Life Without Cigarettes
Mar. 18th, 2007 09:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraSo Friday ____ _____ wanders into the Little Store with a fresh sacrificial lamb – whoops! I mean prospective tenant – in tow.
____ _____ is the Vice President of Commercial Leasing for the mighty Cannery Row Company, yr basic hardy, garden variety Rotary Club Republican. Former chairman of the useless Monterey Chamber of Commerce, used to work for Starbucks.
(Once in his office while we were hammering out the terms of my new lease, he recalled those times for me and I swear his eyes filled with tears remembering the great health care benefits and those happy corporate days when his livelihood did not depend on lingually massaging ___ __________'s fat and hairy ass. But I digress.)
What empty storefront was this poor schmuck thinking of renting? The little Egyptian artifact store that went in and out of business in less than three months? The site formerly known as Satchmo's, a bobblehead emporium across right across the walkway from Bubba Gump's? The vacant Blue Finn pool hall, the defunct rock 'n' roll teeshirt store, the old kite store, the Sea Otter kitsch shoppe?
Well, of course, I acted overjoyed to see them. Shuffled and scraped! Kinda like that old Jerome Bixby sci fi story, It's A Good Life – whatever you do, don't think of those purple things in the corn!
"Pat is one of Cannery Row's most unusual success stories!" ____ _____ boomed.
Success story! Ya gotta love that. Though I hate being called "Pat."
The prospective tenant was an Indian guy with a wide polite smile. I wondered I could get my left eyebrow to twitch in Morse Code: sign nothing without foot traffic statistics.
There was another gentleman in the store while _____ and victim did the tour, a tall, handsome patrician-looking man with a familiar-looking face I couldn't quite place. I recognized the watch on his left wrist though – an oyster Rolex.
"Who are those people?" he asked when they finally left. "I've seen them everywhere today."
"Don't you smell the sulfur?" I said. "That was the Devil working on his latest contract."
"The Devil?"
"Well. The Vice President of Corporate Leasing for the Cannery Row Company. I guess he's not really the Devil. Just one of the lesser demons. Beelzebub maybe. Or Legion."
The man laughed. "I take it you don't like the Cannery Row Company."
"Do you work for them?"
"No."
"Well, then, I hate and despise them."
"What are they building out there?"
"A luxury hotel!"
"Hmmm," said the man. "We always stay in Pebble Beach."
I bet you do, I thought. I'd just noticed his shoes.
"Well, I have a son who really likes hot sauce. What would you recommend?"
I pitched him Marie Sharp's hot. It is the best hot sauce in the world, after all.
After I rang it up, he handed me $107.50.
"Uh – you overpaid by a hundred bucks," I said, trying to hand the Benjamin back to him.
"No, I want you to have that," he said, pushing it back again in my direction.
This was bizarre beyond belief but what the fuck – being craven and desperate and totally without dignity, I kept it.
Maybe this was his way of redistributing the world's wealth! Come the revolution, I will see to it his night soil quota is reduced by one barrel load per day!
In other news, I stopped smoking Monday. Even with nicotine patches, it's been rough. I am very snippy and had a vivid fantasy of clubbing this aging hippie woman to death yesterday after she spent half an hour in the Little Store wandering around, picking things up, putting them back down, all the while humming tunelessly to herself.
The horror of dealing with her was counterbalanced very nicely however when another lady came in later that afternoon with her well-behaved children and her equally well-behaved husband.
"Tyrisie! LaVaugn! You stand right where I can see you and don't you move a muscle," she said. She didn't even have to raise her voice!
"Now, you," she said to me. "Show me the hottest thing you have in the store."
So I did. She ended up dropping fifty bucks.
"I must say," I told her while I bubble wrapped her purchases. "Your kids are the best behaved children I have ever seen in this store. I see some real little monsters in here. How do you do it?"
"I beat them," she said. "They sass me, they get spanked."
And before you judge her consider that she lives in the heart of East Oakland where gang activity hasn't yet been dignified by words like "insurgency" but is a civil war nonetheless. By teaching these kids to tow the line, she is guaranteeing them an escort out of the war zone and almost certainly saving their lives.
