I was in San Francisco and my mom and sister were visiting. We went to the public library, which also housed the local public radio. It was a beautiful place, you could buy records and books there too—I guess it was a lot like a Barnes & Nobel. I was using one of their desks to do a design project while mom and Tami looked around, wandered.
I was making a photoshop composite, a background of some sort onto which I wanted to place a photographic portrait. I had some photos and I was trying to figure out how to scan them into my laptop. The photos were in a very old leather dice-rolling container, the kind that came with Yahtzee or backgammon wherein the outside was leather and the inside was velvet. The photos were actually part of this container, they lined it and were part of its deteriorating structure. The leather was hard and brittle and as I gently pulled the layers of photos out the container crumbled. The photos were black and white but tinted by time different shades of red and orange. They were portraits of various women, women I knew. One of them was Wendy.
Under the desk I was working at was a large printer. I lifted the lid to see if it was also a scanner. It was. I was very happy about this discovery. I put one of the photos face down on the glass and closed the lid on the curled up photo. I then became aware that a woman was watching me work, looking over my shoulder. I didn’t know who it was, but her presence made me realize that I can’t use these photos of women from my past. This would make her angry. I lifted the lid to remove the photo and it wasn’t there. I looked all around the scanner, on the floor under it and behind it. I was on my hands and knees desperately looking for it. It had vanished. I was shocked by this, as one would be. I was trying to communicate to the woman and to others around me the horrible thing that had just happened, the horrible unbelievable thing that had just happened. The library was a quiet place and I didn’t want to make too large a fuss, but still I was very upset.
I sat down at the desk again and realized all the photos were gone except for one. It was the red-orange discolored image of Wendy. It looked like the kind of image that comes out of a photo booth. Just having this image on the desk was problematic so I put it away.
I went to the restroom. It was in another building, out the door to the left of me. Outside the library it was a beautiful sunny warm day and the light was slightly brighter than any real world light. The bathroom was not at all nice—worse than the roadside rest stop variety, and I was happy to be out of there quickly. My mom and Tami were waiting for me outside. As I looked at them I could feel my body filling with dread. I asked them, why are you here? Why are you not watching my laptop and things in the library? They shrugged unknowingly. I was panicked and could already imagine returning to the library to find all my things gone. I could also see how this was going to affect my life for the near future, and a dark depression started to creep in on me.
The library was no longer a short walk between buildings but a place we needed to drive to. I rushed mom and Tami to my mom’s car. It was a little Fiat-like thing that you see in old Italian movies. Mom drove and as we got near the library it occurred to me that she might be pranking me, that maybe she picked up all my things before leaving. I told her to slow down, to stop, that we are at the library, but she did not. She wasn’t listening to me. I realized then that she wasn’t aware enough to prank me and my stuff was likely lost. I had to jump from the moving car or we would have missed the library altogether. I opened the door and jumped out running so as not to fall.
Of course my laptop and everything I had was gone. The young guy working the counter shrugged and seemed to have no idea who I was or that I was ever there. He wanted me to fill out a police report for insurance purposes. He had one on the ready, it was a yellow legal pad of paper with words pre-written and brown boxes where the facts were supposed to be filled in. He said I could also fill out a report later at the police station. I was beside myself with both anger and depression. I searched the interior of the library feverishly hoping someone had stashed it quickly seeing that I had returned. I extended my search to the bushes outside and around the back of the library. I ended up in an area that homeless people had been using as a bathroom and found abandoned bicycles and parts.
I felt like my stuff was nearby, that it wasn’t too late to find it or the person who had it. I went back into the library to find them. I scanned all the people looking for bulges in their backpacks or bags. I renewed my search behind pillow cushions in the reading area. The young guy that worked the front desk came into the reading area and pinched his nose closed with his fingers to indicate that something smelled bad. He said it was me, that I smelled like urine and that I had to leave. I said, “Now you are going to kick me out! You!” He shrugged like it was inevitable, meant to be. He followed me outside where another much larger man watched me carefully. I could tell they were a team of sorts and that I’d not be able to go back inside.
