She woke up that morning with all the time in the world. Her to-do list was so remarkably short that it didn’t deserve to be called a to-do list. She needed to put a piece of mail in an outgoing box. She needed to shave her shins. But really. That was hardly a reason to get out of bed.

She rolled over and pulled up the shades on the west side of the room. She enjoyed the view from the 10th floor of the apartment building near the center of Santiago, Chile. When the air was clear of smog and cloud cover, she could see the craggy snowcovered tips of the Andes to the west. Later today, she might ascend to the top of the building and swim laps in the pool – to the Andes, away from them, toward their mighty peaks, toward the Pacific Ocean, unseeable from here but only an hour by bus.

Chile is a skinny strip of a country. More narrow than California. For her, it was the weekend with nothing pending. Nothing to grade and nothing to assemble for upcoming classes. She could hop on a bus and trip to Vina Del Mar, eat empanadas on the coast, drink Chileno wine. She could hop on a bus and ride up and up and up perilous switchbacks into those majestic mountains, tripping to Mendoza and drinking Argentinian Malbec.
She could take a walk. She could ride the metro to its farthest reaches and explore anything in any direction.

She thought about all the possibilities, there in bed, comforter wrapped around her middle. She craved coffee but would settle for the No Es Café, instant powder with mocha flavoring and shelf stable milk. She moved into her tiny kitchen to accomplish this small feat, pushing the lever to heat water in the electric kettle, and while the heating transpired, heading out onto her balcony to smoke the first Lucky Strike of the day and look down at the city below. She ran her fingers though her hair, letting loose strands drift down and down. A worker in a solid navy blue uniform pushed a broom over the sidewalk 11 stories below.

Other people were working today. But she had nothing to do. She had all the time in the world. She mixed even spoons of instant coffee and chocolate into the hot water and added pallid dairy product.

When you have all the time in the world, your life can get pretty boring. You can obsess about the details. You can think about the things you wanted in life that you didn’t get. You can make plans to remediate these lacks. In short, you can get in a lot of fucking trouble. Not much of that happens in this particular story. But you can see how it would.

She opened a wall safe, removed her debit card and slid it into a buttoned jacket pocket along with key to apartment, and disposable phone provided by her landlord, as well. Just in case. But really. An Internet café plied its wares on every street corner. So a person didn’t have to be out of communication for long in Santiago. On the way out the door, she remembered her mail. As she left the building, she slid her envelope in an outgoing slot. Check. To-do list half done. She walked two short blocks to the Estación Salvador, getting there around noon, not that the time mattered. She flipped a coin, jammed onto the red line and rode it to its end, in the direction of a wealthy neighborhood with offices and shops known as Sanhattan. She wandered through the huge mall, bought a bottle of interesting wine at one store and a stylish sweater on a clearance rack at another.

She had all the time in the world and a thrifty budget that allowed occasional frills. Such privileges she had. Surely she appreciated these gifts every minute of every day.
She sat on a bench, watching people. Moms dragging kiddos. Young women with their boyfriends publicly displaying much affection. Middle-aged Chilenos with busy suits and perfunctory scowls. Perfunctory suits and busy scowls.

She smoked a Lucky on a bench and reached in her pocket for her debit card. She’d last used it to take out money at an ATM near the restrooms. But now it was missing.

Oh shit. No ATM. A pickpocket maybe? Had it fallen out? Most likely, she had left it in the ATM machine. She’d have to call the bank and cancel it. But how would she then get money from her account? Could the bank send a new card here? She felt her privilege slide away like a narrow turd in a low-flow toilet. If that symbolic meaning doesn’t smack you in the jaw, shoot me an email demanding explication.

She had all the time in the world to panic. She lurched up from the bench and raced to the escalator, clutching wine and sweater in their respective bags. Down and down, taking two steps at a time to travel faster. And then, touching the cold ATM machine, feeling its card slot empty, of course, of course. It had been something like an hour. Of course, of course someone had used the machine since then. Por supuesto. Aaah! The despair!

A security guard approached. She struggled to put together the words in Spanish to describe her great loss. But he needed no explanation really, not from her. In fact, he had seen her there at the ATM. He watched her walk away, made an ineffectual attempt to stop her, and then collected her card from the machine. He directed her now to a customer service desk, walked her there, in fact, and in superfast Chileno Spanish explained the problem, the loss, the horror, the horror or the idiocy, the idiocy. And the folks behind a glass wall inside a kiosk slid a card to her under the glass. And it was her debit card, there, rescued by this security guard. And she wanted to give him a hug but he seemed not interested in anything other than getting back to his real job that doesn’t involve helping stupid women from the Estados Unitos.

She had all the time in the world to feel grateful. To celebrate, she headed into a restaurant and ordered a four-course lunch special featuring meat that paired nicely with a half-bottle of cab sauv from the Cachapoal Valley. A spectacular lunch. She ate slowly to make the meal last as long as possible. No one was keeping track of her time. No one was waiting at home. She would not have to explain her day to anyone. She would not have anyone to whom she might explain her day.

She was a teensy tipsy on the metro ride back to her apartment but nobody gave a flying fuck. At home, she could shave her shins.