here and that was an inconvenience for me, and now I have to wait and that's also an inconvenience for me, but I'm going to wait because I'm here now and soon enough I'm going to get my key and when that happens I can resume my passage through the normal course of events.  But now I have to wait.  So they were chatting like I hadn't even come in and sat down to wait for my key, which is exactly what I did, and here's the example.

The liquor guy said to the key guy, so business has been good?  and the key guy said, sure, it's good.  It's steady.  People are always losing their keys, and when they do they have to come to me.  Right, said the liquor guy.  And they come, said the key guy, and I fix them right up because that's my job.  Right, said the liquor guy.

But that's not all of my business, said the key guy.  I mean that's the bedrock sure but that's not all of it.  What's that you're talking about now?  said the liquor guy.  I'm talking about criminals, said the key guy.  A lot of my business goes to criminals.  C'mon Gene, said the liquor guy.  Yeah, that's the way it is, said the key guy.  Criminals need keys a lot.  For example, say you're a criminal and you want to get into a store and take all the money out of it and stash it somewhere or spend it or live off it or make some kind of illicit investment.  Well, you could break in and that's risky but it's done.  Frequently, they do it that way.  But wouldn't it be easier if you just had a key?  Say the key that will unlock the front door or the back door of the place you want to get into?  Of course it would, and keys are cheap.  I mean those kinds of keys which we might call illicit keys are more expensive than your run of the mill keys but still they're cheap compared to the risks of breaking in which can lead to all sorts of complications.  Whereas there's nothing complicated about opening a door when you have the key.

So the smart ones, the smart criminals, said the key guy, come to me for a key because they can see the advantage and weigh it against the price and make the most sensible decision.  They come to me and tell me about the lock or show me a cast they made of the lock - which makes things easier for me, but it doesn't lower my price - and I make a key for them and then they use that key in their criminal activities be those what they may.  Sometimes it's just breaking in like I said before but actually there are a whole variety of criminal activities that are a lot easier to perform successfully if you have a key.  I don't ask about it because really I don't want to know.  I'd rather not even know that they're criminals.  But they tell me anyway sometimes.  Often, they feel compelled to tell me just what they are going to do with the key I am going to give them even though it really doesn't matter much as far as making the key goes.  Oh yeah, said the liquor guy.  Criminals are gabbers.  You can never get them to shut up.  Gabby criminals are always stopping by my place.  In fact you could say a good deal of my earnings come from gabby criminals coming in to pick something up to celebrate the success of some crime or the other.  This is true just as the majority of losses occur when gabby criminals stop by not to pick something up but to threaten me with a lethal weapon and extort all the cash I have in the register.

I don't care what size, shape or color a criminal is, said the liquor guy, ninety-nine times out of one hundred he's a gabber, or she's a gabber.  They gab both when they are at my place committing a crime and when they are just stopping by to pick something up to celebrate a crime.  In both cases they gab, and in both cases it is primarily their crimes that they gab about.  Sometimes their gabbing gets to me even more than the extortion of the money I keep in the register.  Sometimes, I think what a relief it would be to be robbed by a criminal who didn't say anything.  Sometimes, I think the silence would be worth it.  It would be a balm.  So much so that after being robbed by a silent criminal, I wouldn't mind so much being robbed two or three times by a criminal who gabbed.  The silence would have soothed me.  While I was being robbed by the succession of gabby criminals, I would remember and be soothed by the silence of that one non-gabbing criminal.  That's right, said the key guy.  You said it.  I think this guy wants a key.  So I gotta go.  And the liquor guy left without a word or even a nod and I was alone in the key guy's place face to face with the key guy.

You wanna a key?  said the key guy.  Yeah, I said.  All right then, said the key guy.  Let's go back to your place and take a look at that lock and then I'll come back here and grind out a key with which I'll fix you right up in a jiffy.  Yeah, I said.

So we set out and the sun was already getting low on the horizon because it was winter and I'd been waiting in the key guy's store all afternoon.  It was a snowless winter of the kind that have become prevalent in recent years.  But you could still tell it was winter because the face of the city had grown rigid in the way one expects it to do in the winter.

We set off and our shadows striped the sidewalk - my long skinny shadow and his short round shadow.  That's the way it always is.  Not that I am what you would call a long skinny person.  I'm not, unless I happen to be standing next to someone who you would call an exceedingly short round person like the key guy.  On other occasions with other people, it's reversed.  I am not a short round person by any means but sometimes I appear that way beside someone you would call an exceedingly long skinny person - long and skinny to the point of being grotesque.  On the occasions when I am walking with that sort of person in the late afternoon in the midst of a rigid snowless winter and our shadows stripe the sidewalk, again one shadow is short and round and the other shadow is long and skinny but my shadow is the short and round one.

We were at my building and then we were in my room and the key guy was on his knees looking at the lock on the door to the place that I couldn't get into because the door was a very small door and the lock was so close to the floor that even the short round key guy had to get down on his knees to examine it.

Oh boy, oh yeah, oh boy, that's the one, oh yeah, the short round key guy was saying as he looked at the lock and probed it with an ugly looking tool with protrusions that extended and receded to fit the inner contours of the lock.  She's a lock all right.  Haven't seen a lock like that in a long time.  She's a lock by god as sure as I'm the key guy.

It was here when I moved in, I said.  The key to the lock was here as well, but I never used it.  Instead I kept it in a drawer - I pointed to a drawer in cupboard under the window, which was black - but this morning when I looked in that drawer, the key was gone.

Happen's that way - said the key guy looking up at me and kind of shading his eyes with his hands, because to him I was exceedingly tall, and from his angle, my head was right next to the brilliant bare light bulb which hangs on a wire that comes out of the ceiling of my room - all the time.

I don't suppose, said the key guy, standing up, that you would be a habitual or occasional correspondent with  - name omitted -  would you?  Who?  I said.   - name omitted -  said the key guy.  What of it?  I said.  Nothing, said the key guy and he stood up.  Forget that I mentioned it.  I'll go back to my place now and fix you up with a new key in a jiffy.  You stop by in exactly three days and it'll be ready for you.  Bye.

And the key guy took off out of my room and I followed him through the corridor to the edge of the stairs where he demonstrated his extreme shortness and roundness by rolling down them.

I went down there three days later and I got my key and opened the lock on the door to the place that I had been trying to get into and that was the end of it.  So that's my example.  Now that you know about it, I want you to consider it in the spare moments you have to consider things that appear completely unrelated to what you presently find yourself engaged in but which might actually be peripherally important to everything you do.

Author Bio

James's hypertext novella, Last Street, appears on Friendly #1, and the first chapter of This Guy, a work in progress, appears on Friendly #2.  "Short and Round" is an excerpt from his second unpublished novel, Moles.