TLUG

I’m standing beneath a bare, relentlessly buzz-clicking fluorescent light in a cell phone repair shop waiting for one of the two clean-cut twenty-somethings behind wobbly, clear-plastic panels earnestly finger-picking at computer keyboards.  While just six miserable months ago this cramped storefront was home to a nail salon – the only nail salon in the history of North American cuticle care to fail – the plague has transformed its cracked-beige-floor-tiles and dusty-low-ceilinged decor into a latter day Hogwarths, housing me-llenial wizards in matching ER-red golf shirts, imbued with wisdom of all things “i or Sam” beyond my wildest nightmares.

With the plague forcing us to over employ our phones for everything from propping open the life-sustaining, yet somehow always broken windows to conducting on-the-hopper vaccine research, PhoneER is the hottest spot in town right.  The big thing in here is that people are forced to stop and talk to their “Customer Care Provider.”  It’s not like Starbucks, where you can use your as-yet-unbroken phone to order and pay for a half-caf-skinny-extra-turnip-flavoring-no-ice-iced-macchiato in a cup the size of something normally used for feeding calves – or maybe half-calves?  Then you swagger into the brownish-greenish-all-lit-the-same-space, full of self-important-plague-solemnity and grab your $15.67 drink not even making eye contact with the Bryn Mawr grad working down $200,000 in college loans one Starbucks tip jar at a time.

No, in PhoneER, you’re required, while making eye contact with a me-llenial, to publicly self-humiliate at the counter, spilling your luddite guts on your phone abuse: In my case, an extraordinarily large truck filled with thousands of pounds of soil drove over a poor case-less Samsung, transforming it into the phone Barney Rubble calls Fred Flintstone on to go bowling.

“I dropfed eet in toy…let,” a heavyset, seventy-something Russian woman confesses, casting a quick glance over her shoulder for the KGB.  

But there are no pale men in dark-baggy suits, glaring back at her with their dead eyes.  There’s just me, swaying from foot-to-foot, not even trying to disguise my undisguisable middleclass impatience with being made wait: A young, dark-sweat-suited Hispanic man sitting with his four-year-old daughter making adorably dramatic faces at the game she’s playing on her iPad: Sitting next to them, a muscle-bound gym-rat in a yellow Gold’s Gym wife-beater, with a gel soaked scalp beneath his thinning hair: At the other counter, a tall-fit-tanned-thirty-something woman in electric-pink yoga pants, a purple tee shirt and an extra-wide brimmed, floppy sunhat.

“Well mam, there is not a great deal,” the Russian’s Customer Care Provider – a skinny, twenty-something white guy, Bryn Mawr grad paying down his $200… you get it – says, enunciating his words with great care, “I will be able to achie ….”

“I putf in bag rice, my dotter say; Uncle Ben feexes phones,” the Russian woman interrupts, wildly waving in the aforementioned sometime occupant of her toilet bowl.

“No vork,” she shakes her head with a sad knowingness.

“Mam, there is probably nothin….”

“I cum, you feex,” she nods so much that you can tell the language barrier has been breached, but she can’t yet acknowledge the depth of her problem.  

Instead, with a loud sigh, she doubles her short body over and extracts, from one of her two bulging grocery bags, a long black-leather purse with a thick gold clasp.

“I pay, I pay, no vorry, no vorry.”

Surrendering all hope of a quick resolution there, I turn my attention to the other Customer Care Provider.

“No, no, you … don’t seem to under…stand!” the floppy hat jerks forward forcefully as its occupant makes her point on the phone-wizard’s lacking comprehension.

“Oh no mam, I get it,” says a clean-cut late-twenties African American man, a white plastic nametag “MANAGER” pinned to his red shirt, nodding his getting-it-ness.  

“It’s not me, it’s your en…surance company.  See they won’t pay for anything more than a broken screen, an’ now that we’ve started working on your phone, we discovered that there’s damage to the actual body of the phone.  The act…ual phone itself, an’ that’s a whole different deal, now they’re sayin’ you gotta FedEx it to th….”

“No, no, no,” she slaps her palm on the counter, getting a wobble from the plastic panel.  

