At a folding card table near the glass doors, a woman spoke to him in Spanish. Somewhere in her early thirties, he imagined. She wore her black hair in a tidy bun. Burgundy sweater. Jeans tucked into her tawny boots. She asked whether he’d made an appointment. He had not. “My license expires today,” he said. “I’ve got a crucial meeting in Burbank tomorrow. I need to be legal by then.” He tapped the manila cover on a screenplay under his arm. He toted the script everywhere in case he encountered an interested producer.

The woman yanked a ticket from an egg-shaped dispenser and handed it to him. Number thirty-six. Printed in red ink. “Have a seat,” she said. “When they are ready, they will call you.” She pointed at molded plastic chairs arranged in rows across the room from a lone service counter.

Enrique stuffed the ticket into his pocket next to a fold of ten-dollar bills he carried for emergencies. His mother would have offered the woman money for a lower number. She’d lived in a different time, a different world. People in charge, especially in the United States, no longer negotiated. Too many people needed their services and products. If one expressed displeasure, reprimand followed.

He sat in a yellow chair on the edge of the third row. Most uncomfortable, requiring frequent shifts at the behest of his lower spine. The fetid scent of cleaning chemicals offended his nose. A woman with two small children occupied the seats to his left. She constantly swatted her boys, admonishing them, expecting them to remain still. She pushed her thick sweater’s roomy sleeves off her hands, unable to corral them behind her wrists. She nodded at the screenplay on Enrique’s lap. “You a writer?”

He confirmed. The woman’s question seemed silly. His friends would have laughed at her. Called her dumb. His mother, who engineered their escape from El Salvador, taught him to never look down on others. We do not know their situation, she’d remind him any time she suspected he’d stumbled into the theater of judgment.

“What kind of stuff you write about?” said the woman.

Enrique wrapped his lower lip over his upper lip. A brief show of humility. “I have composed a biography of Chuck Norris.” He paused. Allowed the woman to consider the possibilities. Then he added the secret spice, the ingredient no one else had the imagination to toss into the mix: “It’s a musical.”

Spiderwebbed wrinkles fleeing the corners of the woman’s eyes trembled. Trying to suppress laughter, no doubt. A response Enrique often encountered when discussing his work. She said, “Why?”

Again, his peers, if he could call them that, his friends who sat in corporate coffee houses with their laptops open on small round tables, would have feigned offense. How dare she question a writer? Thankfully, Enrique’s mother raised him to confront all strangers with kindness. After a polite nod, acknowledging, Yes, it would appear odd that anyone, especially a first-generation immigrant from Central America, should have any interest in Chuck Norris, he said, “When I was a little boy, my mother put the only tape we had into our used VCR to babysit me while she worked her evening job. The movie was called Invasion U.S.A. Chuck Norris defeats a villain who slaughters an entire boat full of refugees. Very clear case of good versus evil. Right and wrong. Chuck Norris, along with my mother, taught me basic morality. I feel a debt.”

In previous such conversations, people asked whether he needed to see a doctor. The wealthy residents west of La Brea suggested he attend a university and learn what an offensive gesture his work constituted. They lectured him about Chuck Norris’s politics and how they collided with Enrique’s very existence. You should hate this man, they instructed him. And if he argued? They became enraged. Called him a coconut.

The woman pointed a fingernail manicured to look like a bloody fang at the screenplay and said, “Sounds stupid.” She returned her attention to her boys, advising the older child, “Don’t make me drag you outside, Sherman.”

An electronic board suspended above the sickle-shaped service counter lit up with a digital number forty. Enrique examined the ticket the woman outside had handed him. He approached the counter, politely stepping around a young man holding a ticket with a red number forty stamped on it. “Excuse me,” he said to a pair of men in skinny jeans behind the counter. One stood, dressed in a corn-colored short-sleeved button-down shirt with the name Gil etched onto a plastic tag hanging crooked on his breast pocket. The other, seated with his fingers massaging the keys of an old desktop computer, ceased a conversation conducted between himself and Gil to throw Enrique an anxious glare.

“One moment.” Gil held up a finger the way Enrique’s mother used to while speaking on the phone to indicate she desired no interruptions. He addressed the seated man, whose nametag read, Trainee. “So, now that we’ve sparked the board, the sheep are going to make your life hell. It’s important to keep your cool, no matter what.”

