from The American Reader
It was past midnight and the street was empty when the cab parked at the construction site. Doug got out of the back seat, and staring at the ground the entire way, went over to the trunk to begin the struggle of taking his two massive suitcases out. Not that Doug needed that much clothing for a week in Miami. But he had no choice but to bring two: the longer the distance, the less time to see each other, the bigger the present.
His friends always teased him for being the only sophomore at Princeton with a long-distance relationship. Other than having to haul big presents through security checkpoint though (he didn’t trust baggage claim with a 4-foot vase), Doug was fine with it. He talked with his girlfriend as much as his friends talked with theirs; he just happened to text her. Not to mention, his friends texted their girlfriends as much as they talked to them as well, and so, in a way, had as much of a distanced relationship as he did.
Doug felt for the suitcase with the vase, to make sure it was still intact, and went over to pay the driver. The man was in a heated conversation on his phone, and angrily took the cash.
Doug looked up and around. He quickly realized that he was at a construction site, not at the apartment building he needed to be at.
The cab had already driven away.
The driver had dropped him early to cheat some money out of him! Or maybe, Doug considered, he had been too busy with that call to notice he had stopped at the wrong address. But how had Doug not noticed? He had been looking out the window. No, that was before. He had been checking Instagram just before he arrived.
No matter, he would text his girlfriend he was running a little late, and call for another taxi. He reached into his right pocket for his smartphone…
…And pulled out nothing.
Doug could have sworn it had been in there before. He had put it into his right pocket just before leaving the car. But reality had just disproven that. Doug checked his left pocket – just in case – though he knew that reality would not permit his phone to be there either. What reality did allow for was what Doug realized had happened: the phone dropped out of his pocket as he was exiting the cab. Still, it seemed unreasonable. That phone had defied the most dangerous situations, from a devastating house fire to a climb in the Grand Canyon, only to get carried away by a taxi in the middle of Miami.
Now was not the time to reminisce, though. Doug gazed around, and spotted a telephone booth. He speed-walked over, suitcases in hand, and picked up the payphone to call his girlfriend. It then occurred to him that he did not know her number beyond the area code. Why would he need to if he had contacts stored on his phone? Naturally, Doug then began to sense his reliance that little machine. It was an alarm clock, a map, a library, a teacher, and loose-leaf paper. Doug had even stopped carrying around his PC now.
He looked around the telephone booth and found a phone book. After minutes of searching, Doug found no way to contact his girlfriend, and resorted to contacting the cab company to send someone to pick him up. He had forgotten the apartment’s address, and so would stay in a hotel until tomorrow, until the company recovered his phone.
Doug returned to the construction site, and sat on a bench in wait. He hoped his girlfriend was worried sick for him, and not changing her relationship status on Facebook. The thought surprised him. He had been dating her for two years, and yet did not know her well enough to predict what she would do now. The relationship had depended on all the talking and texting by phone, and without it, Doug had a feeling that there was no relationship. Maybe, he needed his phone for more than just the material part of his life.
Doug found himself staring at a swarm of flies encircling a half-empty container of peanut butter sticking out of an open garbage bag on the street. He watched carefully as the flies, which were trying to get food, instead got stuck to the peanut butter, becoming part of it. But Doug knew that in reality all was relative. One could say that the peanut butter became part of the swarm of flies.