I stood on the sidewalk in front of the library and contemplated my fate. I had no wallet, no phone, no laptop and no money. I had recently got that laptop after the previous one was stollen and the thought of having to set up another one depressed me immensely. I felt hopeless, like I had lost at life. I had no way to contact anyone to come pick me up. I didn’t know how to walk home or where home was. I had an old phone with me that had been erased to be returned as a trade-in. I looked at it briefly and saw the welcome message of a restored phone. It was not tied to any account and could do nothing but call 911. It wasn’t even an iPhone, but some foreign looking thing. I could do nothing but walk forward. The realization that I had no communication tools and would not be found was overwhelming.
I walked down the street. After a while, I came to an automotive garage in an industrial area. There was a guy there working on a couple of vintage motorcycles. One of them was a Honda, the hipster kind that people love to restore. It had a gaudy exhaust pipe on it. A woman came out from behind a storage container. She seemed to work there though she looked too young and maybe too clean. She talked to the guy about the bike. He said she should ride them more often. He jumped on the Honda and spun around the cement floor like a circus performer and was gone.
I was sitting in this elevated storage container just outside the shop with my legs dangling over the edge. She came over to talk to me. I wasn’t in the mood to talk. She was young, simplistically pretty, and stocky. She wore brightly colored leggings with stripes that accentuated her hips. She sat down on my left, her leg lightly touched mine once she got settled up on the ledge.
I explained to her what had happened. There was some issue with noise, or my voice wasn’t working well, but I had to repeat things because she couldn’t hear it, or understand it. At one point she laughed at me because she thought I said I was 11 years old. I corrected her and said, “No, I have twin 11 year olds.” She was comforted by this—she felt I was not going to hit on her, or be interested in her in an inappropriate way.
She thought I was destitute or maybe homeless. She said I smelled like urine. I apologized for that. I said, “No, I’m a Microsoft Employee.” She didn’t hear me or understand so I said, “I am a Microsoft Executive” thinking that the word executive would make it clear how not homeless I was. She nodded and said she understood. I was beginning to enjoy her company, and the look and feel of her. The longer we sat side by side the more familiar and comforting she became. Her presence was becoming soothing, her unadorned look was becoming beautiful, nearly emotional. I realized I was gently stroking her leg while we sat there and she was leaning into me like an old friend. I was aware that she had transformed from someone I was not attracted to into someone I was deeply attracted to. I could imagine our future intimacy.
The old phone vibrated in my pocket. I was startled back to the circumstances of the day and struggled to find the pocket the phone was in. I thought that my life depended on answering this call. I thought it might be my wife, or someone, having found a way to contact me through this old phone. I barely got it out of the pocket in time. It was not a call. It was the phone sending me a message. It asked me if I’d like to use “Find My” to track my devices. I was shocked. It must have noticed that I was no longer near my devices and automatically sent a notice. I pressed the screen and it presented a map of San Francisco. I could see a clump of little orange icons moving very fast through the city heading north. Each icon represented one of my things—laptop, phone, wallet, etc.
The girl and I agreed it was moving too fast to be in a vehicle driving and that the software must be playing back the recent journey of the devices. We were both enthralled and amazed. Then I was filled with anger at the type of world we lived in as I watched my things move across the map. I used my fingers to zoom in on the map and started to recognize the neighborhood that my things were approaching. They made a series of turns on different roads and then finally came to a stop. I zoomed in more and realized it was an electronics store. They were selling my laptop. I was furious. Then I thought I could go there and get my laptop. It was very far away, on the other side of town. I wasn’t sure how I could remember all the stops they were going to make as they sold each item. I assumed each of my things would be sold in a different location, a different stop.
I zoomed in further and the cluster of icons became an icon of a vehicle. I zoomed further and it rendered a simplistic 3D render of an RV, a small older motorhome. Of course, I said, fucking trash people. As I expressed this out loud I realized I had exposed my prejudice toward these people to my new friend. I zoomed in to see if the software would show a license plate. It would not. I was zoomed in too close now and I kept losing the RV as it sped through town. My camera would go through the geometry of the 3D world and get lost. I tried to zoom back out.
There was a commotion in front of us. As we both looked up we saw a model kitchen set—like you’d see at IKEA, but only one, and in the garage. In the kitchen, my co-workers Matt and Dave were making a dinner, and making a big show of it. They were shirtless and clearly they thought it was funny that, because of the height of the island countertop, they appeared to be naked to the audience. There was another life-of-the-party shirtless guy. He was egging them on. He was very excited about the antics of Matt and Dave. He was dancing and pointing. He pursed his lips and pointed at them, at the two seemingly naked cooks. He loved them. But who wouldn’t?