I should have drowned them all!
He's in the center of the lobby, tiled marble floor, cup of espresso in one hand, cigarette in the other, owner of the restaurant in his chef whites, by some strange coincidence I know yet another of his children, a neighbor who lived beneath me in my old apartment on 17th Avenue, he reminisces about her, her secret marriage to Santino which if he'd known about he'd have stopped, he pauses for a moment to reflect before exclaiming loudly:
"I should have drowned them all when they was born. All four of them."
He pauses a moment, sips his espresso, takes a drag on his cigarette, then adds:
"Their mother too."
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Exhaustion
A day off. 1 day off a week through the month of December, and I'm exhausted. 4 days straight of up-at-7:00 AM, shower, brief on the computer, on the bus to work by 9:00, finish work at 11:00, 12:00 at night, bus home, quick drink, bed, repeat again.
It's life in an old school Italian Restaurant.
It's the start, again, of life on my feet, and they don't like it, 15, 16 hours straight and they're complaining, legs aching, toes cramped and bent. Then the slippery walk to a bus, the counting of minutes and buses headed in the wrong direction, up to 30, 40 minutes in 30 below weather waiting for the one I need, transfer, another bus, home, feed the cat, check the messages on the phone - solicitors, the boy, Shaw cable to advise me that if I don't pay them immediately I risk disconnection, amusing in that they have already disconnected me a week ago, this an inane reminder that "in case I haven't noticed I don't have internet I might not have any internet....", the gas company, ... turn on the computer, search for the slow trickle of an unsecured local wireless network...
A day off and I'm lucky, I've found a wireless network nearby I can mooch onto, try to stuff myself with the news of the week, cram a weeks worth of surfing into a brief couple of hours...
Visit websites, read news, weather; the obsession of all those damned to public transport in Calgary, ideas, a weeks worth of surfing in all the time I can leech this connection....
Download podcasts, the connection so unsure that I dare not stream them, and I'm right, they take longer to download then they would to listen to.
Connections drop off, disappear, I'm disconnected, reboot, re-search, re-acquire an unsecured connection, signal strength warning in the lower right
"Very Weak", webpages take minutes to load, videos are unwatchable.
There were the children today, exhausted Dad trying to cope, there are groceries at least. Brownies, pasta, rice, I don't need to eat during the week, the restaurant feeds me well, with a drink at the end of the shift, but still, there's something about having gone without food for so long that when one has the chance one just buys it, hoards, stockpiles, the remembrance of poverty...
It's a salaried position, most customers pay with credit card, but we get occasional cash backs, $50 here, $100 there, money spent on catching up bills, not the internet (as that's how I got here), but the phone, miraculously still connected, groceries, an overdue haircut (a flirtatious customer playing the "what celebrity I remind her of" game, before confiding in a waitress that it's Lyle Lovett), bus tickets, espresso, rum, filtered tip cigarettes, dry cleaning, the necessities of life I'd grown too used to living without.
There are other bills, stacks of them, but they have to wait their turn, the small rationing of payments....
But today, day off, feet mostly in the air, exhausted.
The children leave and I go for a nap, crushed, strange dreams, then awake, espresso, and begin the Gold Medal of Housekeeping.
Dishes, 2 weeks worth to be caught up, dry cleaning to be sorted and organized, laundry (1 months worth), garbage, recycling.
The laundry is in hell, the basement is freezing, snow stamped in the back hall remains frozen on the floor an hour later when I check it; the dryer grinds and steps across the floor, the drum has come derailed....
I can hear it downstairs, thumping across the floor like a demon struggling to escape the icy hell in which it's been imprisoned.
It's my day off, it's late, it's almost done and I don't want it to end, it will shortly enough but I've drunk cups of espresso to keep awake, stretch it out as long as I can, and now must take off the edge with shot of rum, reboot to try and recapture this connection, gather and sieve my thoughts...
I'm exhausted.
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Helicopters, $50.00 apiece...
We're sitting down before the shift and eating dinner. It's a ritual in the old-school Italian restaurants....
The owner's son is there, chatting, he's very lively. Good looking, 26 years old, he's trying to sell us helicopters he's found in the back of his roommates "Soldier of Fortune" magazine. Helicopters, $50.00, Jeeps, $25.00, the US government is selling them off cheap....
Now I know he's talking about the Army Surplus, and since I've got that Helicopter Pilot's helmet (which I grossly overpaid for, but I'm a safety-first kinda guy) I think "Why not" and I offer to buy 2 helicopters. $100.00. He promises to bring me in the magazine, but I don't want it. I just want the helicopters. I offer him a hundred and fifty, so he can buy one for himself, let him deal with the paperwork and ordering, and now he's backpedaling.... His father just ignores us.
The next night, dinner again, we're talking about the gun control laws, the 1 billion wasted on the gun registry, the owner is telling us how anyone can get a gun, heck, he can get me any gun I want in 2 days, with silencer and everything, brought across from the border....
And I'm thinking to myself, "Great, throw in a couple of Glocks with silencers with the helicopters and I'll pay $200...".
But I don't say anything. I'm new, and I haven't tested his sense of humor yet. He seems pretty dry.
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You remind me of Alfred Hitchcock...
He's introduced himself, and by way of conversation tells me that "I remind him of Alfred Hitchcock".
My curiosity is piqued, I haven't yet been warned by the other staff; and so I ask him what it is about me that could possibly remind him of Alfred Hitchcock - my pointy nose? My somewhat portly carriage? My balding head?
"No, no, no, it's just something about your demeanor...." he tells me.
"So you're a film buff I presume?" I parry.
"No" he replies.
Later I overhear him on the phone with his mother. His father owns the restaurant, he works here as a sort of errand boy, dishwasher, prep-cook, whatever.
"I want to ask him Mom but you know how Dad is about giving raises....And I haven't worked here a year yet...."
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