Or Best Offer: Part I

Nostalgia comes with a price.

Eric found the GPS on Facebook Marketplace. It was a rainy Sunday morning, and he was bored. His girlfriend was visiting her sister; the dog was snoring on the couch by his side. An old Rolling Stones album played on his turntable.

Eric wasn’t actually looking for a GPS, although he’d talked about getting one just last week.

‘I’m sick of downloading an app for everything,’ he told his girlfriend Gina over dinner. They were dining on ramen noodles at the hole-in-wall down the street from their apartment. ‘My phone is absolutely overflowing with them. I can never find anything I’m looking for. And I use most of these apps one time, twice at the most! They take up so much space, it’s a ridiculous system.’

Gina was sympathetic, but pragmatic. She spun the long, thick noodles around her chopsticks and slurped them up. Eric winced at the noise, glancing around to see if any of the other patrons had noticed.

‘I know it’s annoying, but that’s the way it goes, babe. What else are you supposed to do?’ Eric toyed with the noodles in his bowl, watching bits of meat and vegetable bob in the viscous broth.

‘I hate being tracked all the time,’ he said. ‘I hate that those apps always know where I am all the time, what I’m doing, who I’m talking to. I’m going to start deleting them.’ Gina shook her head and sipped her tea.

‘You’ll just have to download them again,’ she said in a sing-song voice. Annoyed, Eric took his phone from his pocket and began deleting apps. He bid goodbye to half a dozen gaming apps, seven shopping apps, 27 separate restaurant apps, and seemingly countless random apps he couldn’t even recall downloading. It was like they multiplied when he wasn’t looking.

Gina watched him for a while, chewing on her noodles with great gusto. A round girl with a cheerful disposition, Gina was an unquestioning fan of technology in all its wonder. Her own phone fairly groaned under the weight of all her apps, neatly sorted and categorized on her phone. After a few minutes of watching Eric jab at his phone with one hand while shoveling food into his mouth with the other, she lost her patience.

‘Are you still deleting apps? How many do you even have?’ She snatched the phone off the table and peered at the screen.

‘You deleted the weather app?’ she asked. ‘Why would you do that?’ Eric gestured to the restaurant’s large windows.

‘Because I can just look outside if I want to know the weather,’ he said. 

‘You say that now,’ said Gina. ‘Wait, you’re deleting the maps app.’ She handed the phone back to Eric. ‘Make sure you fix that.’

‘It’s not a mistake,’ said Eric. ‘I’m sick of having five different apps that tell me where I’m going in ever so slightly different ways.’

‘At least keep one,’ said Gina. ‘You manage to get lost with the five you have as it is.’ Eric stabbed moodily at a dumpling. 

‘I miss having a GPS,’ he complained. ‘You had one device, it did one job, finito, done.’ He held his hands out in front of him, miming the rectangular shape of a screen. ‘No ads, no add-ons, nothing. It tells you where you’re going, and nothing else.’

‘You sound like you’re ancient,’ snickered Gina. ‘I can’t remember the last time I owned a GPS. Maybe in college?’ She tapped one red nail to her pink lips, thinking. ‘It was a hunk of junk, but it got me around pretty well. I wonder whatever happened to it.’

‘I wish you knew,’ said Eric. ‘I’d love to have one.’ He tried to catch the waiter’s eye as he whizzed by, sighing as he was duly ignored.

‘Is this why your car still has a CD player?’ said Gina. ‘Are you really a hipster?’ She smiled at the waiter, who veered over to deposit the check on the table with a flourish. Eric grimaced and averted his eyes. 

‘Older technology is better,’ he insisted. ‘Sturdier. More reliable. This new technology is totally made to fall apart, so you have to keep buying it over and over.’ Gina’s eyes flickered to the check before returning to his face. Her expression was fond, placid. 

‘And here I thought you were just being thrifty.’ She dipped her spoon into the remaining broth in her bowl and sipped it, looking thoughtful. Eric tore at the napkin sitting in his lap. ‘Next thing, you’ll start printing up Mapquest pages.’

‘I don’t think that’s a thing anymore,’ he said. He risked a glance up. Gina was staring at him, that same tranquil smile on her lips. The chopsticks dangled from her plump fingers. Eric could feel sweat prickling on the back of his neck. 

‘Well, things were a hell of a lot simpler back then,’ he said. Gina snorted, and dropped the chopsticks down with a clatter. Eric glanced around again, but none of the other patrons seemed to notice. She rifled through her enormous red bag. 

Eric watched as Gina littered the table with old tissues and coins, bits of wrappers and crumpled receipts. At last she emerged, triumphant, with her credit card. Smacking it down on the table with a sharp snap, she raised one manicured eyebrow. Eric met her gaze, fighting to keep his expression neutral.

‘Well if I see any technology from the early 2000s,’ she said. ‘I’ll be sure to let you know.’