Back to work, open 'til close. There are a lot of outstanding bills to be remedied, and I'm paranoid that we'll be busy - crazy busy, busier than I can handle.
These fears are for nothing. The restaurant is dead. The lockdown - essential travel only - has scared off the Albertans. For good reason. A few of the locals, regulars, people that you'd missed over the winter, hardy diners who don't mind braving the cold winds, variable spring, they come, and there's time to properly serve them, chat to them on the deck.
Between tables, sweep, clean, "make busy", but this can go on only so long, the owners tell me to "bring a book". Here, that is unheard of, but that's how dead we are.
The Ferry Landing, signs advising travelers to "Stay in their car" - it used to be exiting your car on the ferry was prohibited, now - even on the Ferry Landing. We call to clarify - no, they mean on the ferry, but the sign doesn't say that, and people, a year and a half in, have been blindly conditioned to unquestioningly accept authority, and are staying in their cars.
Time passes. The slow murder of innocent days. When the weather turns - if it turns, business will improve. But it's unlikely, given the State of Alberta vs the State of BC's numbers - that the border will open this summer.
The first night after work I celebrate at the 7/11 buffet. 2 cheddar smokies, with all the fixings, hot peppers, mustard, sauerkraut & onions, heaped high with processed cheese squirt and chili. Mmmm-mmmm-mm.
Now, this should be a straightforward sort of in-out deal, a 24 hour turn-around to a short-notice explosion, 2 minute warning to find a washroom, pull over, whatever, 7/11 is a dodgy proposition at best, made more so by working in the service industry. But a man has to eat. And so - the rest of the week - waiting. Is it coming? When is it coming? How is my belly?
Days pass. This is unheard of. By now there should have been the standard 7/11 explosion, an eleven second eruption of fury that rings the bowl, a black tarry viscous mess of abysmal digestion that clouds the bathroom, chokes the senses, asphyxiates even the author, shitsicles dangling from the toilet seat, but my belly is suspiciously quiet.
There are, however, little foreshadowing's, vapors, emanations as you pace the restaurant, sour, pungent smells that warn of disaster...
In the meantime there's the wanderers. A 50 something lady that showed up in the parking lot of the restaurant, green Subaru station wagon, out of gas. She just wants to park there until ....
...there's no plan. The owners help her out with some gas, get her off the property. Every year there's a few, they come here from God knows where, looking for God knows what, even they couldn't tell you. They just come, arrive lost, and then disappear.
She's not disappearing as quick as they'd like. She's driving from the ferry landing to the Superette, then turns around and drives back. A hundred yards, if that. And forth. We watch her from the back loading dock while the sun sets. It's no wonder she has no gas. She comes into the restaurant, looks at the menu - no mask, not surprising, and then leaves. She parks at the top of the road and spends the night in her Subaru.
After a week of this the police come, the car leaves, driven by an officer or towed or maybe of her own volition. Who knows?
Every day check the weather, still too cool for the patio. The forecast, invariably wrong, even when it's just a case of "Observe the weather", check your phone. It's wrong. A forecast 18 degrees turns into an 8 degree afternoon, with wind chill. My phone tells me it's lovely outside. The patio is empty.
Hours pass, when customers finally show up you're more irate that they came than glad to see them. This is how bad it's gotten.
Thank goodness for Ken. Poor Ken, he's bearing the brunt of my boredom. Chris and I, we make up "Facts about Ken", and then share them with him. Like that Kens can just split in 2 like cellular mitosis, and one of the Ken's will immediately leave to go dig himself a basement someplace. The other stays with the restaurant. Or that NASA has to track the position of every Ken on earth to effectively pull off a space launch. Or...
...it's the same sort of inanity, over an over. We're all bored out of our skulls. Me and Chris revisit Peter Caine's Bigfoot videos. The ones where he shows off the Bigfoot Penis and then milks it for Bigfoot Sperm.
I have an idea, involving Bigfoot Sperm and making Ken a Bigfoot surrogate father of the species...but he's not hearing it, won't hear it, and I'm getting angry "It was the last one of the species and they only gestate for 14 months and I can't believe you're that selfish..."
The restaurant is slow and it's killing me but I take some comfort in knowing that it's been harder on Ken.
Monday, a full 4 days later and 7/11 makes it's departure in much it's usual style. Now for a couple of much needed days off. As slow as it's been I'm not used to standing around for 9 hours a day and it's taken it's toll.