Losing at Solitaire

Today was disappointing, in many ways.  I finally got off the couch around 11:20-ish am, thanks to a friend texting me.  Repeatedly.  I’ve taken to sleeping with a sleep mask, since I sleep in the living room where my snores cannot offend, and we keep the lights on 24 hours a day to ward off home invaders.  So in the mornings when people start blowing up my phone (as they do), I have to remove the mask to peep the tweet, and that’s when the light burns my eyes and I can pretty much give up on sleeping more.  Not that it stops me from continuing to lie on the couch and pretend to sleep, to hope for sleep, to desperately claw at it like a leper to a bottle of Jergens.  All to no avail. 

So, that happened. 

I wake and get ready for the day.  I watch a few “Tom & Jerry” cartoons.  I prefer “Looney Tunes”, but I still get a good chuckle out of just about any old cartoon.  I get dressed and leave the house to visit the optometrist.  I catch the bus at the corner and pay my last five dollars in cash for a day pass, allowing me to hop from bus to bus like a transit whore who hasn’t watched the educational film “Seat Crabs: The Silent Itcher”.  I sit down on the over-crowded bus and promptly lose my day pass.  I’m playing solitaire on my iPod and checking texts on my smartphone.  The world around me is like a frame; holding me in and up, increasing my markup but not my aesthetic allure.  I get off the bus and walk six and a half blocks to my old optometrist’s office.  They are gone.  The building is there, framed as it always has been by a Sushi Hut and a Wells Fargo, and there’s even still a window decal of an attractive blonde with sensible frames smiling to the right of the door, but on said door is taped a handwritten sign that reads “We’ve moved across the street, 1450 ******* Rd, Ste 300.”

Okay.

I’m on foot.  What’s another block? I cross the street and there is a large office-building with the number 1450 emblazoned over the entrance.  I saunter in to see three elevators.  And nothing else.  Ominous.  So I push the button to call the car, it dings, the light comes on, goes off, and nothing happens.  So I push it again and the third car arrives with a pleasant sound and accompanying light. I get in to find it covered in movers’ flame-retardant blankets and lit by a shoplight hanging from an exposed wire.  Nothing about this screams “Danger. Disaster imminent.” except perhaps everything.  I press 3 and ascend.  I get out on the third floor and directly ahead and to my left is a room with the placard 300 next to the door.  The lights are off, no business name is displayed outside, and nothing indicates that any sort of legitimate business is conducted anywhere near here.  I try the door.  It’s locked.  I look for a directory on the wall near the elevators and find one, yet it only lets the reader know in which direction the room Numbers are, not who or what might be in them.  I get in the elevator and go back down to the first floor, which in my absence has been renamed “L”.  I find a touchscreen directory in the foyer and try to find my optometrist by company name and then doctor name.  No dice.  I go out the way I came in and walk around the building.  There is another entrance in the back, so I go in.  The vista there is even less welcoming than the front, so I leave; quickly.  I circle the building and decide I’m on a fool’s errand.

  I start walking. 

I am always on the wrong side of the street, I realize, as each intersection I come to has no pedestrian crossing on the side I’m on.  Seriously, this happened four times in a row.  I go to a Food 4 Less that I thought had a Bank of America ATM inside.  They do not.  They do not have any sort of ATM inside.  I find that odd.  They have a RED box, a CoinStar, and a Lottery Ticket Machine, but no ATM.  They have self-checkout lanes, but no ATM.  I am confused.  I start to walk towards a shopping center I know of that is three blocks away that does have a Bank of America ATM, but I remember that the trolley stop less than a block away has a machine that sells day passes and accepts Debit cards, so I go to Jack-in-the-Box instead.  I order my food from a machine and pay with a card, and think to myself that Philip K. Dick was a visionary genius.  I sit at a high table next to what appears to be a District Manager having an informal meeting with the Store Manager.  They discuss employees that they are grooming for advancement, health code compliance, and fourth quarter growth.  I read a bit from the book I’m working on and eat each of the items I’d ordered in turn: first the curly fries, then a taco, then the other, then the burger.  I refill my soda and walk away, the District Manager’s vocabulary and delivery running through my head.  I get to the trolley station across the street and buy another day pass with my debit card, then promptly spill my soda on the ground.  I pick up the cup and lid and go to put them in the trash can, cursing myself that I’d left this liquid mess here for anyone step in, when I see what is either a clump of really good Macaroni-n-Cheese or really bad Enchilada Casserole stuck to the side of the obsolete Information Booth, caged and closed forever now in a world full of consumers that don’t need or want to speak to a person ever again. 

I’m waiting for the Westbound trolley, though at this juncture it could be South.  I never can tell.  I am looking in the direction it will be coming from and watching people amble into the station, wearing varied looks of fatigue and disaffection.  I see a figure that I think might be IWishICouldRememberHisName, the guy who used to clean the Borders I worked at for six years in the mornings.  As the figure nears I see it is not him, and remember that in my last few months there he’d been replaced by a new service that was cheaper, despite the fact that he’d held the contract for many years.  I think of our mutual expendability; how disposable each and every one of us are, as I watch a woman cross the tracks to catch the trolley going in the opposite direction.  She looks sad; as though her thoughts are stuck in a familiar infinite loop, like mine.  I think about how I’d like to talk to her, see how she feels about things like this.  I think about how I’d like to talk to someone. 

Anyone.

But I have to go to work, so I start another game of solitaire and board the trolley.  I get off after one stop and walk downstairs to a transit center outside a posh shopping mall.  Strange placement.  I am watching the people around me in an inactive way.  If at this point there was someone to see, my eyes would have gone straight through them.  I know this as I reach the bottom of the steps and turn to find the appropriate bus sign.  Each sign within my sight is wrong, but each sign just outside the limitations of my near-sightedness looks like mine, the 120.  As I near them, I see they are not.  That’s the 928.  That’s the 60.  That’s the 41.  How did a 41 look like a 120, regardless of how far away I was?  I get to my spot to stand and dutifully do so.  Duncan Sheik is wailing on the iPod and I’m looking at my fellow passengers, trying to find just one that doesn’t look as though they wished they were dead.  The bus arrives and people file off of it; all but one.  The last guy stays and argues with the driver for a very long time.  I have the earbuds in and therefore cannot hear what the irate passenger is saying, but I can hear the people around me waiting for him to burn his anger out and leave so that we can board the bus.  One brazen fellow over my right shirt says “Either hit him or stop squawking so we can get the Hell on” which I think is funny.  How can he tout the strength of action over words when he’s shouting from the back of an impregnable crowd?  Wouldn’t his message be delivered more effectively if he’d only pushed his way through the crowd and punched the interloper? 

Eventually the cantankerous commuter feels he’s said his peace and there is nothing to gain at this venture and deboards the bus.  We file on and I continue my solitaire game.  I get off the bus downtown and walk the rest of the way to work, where I find a sparsely populated dining room and a tableful of content and proud staff.  Apparently the day was quite busy and everyone on duty kicked ass.  I like to hear that.  As I speak to congratulate them, my voice frightens me.  It’s the first time I’ve used it; five hours into my day.  I didn’t even have to speak to anyone at lunch; my day had been conducted by machines.

Obviously, it’s been a relatively slow evening, hence the extremely looooooooong post.  And several games of solitaire.  Which I lose frequently.  This is nothing new.  It has, however, prompted me to write something, which is good.  And I think I have an idea for a new play or film or something.

Aaaannnddd…. I’m getting married in only four months!!!!!!  I am very excited about that!!!!!