A war-tattered copy of The Atlantic magazine from October of 2008 lies slowly dying on the shelf. Times are tough. Farther down the shelf are the living: pamphlets detailing how to collect unemployment insurance, what to do if your claim is denied, what to do if your claim runs out, how to appeal a denial or an expiration. Times are indeed tough. 
This is what we do with our Fridays mornings off. We drive down to Inglewood, to the unemployment office near the airport to argue for a thousand dollars that we should have received last December.
We arrive late, as wholly appropriate when arriving to an unemployment office; we duck the imaginary picketers who throw empty cans and invective at us; if we were less lazy, on time just a bit more often, we’d have a job and wouldn’t need to take their tax money. Lord knows where the State of California is going to come up with a thousand dollars, they chant.
It’s a clunky chant.
The low-talking black man who looks like Gordon from Sesame Street, which is to say that he wears sweaters, hands us our file through the security slot and tells us to review it. We briefly glance at the file, memorize a few times, dates, tuck those away for the next hour and shortly return the file to Gordon.
Over the last 75 years, the name Gordon has gone from the 70th most popular name in America to the 946th most popular name in America. We consider telling the Gordon through the window; we realize, in this tough day and age, he’s probably not named Gordon. It was Gordons that got us through the last depression. It will be Gordons that get us through this one as well.
A man dressed in what has to be described as a tragic ensemble talks loudly on an equally tragic mobile phone. He’s loud enough that we can’t hear the looped video that explains what will happen at our unemployment hearing. Loafers, baggy white socks, short jeans, Target-brand button down, off-black sports coat: the man should have just finished reading the weather in Billings, Montana. Instead, he’s been waiting for hours for a case that had been postponed days ago. He calls his employer to say so.
He seems to have brought along a ringer, an Unemployment Insurance expert, who stalks the UI waiting area guarded by prints of Elizabeth Horowitz pastels and watercolors. The ringer stumbles, but adroitly, with a cane from UI window to worker, asking if they have a copy of a certain UI book by a certain UI expert. He promises one judge that he will bring her a copy the next time. 
His copy is signed.
"…or you can leave a message on my cell phone, but I’m driving, can’t pick up the phone to answer." We are wandering the room and catch the beautiful end to a message left by a gentleman of seventy-some years for a friend or family member or co-worker who was, in all evidence, until this moment, completely oblivious to the laws of California and would have been confused to the point of suicide had they called this gentleman back in a short while and he’d not picked up. Now they know that he’s driving. Can’t pick up the phone to answer.
Our name is mercifully called. Judge Benjamin Sterlin presiding. He walks us to a room where the hearing will begin. We frown because he’s not wearing a robe. Maybe it’s on underneath.
"They have you working on Good Friday."
"Too many unemployment claims," he replies without irony. "There are a few government holidays left, but…"
We sit at two tables connected in the shape of a T, the top of which is formed by Judge Sterlin’s desk. This will be recorded. He swears us in and asks us why we didn’t send our UI claim in on time. We can’t remember when we sent it in (thank you Alberto Gonzalez, Scooter Libby; may we not end up with you). Why we didn’t pick up the call from a UI employee. We were at work at 2:22pm in the afternoon (thank you Gordon). If we looked for work. Everyone is always looking for work; that’s more of a broadly philosophical question than we expected in this situation, but our answers seem to satisfy Judge Sterlin. He will make his decision later today.
We’re never going to see that thousand bucks.
Sulkily, we return to Gordon who validates our parking. The October 2008 Atlantic remains un-resuscitated on the shelf. John McCain on the cover: "Why War is his Answer: Inside the Mind of John McCain." We walk out of the waiting area, thick to the point of saturation with questions that John McCain smugly answers from the tattered cover of an old magazine.
