Feeling bored? Feeling insufficiently stressed? Need to have
a minor mental breakdown? Then here’s the number for you: (787) 521-3434.
“I’m going to go off and bother Marc,” called Lady over her
shoulder to Jorge, and it was a good thing she did. Because Marc had stopped
being a writer, a cellist, or even a person: Marc was a broken gas main waiting
to encounter a match.
Which was getting closer and closer as the mechanical voice
assured me repetitively
and Spanishly—su
llamada puede ser monitoriada por un supervisor para asegurar la calidad de
servicio. Oh, and I can know tell you what to do in the event of (yes, I
hate that “in the event of,” too, but that’s what they said: en el caso de un huracán) a hurricane:
unplug all your appliances. Oh, and did you know that you’re not supposed to
plug in wet or water-damaged appliances? Wow—the stuff you can learn, just by
calling (787) 521-3434!
And they must have thought I was a real retard, because did
they think I got it on the first several hundred repetitions? Of course not, so
they shot for the thousands.
So Lady comes by, and says, “oh, I see you’re busy,” and I
tell her, “no, though just now I’ve learned that my call will be answered in
the order in which it was received! Wow—isn’t that nice? When you think of all
the random events that happen in life—the good looks, the nasty temperaments, the
trifles that are social status and race—isn’t it wonderful that the Puerto Rico
Electric Power Company has decided to set an example for the universe to
follow? Ah, justice! Fair play! A level playing field!”
Unwisely, Lady decides to sit down.
“I see you’re trying to call the power company….”
“No,” I tell her, “this is a physiological experiment in how
high my blood pressure can get before I stroke out. I’ve decided to forego
Rosetta Stone and practice my Spanish oral comprehension skills free via the
government of Puerto Rico. Since my writer’s block has become both chronic and
acute…”
Well, today it was the power company but yesterday? It
started out with emergency calls to the sisters of Mr. Fernández from one of
the sister’s husband who had learned from people high in government circles; these
people—with their fingers on every governmental pulse, their stethoscopes
auscultating every governmental breath—these people at the pinnacle of power
had breathed to Mr. Fernández’s sister’s husband that water rationing was
imminent: the announcement would come in an hour.
There is and isn’t a crisis, you see, though it is true that
the water in the reservoirs has been dropping precipitously for the last six
months. Puerto Rico, however, has decided to join the rest of the world and
have a little drought: in fact, the whole Caribbean is droughting. So starting
Monday, it’s going to be, as El Nuevo Día
Put it: Un Día Si, Un Día No—I’ll
insult no one by translating.
So yes, the water is running low, but 60% of the water that
the water utility produces? It goes into the ground, not through the pipes. The
system is so old, and so broken, that we are two or three times the industry
standard for loss of water.
But is there time to contemplate such pedantic details? Of
course not, since instantly the question became what to do about Mr.
Fernández’s parents—the one day yes they
could manage, but the one day no? Not so easy. So we’re now in pollo decapitado phase, which means that
two sisters have to go to Home Depot and scurry around, battling the armies
that have gathered inexplicably in the water tank area—no surprise, because
everybody, it seems, is powerfully connected to those who sit at the thrones of
power—and the sisters can buy nothing, absolutely nothing, without the
authority of the third sister, who is at home repining or reclining or both in
bed with the monga, the dreaded
Puerto Rican disease that descends when even one drop of water falls upon you.
So the solution, as anybody can see, was to take phone
photos of various merchandise, slug off the advances of other shoppers who
wanted to purchase, not photograph, the putative merchandise, and then wait for
the text message of approval.
Why, you ask, Calm and Temperate Reader, do all that? Can’t
we just buy a tank, and put it in the patio? No no, because this sister is
doing everything for the parents—bringing them cremita with raisins at just the right time of the morning,
checking in several times a day, shopping for them and cleaning their
apartment. She’s a saint—a saint who will take one look at the water tank
and—if unauthorized—find and invent every possible flaw with it. Oh, and will
she bring it up? More often than the pope blesses the crowd in St. Peter’s
Square…..
So it was a less-than-merry day at Home Depot, since the
flash mob? It was invented, patented, and perfected in Puerto Rico, and all of
the people still left on the island dropped everything they were doing and
went—“one clear call for me,” as the poet sang—to Home Depot! Oh, and the three
cell phones of the three sisters were ringing like mad, since there were
constant updates on the situation coming in, plus the usual cell / text
activity. So yesterday, at Home Depot, which never tends to be anything
reminiscent of a day in the country? Well, if Dante were around, he’d have to
do serious revision of The Inferno….
