How I Got My New Computer

[mallorys_camera]

Summer on Cannery Row has been a bust. Oh, we're making money. Some money. But not a lot of money.

Of course, neither has anyone else.

Louie Linguini's, for example, must be hemorrhaging green. Laminated menus lay ignored on the big plastic tables alongside the faux New Orleans staircase; the pigeons shit on them. Likewise the canvas umbrellas on the outside deck - a spectacular view for the cost of an over-cooked, over-priced fish taco - are dripping with guano. I should note for the record that the seagulls and pigeons hereabouts are ridiculously well-fed, surviving on a calorie-rich diet of straggling tourist fast-food droppings and fryer grease which fact is reflected in their poop, liquid and plentiful, falling from the heavens like white rain.

Why have the tourists abandoned Monterey? Why does the ghost of John Steinbeck not intercede with the Great Retail Gods in their discount warehouse on the foot of Mount Olympus?

The July 4th weekend was a particular disappointment. We made $1500, well short of my projections. We did a lot of sales but they were all penny ante sales; raspberry chipotle marinade, not chili-patterned, bulk-produced-in-China salsa servers. Joe, the Bargetto manager, warned me about this when I first set up shop. “The thing is you're gonna have to sell a lot of hot sauce to make that monthly nut. You need some big ticket items.”

“So how's business?” Bozo Senior asked on one of his smooth jazz breaks. We both smoke and have fallen into the companionable habit of taking our cigarette breaks together. We lean on the sea wall, gaze out into the wild blue beyond the kelp bank. Talk trash about the tourists.

“Business could be better,” I allow.

“Are we playing too loud? I can turn down the amp - “

“No, no. It's just that there don't seem to be as many fun-loving vacationers as I was led to believe there would be when I signed that lease.”

“I know what you mean,” sighed Bozo, popping a breath mint. Then he brightened. “Hey, did I tell you that we're playing here six days a week?”

“Here?” I say, faintly alarmed. Smooth jazz tends to create a kind of cluster effect: hoards of people standing around in Steinbeck Plaza under the impression that they're listening to something worth paying for but getting it for free. When the music is over, they quickly disburse before the hat can be passed. Which means they ain't coming into the stores to open their wallets.

“Well, Monterey. Over at the wharf, five days a week; here, one. The Shakes have kind of adopted us.”

“Ah, the Shakes! Monterey's premiere dysfunctional family.”

“So,” says Bozo licking the remains of the breath mint from between his bleached teeth. “Has Ernesto said anything to you?”

“Ernesto?”

“Last Sunday, he threatened us.”

“Threatened you?” Ernesto with his plump little cheeks and his hangdog expression, his limp, moist fish of a handshake? I found that hard to believe. “What's he gonna do? Lock you in a room and play 'I'd rather be a hammer than a nail' till you scream for mercy?”

“I don't know what he's gonna do. Does he own a gun?”

“A gun?” I remembered the number of times that Ernesto had wandered into the store sniffing around to see whether I might be interested in some light money laundering.

“High volume cash business,” Ernesto had observed, looking around approvingly.

“Cash business, yes,” I'd said. “I don't know about the volume part.”

Ernesto. A Mexican drug lord?

Stranger things had happened.

“Terrible habit,” said Bozo idly, flicking his cigarette on to the beach where it nearly collided with the head of a horribly overweight woman in seersucker shorts. She didn't notice. Who knew Big Dog did seersucker?

“Excuse me,” I told him. And followed a pair of tattooed bikers into the store. They bought a chili-patterned, bulk-produced-in-China salsa server, and a pair of flamingo salt and pepper shakers to match. Which only goes to prove that you can't judge a book by its cover.

Around five Ben came by. He tried to hide his smirk. “I thought I'd take over now so that you can go to the fabulous Bill and Heidi barbecue.”

“The fabulous Bill and Heidi barbecue!” I said. “Of course. The high point of any Independence Day celebration.”

We haven't been seeing a lot of Bill and Heidi recently. That's partly because we hardly see anyone. But mostly because after you've just spent ten hours behind a counter doing open comedy mikes for every random hominid who wanders in off the street, about the last thing you want to do is engage in a human interaction that involves work. And Heidi is a lot of work. I like her. I can't say I particularly enjoy her, though. She's almost pathologically self-involved. She's quick to take slight. She has a sense of humor but only after you've spent ten minutes deconstructing the taxonomy of the joke. She's generous but in that spastic, Asperger way - constantly giving you things you have no use for, that will clutter up your kitchen cabinets or your closet shelves for centuries to come. You can't unload them at Good Will because she routinely checks Good Will for fresh gift ideas.

Plus she's a really terrible cook.

I got home only to discover the i-Book had crashed again. Fucking i-book. Piece of shit with a measly little screen and a date battery that from Day 1 had refused to remember calendar settings thereby causing me to have to reset the time stamp on the stupid thing twenty times a day. If I didn't catch the tic quickly enough, then the errant time stamp would infect a million invisible processes inside the operating system causing them all to freeze. I was running Norton Utilities literally five times a day.

Obviously - time for a new computer. But I didn't want to have to spend the money on a new computer. I didn't want to have to upgrade to Mac OS X. All my applications are OS 9. Anyway, I figured my time was worthless to everyone but me. It was better to spend three hours a day running Norton Utilities than to upgrade. Anyway, it gave me lots of time to keep au courant with the latest serial killer novels.

