Trying to Buy a Vowell

(October 10, 2008)

Crappity crap crap. All week I have been saying that I just need to get through this week. Get me to Friday. Get me to the long weekend.

Tonight, Friday, all I had to do was leave work by 6:15, go to the corner of Harvard and Cambridge, and wait for the 66 bus into Brookline Center. It's a beautiful, perfect Friday night and Sarah Vowell is at the Booksmith for a signing and reading.

I go there whenever an author of interest comes through. It's free and always interesting. I have a number of signed books. It's a thing.

So, first round of crap in the seven craptastic levels of crapness, I can't seem to get out of the office. With one eye on the clock, I'm on hold with a travel Visa agent in TexASS who is going to come back on the line and tell me either A)Yes, your boss's rush India travel Visa has been processed and this is the Saturday delivery Fed Ex tracking number for the package containing his stamped passport or B)I'm sorry, our courier did not have your boss's papers with him when he returned from the consulate and you will need to tell your boss he'll have to totally re-book his Monday flight to Dubai 'cuz he ain't going nowhere without a passport or India Visa.

It was A, thank god. I don't know how I pull off these things. KNOCK WOOD, it's not over yet, we still need Fed Ex to not-fuck-up. Oh, is that all? I'll be nice and relaxed now. How is YOUR weekend?

So then I tell the boss, okay, I am leaving now, ONE LAST TIME after the hundred times I have asked you this week -- is there anything else you forgot for the India trip? What about the New York trade show on Wednesday, you will prep a demo server this weekend so it's ready to go in the van with the sales guys on Tuesday morning? Did you do payroll? Do you know where the blank checks are kept now? Will you be calling me over the weekend to come in and help you find a license key or a box or a spare drive? He's nodding. Some of those things don't warrant a nod, which is how I know he isn't listening. He's typing at one of the ten new Macbooks whose drives he's been trying to partition all day long, and I confirm by the gluey way he slides his vacant gaze from the computer to my face that I may as well be Charlie Brown's parents. "Womp WOMP womp WOOOOMP womp womp womp?"

I leave anyway. As the door is closing I hear him mutter "have a nice..." The man rarely finishes a sentence.

Halfway to the bus stop, a tinny version of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik means my cell phone is ringing, and it's him. "Yes?"

"There are some things we forgot!"

We. Dumbass.

It's nothing I can't handle while speed walking to the bus. I direct him to where the checks are kept now, I tell him what spare drive he can take, I assure him I will book an order for ten more license keys on Tuesday morning but unfortunately if he was "supposed to take one to India on Monday" then telling me on Friday night at 6:30 is a problem, since, once again, I don't have a crystal ball nor can I bend the space/time continuum. I know I did the continuum trick with the India Visa, but that's some next-level shit and I can't always work it.

We hang up.

O happy day, the 66 bus is coming from over the crest of the hill! Awesome. It'll be here in the next batch of traffic once this light turns green. As if in response, a cheer goes up behind me inside Sports Depot. I remember that tonight is a big baseball something-or-other. I dig out my dollar and quarters (where is my T pass? Crap, I lost it with like fifteen bucks left on it, dammit) and wait for the 66.

Fucker ZOOMS RIGHT THE FUCK BY ME. "No!!" I wave and yell. CRAP! I'm standing right here! Driver didn't even glance at the bus stop!

I wave uselessly at a few cabs, but everyone is full or off duty. I check the time - CRAP, it's 6:36. I wanted to be AT the bookstore by now, so I can buy a book and get a seat. Plus, Joe likes Sarah Vowell too and this would be the first book signing I attend that he's gonna come with, baseball be damned.

I abandon that no-man's-land corner for cab possibilities, cross to the other side of Harvard so any oncoming cabs would be going my way. Trying to get Joe on his cell but getting "out of range," I realize he is underground on the C train. I scoot up Harvard Ave, past Stingray Tattoo and Body Art, past O'Briens, to the corner of Harvard and Brighton.

Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. It's Joey.

"I'm in Coolidge Corner now. It's a mob scene!"

CRAP! He says he's hungry and may not feel like waiting in lines or listening to a reading. While he decides, I'll make my way over and either find him waiting with a book, with a seat saved for me, or else he'll call and say he went home.

