intro and pt 1
Nov. 2nd, 2009 12:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smackenzieApril in Boston - April anywhere, really - is a bit of a transitional month. Winter might not be over, but people are still expecting it to be spring. College students start thinking about the end of the semester and what they'll do for the summer. Christians plan for Easter, Jews plan for Passover. It rains. Sometimes it snows. Sometimes it warms up enough that people break out the shorts and lightweight skirts and t-shirts and sandals. Croci and tulips come up in front yards. No one expects anything terrible to happen.
But then, no one usually does.
So sometimes, when terror strikes, it takes a few tries before anyone notices it for what it is.
This particular terror - not that anyone noticed it as such - started on a Tuesday in April, an innocuous day in a bit of a transitional month. It was a damp morning, a little cold, a little overcast, but with sun predicted for the afternoon. It was a Tuesday like any other Tuesday, really, full of people doing the things they normally did. Moms in Belmont made sure their kids got off to school with their homework finished, their permission slips signed, and their coats buttoned. Husbands and wives in Brookline and Arlington kissed each other goodbye before going off to work. College students in Boston and Medford and Newton rolled out of bed, or rolled over and went back to sleep. Shopkeepers in Jamaica Plain and Dorchester rolled up security windows, unlocked doors, and turned on lights. Bakers in the South End set bread dough to rise and pulled cinnamon buns out of ovens. Mechanics in Cambridge winched cars up on lifts to work on undercarriages. Cleaning crews vacuumed carpets and changed bedsheets and Windexed bathroom mirrors in swank downtown hotels. Travelers retrieved their luggage from the baggage claim or got confused by the self check-in at Logan Airport. Surgeons at Mass General and Longwood and Lahey scrubbed in. Firemen in Somerville arrived at station houses for their shifts, cops patrolled the former Combat Zone and the Theater District and the North End. Artists at Brickbottom primed canvases and scrubbed glue off their hands and sketched designs.
Line cooks fried eggs and flipped pancakes. Waitresses poured coffee. Financial planners met with clients, mortgage brokers crunched numbers, realtors made phone calls. Construction workers hauled 2x4s, electricians tested wires, plumbers laid pipes. Office workers bitched about working in cube farms, read their email, showed up late for meetings. Bus drivers picked up fares, cabbies dropped people off. Baristas brewed espressos and foamed milk and made fancy coffee drinks. Dog walkers collected their four-legged charges, retail workers ran for the T so as not to be late to work again. Garbagemen dumped big plastic garbage cans and hung off the backs of their trucks as they navigated narrow city streets and people who didn't know how to parallel park their cars. DJs guided people through their morning commute, teachers tried to get their students to sit down, quiet down, or wake up. Pages and congressional aides ran errands all over the State House.
And Martin Toro, a homeless veteran of the first Gulf War, wished the receptionist of the Pine Street Inn a good morning, walked out the front door, went two blocks, and was shot in the back of the head. He died instantly.
Because he was homeless and there were no witnesses - or at least no witnesses willing to come forward - his death rated a short mention in the Boston Globe the next day but almost immediately vanished from the public consciousness. Maybe people should have paid closer attention.
No, people should definitely have paid closer attention.
In Somerville, the only thing Ana Katic and her roommate Rose Marie Poole were paying attention to was the fact that Rose Marie's car wouldn't start. Rose Marie worked as a receptionist at a financial planning office downtown, and usually she took the T, but she'd slept through her alarm clock, for one thing, and she needed to get her car inspected, for another. The inspection had expired the end of March, and she knew from bad past experience that an expired-inspection ticket was somewhere in the vicinity of $60. Which she did not want to have to pay. But if she couldn't get her car started, she couldn't get it inspected, and she couldn't get to work.
"Take a cab," Ana suggested. "I'll call Triple-A. Maybe it's the battery. They'll jump it and then I can take the car in for its inspection, and you can pay me back when you get home."
