It's a crazy night at the restaurant. By the book, looking at it yesterday, we shouldn't have been so busy. But by tonight we had filled up with some interesting characters...
Tonight, one, a middle aged man, large, overweight, loud Hawaiian print shirt, bad comb-over with 2 ladies. He beckons me over, he doesn't want anything, just wants to introduce himself. I must be Rupert Everett he says.
Probably it's the way I've done (or not) my hair, I play along and say yes, yes I am, I'm just researching my next role as a waiter in my next film about a waiter in a busy Italian restaurant...and I ask him not to blow my cover.
While not necessarily a fan I appreciate the gesture, it's a damned sight nicer that noting I look like Lyle Lovett.
He's Harry the Psychologist. I notice that he's brought his own candle and a vase full of flowers.
He tells me that he's quite intuitive, the roses are for strangers that he meets, he can tell when they need a flower. He'd been for dinner once recently and he saw an older Chinese lady, about 85 years old, with her son and daughter, and by looking at her he could just tell and so he went and placed one of his flowers in her hands and said "SOMETHING IN CHINESE AND I DON'T SPEAK CHINESE" which meant, in perfect Mandarin, "this is for the beauty within your soul" and she was moved to tears and said to him "SOMETHING ELSE IN CHINESE" which meant "Please take me home" and he knew he had chosen the right person because her children were abusive towards her.
He likes to hand them out to people in need.
Harry's a psychologist.
He's intuited that I'm an introvert with many gifts, that I have been blessed by God and if I have a moment I should stop at their table and discuss them with him.
Sadly we're pretty busy and I don't have a moment. But Harry, he's a sport, he understands.
Later, when I do have a moment I stop by and he tells me about how at 22 years of age he had his masters of psychology and some time to kill and so he went to Montreal, worked his way on a tramp steamer over to Iceland, worked a few months as a fisherman, then another boat to France where he picked grapes and made Champagne, then on to Turkey where he dug up 10th Century Sufi ruins, then another boat to South America where he dug up Mayan Ruins, from there on various Banana boats through the Caribbean, and eventually back to North America...
Harry's lived an exciting life. I'd like to compete, but how can you compete with this? But, Harry reassures me, I have many gifts and I've been blessed by God with an uncanny resemblance to Rupert Everett and a voice to match and perhaps I sing? Harry plays the Harmonica and double Bass. I don't sing, or I do, but in a kind of monotone that makes Leonard Cohen seem like Sarah Brightman...
His guests the whole time haven't said a thing, they only smile apologetically.
Harry's a psychologist.