Orange means quarters

Forty coins, ten dollars, wrapped in a paper tube two and a quarter inches long, weigh exactly as much as forty quarters should and not a fraction more; the wrapper itself is not counted separately, being paper, being nothing but a container. Banks assemble these by machine now, crimping each end tight enough that opening one requires either a coin dropped hard against a counter or several minutes of patient unrolling with a thumbnail. The paper is printed orange, a color assigned to the quarter alone among coins, so that a roll can be identified by wrapper color from across a drawer without anyone reading the small print stamped along its length. Inside, the coins stack with a precision that feels almost accidental, forty identical discs pressed edge to edge, silent until disturbed. A roll of quarters exists for one reason: to move a known quantity of coin without counting it twice, and it accomplishes this reliably, which is more than most paper products manage with ten dollars' worth of anything inside them. Laundromats consume these by the dozen. Vending machines take them one at a time. The wrapper itself is discarded the moment its contents are needed, crumpled and dropped without ceremony. Most end up in a wastebasket beside the register, one job finished, ten dollars now somebody else's problem.

Doreen Fitch