by Evan Dara
And here’s Gerry, hardcore Zappatista and hardercore McLuhanytooner, wrapping the electrical cord around his video projector, so he can carry it home. Gerry showed some kind of documentary tonight about some kid in San Diego who stole a tank from a local military base, then went on a rampage driving it through town. And I do mean through: the kid knocked down lampposts and mailboxes, and lots and lots of shrubs.
We must have had about thirty people in the back room – Gerry calls it the Come-Unity Room – so that was good. Sure, we’ve got to move a few tables around, and some people just show up for the show, i.e., they don’t order anything, but you know. Gerry also leads the every-other-Wednesday FAIR – sorry: fairness and accuracy in reporting – sessions, and we’re lucky if we get eighteen people for that. But Gerry does it all for free, and even handles publicity. That is if Gerry handing out, to anyone who’ll take them, half-page xeroxes crammed with listings of his activities, which he only makes because he’s got a friend at a bookstore who lets him use their photocopier when no one’s looking, is what you’d call publicity.
Point is, I don’t have to do the clean-ick. I’m supposed to wrap at eight, but you know how that goes. Eight becomes nine, then nine becomes two figures, and I’m still here, and more importantly, I’m still here when someone once said that’s the hour we do scrub. And so I get out a rag, and say pardon me scuse me to the CU students who’re sitting with textbooks and laptops spread across their tables, and some of them even hand salt-shakers to me, without really ever taking their eyes from their screens, and go a-wiping, getting all probe-y in the lids with the tip of my first finger and the reinforced pointy corners of the rags, and then slurping all around the glass threading with the heel of my hand riding rag-center, no more than two tables per rag if you please.
And so then I’ve got to get a few more rags. And then it’s over. I put terminal table 20’s Tabasco bottle all towards the wall, label out, and now all de-oozed up top, and go burrow all the gunkoid rags into the hamper, and here I’m wondering: What was all that about? That wasn’t so bad. Why, every night, I mean every night, resistance? And here I’m thinking I’ve got to shut down the chiming, just remove the wind chimes, because it really ain’t so bad.
Ain’t, actually, nothing at all. When you come to not-think about it.
And here’s Agnes, on til 11 tonight, standing by table 5 and making another page of her checkpad curl up from pencil pressure. She’s a Limon dancer, and she kinda slides on back to the cook area and clips the slip up on the order wheel, and it reminds me that we don’t have sawdust on the floor here, even though in survey after survey 80% of the respondents think we do. If we’d ever done a survey.
But that’s kinda predictable. The building here’s pretty old, best guess dating from the ’30s. Back when Pearl Street was a street. When it was a pearl. Connie, the owner, had the place for at least a few years before she followed some trout-farming guy to Missoula. Some say he was a supplier. Some say she was supplying him. That was maybe eighteen years ago, which is maybe six years after the street was bricked, and the place has kinda kept running on its own since then. Somebody probably sends Connie a piece of paper or something once a year, but you’ll have to ask somebody else about that. In practical terms, the closest thing Laz’s Trident Café has to an owner is an account at the bank. Though I still wouldn’t mind meeting Connie some day.
Do we really stay open 24 hours? Don’t really know, and I don’t think many other people do either. But I’ll take the general word for it, and I will vouch that the electricity’s running every time I’ve seen the place, or been in to tote plate. And Bongo, the guy who twists balloons just up the street, he told me he’s seen the place unattended, and that night people come in and take their coffee or muffins or whatnot and just leave what’s right in the wicker basket. It’s not impossible.
And why not? Five nights a week – OK, usually six – I’m here til late, because I like to help out with the Midnight Special. I even like just to watch it. Now, this ain’t the train or the light or the whistle or the prisoners. This isn’t even our Daily or Blue Plate Special, which only actually happens on the days when Riqi isn’t out with Rachel too late the night before. It’s just that, come twelve, actually twelve-ish, we kinda put out all the stuff we otherwise would have to throw away – one-day bread products, older fruits and vedges, unsold fish, certain meat things and sauces, the perishable stuff – and let people have it, you know, first come first gits, for whatever price they want, right on down to the best price of all. And if you don’t contribute to the wicker you’re even more welcome. Maybe you can’t.
