The Exchange

The Curator is pleased to admit you for an eleventh viewing.

You will come in out of the rain into a great telephone exchange given over to an answering that never ends, all hot dust and stopped clocks and a low buzzing dark, where every soul who feared its own call ringing out un-answered is picked up at last, connected and kept. There is a warm voice waiting on the line and your number already lit on the board, and a position held for you, and an exchange that has learned by heart the one call you could not bear to have ring out. One reminder, with our compliments: the way out is real, and this time it asks whether you can walk away un-answered, place no call and leave no docket, and go out into the cold street alive.