Then I couldn't put it off any longer. It was time for Heidi.

Three kinds of macaroni salad. Over-done hamburgers. Watery beans.

“Can I fix you a plate, Patrizia?” asks genial Bill.

“I've eaten, thanks,” I said, lifting my hand.

“Why did you eat since you knew we'd be serving food?” asked Heidi, tight-lipped.

“Because I wanted to hang out with you,” I said.

“That's what you always say,” said Heidi. “But then you never do.” She was walking funny, kind of stiff-legged. She grabbed a plate and started stuffing food on to it.

“Honey,” said Bill. “They have a retail business. It's a sixteen hour a day operation.”

“Seventeen, actually,” I said. Heidi thrust the plate at me.

I didn't know what else to do so I took it. Poked the salad with a fork. What was that black thing hiding behind that clump of fused spaghetti. An olive?

“It's very good,” said Heidi. “I used Balsamic vinegar.”

“Mom, can I go over to Halen's house?” whined Robin. “They're setting off fireworks.”

“No,” I said. “You can stay here with us. There'll be plenty of fireworks.”

Bill's son, Sean, was there with a couple of his friends. Also in attendance, another Bill - a musician friend of Bill Sullivan's - and his wife, Laurie who was dressed in a peasant skirt and a scoop-necked, bare-armed blouse, a style she really should have given up wearing twenty years ago if she didn't intend to put serious time in at the gym.

Clearly she didn't.

“You know, choice is an illusion,” Laurie told me. “You think you're doing something because you decide to do something. But really, it's all just molecules running wild in your brain.”

“I've always suspected it was something like that,” I said.

“Would you like to see Punky's grave?” asked Bill.

Punky - Bill and Heidi's cat - got hit by a car a couple of weeks ago. I had planned to send them a sympathy card but never got around to it. I never much liked Punky. When we lived next door, she'd routinely lay in wait to beat up my cat. It got so bad that Meezer was afraid to go outdoors. But I knew how much Heidi had doted on the animal, matching its collar to the holiday seasons, fretting endlessly over Punky's diet and moods. The cat was the true child of this middle-aged marriage.

Bill had erected a large stone cross over the grave. Flanked by a plaster statue of St. Francis.

“Very nice,” I said.

“She's doing badly,” said Bill. “Very badly. At night, it's -“ He shook his head. “I'm worried.”

“It's another death in a life that's been crowded with them, “ I said. “It brings stuff up.”

“She doesn't sleep,” said Bill.

“She's never slept,” I said.

I tried to connect, really I did. I trailed Heidi into the kitchen. She was standing with a knife in her hand, frowning at an over-sized angel-food cake. Personally, I hate angel-food cakes. Why not just dispense with the pretense and serve your guests upholstery foam?

“So, how are you?” I asked.

“I'm fine,” she said. “Just fine.” She smiled at me to prove it. Her eyes were glassy. What was she on?

“And the new job?”

“It's fine. They gave me cards and flowers when Punky died. A little balloon bouquet. I thought that was sweet.”

“Very sweet.”

“So. Do you even remember that we invited you over for dinner on your birthday?”

“Of course I remember, Heidi -“

“But you didn't come -“

“Well, no. It was my birthday. I wanted to be alone.”

“Alone! On your birthday. That's just weird, Patrizia.”

I was in a really dreadful mood by the time Robin and I shuffled off to the hillside where Monterey old-timers gather to view fireworks. Robin was being a real brat. Not even ten yet and already he's got that teenage thing down, the pouting, the entitlement, the take-away love game when he doesn't get what he's angling for. I wish I could say the fireworks lifted my mood but all I could think was how much I hate the whole mysticism of the nation state. Patriotism is just primate pseudospeciation elevated into an ideology. The same old molecules rioting in your brain.

Then I came home and found that Milo had knocked over the cup of coffee I had carelessly left next to the i-Book. Totally ruined. Fortunately I'm obsessive about back-ups and my credit is good. I type these words on a brand new G3 running OSX.

Comments

[thewindrose.livejournal.com]

Congrats on your new computer, even if it wasn't exactly the time you had planned on buying a new computer. I hope it works out for you!! I am still getting the hang of OSX, but it's getting there.

I had a few friends like that, but I've been slowly deliberately dropping them. It's not that I don't like them, but why hang out with folks who make me feel miserable? The only problem is that there is no "good" way to do it - especially with needy people. Emily Post never told us how to drop friends with dignity.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Well, see, I've always been of the opinion that you're lucky if you have ten real friends in a lifetime. The rest are interchangeable units that plug into a mental circuit board. Meaning: you like them well enough now but you know damn well you won't remember their names ten years from now. I don't drop people per se. They just... dissappear as circumstances change.

[wailaki.livejournal.com]

The Tao works in mysterious ways, in this case with Milo as its agent. Your time IS TOO more valuable. In fact, it's all you've got. SO valuable, that I have to suggest you stop wasting it on passive-agressive bitchy women who have nowhere to go except running for the shelter of Mother's little helper. On the other hand, they provide you with fodder. And your faithful readers LOVE to live your vicarious life. Especially poignant was the description of the slick white guano dropping from the sky.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Fodder, yeah. I think Heidi reminds me of my late mother.