Corruption and conspiracy for the win

2.

"It's all a fake," says S at the guard shack. "He's alive and living in Israel." "But those women," I say, "their lives were completely messed up, decades of PTSD." "Oh, it's fake, all politics now," he responds. "They're getting $200K each to say all that." "Have you ever known anyone who was sexually abused as a child?" I ask. "Oh, yes, I'm very close to one."

 

1.

"No, I just look like a bitch today," says the Ahuimanu Park custodian, when I ask if I can take her photo. Her wide smile is framed by the chain link fence between us. She's been weed whacking, has to pull up the grass-splattered windshield of her helmet to talk. She's aggravated because she has to do all the work around here. "So much corruption," she says. And they're blowing up her bathrooms. (I see exploding toilets, but she means graffiti.) Scrawling "BOTO" everywhere. (She kindly translated for me.) It might be better if she stopped and the place went to hell; then someone might clean it up. But she does it. "Hard being the competent one, I know," I say. Her neighbor down the road said she was going to die in a few months. Her grass got way too high, so she cut it. "Why'd you cut it, if you weren't paid for it?" the woman demanded. "Well, I knew you needed help, and besides, I have to look at it all the time, and it's ugly."

The woman hasn't died yet, she says, her smile turned ironic. But the custodian's father passed four months ago. As she goes back to weed whacking (she'd had a mower, but the bolt fell off in high grass and she thought people would assume she was on drugs, crawling around on the ground looking for it), I say I'm sorry about her father's death. "It's life," she says.

 

0.

The phone tree was more banyan than oak, options writhing around options, roots tangled, no way to know what limb would sprout next. (Imagine a John Cage piece composed of touch tone tones.) I was trying to roll over an IRA from a company that never responds, no matter how many trees you follow and forms you send in. "There's something wrong with the form," a woman finally says. "You hadn't confirmed that this was what you wanted." "But it's all on the form that was sent in three weeks ago!" Yes, this is what I want. "Will Susan get updates?" asked my adviser, also on the line. "No," was the response.