Nice Dinner. Nice Restaurant. Good Service.

The Jennifer Dispatches IV: Tim Sequiturs

Jennifer reports to me the following:

Tim woke up from a nap and started to wave his left arm around wildly like he was looking for an alarm clock to shut off.

When Jen asked what he was doing with his arm, Tim said "I'm trying to think of all of the simple classifications of flowers."

Jen giggled quietly and asked him if he knew what he had just said.

"Sure. Yes." he replied, as though she was the crazy one, and then: "I don't knooooooooooooow."

Then he went back to sleep.

Later, Tim had no memory of any of this.

I Help the Half-Crab/Half-Woman

On my way home from a concert the other night, I decided to walk up K Street instead of I street. K Street has fewer street lamps and fewer cars. I wanted to enjoy the crickets and the soft churr of sprinklers as I wandered home in the midnight heat.

As I strolled past a smallish apartment building, harshly lit with halogen bulbs, I came upon a strange, contorted form on the grassy parkstrip. It was a woman, more or less. She was calling softy, in a plaintive croak, for her cat, which I could see across the street, rubbing itself on the trunk of a cherry tree. The woman shot a pop-eyed glance at me and I offered to help.

I went across the street expecting to have to chase the cat, but it was perfectly happy to be scooped up into my arms and I returned, triumphantly, to the other side of the street and the strange little woman. She scuttled toward me using only her arms, holding them akimbo and pushing from one side and then the other while her legs, bent at odd angles, merely twitched out of time with her stuttering locomotion. She moved side to side and chattered for her cat. I offered to place it directly into her apartment, the door of which was open behind her.

The apartment was filthy and smelled like a parakeet's cage. The TV was on, tuned to only static. There were bottles and fast food wrappers strewn everywhere. I set the cat down and I swear it let out a sigh.

The lady asked me, as I was leaving, in a voice like someone was choking on a kazoo, to tell those people to leave and I said which people and she said that couple by the car and I looked around and saw that there was no couple anywhere nearby and I wanted to leave very much very soon.

I put the cat in her apartment and pulled the door to. I made sure she didn't want any help and I left, walking up the street as I had been before. I had walked maybe two blocks before I heard again the wailing, plaintive spasms calling for a missing cat. I stopped and waited for a long moment before turning around and going back to help again.

Homeless for the Holidays (At My House!)

One year, while living alone in a little house I rented, I had a Halloween party.

In the early part of the evening I stayed in and handed out candy to the trick-or-treaters and, because I was forever opening and shutting the door anyway, I didn't bother to lock it in between candy out-handing.

So I could hardly have been surprised when the seven foot tall homeless man, stinking of whiskey and pee (and of clothes washed in whiskey and pee) burst through my door and into my living room to "get away from the dude who stole [his] bike!"

At first I tried to humor him. Pretended to look outside. Told him I didn't see the guy he was running from - that the coast was clear. Somehow he took this elaborate pantomime as an invitation to sit on (and forever mar the smell of) my sofa.

He grabbed my phone off the coffee table and punched a long succession of numbers. While he sat there, fidgeting, holding the receiver against his head as though waiting while it rang on the other end, he told me he was calling the C.I.A.

When he finally got through to the C.I.A. he asked to speak with Mr. Santos.

He became enraged when he was, apparently, told that Mr. Santos had been transferred to another department and that they did not have a contact number. The homeless man held the phone away from his face and shouted into it "I ride with Jesus on a rickshaw!"

This all ended predictably, with me pushing my head into his chest in order to get him out the door, like trying to get an elephant onto an airplane.

So all that was years ago. The reason I mention it is that I am, apparently, the nexus in some cosmic relationship between the wheel of the year and drunken vagrantism.

Today, Valentine's Day, I received a telephone call from my delightful French neighbor, informing me that a drunken man was sleeping on my front porch (a sentence that sounds surprisingly sophistique in a French accent).

I laughed. Imagine if I'd gone to get the mail this afternoon. How long had he been there? As it was I had wandered by the front window half a dozen times today without seeing his sack-like body slumped in my Adirondack chair. But the sun was on him and he was sound asleep, drunk as a fish, blissfully unaware of my presence as I peered at him through the glass.