What’s nice is that there isn’t a gold rush. We just set the stuff out on a few of the tables in the back room, and we don’t even bother to push the tables together. Let’s get real. Now that would be too much work. And yes sometimes there’s a line, and sometimes a bit of a bump on the way to the better stuff – read: meat – and sometimes a few of the Specialists get a little agitated or, well, redolent or grizzly, but in general things run pretty well. Well enough that we do it again the next day.
And have been doing it for years. I’ve been here just over four years, since maybe eight months after I graduated, and I don’t think they’ve, we’ve, missed a night. Plates, forks and knives are out by eleven thirty. The Special itself, spread over maybe six serving trays, by when we’re convinced we aren’t going to sell any more of it. Sure we have street people, and sure we have CU students, and opportunistic CU students, and opportunistic CU students with trust funds, and I hope they all enjoy. Just let them leave the silverware. We pretty much cover our costs, and sometimes, not often, we have an extra hand at the sink, and for our distinguished clientele this is their chance to check out non-dualistic dining. People seem to like it, and to understand they shouldn’t raise too much of a stink, in any which way.
And I’ll ask you to hold off on all those words like unlikely, or highly unlikely, or rad, or what-a-buncha, or any others such like that, because we’re actually classical, Smithian, right there in the tradition. The café earns just enough corn to come back to work the next day, and start all over again. An elegant formula, for once properly applied. So OK? We’re right on model.
McLuhan says If it works it’s obsolete. And here’s Gerry again, coming up beside me. He’s going back to the back room to make sure he hasn’t missed anything. Gerry doesn’t miss much. He has a long face and a long-ish nose and wears very comfortable-looking sweatpant-like pants over high-top black sneakers, with white laces. He also wears a great last name: Violetta. Gerry Violetta. Once, I was talking about some book with a CU student eating a Mediterranean sandwich, and Gerry happened to be walking by, and he musta heard something cause he said Laughter and Forgiving? And we said No, and Gerry said Because those are my two big things. OK? That’s Gerry. Now do you understand? Frank says Without deviation progress is not possible, Gerry says and he moves off back to the back room and doesn’t find anything, which suits him just fine.
And now it’s tomorrow, and I’m in a little early, if forty minutes counts as something worth commenting on. I saw Alana leaning into a face-down fat man on the street, massaging him to readiness for a noontime gorge, and we got Samby Jack having his morning coffee at table 8, which most days becomes afternoon coffee, but what can you do, and there’s that guy who likes the Denver Post with his French toast hold the hash-browns. And we also got a few new contributions to the Gore Vidal Memorial Anagram Board, all written with the same hand, so I suspect someone’s been doing homework: valid ogre, viral doge, I Love Drag. I’ve seen the first two before, but am grateful for the third, and that probably explains why I keep cleaning the eraser and refilling the chalk, which we have in some nice colors, pinks and purples, and now I got to go outside.
Here it’s still quiet, with only a few errands-runners and a few tourists out for a last turkey stroll, saying goodbye to Pearl Street in shorts, big guts, and large, complexly facetted and did I say LARGE sneakers. No buskers out yet
, not even Kenny Lightfoot the card-trickster, it’s too early for them too, but bronze Betty’s still sitting at the corner of Broadway on her bronze swing, and the sun is sure already here, with that lovely, amber, late-morning brightness, singing down through blue blue sky. And the planters are trimmed and the bricks still there, walked-on, rough-textured, and immaculate, and just store after store, store after store after store after store, big windows smiling to the hoverers and flitters. But it’s quiet now.
And now I’m back in the café, and reaching behind the register for my checkpad. OK, I’m still twenty minutes ahead of sked, but it’s not like I’m gonna put in for extra time, and even so they don’t even need me, because there’s practically no one here. Just the same Samby and the same Post-toast-no-hash-browns guy. And so I check the state of the coffeemaker and, gratitude defined, see it’s refreshed and clean. Monique must have done her number when she got in, usually at eight. And so now I fill up two cups and offer them to Mayuck and his guest, who’re both standing in the main room. Mayuck looks at me, and smiles, and says thanks, and accepts his coffee with another smile, and says hello. Both Mayuck and his guest are carrying sheaves of papers, and both are making notes as they walk around the extremities of the main dining room, eyes down. Best guess is that the guest is some city guy reviewing the flooring, as that’s what they’re looking at. At least that’s what Mayuck’s pointing to, with his pen.