Not to mention saving wear and tear on my nerves at the hot sauce store.
____ _____ is the Vice President of Commercial Leasing for the mighty Cannery Row Company, yr basic hardy, garden variety Rotary Club Republican. Former chairman of the useless Monterey Chamber of Commerce, used to work for Starbucks.
(Once in his office while we were hammering out the terms of my new lease, he recalled those times for me and I swear his eyes filled with tears remembering the great health care benefits and those happy corporate days when his livelihood did not depend on lingually massaging ___ __________'s fat and hairy ass. But I digress.)
What empty storefront was this poor schmuck thinking of renting? The little Egyptian artifact store that went in and out of business in less than three months? The site formerly known as Satchmo's, a bobblehead emporium across right across the walkway from Bubba Gump's? The vacant Blue Finn pool hall, the defunct rock 'n' roll teeshirt store, the old kite store, the Sea Otter kitsch shoppe?
Well, of course, I acted overjoyed to see them. Shuffled and scraped! Kinda like that old Jerome Bixby sci fi story, It's A Good Life – whatever you do, don't think of those purple things in the corn!
"Pat is one of Cannery Row's most unusual success stories!" ____ _____ boomed.
Success story! Ya gotta love that. Though I hate being called "Pat."
The prospective tenant was an Indian guy with a wide polite smile. I wondered I could get my left eyebrow to twitch in Morse Code: sign nothing without foot traffic statistics.
There was another gentleman in the store while _____ and victim did the tour, a tall, handsome patrician-looking man with a familiar-looking face I couldn't quite place. I recognized the watch on his left wrist though – an oyster Rolex.
"Who are those people?" he asked when they finally left. "I've seen them everywhere today."
"Don't you smell the sulfur?" I said. "That was the Devil working on his latest contract."
"The Devil?"
"Well. The Vice President of Corporate Leasing for the Cannery Row Company. I guess he's not really the Devil. Just one of the lesser demons. Beelzebub maybe. Or Legion."
The man laughed. "I take it you don't like the Cannery Row Company."
"Do you work for them?"
"No."
"Well, then, I hate and despise them."
"What are they building out there?"
"A luxury hotel!"
"Hmmm," said the man. "We always stay in Pebble Beach."
I bet you do, I thought. I'd just noticed his shoes.
"Well, I have a son who really likes hot sauce. What would you recommend?"
I pitched him Marie Sharp's hot. It is the best hot sauce in the world, after all.
After I rang it up, he handed me $107.50.
"Uh – you overpaid by a hundred bucks," I said, trying to hand the Benjamin back to him.
"No, I want you to have that," he said, pushing it back again in my direction.
This was bizarre beyond belief but what the fuck – being craven and desperate and totally without dignity, I kept it.
Maybe this was his way of redistributing the world's wealth! Come the revolution, I will see to it his night soil quota is reduced by one barrel load per day!
In other news, I stopped smoking Monday. Even with nicotine patches, it's been rough. I am very snippy and had a vivid fantasy of clubbing this aging hippie woman to death yesterday after she spent half an hour in the Little Store wandering around, picking things up, putting them back down, all the while humming tunelessly to herself.
The horror of dealing with her was counterbalanced very nicely however when another lady came in later that afternoon with her well-behaved children and her equally well-behaved husband.
"Tyrisie! LaVaugn! You stand right where I can see you and don't you move a muscle," she said. She didn't even have to raise her voice!
"Now, you," she said to me. "Show me the hottest thing you have in the store."
So I did. She ended up dropping fifty bucks.
"I must say," I told her while I bubble wrapped her purchases. "Your kids are the best behaved children I have ever seen in this store. I see some real little monsters in here. How do you do it?"
"I beat them," she said. "They sass me, they get spanked."
And before you judge her consider that she lives in the heart of East Oakland where gang activity hasn't yet been dignified by words like "insurgency" but is a civil war nonetheless. By teaching these kids to tow the line, she is guaranteeing them an escort out of the war zone and almost certainly saving their lives.
Not to mention saving wear and tear on my nerves at the hot sauce store.
