Company

I am in a white tee shirt and a lady in an old cardigan calls me and she has something behind her eyes that I cannot read, that I waste too much time trying to memorise, and she says that she needs me and it's all that I hear at first, and then the sound of her pencil scratching something shorthand onto the paper she has fastened to a clip board in her palm. As we walk down the aisle, her hand now on my elbow, the line of people on the stage seems to part like biblical sea, making space for me to stand, to join, a wave against the shore.
Lapping again. Lapping again. 
And she is busy making introductions as we walk up the stairs to where the people are and they salute and wave half hearted waves and some say their names and others say "Nice to meet you" and "I'm glad you're here" and it seems sort of sincere and one girl with a blonde ponytail and a pink sweater looks at me into my face and she smiles with her mouth closed and I'm transported somewhere and its just the two of us and we've shared something that binds us, ties us in knots, two sides of the same coin; and then I am back and her smile is still there and I am in the middle of the line, in its belly, and the introductions have all been eaten. Leftover morsels floating up and up and up. The lady in the old cardigan is some way through a list of instructions that I haven't heard and she is waiting for a response so I nod and she carries on.
I am in over my head.
It is the beginning and it is the end.
Somebody elses life that I have climbed inside, their skin a coat over my skin.
I step forward, unsteady on my feet as if it all, every bit of this, is new.
I take another step, the emergency exit light above the emergency exit now a glowing green beacon.
"Go" it says, "Pick up and go."