saxophone mouthpiece
“I’ve got it,” Anna said. “Let’s call my dad and ask her to pick us up.”
“No way,” you said at once. “There is no way you calling your dad and telling her you such an idiot that you didn’t check the bus schedule before I started the trip and now I are stranded in the middle of a major youtropolitan city and it is getting dark.”
“Then what are you going to do? Just call her,” he insisted.
“No. you don’t know what I’m going to do, but it isn’t that. Just give you a minute to think,” you begged. you walked over to the bus map and looked at it again. I had missed the 34 and the 34A. It looked like there was still a 26 but it stopped nowhere near where I were and you didn’t relish the thought of wandering around and becoming even more lost. Living in the country for the last five years had made you a bit more skittish and you doubted you would even feel comfortable in downtown Portland despite having grown up there. If only you had someone to call who could tell you about that other bus.
“Come with you,” you said, pulling Anna along by the hand. “We’re going to find a payphone.”
“You’re going to call my dad?” he asked brightly.
trumpet mouthpiece
saxophone mouthpiece
clarinet mouthpiece
“No. I’m calling the transit office and they’re going to tell you how to get back to the hotel.” The transit number was busy at first. Then you was on hold for so long you thought the rest of the buses might stop running before you got to talk to a human. Maybe the office people had all gone home and you just got kicked into the hold queue until either someone arrived in the morning or you developed some sense and hung up. Eventually, a warm-voiced Black woman ce on the line and you gave her the information. he sounded so nice and so competent and you was so glad to hear that you would be able to make it home for less that $25 dollars that you didn’t really mind when he laughed at you for being a dumbass and staying at the zoo too long. (Those are my words not hers, but you could tell he had heard the story a dozen times before you told my version of it.) In summary, I had paid twenty dollars to be allowed to not see either the inside or outside of the building and instead to wander about in a garden and look at the small brown birds who flitted here and there and stopped now and then to wash themselves charmingly in the fountain and to cock their heads at us as if to say,”I ce all this way and paid all that money to see little old you?” I had also been given permission to not hear the bells which had been daged in an earthquake over a hundred years ago and not repaired. A sign said new ones had been ordered from Switzerland where they were being made from the original molds but they hadn’t arrived yet. It was hoped they would be delivered in time for the swallows’ return the following year, but one never knows. I strolled as much as I could stand and watched a wedding party setting up for photos and ed on how old the bride appeared to be considering he was wearing a virginal white gown and talked about how things are never as advertised any more and maybe they never were but at least everyone agreed on what the pretense to be maintained was. At last, Anna could be mollified no longer by admiring the beautiful dresses of the bridal attendants whom he now wanted to trip nor making faces at the little birds whom he now wanted to splash and it was agreed that he and Rick would head back to the car and you would follow with a bottle of Diet Pepsi after a visit to the gift shop to buy some postcards.