Soon they leave, and I go to the slot on the side of the register’s desk and take out menus and start scrubbing them, they’re laminated, wipes clean with a sponge. Some little efficiency here. And then I just go back and hang out a bit with Carlos, the morning cook, cause I’m not really working yet, and he’s cooking up the splat du jour, those kinda overspiced and deeply heterogeneous stew-like entities he sometimes makes, and ladles out with a ladle, and serves with homies and salad. And today it’s tomato-seitan-quinoa-whoknowswhat, and now Mayuck is getting up from the bench outside with his guest and they’re walking off.
When I think of Mayuck in my off hours, it’s with him in a t-shirt with a large capital letter I on it, for Inevitable. Or maybe Inescapable. But in profile, the I bends around his fat stomach and becomes a C. But I have no idea what that stands for. Mayuck’s dad owned our building, and he also owned four other properties in downtown Boulder, including three on Pearl Street. Daddy made a stack of it on the other places, but he kinda kept our rent unnaturally low, kinda like he was subsidizing us, who knows why. He said he liked our sugarless bialys. When we’d tell him that bialys don’t have sugar, he’d say There you go, and walk off with one. A sweet guy, quiet, and also not exactly what you’d call svelte, but his smile had some nice underpainting and you were glad to see it bop in.
Then, of course, the infarction came, and all of a sudden it’s his sons who are showing up. Hadn’t been in here more than once over the last fifteen years, according to those who’d know, namely Agnes, but now they’re Back In Town. And they’re really friendly and they’re really nice, and then the letter comes with a number so ridiculous that Riqi knocks over a mixing bowl, happily empty but therefore loud. Quick calculations produce multiple, gaspy articulations of the words Almost quadruple, and when we’re finally able to read some more we find the phrase Though of course you have priority which we don’t because we can’t. Can’t as in no way can’t. Which gave us, as of that barbed-letter day, until the lease runs out, about eight more weeks.
And of course we called the family’s office, and Daniella, who’d been answering the phone there since like the Pat Boone years, suddenly had this bright, bright new voice, and this new name, and after we left two messages we got a call back from Mayuck. And he said what he had to, and he said he had to because his father’s affairs had passed for control to some kind of trust, some kind of trust run by some kind of board, which by law had to run the trust in the best interest of the trust, and to which there was no, but absolutely no, form of appeal. But absolutely no.
And when we pointed out that by our figuring the value of his father’s properties had gone up by about 4000% over the past twenty years, he listened. And when we mentioned that we were just now barely barely making our current rent, he listened. And when we and now I got to go outside.
And here, happily, it’s warm, nice and sunny and face-warming warm, cause the sun’s just past noontime and the few, tufty, scattered clouds just can’t compete. And here I’m wondering how it can be so sunny and warm here in Seattle, with all its gray and rain, cause here’s that clothes store I saw in Seattle, and here’s that shoe store I saw in Seattle, and here’s that sneaker store I saw in Seattle, and here’s that home-furnishings store I saw. And these guys, I mean these guys, in addition to all their design efficiencies and economies of scale, they don’t even have to make a profit. They’re just billboards. They’re just advertisements for their non-selves.
And now I go back in, cause now we only got six weeks and change left, and I got to work, cause my shift has started. And so I grab my checkpad and look for customers, such beings being exactly what we need. But because we couldn’t even fit enough customers in here 36/7 to crack the new nut, last month we hired someone to look for angels. We’re actually laying out for this. At the interview, the guy we ended up hiring said he knew a potential savior, some executive who works a few office-suites down from Sumner Rothstein – sorry: Redstone – and who has a ski house here, but now our angel-hunter isn’t saying much. And we’ve also started looking for a new location, but we need pedestrian traffic and so we’ve got to stay nearby. There was a spot over on Walnut Street, on 13 block, a good-sized place, but there was a consideration with the plumbing there, and when we heard the rent we said Hoo. So we’re still looking. And – wait! – no, we’re still looking.