Enrique sought empathy with the man holding the number forty ticket. Raised his eyebrows to communicate this question: Can you believe these gentlemen referred to us as farm animals? But the man with the number forty ticket only bounced on the soles of his squeaky boat shoes, peeking over Enrique’s shoulder, as though that might hasten his business.

“Can I help you?” The trainee’s tones hinted at a life devoid of worries beyond the quality of the next Disney Star Wars product. Enrique pictured the man making YouTube videos in which he opened packages of action figures. His mother would have scolded him for such a specific, unfounded assumption.

He laid the ticket the woman outside had given him onto the counter. “It appears you’ve skipped me.”

The trainee put his middle finger on the ticket and dragged it closer to him. Lines developed around his gaunt face as his mouth and eyes drew back. “This says… thirty-six.” His tense expression dissipated. He craned his head, as if to beckon Enrique’s attention toward the electronic board. “We’re serving customer forty.” He spoke at the pace of a relaxed tortoise, as though he believed Enrique either stupid or unfamiliar with the English language.

“That’s me.” The man in squeaky boat shoes waved his ticket like a flag. “I’m number forty.”

Gil patted the trainee’s shoulder. “Ease off the snark, Donny.” He leaned over the counter and said, at a lower volume, though not low enough for anyone else in the room to miss, “It’s Donny’s first day. Forgive him if he sounds… how shall I put it? Snippy? Does that work? Snippy?”

“Congratulations on your new job,” Enrique said to Donny. “My number comes before forty, so my question is: Are you counting backwards? Will the next number to appear on the board be thirty-nine?”

“We will circle around,” said Donny. “You can wait for thirty-six to pop up once we cycle through all the numbers.”

“How many numbers are there?” said Enrique.

“Five hundred.”

The man in squeaky boat shoes said to Enrique, “It’s not your turn, bruh. Could you glide to the side?”

The speckled floor tilted. The narrow room elongated as the walls closed in like the compactor scene in the only Star Wars movie Enrique had watched more than twice. The one with the clearest vision of right and wrong. “Forgive me,” he said to the men behind the counter. “Why was my number skipped?”

“Oh…” Gil waved his hands near his stomach, as though shooing away unwelcome children. “The board is broken. It started at forty for some reason.”

The room shifted sideways. A rotating tunnel in a funhouse at the church carnival Enrique’s mother dragged him to the first few years they lived in the States. The man in squeaky boat shoes attempted to snake around him. Enrique stood his ground. He thought of Chuck Norris. How would he have responded? Most failed to understand the characters Chuck Norris played on film. They desired only a world beholden to the slightest edicts of civilization. Organic respect between citizens. He’d proposed this reading of Chuck Norris cinema to his writing friends. They protested. They’d overdosed on relativism and believed no one should be bound by the rules of another. Enrique argued such a position produced only chaos. This did not bother his writing friends, however, because they had never witnessed chaos.

Enrique had.

In 1985, government officials accused his father of harboring sympathies for the FMLN. As they led his father away at night, hemp sack dragged over his head, they assured Enrique and his mother they would see him again. His mother waited a week for his father’s return. Convinced the government murdered him, she decided they needed to flee their homeland before the officials disappeared her next or, worse, her son.

Enrique said to the men behind the counter, “How long will it take to cycle through all five hundred numbers?”

Gil said, “Generally, we get through a round every two or three days.”

Would this be the point Chuck Norris erupted in violence? In Chuck Norris cinema, such responses proved effective. But life and the movies did not occupy the same planes of existence. An important distinction many in modern America, Enrique felt, failed to grasp. He said, “You expect me to sit here for two or three days?”

“That’s impossible.” A smirk developed on Donny’s sunburnt face. “We close at five. No one can sit in the lobby overnight.”

Gil became a living bobblehead. “Right, right. Exactly right.”

“What do you recommend?” said Enrique. “I have a very important meeting tomorrow. My license expires today.”

Donny’s frown compelled flakes of scorched skin to detach from his face and drift to his shoulders. “Why would you wait until now to renew it?”

“That’s entirely irrelevant,” said Enrique.

