a line of people each perfectly alone

The methadone queue is a crowd choreographed into mutual non-contact: dozens of people pressed onto one narrow walkway, waiting for the same door, and each of them holding himself alone, arms crossed, stand-offish, brooding, a solo act. Togetherness in the barest physical sense, sixty bodies in a line, coexisting with a total absence of contact between any two of them, the aloneness so exact it takes real skill to maintain, which is why the narration can only call it balletic.