Now Now

Rhapsody In Blue

I’m sitting on our leather couch. It’s golden hour, the second or third nice day of the spring. The small of my back is wet from Tiger Balm. (My back has been hurting since about 5:00, when my boss called and we discovered, jointly and by dumb luck, that I have a trial on Monday. My admin missed it.) From two rooms away, the electric kettle sounds like a white noise machine. That is, kind of like the ocean.

I just got up and dumped the kettle into our big pasta pot. In the dining room, Rachel called Gus and then sat down at my spot on the leather couch. I grabbed my computer and moved to the other one. I’m looking at her across our big open downstairs.

She’s sitting under a painting of two headless, naked women, asking Gus about his flight, which the airline delayed by an entire day due to a strike. Rachel has been on and off hold with United - mostly on; only off when somebody actually picks up the phone - for two hours. Gus was on the phone with them for three hours before that. Every time it sounds like someone is going to help them, they transfer them instead, sometimes without warning, once to another airline. Twice now, the person on the line has simply hung up - each time after thirty or forty minutes on hold. Nobody will give a call back number. Once, an operator started screaming at Gus, then wouldn’t give his name. Hours and hours of their hold music, Rhapsody in Blue, have filled the house with a barely restrained fury.

It is now, now. Just like it always is.