Edward Adrift

my back against the wall as I look for the cell phone kiosk. At last I see it. It’s manned by a pretty young woman wearing a Santa hat. She looks friendly. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all. Both of those things—the woman’s apparent friendliness, the notion that this won’t be bad—are conjecture, and conjecture is not good enough. I need facts, and there is only one way to get them.
    The woman in the Santa hat sees me coming.
    “Happy holidays, sir,” she says. “How can I help you?”
    “I need a cellular telephone for my trip to Idaho.”
    She gestures at the array of phones adorning the kiosk.
    “Well, we can certainly help with that. Did you have a particular model in mind? We have Blackberries, iPhones, Androids…”
    “Just a phone that calls other phones.”
    She smiles.
    “You’re funny, sir. Let’s look at this Droid Razr. It’s has one gig of LP DDR2 RAM, a four-point-three-inch display, it runs on the 4G LTE network—”
    “Does it call people?”
    “Yes, of course it does. It also has some bitchin’ apps.”
    “What?”
    Her face flushes.
    “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said ‘bitchin’”
    She flummoxes me.
    “I don’t care,” I say. “If it’s bitchin’, you should be honest about that.”
    “Oh, good. What kind of data plan do you need?”
    “What’s a data plan?”
    “You know, web browsing and stuff.”
    “I have cable Internet at home.”
    “Right, but for your phone, I mean.”
    “This phone has that?”
    “Of course. And it has a camera so you can send pictures to people, and text-messaging capability.”
    “Text messaging?”
    “Absolutely!”
    “Is there any other kind?” I ask.
    “Any other kind of what?”
    “Messaging.”
    “Not on this phone.”
    “OK. I like to send messages.”
    “OK, so you’ll want to go unlimited with that.”
    “Yes, I don’t want to be limited.”
    “You know what?” she says. “The Razr is good. But I think I have the right phone for you, sir. You want the best.”
    “Yes.”
    She brings out what she calls the Apple iPhone. It has everything I would ever want to do, she says. I can talk on it, I can use it to surf the Internet, I can send and receive messages, I can listen to music, I can take pictures. She says it’s the best phone there is.
    She also tells me that it’s $399 and that the full data plan—“You’ll want that,” she says—will run me about $150 a month. Both of those numbers seem steep to me, but I remember that (a) I’m fucking loaded and (b) I wouldn’t want to disappoint this woman who keeps telling me how smart I am for zeroing in on the iPhone.
    I give her my credit card.

    It’s 11:23 p.m. I have spent the past six hours and thirty-four minutes playing with my bitchin’ iPhone, minus the time it took for eight pee breaks.
    It is the greatest thing I have ever owned. That might be hyperbole, but I don’t care.
    I will be able to get rid of my television set.
    I will be able to get rid of my VCR, which I don’t use anymore anyway, now that my
Dragnet
tapes are gone.
    I will be able to get rid of my DVD player.
    I can watch Dallas Cowboys games anywhere.
    I barely need my computer anymore.
    I have every song R.E.M. has ever released saved to my phone.
    I just plotted out the entire trip to Boise, including gas stops, food, and lodging in Butte the first night, then I sent the files to my printer from my “cloud” so I have backup paper copies, which is just smart planning.
    I love my “cloud.”
    I don’t think my bitchin’ iPhone is enough to countermand (I love the word “countermand”) my declaration that 2011 has been a shitburger of a year, but maybe it can make 2012 the best year ever.
    I leave tomorrow.

FROM BILLINGS TO BOISE: A TWO-DAY ITINERARY BY EDWARD STANTON
    Dates of travel: December 9–10, 2011.
    Beginning address: 639 Clark Avenue, Billings, Montana.
    Ending address: 1313 N. 25 Street, Boise, Idaho.
    Beginning odometer reading: 27,156.8 miles.
    Anticipated ending odometer reading: 27,848.3 miles (this accounts for the 686.5 miles from here to Donna and Victor’s house, plus gives me 5 extra miles for getting off the highway for food and gas. I wish there were some way to be precise about this, but there isn’t).
    Anticipated gas mileage: 22.7 miles per gallon on the highway, based on current figures.
    Size of gas tank: 18 gallons.
    Number of fill-ups needed to complete trip: Two. In Butte on Day 2, and later that day in American Falls,