Another one I just found
- I know I’m not supposed to be repeating a lot of content on a blog (hits, etc), but I thought this was too good to let go:
Customers at Work
Three customers, there before my shift started, around 9:30. They’re playing on one of the middle tables, although most people choose the ones around the edges. One was an unremarkable grey-haired man, in shape for his sixties, sounds southern, drinking Jack on the rocks. David. The two women were drinking chardonnay. One was a brunette, tall, packed tight into a skirt and tights, her hair bunched around her head like a mango split down the middle to expose a tyrannosaur. She was powerful, held her body very aggressively, and you could see the guys she spoke to (including the thirty-something “player” players who are part of my late-night crowd) scratching behind their ears.
The other woman was quiet, with a dark brown puddle of shoulder-length hair, wearing a large, hanging cross over a black, loose dress and looked pretty much like a witch. She said her name was “Scarlet” (she battered her eyelids), although I later found out it was Linda. They were both at least fifty — or perhaps weathered forty-five year olds.
A regular bet me they were going to break a glass, with odds of ten to one. I bet him a dime. Three minutes later I lost a dollar. Scarlet cleaned up a bit of it and brought it over, telling me she wanted to pay now, as she wanted to leave. Having gone a few times to the bathroom with her friend I could see why––she looked like a coked-up fifty year old, gurning slightly…spent. She admitted that she had a nine-year-old son at home who needed to do a science project, which was why she wanted to leave. It was 10:30pm.
So Scarlet pays, giving me a forty dollar tip on a fifty dollar check, and tells me she’ll sort me out, if I need anything, I should just ask. I find out they’re “business partners” (fashion, I think), who met this guy downtown and asked him if he knew how to shoot pool. He said yes. Anyway, 15 minutes later they all decide to leave, but get distracted as the tyrannosaur starts hitting on these three Caribbean guys playing on the tight-table. David goes over there as well, they’re all having a good time, and then he bolts to the other side of the bar saying “I don’t want to get killed.” Apparently the tyrannosaur used the “n” word, specifically saying that she had “nigger lips,” before they were fashionable, “before people started paying for them.”
Dave turns out to be a good guy. After a couple more drinks he starts limbering up with phrases like “I just met them, didn’t know what I was in for,” “I don’t know whacked out crazy bitches like them.” He has a mild, easy voice to listen to, and begins telling me his own pool story. “I was unbeatable. An asshole comes up; young mother fucker. I see you shooting pool, he says, I’ll play you for a million. You know what, dickhead, I said, you don’t have a million…” I forget how it finished. He said to me and a regular, “those two make more than the three of us combined. And I don’t know how much you make, but I know how much I make, and how much they make, and it’s a lot.”
Anyway, this experience rounds off with one of the best conversations of my life, with Scarlet (Linda) the witch.
“Hey listen, you can take my platinum card, and take what you need,” she says. Dave is behind her, eyebrows continually raised. They’ve been kissing a little, but I don’t think he’s into it. She’s too fucked up.
“I don’t think you should be saying stuff like that,” I tell her.
“Listen, hold my hand,” she says seriously, but I laugh. “What?” she asks, offended.
“I just don’t hold customers’ hands that often, not from over the bar.” Dave’s shaking his head, mouthing fucked up at me.
“You know what that means?” she asks, staring me in the eyes.
“What?” I’m now trembling slightly. It takes her a moment to respond, and I’m starting to feel sullied. She’s squeezing my hand a little harder.
“That means it’s the real thing.” I don’t know what she means, but I can imagine a teenage girl telling her first fuck the same thing, with those same eyes. I play along.
“Yeah, it’s nice.”
“Could you help us out?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we’ve got a really big…” there’s a long pause, I think because she’s lost the thread of her idea “…space.
Dave is bewildered. He says, over her shoulder, “I don’t know have a fucking clue what she wants, it’s beyond me.”
I tell her I don’t understand, and she starts babbling.
“We’ll help you out…whatever you need…you can take the card, and whatever happens…I just don’t want anything…if anything bad happens…”
“I’m not expecting anything bad to happen” I tell her.
“It’s a great life. You have a great life.”
“Yeah, it’s ok, I like it here.”
“I want to fuck you.”
This last line throws me off a little, and I flee to the back room for a minute. I return, avoid her eyes, serve some customers, and she gets distracted. The guy has also stood up to get his jacket. Two French guys––thick French accents––came over to get drinks, hands in back pockets. I asked “do you guys want some loose American pussy?” They paused, wondering what that was, and said “Two budweisers please.”
The three of them stumble out by 11:13pm.
Oh, and I just found her card, the one whose name I can’t remember. I won’t give it, I’ll only say that she’s the president of “F by Fortuna Valentino.”
