2018
Sitting in traffic to get to a coffee shop on the other side of town. Ridiculous! But Lucy couldn’t afford to live in the coffee shop’s neighborhood and she wouldn’t give up going there even if it took 20 minutes to travel 10 miles.
Going out for coffee seemed like a break and an opportunity. A welcoming destination. She could focus on her writing better than sitting on her bed, it was a chance to drink coffee and maybe see someone she knew. Have a random encounter, overhear some gem of an observation, watch other people do whatever they did when no one was watching.
Sometimes after getting her coffee and securing a table to herself, she played a game she enigmatically called “How do I know I can trust you”. Pick a person at random and create a backstory for them, complete it with a fact from your own life creating the illusion that you have something in common. In a mysterious way this game made her feel more connected and after she played it several times she felt like she belonged in the world and was one of it’s true participants.
The radio played a song that was popular when she was in high school and her mind wandered. Communicating with strangers had begun to feel strained, archaic. She often felt like she was trying to use a tin can on a string to talk with others, the distance felt that tangible and clunky. She would second-guess a witty remark that then would fall flat and seem inconsequential. She might interpret a silence as awkward and try to fill it with too many meaningless Ummm’s and stutterings.
She had left her job at Costco recently to write her memoir, to live off her savings and drop out of the retail world where she felt like a gladiator facing off to a herd of lions. “What was a group of Lions called?” This unemployment further isolated her but actually gave her something in common with a lot of others. Many were working this way now, consulting or contracting themselves, not dependent on a day to day wage slave at a building in the city.
And she used to love to talk to new people! Lucy was the kind of woman you’d see at a party flitting from group to group, leaving the sound of laughter in her wake. At this point in her life? She was finding it difficult to know how to reply to a cashier’s “How are you today?”
The cars were starting to move and she felt a twinge of shame. She would be a more important, interesting person if she had a tech job and was able to live in a beautiful apartment in the neighborhood instead of commuting. And she’d walk to the coffee shop, saying hi to the fascinating neighbors and the local small dogs, and nonchalantly walk by the graffiti and the other city life she would pass every day. Her everyday exposure to the “aunthenticity” of the city would somehow make her a more “real” person.
Another thing, Lucy pondered to herself, another thing that was disconcerting lately – she had seen some kids in the university district wearing face masks. It made her wonder what they had that they didn’t want to give away. Or was it something she had that she was infecting others with?
She’s ask someone she decided.
Maybe she was just imagining things.
this is the 7th installment in the serial fiction Fortune
CELLOPHANE 