Twitter.
Twitter twitter twitter.
It knows where she is. It tells me where she is.
I track her. She has a schedule. Sometimes I’m there to watch her.
Up at 6 a.m. She tweets a dream.
At the gym by 6:30. It has big windows. And good parking across the street.
She tweets her burned calories.
Shower. At 7. She doesn’t tweet from the shower.
She tweets the clothes she wears sometimes. Shirts, skirts, pants.
That’s usually at about 7:20.
She usually eats light. Toast, unbuttered. Sometimes a smoothie. Or oatmeal with sliced mango.
She tweets boastfully about her diet.
It’s about 7:50 when she gets on the bus. She tweets about the weather as the bus pulls away from the stop.
I put pins on a Google Map as the bus carves out her twitter-passage through the city.
She’s off the bus at 8:23.
The wind catches her hair, ruffles her scarf.
I watch her.
She walks down the sidewalk for two blocks. Sometimes she tweets while she waits at a light to cross the street.
She goes to Starbucks just before heading up to the office.
I wait outside for her. In the bus shelter across the street.
As she waits for her soya latte she tweets a friend.
Her office is upstairs. She’s there by 9. One final tweet about her idiot boss before the work silence.
I wait.
Her friends start to tweet replies about lunch plans mid-morning when they take coffee breaks.
If they name the restaurant, I’m there ahead of them. I find a corner table and wait, drinking coffee.
Sometimes I don’t know where she goes.
That’s OK. Twitter will tell me.
When she tweets about the sandwich she orders, I know where she is. She likes exotic fillings. Roasted eggplant. Curried beef.
I race to the tweet’s location.
Sometimes I catch a glimpse of her.
Sometimes I’m only there in time to watch them clear her plate, see a napkin with a smudge of her lipstick.
I’ll stop at an internet cafe when she’s safely back at work.
I pin her tweet locations on a Google Map. My finger sweeps across the screen, follows her passage through the city.
I spend some time remembering her last few days, her schedule, her moods.
She was sad last Sunday. Her cat died that weekend. Her friends sent her supportive tweets.
Last Tuesday she consoled herself with a new comforter for her bed. It’s red, with yellow flowers and paisleys.
Wednesday she wrapped it around herself and curled up on the couch to watch Australia.
She tweeted her tears when the Drover learned Mrs. Boss wasn’t dead. I cried with her, watched it with her at my home.
We were together. We were one, in Twitter.
Friday. Ah, Friday.
I lost track of her, until Twitter told me where she was. She tweeted from a club near her apartment.
She went out dancing with friends. She tweeted about her seven Bellinis. Her spelling was terrible.
I stood at the bar and watched her flirt. It broke my heart.
She doesn’t know that I love her. I know everything about her.
Her favourite colour is dark orange. She loves Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient.
She was born on Canada Day. She plays the violin. Her favourite actor is Ben Kingsley.
She’s everything to me. She fills my heart with joy. My skin prickles with each buzz of her tweets on my cellphone.
Like the wise owl said ... I’m twitterpated.
She danced with a man that Friday night. A lot.
She was giddy. She went to the ladies room to tweet about his ass, his chest hair.
She tried to kiss him clumsily when she came back.
He danced with another girl. She looked sad, ordered another Bellini.
Later, I followed the man outside when he left. I pulled him into an alley and broke his nose, told him never to hurt her again.
He just ran away.
When I went back inside the club she was gone.
I waited.
She tweeted from two blocks away, told her friends she was walking home.
I ran to catch up.
I followed behind her as she stumbled along the sidewalk.
She took off her heels and walked in her stockings.
The street was empty, just the odd car passed by.
It was time. It was time to tell her how much I love her.
Then she started to sing. Her voice rose up loud against the canyon of apartment buildings around us.
“Somewhere, over the rainbow…”
Suddenly, she stopped and turned to me. I was right behind her.
Her eyelids drooped drunkenly and she leaned against the wall. I could smell her perfume, her hair spray.
“Did you see Australia?” she asked, looking up at the sky and closing her eyes.
“No ...” I stammered.
“Saddest movie, like, ever.”
Then the front door of her apartment building slammed shut and she was inside.
My finger is on that pin on Google Maps, that pin where I watched her through the glass as she fell onto the elevator.
My cellphone buzzes.
It’s her, a new tweet. She left work early and is on the bus.
I’m gonna have to hurry if I want to watch her shop for fruit before she goes home.
Andrew Robulack is a Whitehorse-based freelance writer and technology solutions consultant specializing in Macs, the internet, and mobile devices. Read his blog online
at www.geeklife.ca.