The Friday after the fair.
Get Bess off to school, we have to go tour Santa Barbara campus in a few hours for college preview for her, so I only have a small bit of time til I have to go bust her back out of school and drive north beachbound.
But I have time to do the dumb treadmill which I hate and I'm dragging myself out there without my vest, with the hole in my heart where my vest used to be, and I think about that green paper the one with all the hope in it, the one stuffed in my bag with the turkey leg receipt, the lost and found green paper. I have a picture of it in my phone and it's only 11:30, how could anyone (if my vest survived) have walked my vest back and turned it in best case in the last twelve hours, I don't think those fair workers are super psyched to do work after hours or maybe they are considering the meth.
I climb on my treadmill which is actually an elliptical but that's like a fancy french word for pretty much the same dumb exercise so I won't use it and I look up the little green paper and I call and put in the extension. I swallow my fear.
Hi I lost my vest last night at the fair and it's blue and it has fake fur and it has no sleeves and I came last night but it wasn't there and they gave me this number and I'm hoping you can check.
Oh! The guy says. Sounding alert. Let me go look? A jacket?
No it has no sleeves. It's navy blue. It's the most important thing in my life, I don't say.
He puts me on hold which is weird because that room is so small I don't know why he doesn't look over his shoulder but maybe he's in another room doing recon on some other mission or maybe he has to find his monocle but it takes forEVER and then the phone picks up and I'm dreading
and he say ok yeah?
my eyes freeze
Yeah is it a jacket?
I say no (heart plunge) it has no sleeves
Yeah, here it is. It's here.
My eyes wide
What
It has like, fur? Yeah.
Are you KIDDING?
I stammer a little bit longer getting the details and I say hey can you send me a picture cause I don't live close I have to drive a long way and I wanna make sure
Sure he says. He says I'll put your name on it and I'll send a picture and we're here 11-11 until Sunday.
I hang up and then my phone is just silent like nothing has transpired and I look at my text messages saying why isn't he sending me a picture did I dream this whole thing and I wait and think I should call him back but we talked about sending the picture like forty times maybe he's setting up the perfect shot and then I say wait you have to wait
You have to wait
treadmill feet bob molasses slowly
the picture comes
It's just my vest, it's just a stupid vest, half hanging off the hanger, next to the other forlorn victims on the rack, it's just hanging there like HEYI'M BETTER THAN THISWHY DID YOULEAVE ME WOULD YOU COME GET ME
and I text back Carlos cause his name is Carlos and not what I would pick in heroic cases like this, like what about Guinevere or at least Slippery Pete or something but it's Carlos so I know it's real and I'll take Carlos I love Carlos
I say OHMYGOD CARLOS you made my day
to put it mildly. I tell him I WROTE ABOUT LOSING MY VEST. I send him my blog.
I tell Carlos maybe put my number on the vest in case and I can't come now I have to go to SB but either my son or I will come Saturday but please keep it safe
and Carlos is on it and I can't believe Carlos didn't block my number all the texts I sent him and I can't believe they have my vest like nothing happened.
He is going to take care of it
So then life keeps going with pre-ordained things not involving my vest but lurking there in the corner every hour is that bewildered joy of it's there. It's waiting there.
All Saturday none of us can walk from two straight days of fair walking plus SB campus walking and I'm waiting for the traffic to die down on the 210, all day waiting and watching the map to see when I can go get my vest without taking 40 million hours but I do call and it's Carlos again Oh Good, it's Carlos! I say. I tell him is it still there (afraid) and he says yes and I say I will be there I'm waiting for traffic and he says I'll be here til 11
And finally the road is all blue so I dash and I have to go in a new gate where it's official not for fun fair parking, for serious parking, no one is carrying any huge stuffed animals or drunk and they squeeze me through a secret official side gate and then I'm loose in the fair and the sun is setting and this is truly dante's inferno, Saturday night, LA County Fair. I'm canoeing my way upstream as the virginal sun is leaving this scene with a dubious look, as fast as it can, all the families with kids quickly covering their heads and streaming for the exits, leaving me with the weekend night people, millions more than on Thursday, people not wanting to get to the strip club TOO early, so this is the place to walk where you can drink while holding on to your girlfriend's belly chain and everyone is in black and has used their arms as a map to write stuff on and I am greased up with purpose, sliding through the gang fight reunion and can I just make it to the beige building, the pool of calm where no one comes
until like me, you lose something
And then the people are gone and I knock on the window and there is cute little Carlos and behind him
there is my vest
I hand him the bag of snacks I brought with his name on it, from home as my currency at this age seems to involve Bugles and sour punch candy where in the past I would have said hey man let's go out and play pool sometime
and he hands me over my vest and it's in my hands like whipped cream, just sloshing over is this what Custer felt right before he saw a machete coming at his head
that sense of victory
and wait I'm on the indians' side, I'll fix that later let's not glorify Custer
I see Carlos for those two seconds where he hands it over and then there's nothing to do except walk away as custom has it, so I am walking back mute with stun into the crowd, back into the open casting call for the gang alley scene of West Side Story and I love humanity
deep barbecue smoke, donuts on sticks sticking out of globs of ice cream
a guy with a tremendous beard
whores on parade
I'm loving them all because Carlos brought me my vest
I stop midstream and take pictures in my pajamas with the lights in the background feeling idiotic but also standing next to a barbecue place that has deep fried captain crunch covered hamburgers so
A girl says oops you dropped your glasses even though I'm wearing my glasses but another pair fell out of my bag and she hands them back, with her thick make upped face but there is glitter and she has happy young eyes and if we were a sitcom in the 80's this is how it would end, me taking a picture of the thing I lost while losing my glasses and a girl handing them back and we freeze frame with a big laugh like it's so ironic, right!?
Instead I leave alone and go back to the McDonald's where we eat after the fair always and stand with my vest there to right history and erase loss and I feel like Jimmy Stewart coming back to life in It's a Wonderful Life throwing his hands up at the end saying Merry Christmas you old building and loan
and I text Carlos back later because he has texted me saying thanks for the snacks, I'm enjoying a sour punch stick right now
and I tell him I have written his supervisor because he's so kind and he said he was only doing his job proudly he said I like that everything has a story
and I said I know a vest is such a dumb little thing but the fair is my one day off with the kids and my mom's been so sick and losing it was so crushing the loss of comfort
and he said from his lost and found box on the edge of the fair Little things matter, all people care about little things. we're all in this together
Then he said see you next year. Thanks for coming to the fair.
