Enter Thursday, December 10th, the day I officially come down with death flu, when Tony leaves his backpack on the bus and loses his laptop, which contains all of his writing, pictures and video of the last four months, our Montreal trip, etcetera, and his camera. We are, understandably, not feeling terrific.
Enter Friday, which spits on Thursday, calling it names and degrading its mother, declaring itself far more bad ass. I go into work and am promptly fired, as the bosses wife, who believes she is the reincarnation of an Atlantis princess and has a giant painted portrait of her idealized past self as Crystal Princess Barbie hanging in the office to prove it, has taken over my job. My bank account has been at zero since the 1st, because they’ve been with-holding my pay so they could get it all over with at once, but even with that plan they failed to have my cheque ready, so they fired me with nothing and gave me nothing. I’m contract, too, which means no severance. As part of cleaning out my desk, I go to unplug my various electronics and get such a nasty shock from the power bar that my hand spasms shut on the cord, and I lose the tip of a fingernail to scorch. Let the day’s twitching commence.
The bright side of being let go is that I am free to leave early, and so, with absolutely no time to spare, I run for the two:thirty Grayhound while Tony scurries to buy me a ticket long distance. The Grayhound, which I catch, then catches fire on the side of the highway just on the other side of the border. A shock had come loose and had been dragging under the bus, sending sparks up into the machine. Someone driving behind us, noting this and the subsequent tiny flames which started, called Grayhound, who then called the bus driver, who then pulled us over and put it out with an extinguisher. During the hours of waiting for the repair people, a fever develops, and I begin to see tiny hallucinations around the edges of my vision. To cheer myself up, I text back and forth with Tony, telling him that I’m not even sad about being laid off, as it means I finally have time to devote to photography. The repair people, coming from Canada, take so long to arrive that by the time we’re all patched up and on the road again, the next Grayhound bus was arriving at the stations the same time we were.
Enter Seattle, a city I am always glad to see. The bus pulls in and I am a rocket, clattering off the bus and through the station with unmatched speed, flagging down the first cab I see. Get me out of here! Get me home! I am silent for the ride, too spaced out for conversation, barely able to concentrate on the texts Tony is sending me, though I note the driver, a dark thin man, smells of sweet incense and has pretty hands. Finally I am home! Another text comes in as I exit the cab, and in my haste to reach my destination, I skip my usual taxi double check, I do not even look up from the phone until I am at the front door, and do not realize that my camera bag is behind me, driving away, fallen to the floor of the car.
Everything that could be done to get it back has been done, and failed. The taxi people do not have it, Craigslist does not have it, nor do any of the pawn shops. To make it worse, it seems that not only did the bag contain the camera and memory cards, (containing all my pictures since leaving Montreal), my arm warmers, and a roll of film I had shot as a gift, it also contained my credit card, which today, after more than a week of searching, I finally have to cave in and cancel.
On the up, I am with Tony for two weeks, and out of Canada until 2010, which is maybe the best gift I ever could have. He is a beautiful, wonderful creature, and he makes my life better absolutely every day.