“You, Zack the Manager are … not under…standin’ me, I came in here yesterday an’ showed you … your very person not the other guy,” with one hand she slips her mask off her nose, while she waves the other toward the Bryn Mawr guy, the floppy hat cranking backwards in what I have to imagine means eye rolling, “he’s worthle….”

“Eh mam, I’m sorry, but you can’t talk like that in my store, that ain’t cool.”

“Yeah-yeah-yeah sorry-sorry it’s just my disability don’t fuck with the disabled right? Just remember that!”  she forces out a fake laugh so dry and cold my stomach tenses.

“So, it’ll be $210 to do everything, that’s after the en…surance covers the cracked ….”

“NO!” she shrieks, whipping off the floppy hat revealing a head of bleached blond hair, the roots and stems a deep, earthy brown.

Russian, Hispanic, gym-rat, Bryn Mawr and impatient-Irish eyes all stare – at least one nervously.

“You made a promise to me yesterday that if I brought my phone in at noon today you’d have it ready for me by one thirty I gotta doctor’s appointment by zoom that creep don’t see me in his office no more too afraid of a few piddly little germs an’ I need this phone for it.”

“Yes mam, I understand,” he runs his finger along the top of his sky-blue mask, letting in and out more air, “an’ I can have yer phone ready for you at time.  We can do the repair.  It’s a matter of what your en…surance will an’ won’t pay for.  It aint PhoneER, it yours en…surance.”

“No no no you’re still not under…standin!” she yanks her mask off her mouth, waving it recklessly in my fearful-middleclass direction, tensing me up even more.  I increase my rate of foot-to-footing, actively considering giving up on my quixotic at a phone fix.

“YOU!  Your very person not someone else I remember YOU …,” she stabs the clear-plastic panel with her finger, “saying this is covered by insurance an’ then I went home an’ confirmed with the lady at the insurance company an’ everything is all set up for noon today an’ then I have my appointment with that condescendin’ prick of a doctor at one thirty this ….”

“Mam you cannot talk ….”

“… afternoon an’ now your trottin’ out a new lie looking for MY,” another finger stab, “money to pay for what the insurance lady said is covered an’ what you said was covered an’ I don’t have no two hundred dollars to pay for nuthin because I don’t have to pay for nuthin I know an awful lot about broken phones let me tell you an’ I aint payin’ for this because it’s covered by insurance Marybelle in India or China or wherever the hell she is told me so yesterday an’ don’t think I don’t know that her name aint Marybelle it’s … one of their names.”

“Let me check with my supervisor mam,” Zack says, his brow now sheened with sweat.

“NO!” she shrieks so loud this time the little girl reaches out for her father’s hand. 

“No-no-no you aint doin’ the disappearin’ act I’ve seen that play before I’ll be standin’ here for hours while you skedaddle out the back door, ye’re stayin’ right here an’ that crummy supervisor of yours is comin’ out so’s I can stop him from weaselin’ your company out of the promises that you, your … very … person made to me yesterday.”

“Mam, my supervisor is in Worcester, I need to talk to him over the phone.  It’ll only take a few minutes.  You can stand right here, Theo’ll …,” he starts to point to the other guy, then drops his arm.  

“I’ll be right out, I assure you mam, I’ll be right out.”

I check out Theo and he’s got the Russian lady dropping her phone into a clear-plastic food storage bag, which he then wraps around the phone twice and seals with packing tape.  His actions are careful and deliberate, exuding such a sense of ceremony that I’m expecting him to slide out from under the counter a magic phone-sanitizing-and-instant-repair machine – “the PSIR 2000, fixes your phone instantly, even after you’ve made an incred…dibly stupid mistake!”  

But no, instead he ceremonially hands the Russian lady her germ-secure-packaged phone, that now looks like something you’d buy in the gift shop at Chernobyl.

“Yes mam, you could try a different brand of rice,” Theo says perkily.  “Maybe try wild rice or black rice.  I do not know if they would work better than Uncle Ben’s, but there is absolutely nothing that we here at PhoneER can do at this point.”

“Zank you, zank you, I vill try udder rice, Marta on my floor, she have Spain…ish peoples rice, I try, I try. Zank you, zank you.”

As she turns to leave, the gym-rat, black cloth-mask just barely touching the tip of his nose, enormous biceps flexing, propels himself out his seat making her start with shock.

