Oh, Huma

I leave my cell phone lying around a lot. I am told I ought not to leave my cell phone lying around a lot but still I persist, which means I keep on doing it.

I leave it right out in the open where everybody can see it. I leave it right out in the open so everybody can see it. Face up on conference tables during meetings. Next to the sink, at work, at lunch hour. Or out on the coffee table when I have friends over. Or up on the hood of the van while I am attempting to walk in a straight line for a police officer late at night.

And so forth. And so on. Et cetera.

I leave my cell phone lying around a lot on the off-chance that my daughter calls me. My daughter, Rachel, I mean, who is the one with a cell phone of her own.

When Rachel calls me, you see, my phone doesn’t say, “Rachel Calling.” It does not show a picture of her from back when she was four and trying to finger paint to disastrous effect. No, no.

That’s because I did not save Rachel’s number in my phone as “Rachel Anders.” No, although that would have been the easy and the lazy thing to do – it is what you would have done – I went a different direction, instead.

So let’s say I am at work and I am at a work table and I am sifting through discovery documents with several fellow workers. And while I am down, hunched over a box of documents on the floor, suddenly, back up on the work table, Rick Springfield’s song, “Human Touch,” comes blaring out at all of us.

“We all need / The human touch / I need it / The human touch…”

And Donna – nosy, gossipy Donna – says, “Katy, you’re getting a call from a… a… Hu-u-u-ma?”

I leap up.

I snatch the phone away. I hold it tightly to my chest.

I look around, conspiratorially, up into the corners of the room like I’m searching for cameras or for spy fairies.

Then I rush out, away from the room and the table and the documents, answering the phone and saying, “Hello, honey, how are you?” in a stage whisper.

And back at the work table, my fellow workers, well, they do not know I have just received a call from my daughter, Rachel. They believe I have just received a call from Huma Abedin.

Because that is what my phone shows.

I leave my cell phone lying around a lot because I am trying to start a rumor.

I am trying to start a rumor that I’m having an affair with Huma Abedin.

You know what they say about how a lie that gets repeated enough starts to become the truth, don’t you? And all that psychic energy from all of these gossipy people chanting, “Katy and Huma sitting in a tree / kay-eye-ess-ess-eye-enn-jee…”

All that psychic energy. It rises up.

It goes out. Into the Universe.

Forwards and backwards and all the other wards.

The lie travels around the world and it changes the world. The lie becomes the truth.

At least, I’m hoping that’s how it works, anyway. When it comes to starting an affair with Huma Abedin, I haven’t really got a Plan B.

I’ll keep you posted.