Somebody has to be first and nobody in this city has been first for years so start with the boy the one whose coat is on the back of the chair with one sleeve inside out the way children take a coat off call him Emin no Emin is a name for someone who gets older call him Tomas the one at the table with the coin in his fist and the cake that came printed and the guest who is paid for and arrives on time Tomas is wrong too Tomas is a name with a father in it and this one has a mother and a bill so call him Aron and leave him there before the eighth candle
The man on the hill flat the one who has timed his exits call him Yusuf and he would hate that call him Ilya who swims until his shoulders burn and is polite in the mornings and means it and rides the middle station all night watching the two cars pass with twelve seconds of lit glass and lit glass Ilya is too soft for a man who has worked out why she takes the stairs now and has changed nothing call him Petar and be done
She is harder call her Nadia the mother in the third bed who has not put him down since the ward went quiet Nadia is a name for a woman who wins something call her Roza no Roza is my grandmother call her the third bed and let the file be angry about it call her Halide with the word she has not spent sitting in the boy like a stone in fruit
The clerk in the office of effects who read his own life off a tray and signed in a hand no file had ever held call him Josef and Josef stays Josef is the only one who signed his own
The cat has no name
I will come back to the cat
I am putting the cat at the end where the ones you cannot do go
The one who brings a chair in one motion call him Marek and he has a hook and a number and a coat and a manual with a paragraph in it that is accurate call him Selim and he straightens a chair on a day that is not his shift call him nothing at all and let him walk the landings saying goodnight through doors
The woman with the ledger thirty years at one book with one shoulder higher call her Dora and her jaw locks in the night and her receipt lies face down under a ribbon that is nearly out call her Sabine no she is a Dora she is exactly a Dora leave her
The crane man eleven years counting floors his hands say twenty-three the drawings say nineteen call him Esen and his wife has stopped asking and the lift log on its nail keeps his numbers where nobody was paid to correct them Esen is good Esen stays
Her call her Lena the one who carries vinyl down to the hall of cabinets on the fourteenth of every March and plays for the hosted and the fans come off their private clocks Lena is a name for someone who is expected somewhere and she is expected nowhere which is the whole point call her the crate call her the fourteenth
The corrector walking the ground filing granite against plate call her Klara and she has three hundred and eleven stones left and one row she will not walk and a card in her coat gone soft with LETTERING HONEST PRICES NO SUBSCRIPTION on it Klara is too clean for a woman who marks a stone corresponding twice call her Ruth call her the ninth along
The Secretary who strikes a line and leaves it legible under the strike call her nothing the joke is hers and naming her would tell the room
The one who finishes what the block takes call her Mira and she has finished this sentence already and gone on to the next call her Anka no Anka is a name for a woman who waits she supplies for the whole landing and has never once been told she is wrong which is not the same as being right call her whatever she would put after it and she will put something after that
The one who sat the unrecorded hour with the boxes in her lap call her Nesrin and she could not read it if I wrote it down and that is the only reason I have written it call her Dilek no Dilek is a name a woman reads on her own form call her the seventh statement and the office will know who I mean and she will not
The one who put her mother’s Thursdays on the board in her own words nine years of them call her Branka and she was up for a day and came down as a code call her Hana and I have gone looking for the reason four times and the schedule gives me the number and not the reason call her sixty-one views nobody applied
The one who washes at the pontoon and takes the gloves off when the family asks call her Vesna no Vesna is a name met at a wedding call her the warmed water it is not warmed for them and her hands are in it to the wrist all day and their name has never once been asked
The one on the first Tuesdays call her Milena and she is four thousand and eighty-one and then she is three thousand nine hundred and seventy-seven and improving all the way down
The one at the back of the hall in the twelve seconds call her Irma and she stood on behalf of a person and was told the observance is not addressed to persons and stood anyway call her Katarin call her remarks verbatim she is the only one on this page who ever asked for something for somebody else
The one at the rail with the ticket call him R-73 and that is not a name and it is what he answers to now and he stood up five times in one day to prove that he was in the room and the board has a field for that and none for him
The widow of the errata whose tear entered the record and could not be removed without enlarging call her Emine no Emine is a name for a woman who is only one woman and I have entered it and struck it and entered it again and she is also possibly the woman in the first hour and possibly the hand that sends the voucher back not known here try the room three women or one and the file has no field for that and neither have I and I have been doing this eleven years
The one at the window seat who is not a person call it Ferit and it took me no time at all and nothing on this page has come easily in eleven years and that did I am striking it I am leaving the strike legible
The two of them in the queue the one who said no at the window and the one who keeps his receipts flat call them nothing at all they have had enough of being written down
There are more of them than there were when I started this page and the page has not got any longer and nobody has asked me for a second one
And the cat
Gray and in the market and remembering for nothing and playing back as a patch of clean sound
I have tried four times and the pen goes down every time
There is nothing to attach to