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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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The neighbors downstairs have moved out.
They only lived here a couple of months, a Somali couple, I met them once when the power repeatedly went out and back on, I could hear the clicking of the fuse back and forth, went downstairs to see what was up, he was in a rage, apparently the fuse would switch off whenever he tried to cook food and work on the computer.
He was going to move out, couldn't stand living in the basement, couldn't live like that, unable to cook and work on the computer at the same time, he'd be gone at the end of the month...
I find that Middle Eastern people are frequently like that, taking offense at trifles and yet somehow ignoring really big things; it was the details that annoy them, imagined slights or insults in the wiring of the house.
I wasn't home enough to notice them, not much, sometimes you'd hear their music, curious and haunting, had they stayed I might have inquired what they were listening to. And everyday when I'd return from work there would be the smell of their cooking, delicious, and while I'd been fed at work it would make me hungry and want to eat again...the sound of children (heard but never seen), parties of taxi drivers gathering in the basement.
Now the flat is empty again, and I wonder who the next tenant will be. Were there any chance of the landlords listening I'd have some suggestions.
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He stops me as I walk past his stall.
"You have a practiced eye" he says. "A man of discriminating taste....
I like him. I stop and give his table a look over - nothing really, he's by far and away the most interesting attraction, older, handsome in a decrepit, faded academic sort of way, wan smile, missing tooth, slight English accent with the charm you imagine English people to possess but so very few of them do.
"A connoisseur..." he continues, then lifts an item off of his table and passes it to me "Take a look at this snow globe.".
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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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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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He's a regular, sort of, in for lunch with his girlfriend and another couple.
He's dressed a bit like a car salesman, suit and tie, hair slicked back, his friends are odd, the guy, big, quiet, short sleeves and arms covered with Tattoos. His girlfriend is beautiful.
They eat and they talk, Tony and his wife with Tattooed guy and his girlfriend, and after a while Tony borrows the private room with Tattoo to chat. They close the door, they need the privacy.
And while Tony, he looks like a car salesman, he's not, when you approach the table you overhear what he's talking about, not the subject, but the adjectives...."He's a fuckin loser...", "Damned cunt" .... "she's a fuckin"... his vocabulary would make even a car salesman blush.
While they're in the private room the girls stop talking, they just sit in front of their phones and text away. It's a business meeting, they don't have to be social when the men aren't around.
The men, whatever they're talking about, it takes a while, half an hour, but the women are fine.
I wonder what it's like, this ganster life, Tattoo, he's got a beautiful girlfriend with a look of perpetual boredom frozen on her face, Tony isn't doing so bad either, it's probably boring, a regular job, regular customers texting and phoning at awkward hours, that drug-addled urgency, deliveries to far flung parking lots in the North East, the glamor, it's not there, you only have to see them to know, it's just a lousy job like everyone elses.
It's a $300.00 bill for lunch. They pay in cash.