“Hey dude, I gotta problem with my phone,” he starts before he even approaches the counter.  “When I swipe a good lookin’ chick on Tinder, she always ends up ugly!”

He laughs too hard at his own, or stolen, joke.  

“Just kiddin’, just kiddin’, though that does happen.  Problem is my speaker don’t work, which is fine when my mom or sises call but ….”

As they delve into the phenomena of the wastefulness of family advice, the floppy hat, now back in place, twitches.  In the waiting area, so tiny and potentially virus rich that my stress-addled brain spontaneously invents an UBER-SCUBA-Gear-Rental App, the relentless beat of the soundtrack to the little girl’s iPad game competes credibly as the most annoying sound of the plague.  The music is low volume but high enough to be heard and has a sorta gasping nature to its beat; building in long-slow bars of random xylophone music to a much louder, short-sharp cymbal clash that then collapses to one second of silence.  Then it all starts all over again.  I start considering it for the soundtrack of the new musical I’m suddenly writing called “Cell Hell.”

The floppy hat twitches a few more times; the gym-rat is leaning his considerable bulk against the clear plastic screen, wowing it precariously towards Theo; the little girl’s dad stares at the twitching hat.

“Can you shut off that obnoxious noise,” she says with surprising calmness, turning to the little girl.  “It’s makin’ me a headache.”

She speaks so calmly and regularly, that the little girl doesn’t notice she’s being spoken to and continues tapping the screen.

“Hey KID!” she amps up rapidly.  “Turn it off!  It’s makin’ me a headache!”

The dad’s heretofore curious stare instantly hardens.

“Play on Letty,” he lays a hand on his daughter’s leg, “don’t pays her no heed.”

“PEOPLE!” the young woman snap-yells.  “I have a right not to listen to that shit, just turn it down!”

“Fuck you lady,” the dad shoots out of his seat, shoulders back, chin out.

“Don’t you dare talk to my daughter like that!”

I tighten tighter.

The gym-rat stands up from wowing the clear-plastic screen, his brow furrowing.

Theo starts out from behind the counter.

“Leaves my dotter alone, she didn’t do nuthin’ ta you,” the dad says, standing in front of the little girl, who stares up, open mouthed, her hand reaching out blindly to be held.

“Oh yeah I guess we … wuz raised different,” she turns full on towards the dad, yanking her mask off her face.

Theo appears between them, arms held up, pink palms aimed flatly at each of their faces.

“All right now everyone masks o…,” he starts.

“That’s racist. Yeah, you one a them,” the dad scoffs, his face relaxing, but his shoulders tightening up towards his ears. “Letty don’t ….”  

“Oh … pol…ease, I … am … not in the one-est little bit racist my dog walker Andrea’s a black guy an’ I’m always talking nice to the people of all the colors everywhere all the time.”

“…pay no heeda at-all ta this racist,” the dad sits back down, still glaring at her.

“It’s that you didn’t talk to women that way in my house, my fa….”
“PleASE, PLEASE!” Theo lurches his shoulders, and the soft pink palms attached

thereto, toward her first, then him.

            “Hey Theo man, whas goin’ on?” Zack stalks out of the back room, his cell phone held up near the side of his furrowed-brow face.  “I’m talkin’ ta Larry, see if I can help out this mam here an’ there’s all screamin’ an sh….”

“Let me talk ta Larry,” she spins around holding out both hands, fingers gesturing back toward her still unmasked face.  “I’ll fix Larry good we’ll be all set here in three seconds.”

Zack immediately backs up, turns on the fly and disappears into the back room.

Theo stands his ground, his head turning first one way, then the other.

The dad strokes his daughter’s hair.

The woman smushes the brim of the floppy hat against the clear-plastic panel until her deeply tanned forehead touches the screen.  She closes her eyes, her breath fogging the plastic.

“Ok. Ok.  We’re all good now,” Theo says to no one and everyone.  “I am going to go back … behind the counter and everyone will behave – right?”

In the silence the xylophone music creeps back to acoustic prominence.  In the illogical manner that human brains work, I wonder if I my bend my knees would they creak loud enough to drown out the xylophone and defer what seems like the inevitable clash of humans.

“Shut that fuckin’ thing off, it’s drivin’ me CRAZY!” she yells into the plastic screen, spit mingling in with her fog.

