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“I think Tibby was a wise girl. I think she loved you.”
When we argue for our limitations,
we get to keep them.
—Evelyn Waugh
The afternoon she was getting on a plane to go to New Orleans, Carmen stopped in the Apple store downtown to switch her service from her old phone to the new one that Tibby had left for her.
She had to wait in line, and then wait endlessly for the so-called genius salesperson to transfer all her contacts, so that by the time she got out of there she was running really late.
She saw as she raced back to the loft that the black town car was already waiting to take her to the airport. She finished packing in a hurry. She went down to the car and then raced up to the loft again when she realized she’d forgotten her makeup bag. By the time the car pulled onto the FDR Drive she was half an hour later than she should have been.
It ought to be fine, Carmen told herself. Travel departments always loaded on extra time. She immediately thought to pass the time checking her email and making calls, but the new phone was not booting up properly. She turned it off. Maybe AT&T needed a little time to switch the service. Her fingers itched.
She grabbed a copy of People magazine from the seat pocket. She remembered how much she used to love these gossipy magazines. At Williams, between Dostoyevsky and Marx, she’d be gobbling up Us Weekly and OK! She’d believed they were faithfully recording the magical world of celebrity. But the more she knew the business, the less she enjoyed the magazines. Every page she turned, she saw the manipulations, the gears showing. She saw how much of the coverage was bartered and bought. She used to look at the red carpet pictures and be dazzled, but now she saw Botox and fake teeth, starvation and double-sided tape.
Maybe they lost their thrill the day she had seen herself in one of the pictures. It was a red carpet photo of her at the Golden Globes, and it probably looked as glamorous as the next one to the outside eye. But when she saw it all she could think of was the sweat that had been dripping down her back, the gross taste in her mouth from not eating for three days, the tape holding up her dress, her confusion at photographers barking her name, the smile pasted on her face. There had been nothing magical about it.
“What time is your flight?” the driver asked her.
Carmen looked up. “Uh. Five forty-five, I think?” She looked at her dead phone. The flight time was on the phone. The airline and terminal information was on the phone. She wondered what time it was. Damn, that was on the phone too. The phone company might as well have switched off her brain while they were at it.
“That might be tough,” he said.
“What?” Now that he mentioned it, it did seem as though the car hadn’t moved in a while. She looked out the window. She scooted up to look through the front windshield. “What’s going on?”
“There must be an accident. Nobody’s moving.”
She could see the Triboro Bridge in the distance, but there were about a million other cars between them and it. She heard sirens behind them, trying to get through. The lanes of the FDR were so packed, no cars could get over to make way for them. A blast of honking began.
At last she spotted an old-fashioned clock on the dashboard. It was almost five. “Can you get off this?” she asked.
The driver looked over his shoulder at her. He couldn’t get anywhere. It was too stupid a question to answer.
She tried to turn her phone on again, but it turned itself off. Was it the battery? Where could she charge it?
Another twenty minutes passed, and no one moved except two police cars and an ambulance that finally broke the sclerosis. “Shit,” Carmen said, as she did every couple of minutes. She stared at the phone in rising panic. What could she do? She couldn’t call the airline, she couldn’t call her manager, she couldn’t call the travel contact. What had anybody ever done before they had iPhones?
She read every page of People, including the weird ads in the back. At five forty-five she paused and raised her head to acknowledge officially missing her flight.
“What do you want to do?” the driver asked.
“I guess go to the airport,” she said. She felt like half a person without a phone to wield. “I’ll have to catch a later flight.”
The only saving grace was the fact that the official meeting wasn’t until Tuesday. She’d simply have to absorb the local culture at a slightly faster rate.
She read The New York Times and even the Financial Times, God help her. She didn’t get out of the car and into the airport until seven twenty. She went to the Delta counter and put herself at their mercy.
“Please just get me on the next flight to New Orleans,” she said.
The Delta woman seemed to push every button on her keyboard at least a hundred times. “The next flight I can get you on is Tuesday afternoon.”
“What?”
“I’m afraid so.” She pushed a few more buttons.
“It’s only Saturday. How can that be?”
She shrugged. “Can’t say.”
“Are you sure?”
She looked down at her screen again. Her name was Daisy and she had a very cheap dye job. Carmen could not afford to start hating her yet. “Sorry. Most of these are overbooked.”
“Can you check another airline for me?”
“Well, I can’t really.…”
“Please?” Carmen felt like she might vault over the desk and hijack the computer herself. She ached for some digital interaction.
“All right, let me look,” Daisy said. She looked, shook her head, looked, shook her head. Carmen hated the sound of her fingernails clacking on the keys. Why did somebody who typed on a keyboard for a living grow such farcically long nails?
“What?” Carmen finally exploded bossily.
Daisy picked up her phone. She mumbled a few things and nodded a few more times. Finally she looked at Carmen. “There’s some big music festival in New Orleans this weekend into next week. That seems to be what’s going on. Nobody’s got any seats until Tuesday.”
“Nobody?”
“Nobody.”
“What should I do?” Carmen wished she had somebody better than Daisy to throw her lot to.
Daisy seemed to wish she had somebody better than Carmen to assist. “Wait till Tuesday?”
“I can’t wait until Tuesday!” Carmen exploded. “I have a meeting on Tuesday! It is the biggest meeting of my entire career.”
Even Daisy was a human being. “You could drive.”
“I don’t have a car.”
“You could rent one.”
“I can’t drive for a million hours by myself!” She wasn’t even so sure she had a valid license. She drove about twice a year, when she went home to see her mom and David and Ryan.
Daisy gave her a look of maternal sympathy. Carmen realized you could turn almost anyone into a mo
ther if you acted like enough of a baby. “Could you get a train?” Daisy asked.
“Is there a train to New Orleans?” Carmen had effectively forgotten the existence of trains. She used to like trains. She once took the sleeping train to see her father in South Carolina, and she’d found it pretty thrilling.
“Sure. There must be. It would take a while.”
“Can you look for me?”
“Can I?”
“Sure. On your computer.”
“You’d probably do better to call Amtrak.”
Would it help or hurt if Carmen started crying? “I don’t have a phone. It’s not working.”
Daisy looked around to see if there was danger of someone catching her engaging in a non-plane-related travel search. Carmen suddenly loved Daisy.
Daisy opened up the Internet browser on her computer and tapped a few things in. She raised her eyebrows. “Well, believe it or not, there’s a train leaving Penn Station at nine fifty-nine tonight that gets you into New Orleans at … five fifteen in the morning.”
“Tomorrow morning?”
“Monday morning.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No.” Daisy made an understanding face. “You’d make your meeting.”
Carmen considered. She’d do her local absorption at warp speed. What choice did she have?
“It’s almost eight now. You probably ought to get going,” Daisy counseled.
“Okay. You’re right. Well, thanks.”
“Good luck to you,” Daisy said sincerely.
Carmen looked over her shoulder several times as she left the terminal. She found it strangely difficult to say goodbye to Daisy, and she wondered if maybe this meant she was lonely.
Lena walked along the river. Over the last few days, she’d taken many walks along the river. It was freezing, but she didn’t feel it. It might have been hailing. The river might have leapt out of its banks and taken her under and she might not have noticed it.
What would she do? What would he do? No, no, no. What would she do? (What would he do?)
Stop! That wasn’t what she got to decide. She only got to decide what she did. This was a version of the prisoner’s dilemma: a lover’s dilemma. She had to do what she was going to do regardless of what he was going to do. She had to do the right thing.
