Saturday Night at 7-11
It's a Saturday night, the week is done (for a day), I've survived and I'm celebrating at home with a glass of rum.
I'm famished.
And restless.
And I think of taking myself to a bar, but there are none handy, and I've got to be up early to go to the flea market. So I compromise and decide upon 7/11.
Now it's not the same, not by a long shot, and while it will do nothing for my restlessness it might (somewhat) curb my hunger...
This is what it's come to. Saturday night at 7-11.
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The Stockbroker
She's tall, my age, brunette, quite good looking. He's short, very nondescript, a bit stout.
I don't know if they're a couple or it's a business meeting. We get all sorts of odd, mismatched couples in the restaurant so it wouldn't surprise me.
She want's a glass of Amarone. We don't have Amarone by the glass but I can open a bottle for her if she'd like, "it'd probably come to" (and here some mental math, Amarone's around $85.00 a bottle, so per glass would be around...) "$20 - $25 per glass" I tell her.
"That's too much. I'll have the Ripassa."
He's not drinking.
I bring her a few glasses. She's definitely the alpha female, always talking, he's quiet, meek almost, listening. And I overhear:
"He shouldna fuckin made that trade. What does he fucking know?" and the meek man mildly contesting "But he's in oil and gas...." and more such from her mouth, turning quickly to a brisk politeness as she orders her next drink...
It would make Tony the Gansta proud.
She's a stockbroker.
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Harry the Psychologist
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.
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Garage Sales 2010 - Week 7
The end of May and it should be an amazing garage sale weekend.
Should be. Were it not for the snow and the rain that greeted me when I woke up.
My map, I'd drawn it up last night, Scarboro (annual parade of garage sales), another one at the Mt. Pleasant Community Center in the NW, that would be the day.
But this morning, the rain and the snow, I was pretty sure that Scarboro would call off their parade and so made my way the the Mt. Pleasant Community Center. Which was as well called off, trucks with farmers waiting in the parking lot, but the community center is locked, and there are so few cars waiting that you know it's not going to happen.
On the way back there's a large sale in front of Westworld Computers on Center St. N - I get off the bus and check it out. A few things, books, sodden in the rain and snow, videos, some new candles, a vintage camera, otherwise nothing. Volunteers staffing it, practically giving stuff away, they were hoping to capitalize on the success of the iPad, due to launch today, but it's nasty nasty out and they'll be glad to be rid of it all...
Week seven's a bust.
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