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"It depends on whether I kick you in the shins or not," he said, showing his gums.
""Pain Management' has been moved to Room 135," Dog Bites put in quickly, hoping to limit the damage.
But Ed was on a roll. He asked each doctor who came up, "Are you here for pain?"
The scene was the same outside Room 135.
"Pain. This is pain," a staffer named Alma repeated. We heard the word "pain" every 10 seconds.
We noticed an increasingly familiar phenomenon in Room 135: the struggle for power, the drive to establish territory. Here, Alma was in charge. She wore bright pink lipstick and an American flag lapel pin. Four staffers were already handing out survey forms. So Dog Bites counted chairs. When we returned to record our count on the session report form, Alma came up behind us.
"You don't have to do that," she said. "I'll take care of it."
Dog Bites retired to the back wall, venturing forth only once to count the attendees. Finally, Alma approached us holding the report form. Her nails were long and scraped against the paper.
"What does this mean?" she asked, pointing to where we'd written "1:30, 235."
"It was 1:30 when I did the head count, which was 235," we said.
She looked at us uncomprehendingly.
"But what is this?" She pointed to where we'd written "1:30."
We repeated, louder, that it had been 1:30 when we took the count.
"Maybe I'm not asking the question in the right way," she said.
She was trying to belittle us in some way, but for the life of us we couldn't figure out how. We were fascinated by where this might be going.
She pointed to the next line, where we'd indicated that the session had started at 1:35.
"We do the count after the session starts," she said.
Ah. We responded that it had been around 1:30 when we did the count. We offered to let her change it.
"It's supposed to be right."
Ok, then, it was "around 1:40."
"Let's just change it to that."
She painstakingly wrote "1:40" over "1:30."
"We have another problem," she said, pointing to where we'd written that the session started at 1:35.
"When I do this," she said helpfully, "I just write that they start on time. Otherwise, we have to say why."
"1:35 is on time," we said.
She shook her head pityingly.
"Why would you say it started late?"
"It didn't," we repeated. "You can change it to 1:30 if you want."
"But we can't change these."
"You just changed the time of the head count from 1:30 to 1:40."
She looked at the paper. Our line of reasoning apparently had no impact.
"Well, we can't change this one," she said.
"OK."
"You have to say why it started late."
"OK."
"Why did it start late?"
We were no help.
"Moderator's discretion?" she ventured. "How does that sound?"
"That sounds great," we said.
Alma smiled and set the session report in the middle of the table, where she could make sure it was not further tampered with.
TUESDAY
At 7 a.m., we met Andrew the A/V guy. We asked if he was always up so early. He grimaced.
"If I'd wanted to do this," he said, "I would have been a dairy farmer."
At the backs of the meeting rooms were folded-over pieces of white cardboard. They had "CAUTION" printed in big black letters on them. Suddenly, Breakfast Drink ran out of Room 135, squealing in terror.
"It's a mouse!" she screeched. "I touched it! I've got that sticky goo all over my fingers now."
We looked at one of the cardboard contraptions. It was, indeed, a mousetrap. We lifted it gingerly with a pen. A tiny tail writhed back and forth. The other A/V guy, Joe, volunteered that the luckless creature had been stuck there since yesterday.
"We were doing a video recording in the afternoon, so they asked everyone to be quiet." But the mouse, he said, "was like, "Cheep, cheep, cheep.'"
WEDNESDAY
Dog Bites e-mailed friends that we were passing out pencils at Moscone for $9 an hour and fantasizing about stabbing our eyes out with them.
Ed found us as we awaited morning instructions in the sublevel. He talked at length about his former job in "the industry," meaning wine. He said he worked with a master sommelier who everyone thinks walks on water. Then Ed karate-chopped his shoulder and blurted, "But he comes up to here on me! It's like, he's just a guy!"
"Is his name Larry?" we asked.
Ed tipped his head back reverently.
"Larry Stone," he whispered.
"I used to have to talk to him on the phone," we said, immediately wishing we hadn't. Dog Bites once had been a leg girl for a local newspaper gossip columnist and occasionally trolled at Stone's restaurant for items.
Ed continued: "I went by Rubicon one day and ... said, "Tell Larry Ed is here.' They were like, Who is this guy?"
Getting excited as he unrolled his tale, Ed stood up, planted a foot on a chair, and aimed his crotch at us.
"Then Larry came up and said, "Give him a bottle of wine.' He came by later and sat with me. He saw something was going on with the staff, so he said, "He tastes wine with me.' They were like ..." Ed mimicked a hovering, inquisitive staff in lock step, hunching his shoulders up to his ears and clamping his arms to his sides.
Dog Bites put her head on the table.
Since those first days at Moscone, we have moved up in the world. Alas, we haven't moved on. After five months, we have been assigned to registration, where we get paid $11 an hour and use a computer. Our bitterness has faded to amusement and acceptance. However, our patience has limits.