So at last the message is received—permission to buy the
tank of photo 73. This is done by joining the line that has stretched through
three municipalities and has merged with a sister store twenty miles away. See?
Excellent choices in payment options! And then the sister are driving
home—fortunately, the line turned out to be for the store in which they had
started, and photographed—to Old San Juan, and are listening to the car radio,
all the better to stay abreast, which is where you want to be in developing
emergencies, and that’s when it’s announced, as the sisters drive in to Old San
Juan…
…that the rationing will not affect Old San Juan!
Back at the ranch, or rather, the café, we’re having an
emergency powwow, since it has dawned on all of us—damn, no wonder the power
company thinks I’m such an idiot—that a major component of coffee is…
Right, but that’s not a problem, since Starbucks, which used
to run the café, ripped out the cisterns when it decided to unStarbuck, and
those cisterns? They’re over at the other store, though one of them may have a
hole that could crap things up, since Lord—who is Lady’s brother and anybody
can see the sense of that!—got it into his head to drill a hole in it.
Sometimes guys get up in the morning and just gotta do things like that.
So we go off and take a look at the tanks—all except
Sunshine, who actually knows what to look for and who will install them, if
installable they be, but who declines to do so because why? He’s wearing a very
nice shirt and very white pants, which he declines to sacrifice to the cause.
So he drifts off, since drifting off is in the air, here at
the Poet’s Passage. Because while I am worrying about how to flush the toilets,
Lady is kissing Gallego, and telling me that he is famous: everybody at the
poetry open mic had been whispering to her, “hey, is that really Gallego? Wow,
too cool!”
So Lady is now off talking to Sasha, also a famous poet, and
not taking care of the fact that there is no bread, since no one has bothered
to look at the bread inventory, which is now zero, absolute zero. And guess
what? Bread is to sandwiches as water…
So Lady beckons to me and writes in blue ink on her hand:
“IHANBD.” Not familiar with that acronym? Neither was I, but I can now tell you
it means: “I’m having a nervous breakdown.
Therapy time, and I appoint Montalvo with the sacred task:
don’t let anyone distract Lady. Who, it turns out, is functioning on three
hours of sleep and no food. So she goes off to get some food, and comes back
with a sandwich, made with the absolute last bread in the café.
“I feel kinda guilty,” she said.
“Eat,” I told her.
So I tell her—focus, concentrate, do what you absolutely
need to do, and then go home and take a nap. I then go home to hear the Saga of
Home Depot from one of the participating sisters. At the end of which, every
auditor’s shoulders had fused anatomically with their ears…
Which may be why I was stressed today because the
electricity in the apartment? It’s gotta be connected, since we may be having a
tropical storm and a brother of the three sisters and Mr. Fernández will
becoming with his young daughter—and how will that child fare in a beach
condominium as she suffers through her first tropical torment?
So I have placed a note on the apartment building’s door for
the power company to call me at my cell phone, and that hasn’t worked, so when
they don’t call you, what do you do? Duh—call them.
“Of course they’re not going to answer, you have to find
someone who knows someone in the agency, and then talk to him—after gently
reminding him of whatever favor it was that your friend had done for him.” Says
Lady. “Oh, and you could also wander the
streets of the old city, looking for the truck….”
And you thought those shoulders could go no higher?
And then she says, “I do have one piece of good news,” and
goes on to say…
“…the cistern is now connected, and we’ll have enough water
to flush the toilets and operate the kitchen. Oh, and we’ll make café col’ao, which is coffee expressed
through an old sock, which everybody loves since it reminds them of abuelita so who needs espresso?”
I can’t believe it….
“Marc, do I drive you crazy?”
“How do you do it,” I asked her, “you kiss everyone and read
their poetry and drift off to paint houses when there’s no bread, or order more
bread when you should be painting houses, and yet everything falls into place!”
“You haven’t answered my question…”
“Of course you drive me crazy!”
She roars with laughter and tells me, “Yeah, I drive Nico
(her husband) crazy, too….”
“What’s your secret?” I ask.
Nico comes by—the two embrace and share a long kiss. Love with Frenchmen!
Hmmm—could that be it?
