When I moved back to Boston, I decided I’d take my car with me. I needed it to drive places on the weekends, and didn’t feel like transporting all my guns in taxis. Unfortunately, it wasn’t so easy when it came to going to work.
I work (for now) in Government Center, where there are two options: play the meter game and risk getting a ticket—or, gonorrhea from the meter maid you screw to get out of it—or, pay well over $100 a month to park in the garage. And still probably get gonorrhea from the meter maid.
I was thinking about doing the latter, minus the maid-boning part, but when I broke it down, I’d only have to pay half that amount if I got myself a T pass. Not just any old T pass.
And for the most part, that’s been a great decision. Granted, it takes me twice as long to get home sometimes, and I have to ride with people, which is tough since I hate them; but, it has given me time to do two things: just laugh at folks I don’t know, and make calls on my phone to show them all I know people and have their numbers.
Laughing at people is just great, because none of them have any idea you’re laughing at them. And if you get caught, you can just say you were just having a chuckle about a piece of crap you saw in a urinal, or Jack Ruby. But I wasn’t laughing the day my cell phone wouldn’t work. So, I took it to the phone store.
Now off the bat, I’ll state that my phone is a piece of crap. It’s literally the cheapest Verizon phone they make, and I think before it was a phone it was some little girl’s makeup mirror. I bought it over a year ago when I lost my new (free) razor phone within minutes of getting off the plane in Los Angeles. I didn’t have much money at the time, and needed a phone ASAP. Calling and checking my messages just doesn’t do it for me; I’m always afraid that one day, I’m going to call and me in another time will answer it. (And at that point, what would I do? I wouldn’t want to scare other-time-me, so I’d probably have to lie and say I’m someone else, and do a funny voice. The last thing I want to do is freak me out.) So, I rushed to the Verizon store on Hollywood Boulevard, bought the cheapest phone they had, and that’s how I wound up at a store in Boston just over a year later, talking to a rather attractive blonde.
She was about my age, and appeared to be one of the store’s managers. She had on a pinstripe blazer and skirt, with a pink blouse and a gold necklace. She had two eyes, and a waist between her torso and midsection; legs perfect for walking.
She walked up to me at that moment and asked if she could help. I told her that my phone had died, and she looked up my account. It was explained that because my warranty was up, I would have to purchase a new phone. This beautiful blonde with the eyes and legs said she just needed to pull up my billing information. She asked if she could have my number. I said sure. Then, I asked if I could have hers.
Except I didn’t. I actually thought of it about five minutes later.
Anyway, this blonde-haired mystery woman brought me over to the service center and explained to a guy named Dwayne or Carlos or Gene that I had a busted crappy phone, and needed to have my information transferred. She told me I’d have to pay $59.99 for the new “unit,” and I told her she’d have to pay nothing for my unit.
No, I didn’t say that either. I just thought of that now, actually.
As this blonde beauty sauntered across the sales floor to tantalize another cell owner, Dwayne or Carlos or Jeb began to transfer my data.
“So your phone just died, huh?”
“Yeah, it won’t work unless it’s plugged in.”
“You tried taking the battery out?”
What?
“What?”
“Well, sometimes if you take the battery out, then just pop it back in tighter, the phone will work again.”
It was then I had an odd feeling. Not as bad as the one you get when you realize your girlfriend and that other guy aren’t just painting each other naked, but not as good as the one you get when you realize your girlfriend and that other girl aren’t just painting each other naked. As I confused even myself with that analogy, Dwayne or Carlos or Zeke removed the battery, wiped it with a cloth, and popped it back in. And hello,cell phone.
I was stunned. All I had to do was take the battery out, pop it back in, and I was good to go. I didn’t have to spend $59.99 for a “new unit”; all I had to do was pull and pop. Somebody had to have known that; someone like—the blonde-haired bitch who tried to screw me out of $60! With that, I thanked Dwayne or Carlos or Dwayne-Carlos, and turned to face my target—but she was gone.
Vanished. Vamoose. Nowhere to be found. This girl had used her authority, poise and breasts to trick me into spending $59.99, all for the benefit of them. And I wanted to give her a piece of my mind. This was surely part of her plan: screw the guy, close the sale, hide and laugh. She was the Heather Mills of phone stores, and I was a brokenhearted Beatle. But that’s how it goes sometimes. People lie and they cheat, and you never get to call them a jerkface. At least I’d saved 60 bucks.
About a week later, I walked along another block in the Financial District. A lot had happened. The day was different. My pants were different. I had shaved at least four or five times. But the weather was the same. And the time was the same. And the blonde haired girl who stood in a crowd of about four waiting for the bus was the same. The same girl from the phone store, that is.
Same girl from the phone store???
You know it, Pappy. Standing there in the very same dress, and the very same shoes—showing off the very same smugness. It was as though fate had brought us together, as though God wanted me to call this girl a crapstick and avenge whatever!
But then I got to thinking, this phone femme fatale was probably bitchy to everybody at that store. Me going up to her and saying she had treated me crappy would be like going up to Christopher Walken and saying he’d been in my movie. There are too many to remember, and thus, I would be long forgotten.
But still, if I said something to her now, she’d never forget it. A guy going up to her on the street, calling her out for crap she pulled, and putting her back in her place.
But then, I’d look like a jerk to everyone else on the corner. They wouldn’t know the back story, the history between me and phone girl. She’d mace me, they’d applaud, steal my quarters, and that would be that.
But maybe there was a way around it. Maybe I could go over and stand by her, and talk loudly on my phone. I’d call up everyone I could, and say “Yeah, I’m here talking on my cell phone! My cell phone, that wasn’t really broken enough for me to buy a new one for $59.99! Why am I talking so loud?! Why are you so fat?!”
But the odds of that working seemed slim and none. These were my choices: confront the girl, look like I was crazy, or be incredibly rude. I was the one who nearly got taken, but sure enough there I was, Mr. Bad Guy, while she smugly escaped all scrutiny. And that was okay. I was fine with that. I would be the bigger person, and keep my mouth shut. I didn’t need to let her in on my annoyance; in fact, I would take pride in my ability to abstain from confrontation. It would be my silence that would defeat her pettiness.
But things don’t always go as we plan in this nifty little life. Sometimes, our strategy fizzles; our ambition evaporates. For it was at that moment a large gentleman talking loudly on his cell phone rounded the corner, and said loudly, “Ha! I just walked by that c— from the phone store!!”
And then, I laughed. Out loud. And hard. It wasn’t so much what the guy said, but more the irony of my comprehending it. Okay, it was also what he said. And not only did the phone girl hear the guy—she also heard me laughing. And she didn’t think it was all that funny.
The bus came, we both got on, and sat awkwardly across the aisle from one another. I thought about making small talk. I thought about apologizing. I thought about explaining to the girl who I was after all, so that she understood the context of my laughing at the other gentleman’s c-bomb. But at this point, I found it best not to say anything. Besides, I had to answer my phone.