"I hate it when you use logic," Rose Marie told her. "Inspection's only like $24. It better pass. Can you call a cab? I can't find my shoes." She disappeared into her bedroom and Ana called a cab. The number for a local cab company was helpfully written on the little blackboard they'd bought for the kitchen, for making lists of things they needed at the grocery store, important phone numbers, and events they needed to remember. "Green and Yellow Cab" was the second important phone number, right under "Dragon Garden". The landlord was down at the bottom. He never answered his phone anyway.
A cab showed up eleven minutes later and Rose Marie hustled off to work. Ana called AAA - at least Rose Marie had remembered to leave her membership card - and asked if someone could come out to jump a dead battery. (Personally she thought it was a waste of AAA's time, but Rose Marie said that's what they were for. And to be honest, Ana didn't want to go door-to-door down the street looking for a neighbor willing to jump Rose Marie's car.) There was three days' worth of dirty dishes in the sink, so she put them in the dishwasher and then got dressed and checked her email while she waited for AAA to show up.
Ana worked at the Diesel Cafe in Davis Square, and in her off-hours she made jewelry and hair accessories. She liked to tell people she wove beads, and she did indeed have a tiny loom on which she made wide beaded bracelets, necklaces, and the occasional headband. Her new project was learning how to make chainmail for ball-jointed dolls, expensive and highly customizable - and collectible - playthings from Japan or Korea. Ana's friend Jeanne had three and Ana thought of them as miniature mannequins more than anything else, because Jeanne could spend as much on their clothes and shoes and wee accessories as she could spend on herself. But she'd convinced Ana there was a market for tiny jewelry, and after Ana had come up with a little headdress made of tiny beads and wire, Jeanne had asked if she could make chainmail too. So Ana was. If nothing else, it was something new and interesting to try.
It took AAA an hour to come by to start Rose Marie's car, by which time Ana had already fielded one robocall and emailed Jeanne twice to clarify the exact size of the (so far still theoretical) chainmail shirt. The problem with the car, as Ana had suspected, was indeed a dead battery.
"I'll be honest," the guy from AAA said. "I'm surprised it lasted through the winter. You got enough juice for a couple days, but I highly suggest you get a new battery as soon as possible. Today would be good."
"I have to get it inspected, too," Ana told him. "I can do it at the same time."
"Good idea. You have a good day."
"Thanks. You too."
She called Rose Marie at work to repeat what the AAA guy had said about replacing the battery. Rose Marie's office had banned personal cell phones while people were actually in the office, so Ana had to call the receptionist's desk like an actual client. Rose Marie wasn't surprised about her car, but she was annoyed.
"Well, shit," she said. "How much is a car battery?"
"I don't know. More than a Duracell. You want me to take it to the place down the street?"
"What place down the street?"
"There's a gas station next to the laundromat. I thought that's where you were going to get it inspected."
"I don't care where - wait, I have to answer the phone. Hang on." She put Ana on hold for about five minutes, subjecting Ana to some annoying - if inoffensive - Muzak before getting back on the line to say "I don't care where you take it, just take it somewhere. Ask them if I can get a new battery on Saturday, and you'll just get it inspected now."
"It won't pass if it needs a battery, will it?"
"I don't know, I guess you'll find out. I have to get back to work. This is so stupid. I'll talk to you when I get home. Bye." And she hung up.
Ana found her rubber boots and her coat and left to (finally) take Rose Marie's car for its inspection, which it passed, as Rose Marie was no doubt hoping it would. Ana asked the mechanic if the battery would hold until Saturday. He seemed to think it would, but suggested she replace it now to avoid, say, the car dying on I-95. Ana said she didn't drive on the highway. He repeated she should get a new battery. She got annoyed at his hard sell and took the car back home.
She called Rose Marie, who was too busy to talk to her - apparently a client had gotten argumentative in a meeting with one of the financial analysts and had taken the problem into the lobby, so Rose Marie had to help deal with the upset client, the frustrated analyst, and the couple of other people who'd just randomly gotten involved.