I wish I'd thought to take a photo before the police came. I called Eric to tell him about the whole thing and he didn't answer. If he had, he told me later, he would have convinced me to decorate the guy with tinsel and string - as a Valentine's Day gift for Chiara.

"Because that's a gift you can't buy in a store," he said.

As it was, I did the safer thing and just called the police.

In three minutes they had nine officers and four paramedics there. It was ridiculous.

Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, especially after they determined that the guy was basically okay - just hammered. They led him away and I got a picture of that. They would take him to a detox shelter and they said he would be fine. They handcuffed him, though. That seemed a shame.

Still, they told me as they were leaving that he was just out of prison - on parole for only two days. So maybe a good thing I didn't put glitter on his face after all, Eric.

One odd note more - after the cops took the drunk guy away from my house, I went outside to sniff the wet spot on the chair (only water - I think) and I checked the mailbox. The mail carrier had come and gone while the dude was passed out on my porch. I have to ask him about this the next time I see him. It won't be awkward, I have to talk to him anyway. For some reason we've stopped receiving the lingerie catalogs the previous owners received at this address and something has to be done, recession or no.

Touche, Tubby

Me: walking down the concourse of the open air shopping center, returning from an eye exam.

Fat Kid: approaching from the opposite direction, wearing a tank top and athletic shorts.

The City: cold. snowbound.

Me: passing the fat kid, "aren't you cold?"

Fat Kid: banging on handheld game with stubby fingers, "I don't get cold. I'm fat."

Me: Sisyphean attempt to laugh in a way that conveyed amusement, but not agreement.

The City: sigh.

The Special This Evening is Waterboarding

Found myself at a dinner with a friend of mine and some of her coworkers.

At one point, apropos of nothing, my friend turns to me and says:

"You're a republican, right?"

I fell off of my chair and was unable to see or taste for several minutes. When I recovered, still in shock, I told her that I "was the most liberal creature she'd ever encountered. I would," I said, "grant trees the right to vote and animals representation in congress. "

she laughed. I continued, feeling on a hot streak.

"I want the government to pay for breast implants and for Obama to swear an oath on a gay baby."

This, it developed, was not the crowd for this sort of thing.

All of my friend's coworkers, I would soon discover, were of the 'double Guantanamo and put the environmentalists there' persuasion. The evening continued in a predictable fashion.

I wish I had been cool about the whole thing - aloof, suave, confident in the resounding victory of my ideology. I wish I'd weathered the "Obama won because the people are so uninformed and it's only a popularity contest," and the "Bush made us safer than we were eight years ago," and "torture is a subjective thing," and, worst of all, the "double standard of the media and the way they reported about Palin" with more aplomb.

As it was, it was all I could do to reassure them all that the coming socialist utopia would have a place for them, too.

Someone at the table eventually was successful in steering the topic to the Superbowl, and I admired them for it. Me, I was itching for a fight and would have liked nothing better than to get to gloat about the potential supreme court appointees. I had already suffered through being told that I only believed what I did because I was clearly a defense attorney (I'm not) and that I didn't understand America as I came from L.A., which was nearly Mexico anyway (that's stupid). I had a hardon to yack about the end of the war in Iraq and Planned Parenthood and the Kyoto treaty and all the other bugaboos of the conservative heart, but I ended up discussing whether or not Kurt Warner would make the hall of fame. (I argued yes, but that he didn't really deserve it. This was only vaguely controversial).

In the end, a man at the end of the table bought drinks for everyone. Everyone, that is, except for me.

I absorb your catcalls. I'll settle for winning the culture wars.

My Father at Christmastide

He watches The Gilmore Girls. He Tivos The Hills. During the whole of Christmas afternoon he sat contentedly in front of the fire, watching lifetime original movies on his 50 inch TV screen while Tim and I stood nervously nearby, hoping to catch the first snore of his inevitable nap so that we could connect the Xbox and chainsaw some aliens.

He knows no sin greater than to serve salad at the same time as the main course. He has left a trail of bloodied and broken waiters and waitresses behind him in his never ending quest to rid the world of this most heinous of wrongs. Once he flatly refused to eat (or pay for) a large porterhouse steak that was brought to him whilst he was still eating his salad. He insisted, loudly, that the waitress must throw away the steak he had been brought and have another prepared for him to be ready after he had finished his lettuce. And woe be unto him who should suggest that he 'calm down' or that it is 'no big deal.' The road to disinheritance is paved with such blasphemies. At Red Lobster the other night (yes, I know), he turned heads when he almost launched into a scathing rebuke of our Croatian waiter for bringing the salads at the same time as out order of coconut shrimp. Only some fast conversational footwork to get him reminiscing about a particular black bean soup he used to get for lunch twenty years ago saved the evening.

