Afternoon on the Clock

I am trying to imagine the person
on the other end of the phone,
I can only see this end pacing
back and forth in front of the desk,
“You don’t really live that far away
if you live close to Centrex”.
pause pause shuffle pause pause
“What if someone yoinks it?”*
*The word yoink is not in the dictionary,
it is unscrabbleable. pause pause
“You know what movie I really want to see?”

This is one of those talk-
without-purpose conversations
that are supposed to occur in the middle
of the night at home but now,
with the advent of cell phones,
his love jelly oozes out
into public hallways and streets,
through the vibrating airways
and spreads across the white lobby desk
from which I am unable to move
for another three hours.