"Joe, I need to get cash in this Store 24, then get the next cab I see! Baby I need both hands to work the bank machine I have to hang u--"

I do the "fast cash" thing, jet out into the Harvard/Brighton rush and start hailing everything. Food delivery cars, Red Bull promo cars, a sedan with a roof rack. I also have my original bus fare still clamped in my hot little fingers, figuring I could still take the 66 from the stop in front of Blanchards, if the bus comes before a cab appears. But then, some cute guy hails a cab for me, I say thanks and collapse inside. "Booksmith in Coolidge Corner!"

Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik again.

"Hi Joey."

"Are you in a cab?"

"Yes, finally!"

"Get out, it's at capacity."

CRAP!

Even though I've reached tonight's seventh circle of crapness, I don't get out of the cab. All this effort to get to Coolidge Corner in fifteen minutes' time, I'm going to Coolidge Corner, dammit.

Joe says he waited in line and bought Sarah's book, but is heading home on foot. I tell him I am still going over there, that I'll call him in a while to say where I'm at and what I'll do.

I give the cabbie a ten for getting me to Booksmith at ten minutes of seven in Friday night traffic. Yep, there's a crowd outside the book store.

Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. "Hi Joey."

"I should have suggested you meet up with me. Where are you now? I'm near B Good. I'm so hungry!"

We decide that he'll go home and heat up the chicken soup I made, and I would check out the book signing situation. Maybe I'd buy another book, we can gift away the first one, and stalk...I mean wait to see if Sarah hangs around the place afterward. Just then, the Booksmith manager comes to the street to announce that they're definitely at capacity, but Sarah will keep signing all the books they sold, and I think she said they sold out of the books! She also reminded everyone that Sarah is doing another reading and signing tomorrow in Harvard Square at the First Presbyterian Church, which holds 600. It's five bucks though, not free. Big deal!

I couldn't buy another book, but that's okay.

"Hi Joey!" This time I call him, he is home by then. I tell him what happened. "YOU got there in time to buy the book, and I got there in time to be reminded about tomorrow's signing!" Even though we missed each other and missed Sarah Vowell, it was still as though Providence had decreed the unfolding of events. So we'll do Harvard Square with the new book, and maybe even Sarah's old book too, if she'll sign both, that'd be cool.

But wait, Providence isn't done yet! So I set off back up Harvard Ave towards home. The street is hopping busy, people strolling with JP Licks' ice cream cones and Kaboom flowers, browsing inside the boutiques that haven't closed yet and window-shopping the ones that have. Small groups looking at the menu's outside the different eateries, dogwalkers and families and couples. I spot a few wanderers that had been, like me, drawn there for the book signing but diverted to other things now.

I notice this little shoe store that's always closed when I'm in the area. It is open, so I go inside. The elfin man behind the counter is about eighty. He drills me with a steady stream of questions the whole time I'm browsing his shoe collection. I answer with "over on Commonwealth Avenue" and "about five years" and "still renting for now" while I check out the Kenneth Coles. Then I notice that he carries El Naturalistas. These, like Fluevogs, are some imported shoes I have researched in recent weeks. My marketing person at work had a pair that she "wore right off" her feet, citing their incredible comfort.

Kinda pricey though. And these wouldn't be the "work shoes" that I talked about for THE LAST TWO ENTRIES (Oh my GOD, am I turning into THAT person?). They're more like, casual, like the Docs would be, or sneakers if I ever wore sneakers, only funkier and, well, from Spain.

I try them on.

It's like walking on a cloud.

I get them.

$160.

The quizzical shoe elf says I can return them in ten days if I want, but I should buy them now because once he sells out of the red ones, he doesn't know if he'll ever get more. Heh. OK pops, you can go home and tell the Missus how you dazzled me with your mad sales skillz.

I am just deciding whether or not to walk home, wait for the bus again or just spring for a cab, when I notice that Bottega Fiorentina has a sign outside touting today's specials. Osso Buco. I've cooked that with my mother, it's good. Veal though. Hard to eat baby animals. I go inside anyway, and select two Catfish Milanese, and two cannoli, to go.

"Hi Joey! Don't eat TOO much chicken soup, I am bringing home dinner!"

"Okay!" He's so flexible. And I did get a cab, and the dinner was delicious. The Red Sox won, and right now Craig Ferguson is on. "It's Friday, everyone!"

"Yaaaay," Joe said. "You made it, baby!"

So, to sum up.

Things that suck: my boss, the 66 bus, my ringtone, and the small size of the Booksmith event room. And Sarah Jessica Parker, but from yesterday still.

Things that do not suck: my boyfriend, shoe elves, the Red Sox, Catfish Milanese and cannolli. And, hopefully, Saturday and Sunday and Monday.