Scooting closer than before, Gil whispered, “You could chance it, you know? Drive safely. No reason to assume you’ll get pulled over.” He must not have spent time in his youth watching action movies. He had no sense of right or wrong. He worked for the DMV and yet he had no issues compelling citizens to break the law. Enrique’s mother once told him the FMLN may very well have had a legitimate argument against the government, but employing anarchy voided their credibility and, worse, allowed the politicians an excuse to slaughter civilians. A poor excuse, she assured him, but an excuse, nevertheless. And what if Enrique took this skinny man’s advice and rumbled across Barham Boulevard in his clunky hatchback, the tailpipe held in place by repurposed clothes hangers, without a valid license? What if he got stopped by the LAPD? The ensuing punishment he received at the hands of the state would be his fault. Gil would continue his life unaware of the results of his irresponsible counsel.

“That’s not acceptable.” Enrique tapped his fingers on the number thirty-six ticket, still laying on the counter, the top and bottom curled by the various manners with which it had been handled. “I would like another ticket. One that will be called in time for me to finish my business here today. And soon.”

Gil pointed at the woman seated at the folding card table. “You’re welcome to ask Angelica for a new number.”

At that moment, Enrique noticed the lobby had filled. Patrons stood against the wall behind the rows of occupied chairs. “You must be joking.”

The man in squeaky boat shoes wheezed and said, “Bruh, could you put it together already?” He lifted the collar of his Hawaiian shirt and wiped his nose with it.

Enrique scanned the faces of the people who had filed in during his exchange with the men behind the counter. They wore the same, tired expressions any crowd donned when an individual attempted to forge sanity amidst an irrational bureaucratic circus. He’d seen it at the post office. At the clínica médica in MacArthur Park. Waiting in line to vote. Usually a wealthier individual insisting someone do something about the terrible customer service. Others would assign such a person a name. Karen, the most recent iteration—Oh, look at that Karen harassing those kids just because they gave her a chocolate shake when she ordered a Big Mac… Why not just take the shake and be happy? Good grief, what an awful Karen! Enrique found that insult especially grating considering his mother’s middle name had been Karin. He’d reached the point of defeat. A point Chuck Norris never arrived at in the movies. He would bite the proverbial bullet and start the process all over again.

He wound through the crowd, exited the building, and took his place behind an attractive young woman with elegant, wavy autumn hair hanging past her shoulders. She pointed at the script under his arm. “What are the odds?” she said. “An actor and a writer, meeting at the DMV.” They occupied a piece of land a mile west of the Paramount gates. They lived in a town overflowing with dreamers attempting to earn their rent making movies. Nothing outlandish about encountering each other at the DMV or anywhere else west of Alvarado. He heard his mother’s voice, however, admonishing him—Stop judging her. She could replace the void in your life manufactured when Rosita left you for that mechanic in Highland Park. The young woman blinked rapidly when she spoke. Perhaps she wanted Enrique to make a verbal note of the skill with which she’d applied glitter to her eyelids. He placed her age around twenty-five. Most women in Hollywood clung to their ambitions until they hit their thirties, at which point they retreated, believing, with some accuracy, the industry frowned upon any woman unable to pass for jailbait. She’d dressed for the DMV the way Enrique assumed she dressed for auditions—short shorts and a halter top secured by spaghetti straps.

“What’s it about?” The young woman poked at the script. She had not, despite the attention paid to the rest of her outfit and makeup, applied polish or glitter to her nails.

“It’s a biopic.”

“Cool.” She dug through her pocket and pulled out a square of Dubble Bubble. She popped it into her mouth. “I love bi-opics.” A common, contemporary mispronunciation of the genre. Another indication she’d entered the world at least two decades after he had. “I love the one about Benjamin Button. Such an amazing story.”

The line inched closer to the folding table. To Angelica, directing those with appointments to a door on the other side of the building and handing tickets to those who, like Enrique, had made the mistake of not scheduling ahead of time.

The young woman said, “So, like, who’s your movie about?” Upon hearing the details of the script, the young woman pressed her forefinger to her pink glossy lips. Her cheeks puffed and a spurt of air escaped her mouth. Enrique enjoyed a whiff of her bubblegum breath. “What’s the point?” she said.

He explained, for the second time that morning, he possessed a debt to the actor.

“No, no,” she said. “I mean, like, what’s the message? A movie is pointless if it doesn’t have a message. Chuck Norris, I mean, what’s his life all about that would mean anything to me?” More proof of her age. Audiences under the age of forty couldn’t fathom entertainment devoid of didactic posturing.

