“I am not waiting another fucking half hour for you.” A woman is sitting on a step, in front of the ATM. She is wearing workout clothes, a paper mask, and holding her phone in front of her face. Her screaming is so loud I can hear her from across the street, up one floor, through a closed window. “You need to get home, feed him, and then get your fucking ass over here.”
After a brief pause she continues, “I said feed him! Then get over here!”
Feed who? A child? The dog? An elderly person? Now I am stressed. Someone needs to get fed, and someone else is in big trouble.
I am reminded of the time I screamed at my husband (then boyfriend) after waiting for him in a car in Harvard Square. That was more than 20 years ago, and I remember I waited exactly 45 minutes.
Today it is unsafe to be outside. The air quality is poor due to wildfires and the pandemic rages on. Schools remain closed. Nonetheless, today’s top news story is the death of a famous socialite. The article mentions the deceased’s nephew who was kidnapped in the 70’s and held for ransom. The family paid after the boy’s severed ear was sent to an Italian newspaper. I touch my yellow beaded earring given to me by a friend who Kondo-ed her jewelry collection. As a child, I was scared of being kidnapped. My dad told me not to worry, that we weren’t wealthy enough to warrant a kidnapping. Still I slept with a knife under my pillow for several weeks. It occurs to me I could have cut my own ear.
The screaming woman has calmed down slightly. She is on the phone with someone else complaining about the first person. “Can you fucking believe that shit? I KNOW.”
This morning I awoke with my nightgown twisted around me like a broken corset. I rolled over and wrote the words Nuanced Nuisance on the pad of lined paper I keep next to my bed. Then the cat came over and sniffed my face. “I don’t know what it means,” I said to the cat while scraping some black gunk out of his eye corners. “I must have had a dream.”
Now I look out the window and the woman is gone. Did she get picked up, or did she storm away on foot? I hope everyone got fed. This is the time of unresolved everything.