Some douchebag in a polo shirt gets out of his car while I'm on my roof with Leah and Kabelo. I squint, saying, "I wish I had better vision. This light," I raise my hand to cover the light, "that distance," I watch the dude stumble up to the curb. He sees me basically heiling, and turns away.
An employee from the Mediterranean Market is handing out menus on my side of the street. It is ten o'clock at night, and a steady procession of cars glide over the faux-cobblestone. I love Saturday.
The employee draws our attention. He is very dark, with a middle-eastern fro, and he is wearing an apron. Like a line-cook, dishwasher, or grocery clerk. I ask him what's up. He says hold on, and kneels with his stack of menus, folding one. What's that for? I ask him, wondering where he's coming from. I think I know, and he just says wait, you'll see. He crafts a paper airplane and tosses it. It loops back around and hits the ground. Several times. I talk to him for awhile and tell him the menu is in my head, I've been there enough times. His name is Mo, and he stocks things.
Kabelo shows me a book on zen and I think maybe I'll get my tao book back from Jordan. So I call him. This is what I write on his facebook wall the following day: So, I called you last night and some dude answered the phone angrily. I asked who he was and, being stoned and drunk, I immediately forgot his name. He then proceeds to badger me, "WHO ARE YOU, WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH JORDAN?" Uh, Hunter, my name's Hunter, and I'm trying to get a book back from him. "WELL YOU CALLED AT THE WRONG FUUUUUCKING TIME." Click. Anyway, you done reading Watercourse Way? Hope you're not dead.
Maybe he and his boyfriend were having a tiff. Boyfriends can be so jealous and mean. I know I was.
I tell them what happened. What the fuck. We sit outside, music blasting through every brick, taking us elsewhere. Kabelo is almost entirely gone. Leah has finished only half of her 40. Kabelo says, stonedly(stOn-ED-lee), "So. . . jaazzz."
I tell him we started the night a little late for this concert in Byrd Park. That was hours ago. But there's Jake's party. The seventh installment of showing shit-- Shitshow VII. And the rest is just another one of those nights where the details cannot exist.
My clearest memory is speaking with Windy and Cynthia, two Chinese girls, up against brick. I was teaching one of them to say "Fuck you" more clearly, and they were teaching me a lot of things that I don't remember. I kept saying Shi shi ni, which is thank you. They kept going back and forth about a lot of things I'm sure I thought I knew about at the time. It's strange to understand so little, to be so provincial, and Cynthia had only been here six months. I understood her perfectly.
Inside, Leah is harassed multiple times for looking familiar.
"Hey, do I know you..."
". . . because you look really familiar."
"Your name is Leah? I've only known one other Leah. I LOVE THAT NAME."
"Are you Mexican?" This is a good one, considering she is Chinese and Russian. Which, when combined, looks totally Mexican.
Comments