While watching a football game on television, he saw a player who had just barely missed an interception clap his hands once, forcefully, in frustration. Apparently never having seen humans behave, my father insisted that someone explain to him why the player in question would clap about missing an interception. Was he happy? What's wrong with him? It was explained to my father that a clap of the type he witnessed was a common way to vent the feeling of 'almost, damn!' and that people did this all the time, ourselves included.

He refused to accept this. He insisted that he had never seen anyone do that ever and that we must be wrong.

But he works really hard to put together a nice Christmas every year. He puts up a ridiculously tall tree (mostly to satisfy my sister's arboreal penis envy) and is willing, bless his heart, to watch the same insipid films every single year just to soak it all in. And all he asks for in return is at least one gift which contains something black and leather.

Oh yeah, he seems to have some kind of poorly developed leather fetish, as well.

A Dollop of Something Else

I'm at a walk-in clinic yesterday and I'm checking myself in. The girl behind the counter is entering my information into the computer and I'm just sort of standing there, handling the tchotchkes scattered around the counter top. Also on the counter, next to an industrial size box of facemasks (sinister), is an industrial size bottle of hand sanitizer.

This reminds me of a vignette from Barack Obama's book where he describes the first time he met George Bush. This was just after Obama had been elected to the senate and he was invited to the White House to meet the president. So he goes and Bush is there to greet him outside the White House. They shake hands. Immediately after they shake hands, and without so much as a word or a glance to anyone nearby, Bush reaches out his right hand to an aide and the aide squirts a big dollop of hand sanitizer into the president's hand. He rubs it all in with his other hand and then invites Obama in.

This is a really rather funny little story about Bush. (Why couldn't he just keep his paw out of his mouth for the next twenty minutes and then use the sanitizer after Obama left the room?) How was I to know I was telling it to a Palin-kateer?

It really isn't funny enough to relate in great detail, but suffice it to tell that the conversation took an odd turn. Governer Blogejevich was mentioned and the phrase "shows who Obama associates with" slithered across the counter at me. Forget that the two men hate one another or that Obama's people are the ones who got the feds on the case when they found out what Blagojevich was up to. Forget all that.

I just wanted to tell a funny little story about Bush and hand sanitizer. Was I mad to expect that one could tell such a story to an attractive young woman who sits behind a giant bottle of the stuff every day?

I Nearly Become a Republican Activist

“My name is James and I am calling to thank you for everything you did last year for the Republican party.”

But all I’ve done for the Republican party has been to occasionally clench my teeth, pull my hair, and spit when it is mentioned. It isn’t personal; it’s only their hypocrisy, backwardness, and ineptitude.

So you can imagine my surprise at this rather forward telephone introduction. On the other hand, I voted for Kerry and that seemed to work out pretty good for the Republican party, I guess. Maybe I do deserve their thanks.

In any case, I just laughed. James continued.

“Well, Mr. Nielsen, we need your help again. The Dems think they have us on the edge and we can’t let them take back the House and Senate, now can we?”

I’m warming up to the whole thing by this point. I reply: “We certainly can’t.”

“Well,” says James, “And Schwarzenegger needs your help, too. I mean, California is finally doing pretty okay and we can’t let ‘em bring back the days of Gray Davis.”

“Dear God, no.” I said in community theatre-grade horror.

“Well, I’m happy you feel that way Mr. Nielsen. That’s why you’ll see how important it is that we get everyone signed up this year - to fight those tax-raisers. What can I sign you up for? A hundred or a hundred-fifty?”

“Dollars?”

“Yessir. Dollars we’ll use to get the word out about the party and make sure Republicans keep America on the right track.”

“Well I think we’re okay here in Orange County.” I said dryly.

“What’s that?”

“Orange County. I think we’re okay here. Have you any idea how many golf courses there are?”

“Well, your donation will help Republicans across the state of California, Mr. Nielsen.”

“So lemme get this straight. You’re asking me to redistribute my hard-earned money to you?”

