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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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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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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 1781
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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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 1944
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.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
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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....
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 1767
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.