Ana wrote "inspection passed, get battery on Sat" on the kitchen blackboard and went into the living room to work on either Jeanne's doll-size chainmail or some adult-size bracelets or necklaces. She didn't have to be at work until 4, so she could play around pretty much all afternoon. She felt as if she'd wasted the morning, although getting Rose Marie's car inspected was already on the to-do list and not a waste at all, and she wanted to get some actual work done before she had to be at the coffeeshop.
words: 1736
But then, no one usually does.
So sometimes, when terror strikes, it takes a few tries before anyone notices it for what it is.
This particular terror - not that anyone noticed it as such - started on a Tuesday in April, an innocuous day in a bit of a transitional month. It was a damp morning, a little cold, a little overcast, but with sun predicted for the afternoon. It was a Tuesday like any other Tuesday, really, full of people doing the things they normally did. Moms in Belmont made sure their kids got off to school with their homework finished, their permission slips signed, and their coats buttoned. Husbands and wives in Brookline and Arlington kissed each other goodbye before going off to work. College students in Boston and Medford and Newton rolled out of bed, or rolled over and went back to sleep. Shopkeepers in Jamaica Plain and Dorchester rolled up security windows, unlocked doors, and turned on lights. Bakers in the South End set bread dough to rise and pulled cinnamon buns out of ovens. Mechanics in Cambridge winched cars up on lifts to work on undercarriages. Cleaning crews vacuumed carpets and changed bedsheets and Windexed bathroom mirrors in swank downtown hotels. Travelers retrieved their luggage from the baggage claim or got confused by the self check-in at Logan Airport. Surgeons at Mass General and Longwood and Lahey scrubbed in. Firemen in Somerville arrived at station houses for their shifts, cops patrolled the former Combat Zone and the Theater District and the North End. Artists at Brickbottom primed canvases and scrubbed glue off their hands and sketched designs.
Line cooks fried eggs and flipped pancakes. Waitresses poured coffee. Financial planners met with clients, mortgage brokers crunched numbers, realtors made phone calls. Construction workers hauled 2x4s, electricians tested wires, plumbers laid pipes. Office workers bitched about working in cube farms, read their email, showed up late for meetings. Bus drivers picked up fares, cabbies dropped people off. Baristas brewed espressos and foamed milk and made fancy coffee drinks. Dog walkers collected their four-legged charges, retail workers ran for the T so as not to be late to work again. Garbagemen dumped big plastic garbage cans and hung off the backs of their trucks as they navigated narrow city streets and people who didn't know how to parallel park their cars. DJs guided people through their morning commute, teachers tried to get their students to sit down, quiet down, or wake up. Pages and congressional aides ran errands all over the State House.
And Martin Toro, a homeless veteran of the first Gulf War, wished the receptionist of the Pine Street Inn a good morning, walked out the front door, went two blocks, and was shot in the back of the head. He died instantly.
Because he was homeless and there were no witnesses - or at least no witnesses willing to come forward - his death rated a short mention in the Boston Globe the next day but almost immediately vanished from the public consciousness. Maybe people should have paid closer attention.
No, people should definitely have paid closer attention.
In Somerville, the only thing Ana Katic and her roommate Rose Marie Poole were paying attention to was the fact that Rose Marie's car wouldn't start. Rose Marie worked as a receptionist at a financial planning office downtown, and usually she took the T, but she'd slept through her alarm clock, for one thing, and she needed to get her car inspected, for another. The inspection had expired the end of March, and she knew from bad past experience that an expired-inspection ticket was somewhere in the vicinity of $60. Which she did not want to have to pay. But if she couldn't get her car started, she couldn't get it inspected, and she couldn't get to work.
"Take a cab," Ana suggested. "I'll call Triple-A. Maybe it's the battery. They'll jump it and then I can take the car in for its inspection, and you can pay me back when you get home."
"I hate it when you use logic," Rose Marie told her. "Inspection's only like $24. It better pass. Can you call a cab? I can't find my shoes." She disappeared into her bedroom and Ana called a cab. The number for a local cab company was helpfully written on the little blackboard they'd bought for the kitchen, for making lists of things they needed at the grocery store, important phone numbers, and events they needed to remember. "Green and Yellow Cab" was the second important phone number, right under "Dragon Garden". The landlord was down at the bottom. He never answered his phone anyway.