“Huh? Mr. Nielsen, your money could help us keep America moving in the right direction.”

“Nothing. Look, James, it’s a nice pitch. Really it is, and I wish you all the luck, but I’m just not the sort of Republican who gives money away to people who need it. I mean.”

“Well, you know, any size donation would be appreciated.”

“Yeah. I mean, I know, but market forces and Adam Smith and all.”

“Huh?”

“I’m just not going to—” and I’m cut off by a dial-tone.

It was too bad. I had a whole bit about Hillary I was going to try to slip in. I can't believe he hung up on me. My Republican impression was fine. Anyone would have sworn I was wearing a golf shirt tucked into khaki pants by the tone of my voice - hell, you could hear the side part in my hair. I didn’t snicker behind my hand or anything.

Afterwards I took a hot, soapy shower.

Someone in this Story is Gregor Samsa

While sitting on the sofa the other night, watching the Colbert Report, my mirth was shattered by a piercing scream from another room.

Chiara.

I leapt from the sofa and ran toward the shriek, to the kitchen, all the time crying out “Chiara!? Chiara, are you okay!?”

There, in the kitchen, Chiara was paralyzed with fright.

I grasped her hands and asked her what the matter was. She pointed to a narrow gap between the fridge and the wall.

“What is it?” I asked.

“A aneemal!” she shrieked.

(She nearly always calls all living things simply ‘animals’ - insects, spiders, lobsters, snails, mice - it makes it exceedingly difficult to steel oneself appropriately for whatever variety of household critter removal one might have ahead of oneself.)

With a silent, frustrated eyeroll, I poked my head around the corner of the fridge. Sure enough - an animal. It was a big cockroach looking thing. The size, perhaps, of a circus peanut. I had no idea how to proceed.

I was afraid to try to spray it with an insecticide, thinking that it would simply dash under the fridge before I could deliver a lethal amount of poison. I was equally afraid to reach back there and squash it with a paper towel - what if it jumped on me? I quickly determined that Chiara would not allow me to use any of our kitchenware to capture it. I was in a pickle.

I went back to the fridge to see if the little bastard was still there. On closer inspection, it was belly up on the linoleum, its horribly articulated legs curled in a final supplication. But ominously, as I watched for any signs of life, its antennae waved gently.

I knew not if they moved by operation of the last spark of life granted the miserable creature or from the slight flow of air created by our central heating. I secretly feared it was only resting in some mockery of mammalian sleep and would leap to attention and arm-crawling-on as soon as its reverie was disturbed. I reached toward it tentatively with the broom.

It was as dead as a coffin nail (as Dickens would have it). I swept it into a specially prepared zip-lock bag and sealed it tight. I resolved to have an exterminator out the next day to whom I would show the insect. Hopefully something could be done about the army of its friends I imagined watching from under the broiler and from behind the dishwasher and inside the vents.

The exterminator’s name, when he arrived the next day, was Ken. Ken took one look at my trophy and pronounced it an oriental cockroach. Basically solitary, Ken assured me, they live outdoors and only come inside by accident or to get out of a deluge.

Ken offered to spray around the perimeter of our apartment so as to dissuade any other oriental cockroaches from coming in. While he did so, he talked.

Ken has horrible stories that we will never have. He has horrible bee stories and ant stories and raccoon stories and termite stories. He knows which restaurants to merely avoid (he wouldn’t tell me) and which to avoid like the plague (all the fast food places).

I gave him a glass of water and he said a curious thing: “I don’t want to drink out of your glass because I am sick.”

Did he imagine that I would drink from that particular glass before washing it? Did he have some sort of disease that dishwashing couldn’t thwart? Whatever his reason for trepidation, he was quickly cured of his worry or his disease as, by the time he finished refusing the water, he had already begun to drink thirstily.

As he was leaving, I pressed him to reveal what he described as “the worst job I ever been on.” He hesitated, but having brought up the topic himself, he was cornered. It involved an opossum, he warned me.

An opossum? What’s so bad about them?

“It was stuck in a drainpipe when I got there, wriggling and twitching,” he began. “I put on my gloves and reached down to pull it out. I grabbed it and gave it a tug and it just tore in half. The whole thing was filled with maggots.”

Then he left. I didn’t shake his hand.