Ironically, maybe defensively, part of me thinks we shouldn’t do it, we shouldn’t try to move. How can you pack and carry maybe 24 years of, well, I don’t really know what it is. Of James that dry-cleaner guy buying bracelets for all the waitresses on his 45th birthday. Of floorboards holding, OK nestling, crumbs from the lips of chatty Tina, who said she was allergic to napkins. And from several people without such allergy. Of Riqi stumbling into mixing up the all-time Platonic pea soup, and then not wanting to sell any of it, and then selling it. And then its not being commented upon. Of endorphins winging through our four-thousandth consumer of nachos grandes, if that’s the plural. Of that guy who’d steal all the toothpicks when we’d go get him extra Russian dressing for his turkey club to travel. And we thought we’d created a restaurant permaculture.
domestic?
laundry service?
Auran-kin?
And here’s that track-suit man who always orders his tuna melt Really Super Clean, and I write that down but don’t know what it means, and Carlos doesn’t know what it means, but apparently we do because the man always looks at the set-down plate and says Great. And here are a few more hungry souls, and so I ask you, Is this enough? Sorry: this plus one-and-a-half rooms above a retired postman’s garage and wages that almost let me think the sacred characters IRA? Wish I could say. I got another note from Stanford maybe two months ago, but didn’t open it. Maybe I should. Put it this way. I don’t think they’re writing to say their offer’s cancelled. Before I started here, I was feeling a few shimmies in the inner legs and applied to Stanford, why not, it’s California, to study something called matriarchal economics. Of course I just made that up, but I wrote a few things about distribution versus accumulation matrices, and participatory as opposed to utility maximization, and boy did they seem to eat it up. Most of all, they seemed to like it when I proposed doing something wherein, that’s the word I used, I’d survey the published writings of female economists.
But I mean, come on. There are no published writings by female economists. At least before like last month. That distinguished group never distinguished themselves at all. The only economic concepts they were working with were Huh? and Who? and Why?
But Stanf
ord seemed keen on the idea, no getting around that, and their letters always had such nice, dense, fingertippy paper. And while this was going on I got my position here, after four years of being a pretty regular customer. Eventually, I told Stanford I wanted to hold off, that I wanted to get a little non-experience first. And you should have seen their letter after that.
Was it a wise choice? You tell me. Even Billy isn’t e-mailing any more. It’s eleven months since he had his fill of all the triple-ick housing developments, which seem unstoppable no matter how many ordinances anyone passes, and the eco-Nazis in their SUV’s, them’s the Bill’s fine words, and packed for Mendecino, and I’d still sure like to see those wire-frames around here, ain’t ashamed to admit it. Those long arms, too. As in long and nicely sculpted. But by now, I’m just paid too little to leave. They wouldn’t be able to get anyone else. Even for, worst case, these last six weeks slightly plus. They got me in cold-cream handcuffs.
Still, I have known my share of bonanzas, cause here comes Walt walking in, carrying his home-electricity-consumption-monitoring gear. He spends his days walking around the backs of houses and recording numbers off of little meters, and somewhere along that process decided he was sweet on me. Has told me so, too. And shows it every time he comes in, by calculating things so that his order costs 15% of what he leaves as the tip. Now that’s what I call being good with numbers, even though the guy never gets more than maybe a sandwich or a small OJ. Still, I haven’t got the heart to tell him that his tips just go into the pot, so he’s courting Carlos, too.
And now the lunchtime rush is picking up, which today is six covers and a new Samby in the back, and in the middle of the lunchtime rush I’ve got more than enough time to go back to thinking about if we should advertise. And about health insurance, for example mine. And about why we seem exempt from the old Arapahoe curse, that Boulder is so beautiful that anyone who sees it will never be able to leave. We heard that a lot during the beginning of the boom times, when we got started with the overcrowding, and, truth be told, I wasn’t above mentioning it to Billy. Now I’m thinking it may be time to bring it up again. Just got to find someone to bring it up with.