The Clerk's Window

Halvard was rank three in his own year and then he was twenty-six and finished, and now he is the formality that decides whether a formality happens. Every report on the near bank passes his desk before it crosses the bridge. He has four years of other people's Friday afternoons in a drawer and one student who has worked out that he is the only person in the building who can be leaned on. The ranking is the engine that puts three people in a room and takes their clothes off to prove something.