A cab showed up eleven minutes later and Rose Marie hustled off to work. Ana called AAA - at least Rose Marie had remembered to leave her membership card - and asked if someone could come out to jump a dead battery. (Personally she thought it was a waste of AAA's time, but Rose Marie said that's what they were for. And to be honest, Ana didn't want to go door-to-door down the street looking for a neighbor willing to jump Rose Marie's car.) There was three days' worth of dirty dishes in the sink, so she put them in the dishwasher and then got dressed and checked her email while she waited for AAA to show up.
Ana worked at the Diesel Cafe in Davis Square, and in her off-hours she made jewelry and hair accessories. She liked to tell people she wove beads, and she did indeed have a tiny loom on which she made wide beaded bracelets, necklaces, and the occasional headband. Her new project was learning how to make chainmail for ball-jointed dolls, expensive and highly customizable - and collectible - playthings from Japan or Korea. Ana's friend Jeanne had three and Ana thought of them as miniature mannequins more than anything else, because Jeanne could spend as much on their clothes and shoes and wee accessories as she could spend on herself. But she'd convinced Ana there was a market for tiny jewelry, and after Ana had come up with a little headdress made of tiny beads and wire, Jeanne had asked if she could make chainmail too. So Ana was. If nothing else, it was something new and interesting to try.
It took AAA an hour to come by to start Rose Marie's car, by which time Ana had already fielded one robocall and emailed Jeanne twice to clarify the exact size of the (so far still theoretical) chainmail shirt. The problem with the car, as Ana had suspected, was indeed a dead battery.
"I'll be honest," the guy from AAA said. "I'm surprised it lasted through the winter. You got enough juice for a couple days, but I highly suggest you get a new battery as soon as possible. Today would be good."
"I have to get it inspected, too," Ana told him. "I can do it at the same time."
"Good idea. You have a good day."
"Thanks. You too."
She called Rose Marie at work to repeat what the AAA guy had said about replacing the battery. Rose Marie's office had banned personal cell phones while people were actually in the office, so Ana had to call the receptionist's desk like an actual client. Rose Marie wasn't surprised about her car, but she was annoyed.
"Well, shit," she said. "How much is a car battery?"
"I don't know. More than a Duracell. You want me to take it to the place down the street?"
"What place down the street?"
"There's a gas station next to the laundromat. I thought that's where you were going to get it inspected."
"I don't care where - wait, I have to answer the phone. Hang on." She put Ana on hold for about five minutes, subjecting Ana to some annoying - if inoffensive - Muzak before getting back on the line to say "I don't care where you take it, just take it somewhere. Ask them if I can get a new battery on Saturday, and you'll just get it inspected now."
"It won't pass if it needs a battery, will it?"
"I don't know, I guess you'll find out. I have to get back to work. This is so stupid. I'll talk to you when I get home. Bye." And she hung up.
Ana found her rubber boots and her coat and left to (finally) take Rose Marie's car for its inspection, which it passed, as Rose Marie was no doubt hoping it would. Ana asked the mechanic if the battery would hold until Saturday. He seemed to think it would, but suggested she replace it now to avoid, say, the car dying on I-95. Ana said she didn't drive on the highway. He repeated she should get a new battery. She got annoyed at his hard sell and took the car back home.
She called Rose Marie, who was too busy to talk to her - apparently a client had gotten argumentative in a meeting with one of the financial analysts and had taken the problem into the lobby, so Rose Marie had to help deal with the upset client, the frustrated analyst, and the couple of other people who'd just randomly gotten involved.
Ana wrote "inspection passed, get battery on Sat" on the kitchen blackboard and went into the living room to work on either Jeanne's doll-size chainmail or some adult-size bracelets or necklaces. She didn't have to be at work until 4, so she could play around pretty much all afternoon. She felt as if she'd wasted the morning, although getting Rose Marie's car inspected was already on the to-do list and not a waste at all, and she wanted to get some actual work done before she had to be at the coffeeshop.
words: 1736
no subject
Date: 2009-11-03 11:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-03 02:21 pm (UTC)