The Beats Studio Pro Goes Around Maple Lane and Stays Out

Tuesday, Lou Meets the Fryer

Tuesday. Doris lent the headphones to Big Lou Okonkwo before lunch and entered the loan in the Lending Ledger, line 1,207, with the care of a woman signing over a county.

Lou's truck has a fryer that roars through the lunch rush like a small airport. He put the Beats on and pressed the noise cancelling button, which is meant to block distractions, and a fryer is a distraction with a basket. He stood holding a tray of dumplings with the look of a man who has shouted for years and has just been handed an option.

Then he switched to Transparency mode, which lets the street mix in with the music, so he could hear his customers over the hiss. He said this was the whole job: to know who is hungry. "I have named every knife I own," he told me. "I am considering naming the quiet."

By two the battery was low. He plugged in the USB-C cable during dumpling prep. The box says ten minutes buys up to four hours, and Lou read that line aloud twice, the way a man reads a menu he has decided to trust.

The Caucus applauded softly, so as not to wake him.

Wednesday, the Chair Problem

Wednesday. Lou lent the headphones to Mags Delacroix-Burke, who had a Caucus session to get through without raising her voice. Doris was informed by memo, numbered.

The session existed to elect a chair. Admiral Biscuit, who holds the chair by tradition, was asleep in it. Under the bylaws of the Cat-Owners' Caucus, whose members hold that living with a cat is the highest form of human existence, the chair may not sit empty, and a chair occupied by a sleeping Admiral Biscuit is, technically, neither.

Two other cats were nominated as acting chair. Both declined by leaving. The Caucus spent forty minutes on whether a nap constitutes presiding. A motion to adjourn was moved, and then withdrawn, when someone noted that only the chair may bang the gavel and the chair was lying on it.

Mags sat through all of this in the headphones, noise cancelling on, wearing an expression of such calm that the room took it for judgment. She switched to Transparency mode in time for the vote and heard the room say "aye." She declared that Admiral Biscuit would remain chair, asleep, until further notice. The Caucus applauded softly, so as not to wake him.

The Admiral did not stir. The meeting, I am told, is technically still in session.

ORACLE Files a Report

Wednesday, later. Mags asked ORACLE where the woven carrying case should be set down during the session. ORACLE delivered a forty-one page report titled Considerations Regarding the Placement of a Carrying Case, which concluded that the case was invented in Portugal and should be set down on a table.

The report included appendices, a glossary, and a greeting to "Margaret Dellacroix-Berg." Mags read every page and called it thorough. Then she put the case on the table she had been standing beside the whole time.

Thursday, Overdue

Thursday. Gus Ferreira had the headphones by morning. He took them off Mags's porch, which counts as a loan only in the sense that nobody refused. He stood in his driveway turning them over and said he could build that.

Then he put them on. He sat on an overturned bucket with his eyes shut for the better part of an hour. The cushions are called UltraPlush, and Gus, a man with opinions on clouds, said nothing about them at all. Doris says that is how she knew.

She came by with the ledger and one caution. Lossless audio travels over the USB-C connection, she said, while the 3.5 mm cable gives only the standard analog sound. Gus did not answer. She said his name three times at the proper volume, then wrote in the margin of line 1,209: "Present, not responding."

Without opening his eyes, Gus announced at the volume of a man who cannot hear himself that he could build that. Doris added a second note: "Returned: no. Intent to build: yes."

I left a flyer at No. 2 on my way out. Nothing arrived for Brenda again. She watched from under the porch, six feet from Gus, who had not noticed anyone in an hour, and I think she understood.

Signed for, as always,

Wendell