My Neighbor

 My neighbor is like a great opera star; she performs stunning arias of complaint, arias of grievance, day after day. I don't have to do a thing. I just take notes.

The idea of a half day enrages her. There are too many! And her husband whines about the half days, as well, but his whining is just a performance--a transparent attempt to curry favor. "Don't do that," says my neighbor, when her spouse goes into the "feeling your pain" act. "Just zip it."

I mention that--on this particular half day--I'm considering screening the Robert Zemeckis film, "The Polar Express." (I'm on the fence. The trailers look creepy. Also, the book seems to be the perfect length; any effort to blow up that book into a two-hour film event seems inherently dubious...)

"Listen," says my neighbor. "I took my kids to the *actual* Polar Express, in Whippany? You have to sign up on the Fourth of July. If you don't hop online on the Fourth, then the window closes. So we get on the train last Saturday, and it's all unemployed twenty-something actors; they're bussed in, from Astoria, so they can sing carols and distribute festive breath mints, etc. The train breaks down, and we're stranded in the woods until 1 AM. The show's producers won't hire emergency bus drivers; there is just one bus, and it's the one that carries the Astoria crowd back and forth. So I'm like, can you dig up real evidence to confirm that there is no other bus option anywhere in the tristate area, nothing more you can do in this situation? And they're like, listen, lady, we are GOING to refund your ticket...."

Next, my neighbor shifts to the topic of her widower father, who has traveled up from South Carolina, and who has chosen to linger (uninvited) in the Maplewood home, for an unspecified number of months. "Oh God," says my neighbor. "I think he might be moving in with me? I can't talk about it."

The following day, I meet the father himself, who complains that his daughter is barring him from a return trip to his actual home. "She says, Father, Father, just stay with us through Christmas....And I'm like, I guess? But why isn't there a single decent bar in this town? And why do you people all drive like lunatics?"

Sometimes, I suspect that neither one of these characters has taken a moment to learn my first name.