“I’m not concerned about that.” Enrique’s writer friends presented similar criticisms of his work. Most of them had moved to Los Angeles from suburbs in Minnesota. Or New Jersey. Or Colorado. Their parents paid their bills. The ease of their lives provided ample time to fashion soap boxes from which they barked platitudes about basic manners. They had not grown up in a one-room apartment colonized by rats and mice, as Enrique had; they had not attended public schools so violent and out of control tourists confused them for correctional facilities. “I respect Mr. Norris. I paid tribute the best way I know how.”

The young woman placed her palm just above her semi-naked hip. “Listen, mister,” she said, “I know a thing or two about storytelling. You can try all you want to pretend there’s no message, but that’s, like, impossible. I once read about a screenwriter who totally tried and failed to avoid that whole Joseph Campbell thing about the hero’s journal…”

“Journey.”

“You know what I mean.” The young woman shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “The very first story ever committed to media, that painting in the cave of the caveman throwing a spear at, like, a wooly mammoth, you know it?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “That story totally had a message—arm yourself or get out of the way. Survival. Not as complex as, say, Mean Girls, but a message, nonetheless.”

Enrique’s lower lip made its way over his upper lip once again. He had judged the young woman, as his mother would have told him not to, and the young woman had proven his assessment inaccurate. As often happened. “The script,” he said, “is about right and wrong. What’s right, and what’s wrong.”

“Oh jeez…” The young woman raised her palm high enough to dab sweat from her forehead. “You, like, think that’s totally not a message?” She opened her mouth to speak again, but Angelica interrupted her:

“Did you make an appointment?”

The young woman said no. Angelica gave her a ticket with a solid, red number 103 stamped on it. The ink now resembled the color of blood. As though Chuck Norris had emerged from the ether and roundhouse kicked the dispenser.

Angelica said to Enrique, “You again?”

“I need a new number.”

She yanked the next ticket jutting from the dispenser the way children stuck out their tongues in disgust. He squeezed through a throng of people clustered near the building’s entrance. The room felt smaller. Hotter. He found a narrow, circular space between a plaster column supporting the ceiling and the far end of the first row of plastic chairs. As he leaned against the column, the electronic board above the service counter blinked and went dark. A collective groan swept through the horde. The board flashed and the number one appeared.

Gil stood on the counter and clapped twice. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “our trainee has saved the day.” He pointed at the deep blue light above his head.

Conversations died. Everyone in the room not working for the DMV stared at the board. They reminded Enrique of government officials gawking at a UFO in that Spielberg movie about abandoning your family to travel through space.

Without his face turning the color of the ink on the tickets in the hands of the people surrounding him, Gil said, “We’re going to have to start over. If you all would be so kind, please step outside and Angelica will give you a new number.” In a Chuck Norris movie, he wouldn’t make it to the end credits without picking up his teeth off the ground. Enrique envisioned it: This careless man in skinny jeans struggling to bend over to reach the speckled tiles and scoop his fractured incisors and molars from the floor. And he expected the people around him to let Gil know how close to the collapse of civilization he may have pushed things.

The woman with the unruly sons and sweater sleeves sighed, allowed her eyes an inspection of the room’s ceiling, and stood. Enrique hoped she’d unleash her mom voice on the men behind the counter. But the woman only hung her head in a universal posture of defeat and marched her boys out of the building. The rest of the crowd, sweating, grumbling, obviously agitated, traded eye contact and meandered behind her. They queued at Angelica’s folding card table. She fiddled with the egg-shaped dispenser, installing what appeared to be a new roll of numbers. Numbers printed in black ink. Numbers starting at one, Enrique assumed. The young woman he’d spoken with about his script, her half-naked hips swaying side to side, joined the others in the expanding line snaking across the thin concrete path leading to the building and into patches of browning grass between the sidewalk and the parking lot.

Enrique reached into his pocket and ran his fingers across the fold of ten-dollar bills he kept for emergencies. He sought eye contact with Gil and Donny, unsure if he’d make it past them without saying something. No discernible thought entertained his journey to the front doors, which he pulled shut. A rough click accompanied the twisting of the lock as the straight bolt slid into place. Patrons approaching from outside paused. Confused expressions contrasted the enthusiasm their jittery hands exuded, clutching new numbers they must surely have thought would improve their day.