On weekdays I alight from the subway, the new day still in darkness and join the throng to ascend the stairs and listen to the female cry of 5 peso jellies for breakfast.

Through the turnstiles and then I turn left, still groggy from too little sleep and pass churros being sugared, fruits high-powered liquefied, head cheese tortas rolling off the production line in their hundreds.

But before all this, day after day, I hear the same voice drifting through the darkened mazes of early morning commerce. The pitch, sales and voice, does not vary…..ever.

Plumas a tres pesos. Peines a dos pesos.

Plumas a tres pesos. Peines a dos pesos.

Ad infinitum.

(That’s) Pens for three pesos. Combs for two pesos.

Pens for three pesos. Combs for two pesos.

As I said, ad infinitum.

August – pens and combs.

October – pens and combs.

January – plumas y peines.

I pass the wooden table of the small time entrepreneur, fiftyish, well-groomed, as you’d expect, drinking paper cup coffee, reading the left-wing Mexico City newspaper La Jornada and robotically repeating those same words.

And daily I peer down and inspect the offerings on his table; Actually I see no pens but combs, yes, in any colour you like but also; nail clippers, little mirrors, scissors, chewing gum, lozenges and a few other things that I can’t think of right now in this game of memory, as I said I’m groggy at the time.

And often I wonder, with all those other knicks and knacks that lie their on his table, why is it that it is just pens and combs that are granted voice?
No chicles a 1 peso, cortauñas a 5 pesos o tal vez 10 (¿qué sé yo?)
I don’t know the price of his gum, his nail clippers, his mirrors.

One morning I stop. I think to ask, why don’t you promote your other products? But who am I to ask such a thing? Call into question this indefatigable salesman of the inky Mexican morning. All that comes out is, “¿tienes plumas?” (Do you have pens?) and of course I know he does. He pulls out a plastic bag full, ¿están a tres pesos? (three pesos), I ask full of feigned innocence and ignorance and of course they are and we make the exchange and I continue on into the rubbish strewn exterior of the station and immeasurable stench of dawn.

Later, I pull out my three peso pen, and I kid you not, I write fifty words or less and the damn, over-promoted thing falls apart in front of my eyes, damaged beyond repair.

I think of lodging my justified complaint but in the afternoon commute I take a different route into the station and so do not know if the pens and combs routine continues in the afternoon too but I imagine it does and am sure too that he must mutter it all night in his sleep, his wife shaking him out of his mechanical trauma.

I could call him to account the next morning, return the faulty item, demand a refund, put it instead towards a head cheese torta which has never let me down but how could he remember me, a lone customer in the murky morn and who I am to break his monotonous rhythm? Pens and combs. Maybe he can’t complete the crossword in his morning paper but his hair sure does look good.