Home
A regular transit customer
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 1694
He greets all the girls as they get on the bus, he's sat up near the driver, slouched, but when they board he sits up and smiles and waves and says hello.
There's something not right with him. It's late at night, I've seen him on the bus before, he must have a job downtown. There's a large scar on his forehead, his eyes go in different directions, his face looks as though he'd survived - barely - a severe automobile accident. I'm not sure if he was born this way or it was an accident.
He's alone, after he says "hi" he gets all shy and slouches over again, forefinger stuck up his nose.
He misses a girl getting on the bus, misses his greeting, and so she doesn't pick up that things aren't quite right with him and sits near the front of the bus.
Eventually he looks up, recognizes the new arrival and waves hello. "Hi" he says. "Cold outside, isn't it?". He doesn't sound slow.
"Sure is" she replies, and he gets all shy again and begins picking his nose. After a few minutes he screws up his courage to chat. "When I get home I'm going to watch Fear Friday on...." and he names a channel.
"Oh" she says, regretting now that she sat so near the front. "Do you like horror movies?"
"Love them" he replies. "They're my favorite. I love zombies and vampires and ...." and the conversation begins. The bus is quiet.
There's something unnerving about him, the ambiguity of his disability, and there's something so perfect about his favorite movie genre, the girl now, perhaps she's entertaining thoughts of him following her home as he outlines in vivid detail the gory details of his private obsession, yet it's somehow a moment that Jack Nicholson would be proud of....
Waiting...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2187
3 parcels in transit. Tibet, the US and Belgium.
Every day hurrying home after work, the one thing to look forward to... (well, that and some scotch or rum). But the mailbox is empty.
I check my confirmation emails, it's been a couple of weeks, the packages SHOULD be showing up soon...
But nothing yet. When they do it'll doubtless be 2 or three in a day, the staggered order times all log jamming together until finally they arrive all at once; the pains I took to provide small incentives each week will have been for naught.
Nothing today. But there's still tomorrow, and if nothing comes tomorrow then it wouldn't be unreasonable to have high hopes for Monday...
The news is grim
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2202
It's always grim. We've had a slow week, the weather, the season, we're not a summer sort of place.
But the owner always consoles us with the bad news of the world. He talks to the food suppliers, the wine reps, other restaurants are down 50, 60% from last year. Some are months behind in paying the suppliers and their rent. He lists the restaurants, we know them, sometimes he tells us outright, other times we're left to guess the moral on our own.
We're lucky to have a job. It's tough out there. You'll never find another job this good.
The news is always grim.
The Resident Artist
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 1824
She's there first thing when I show up. The resident artist.
She hangs about the restaurant while your setting up, for no reason in particular, just hanging out. She's about 60, terrible hair, heavily overweight, obviously plastic teeth carefully molded into the original overbite by an sadistically meticulous dentist. She has a particularly vapid smile which she imagines to be charming. It's just offputting.
The staff despise her.
She hangs out, follows the owner about, talking to him...she just wants to keep in touch, and staff ignore her until she manages to catch someone's eye and avails herself of the opportunity to ask for a cappuccino. She's a freeloader. After the cappuccino she'll drop hints to the owner, she'd love some food, dessert maybe....but while she's drinking the cappuccino she talks about her many ailments. Her hip, her back, slipped discs, she's got these magnets that a friend gave her and they're doing her a world of good (and one is tempted to observe that placebos work best with psycho-somatic ailments, but she wouldn't get it...).
After a while the owner gets busy and so she follows the staff around, she has pictures of her work on a digital camera she's just happened to bring with her, commonplace mountain scenes and landscapes, they look passable, although anything looks passable when reduced to the size of a one inch LCD display. There are cougars and wolves as well, and we feign interest and remark upon her obvious talent.
We're obviously lying, but it's what she wants to hear.
And she hangs about a bit longer, mooching, trying to stick a finger in every dessert that comes out of the fridge, waiting for the owner to offer her some food but he's busy and forgets and so eventually she runs out of people to show her pictures to and she just disappears.
Page 984 of 1085