Two of the memoranda announcing the workshop gave bulleted directives in regard to cell phones and other portable communication devices: they were not to be brought. The workshop leader, a man named Edwin J. Tier, is revisiting the point.”Now, has anyone brought cell phones? I’m going to send around-Jason?”

“Jamin,” I say.

“I’m going to send around Jamin here. All right? With this basket. Any cell phones in purses or bags or what have you-if you wouldn’t mind depositing them for the time being….”

I move slowly. We’re gathered in the Fishbowl, an enormous circular room walled partly with rippled glass blocks. Since all the chairs have been removed-and all the tables but the one bearing stacks of folded lavender bath towels-my co-workers have assumed positions on the floor. Women rest on one hip or the other, their legs to one side, their weight coming down on single wrinkled wrists. Men lie sideways or hug their bent legs or half stand, an elbow propped to a knee, as if they’re being photographed in baseball uniforms. I lean down as I pass with the empty basket. I feel strange, as if I’m offering people a glance at their own reflections.

When I return with the basket, I’m sent out again, with an armful of lavender towels.

“Now this bird house,” Edwin J. Tier is saying. “What could be simpler than that? Six, seven pieces of wood. A few nails. Simple. But then consider. We’re going to need tools. To measure, to cut, to affix. All right? What else? What else might we need for this bird house? We’ve got materials, we’ve got tools. What else? Well, how about knowledge? Are we going to need knowledge for this? We are. We’ll have to know how to use our few tools. More important, we’ll have to know why. We’ll have to know what we want and why we want it-all right?-at each and every phase of the process. We’ll have to know how to make this bird house, I’m saying. All right. Now consider. If I’m making a bird house, and if my left hand doesn’t know what my right hand is doing, how successful am I going to be? If I’m making a bird house, and I know everything about cutting a little round hole, but nothing about anything else, what are my chances of developing a product you’ll admire in the category of ‘bird house’? Do you see? It takes profound, integrated knowledge, doesn’t it? To make something as basic as a bird house. I want you to think about that. Profound, integrated knowledge. All right? Knowledge, integrated, profound.

“Do you all have a towel? I’m going to ask you to lay out your towels and when you’ve done so ease yourselves down on them. Thank you, Jaden. You can go ahead and join them. Please. Lie down. Just however you’re comfortable. You’re probably tired. You’ve been holding yourselves up on the floor. You’ve been working without profound knowledge. Lie down. That’s super. All right. We’re going to do this together. This is the first of many things we’re going to do all together. What we’re going to do, we’re going to take a little nap.”

On my side, on my towel, at the edge of the group, I think that I must have misheard. Before that thought can complete itself, though, I realize that I am responding. Or I’m ready to respond. The pleasant-enough voice of Edwin J. Tier accompanies me as I start to glide the switching inner geometries. But I’m not yet asleep, and for a second or two I hold on. I run through a few of the facts of my life-maybe to reassure myself that they’ll be here when I return. I’m twenty-four, twenty-five in a couple of weeks. I work for a man who’s a pedophile, I think, or something just as bad. I took this lame promotion in order to get a jump on my student loans.

***

Scott Garson has lived all over, most recently in Santa Cruz. His stories have appeared in issues/postings of Juked, Hobart, The New Orleans Review, Fourteen Hills, Quick Fiction, elimae, and others.