“You leaves my daughter alone, … BITCH!”

Theo almost trips over himself rushing back into the customer area just as the backroom door bursts open.  Larry, no longer needing convincing, is gone, Zack’s phone repocketed.

“Awright-awright-awright, I got this solved, … I think,” Zack raises his eyebrows, eyeballs darting from the smushed forehead on the plastic screen to Theo and to me.

I do my best to express middleclass-impatient-indignation with my eyes, but he moves onto the real problems.  As I concede defeat and start to turn for the door, I catch the gym-rat’s eye: All at once he raises his eyebrows, rolls his eyes, shakes his head: All done in microseconds.  

Involuntarily I look down at my boring-frumpy-khaki self to see if the gods of cell phone repair have made any substantive changes without notice – nothing!  I look back up, he’s still nodding at me, and executing motion-sickness-inducing, rapid quarter eyerolls.

“So, we can do this for you mam, La… my supervisor has authorized me to cut our fee in tw….”

“NO FUCKIN’ WAY!” she bolts upright off the plastic screen.

“To nuthin,” Zack continues calmly, if not convincingly.

“Fuck that,” the dad says, propelling himself from his seat.  “White lady can complain her way to a free fix while I’m slappin’ down hard cas….”

“Yours is free sir,” Theo raises his all-powerful pink palms again.  “It was a Samsung problem, an’ it’s almost ready, I’m just downloading the latest operating system, an’ you….”

“I have a disability,” the woman says calmly.  “I have a brain injury I can’t put up with this shit anymore that music is stressin’ my brain just fix my phone an’ I’ll be back at one twenty-five if it ain’t ready I’ll scream so loud that creep of a doctor’ll hear an’ cancel the appointment anyway that’s how you get by when the computer inside yer skull gets fucked up.”

She turns and without looking at them says: “Sorry little girl not sorry father.”

And she’s gone, the glass storefront door sweeping closed behind her.

I consider doing the same and fleeing this now incredibly tense environment, but my addiction to eavesdropping prevents me from moving.

The dad’s out of his chair again, kinda-sorta leaning forward like he may follow her.

“Don’t do it dad,” the gym-rat says, visibly shocking everyone.

The little girl turns carefully to look at his face.

“Hey man I learned this from a dude I worked with, a plumber,” he nods with a smile to anxious faced little girl.  Then he stares all serious faced at the dad.  

“If you can believe this, a plumber philosopher kinda dude, smoked weed all day long, read big, thick, red-hard covered books, listened to a shi… a ton a sixties music.  But he useta have this bumper sticker but stuck on the dash in his shit-box van, … sorry, sorry, little girl.”

He nods to her but keeps the serious face.

“But this sign said, The Love U Get Equals The Love U Give.  An’ that helped me a bunch with my crazy family, just sayin’.”

He looks a little bashful, half turns back toward the plastic screen.  

“That chick’s all busted up inside.  Good … lookin’,” he shakes his head.  “But broken, she probly can’t do love no more, but you can.  You got a nice family there, so just remember, the love you give.”

He nods deliberately like at some point he’s actually practiced advice-giving-nodding.

No one says anything, but the dad sits down again.

“The creep still fired me.”

“Who?  Wha’ happen?” the dad’s face scrunches up in confusion.

“The plumber, he fired my as…, sorry man, I aint ‘round kids much,” he bends his knees slightly, lurches his massive shoulders to the left in somatic apology. 

“The plumber.  He fired me, one Wednesday at lunch, both of us wasted.  He said, ‘this company can’t run with both of us bluntin’ all day, so you’re done.’  I hadda walk a mile ta Revere Beach T Station.  Later, I heard he hired some born-again dude who stole the company an’ renamed it Heavenly Plumbing.  I ain’t shi… foolin’ ya man.  The love you give!  But it worked, ‘cause I stopped smokin’ weed, got in shap….”

The gods of cell phone repair –now the brattiest gods on Mount Olympus – finally swoop to my rescue as Zack waves me over to his clear-plastic screen.  

As I step toward him, I slide the mangled Samsung from my pocket, clearly displaying this formidable new challenge to his wizardly powers.

 “Wu…heee, man!  You ain’t been givin’ this Sam no love!”