More true tales from the annals of capitalism

We got our first Internet order from someone who isn’t either related to us or knows us well enough to feel sorry for us. Pretty darn exciting if you ask me.

Otherwise, the Pro-Am fallout never made it down to Cannery Row but the weekend went okay, constant dribble of customers at around ten bucks a pop. We cleared a little over $500. Very cold but the sun was shining. The ocean, at high tide, lapped almost to the seawall and I worried that some of the tourist children cavorting carelessly on the rocks might get swept away by a maverick wave.

Around noon, during a lull, I had just figured out a major accounting glitch that had had been plaguing me for weeks and was furiously paging back through the Quickbooks accounts, retroactively applying it, when Ernesto stumbled into the store. He offered me his hand and flashed a smile. Hand like the proverbial dead fish.

“Will you do me a favor?” Ernesto asked.

“That depends,” I said.

I looked Ernesto up on the web once. At the height of the world music thing, he was actually pretty well regarded, traveling all over the country to perform at festivals. This was in the late eighties and early nineties. Then the world music thing fell apart.

Ernesto gestured to outside the door where a little cart sat with his canopy and his instruments. “Will you keep an eye on that for me for a while?”

“No can do, Ernesto,” I said. “I have to keep an eye on my customers.”

“Just for a little,” he said. “Just while I park the car –“ He glanced over at his maroon Nova. The maroon Nova had seen better days, when it wasn’t being stranded in a red zone alongside of which a very happy and triumphant meter maid had just pulled up, reaching for her ticket book.

“Holy shit!” said Ernesto.

And he just ran.

Leaving me with the cart.

I thought of dumping the instruments one by one over the seawall. Maybe they’d hit one of the tourist children on the head. This would not be good for business.

Instead I dragged the cart rather laboriously behind my sign. One of its wheels was almost flat. The entire thing lurched precariously to one side. It was a bitch to maneuver.

I was partly pissed and partly bemused. About a month ago, Ernesto had come into my store one day and hit me up for a hundred bucks so he could lure some real musicians down to the plaza to play with him. “A real salsa band,” he said. “Good for business!”

I shook my head. “Wrong time of year, Ernesto. It’s too cold for people to sit out in the square and listen to music.”
What I didn’t tell him is that we were struggling to make the overhead and anyway, even if we weren’t, I have my own band of starving musicians to play Lady Bountiful to. Plus I am really sick of El Condor Passa.

“I thought you went to Miami in the wintertime, Ernesto,” I said and he sighed, his face lost the happy mask just for a second.

“Not this year, baby. Not this year. This is a bad year.”

“How do you make money anyway? If you don’t mind me asking. Do people give you donations for playing?”

“No, I sell CD’s,” he said. “But this year, people aren’t buying. I stand out there, I play for six hours yesterday. I sell two CD’s. Sixteen dollars for six hours work.”

Yeah, yeah, times are tough all over, I’m thinking, but the thing is I kind of like Ernesto and he really is a talented musician. Sometimes towards the end of the afternoon when he breaks away from Brazil and the Shadow of Your Smile and begins riffing jazz or Delta blues, he makes the sunset really magical.

“You know if you want, you can give me a bunch of your CD’s and I’ll sell them for you out of the store. I won’t charge you a consignment fee.”

He flashed me a mournful smile. His teeth are not in great shape. “No, no. It’s okay. But, you know, I hate this stuff they want me to play. I want to play real music.”

Nobody wants you to play that other stuff either, I think but I forebear utterance. And, besides, that’s not exactly true. The tourists love that shit. “You’re so lucky,” they tell me when they come into the store. “The ocean, the beautiful music –“

When Ernesto wanders back an hour or so later, I’m having a mini-stampede at the cash register so I have an excuse not to listen to his apology. “This has not been a good day,” he tries to tell me. “Everything that could go wrong went wrong.” But I just flash him a smile, go back to the guy in the Raiders jacket: “See the difference between Marie Sharp’s and Susie’s is that the Susie’s has a lot of vinegar. And the vinegar traps the heat in your mouth. But the Marie Sharp’s is actually hotter –“

After Ernesto leaves, I close one of the doors and turn Alison Krauss up loud on the CD player.

(And this would be the natural ending point if I were writing a David Sedaris-type short story. But this ain’t no short story. This is my life!)

An hour or so later, a well-dressed blonde woman staggered into the store. Younger than me, but her skin had the leathery look of a vintage alcoholic. She was very drunk. “Hot sauce!” she cries in a deep Texas accent. “I just love hot sauce. I’ll buy every bottle of chipotle you got!”

“You don’t want to do that,” I said. The store was quite crowded at this point. The other customers were trying to ignore her.

“Baby,” sang Alison. “Now that I’ve found you –“

The drunken woman stood transfixed. “Who is that?”

“What?”

“The music. Who’s singing?”

She was having a Moment. Her and Alison Krauss.

“That’s Alison Krauss,” I said.

“Alison Krauss,” she repeated. “Alison Krauss.” She looked as though she was about to break into tears. “I’ve never heard anything so beautiful in my life. Sell me that CD.”

“What? No, no. I’m sorry. That’s not possible –“

“Why?” she said. “I’ve got money.”

She opened her purse and began pulling out hundred dollar bills. I felt like I was trapped in some horrible contemporary remake of Butterfield 8.

“You should put your money away,” I said. There were big red blotches on the bills where she had touched them, and then I noticed that the tip of her Fuck You finger – the one right next to the finger wearing the Diamond as Big as the Ritz – was practically sheared off.

“Oh my God! I’m bleeding,” she said. “I cut myself on that broken glass. That bastard –“

“You need to see a doctor,” I said. “Do you want me to call you a taxi? You need to go to the emergency room and get that taken care of.”

“That bastard,” she said. “You’re a sweet little thing to get all worried about me. Sure you won’t sell me that CD?”

“Put your money away before something happens to it,” I said.

“Got a band-aid, sugar?”

“No, but here –“ I fashioned a bandage from some cut-up paper-towels, taped it on her finger. “That is not going to hold,” I said. “You really need to get yourself to a doctor as soon as possible.”

“Write the name of that album down for me, honey,” she said. “Is there a CD store somewhere around here? And, here, why don’t you just take this –“ She tried to shove a blood-stained C-note my way. I had joined her and Alison Krauss in that Moment. The sun was shining, there were daisies on the grass and any minute now, a unicorn was going to wander over and proposition us: say, you babes look like you know where I can get some swinging, three-way, hardcore action –

“I can’t take your money,” I repeated over and over again. And finally got her out the front door.

Walked back to the counter.

Whereupon all the other customers in the store started to clap.

“You handled that really well,” said a man in an Eddie Bauer windbreaker. “Here. I’ll take three bottles of Marie Sharp’s. . And do you have a web site you sell from? I’ll take a card.”