I went upstairs and tossed the cockroach in the trash and then covered him with a layer of crumpled paper towels so that I wouldn’t have to see him every time I threw something out in the coming days.

Sic Transit Pestilentia.

I Cannot Return to the Nursery

I have a problem.

The guy at the Armstrong Nursery Center on Pacific Coast Highway thinks I am someone I am not. Though it’s partly my fault, I suppose, I can never go back there. I will have to drive fifteen minutes out of my way and purchase plant food or flowers or terra cotta pots or whatever at another location.

I don’t see any other solution.

I was dropping by with a soil sample to inquire about some funny little white bastards living in the pot of my lemon tree.

(Turns out they are soil gnats. There’s a spray you can get.)

The manager is a nice guy, although a little lispy; it grates on you if you hear it for too long.

Anyway, as I’m waiting for one of the high school kids who work there to retrieve my gnat-killing spray, the manager guy says to me “So how is that avocado tree doing?”

But see, I don’t have an avocado tree. Never did.

I’d tell the guy, except that he’s made this mistake once before and I didn’t hear the question or something and said "fine." So now he, in his mind, correctly associates me with avocado trees, but I still don’t have one.

I decide I have to fix up this confusion.

So I tell him that my avocado tree is doing fine but is not making any avocados. He asks what kind of exposure it gets and I say southeast. That’s the problem, he says. I agree.

Then, he asks me if I still work at Boeing.

I am not going to lie to the guy. A houseplant mistake is one thing - he just misremembered what kind of plant he sold me - no big deal, but a mistake on this order suggests he has confused me with another person altogether. So what do I do?

Naturally, I tell him no, I don’t work at Boeing still.

But before he can ask me about my kids or my boat or my trip to Senegal, I get out of there. And can you imagine if he saw me with my wife instead of the woman he might imagine me to be married to?

But obviously that will never happen because I can never return.

Fuck.

To an Anonymous Punk, My Rebuttal

The other day, in the parking lot of a bookstore, I strolled by a small group of militant old-school punks drinking on the hood of an old beater. These guys were classic. Mohawks, studded leather, overweight girlfriends.

I wanted to walk as near to them as possible as I passed them on the way back to my car because I wanted to communicate to them (my blazer and flip-flops aside) that, in some cosmic sense, I was one of them.

Or anyway, I wanted them to know that I sympathized with them enough to not avoid them outright. I tried to emit early Ramones vibes at them as I strolled by plucking the price sticker from my book of Sontag essays.

The lead punk, his primacy evidenced both by his size and his possession of the plastic jug of vodka, greeted me with a “hey, man!” and I returned it with vigor.

“Isn’t this a magnificent evening?” he offered up lankily.

I replied that it was, but beginning to question my wisdom in instigating the exchange, I veered slightly and made for my car as casually but as quickly as I could.

The punk had a parting query for me and I’ve thought of it intermittently since:

“Don’t you wish everything was free?” he asked me in his hale timbre.

When I climbed into my car (a convertible), I took especial care to turn down the volume on the Belle and Sebastian song then playing on my stereo; I didn’t want to offend or rile the punks.

I muttered something supportive to them and drove away.

Afterward, I made for the dinner party I was attending that night at the Hometown Buffet.

I'll let that sink in.

The terrors were legion.

The place shared a wall with the 99cent store. Pay at the door and then take as much food as you like.

Lemme give you the tour: Here’s eggs. Here’s pot roast. Here’s spaghetti with ketchup. Here’s a vegetable - no, wait, that’s a chicken finger.

At one point a woman (one hopes) in a large bee costume sat down next to me and gave me a sweaty hug. The pilling felt of the costume’s gloves was used to caress my cheek. The black tights of the outfit had pooled around her ankles and spilled over the oversized sneakers. The smell was reminiscent of nothing so much as the ancient t-shirt I once discovered under a seat cushion on a houseboat.

Point is, I desperately wanted to be somewhere expensive as all sin. I think that punk had the wrong of it; I don’t want everything to be free, I just want to always have enough money to dine at an establishment where I can eat food that hasn’t been sitting under a lightbulb for a week and a half and takes less than an hour to chew.

But you can’t say that kind of thing to a punk, not when you have a haircut like I have.

Beatles, Like Hands, Are Often Taken From Us Prematurely

Today, while in line at the pharmacy to pick up my prescription for twenty Percocets needed for yet another kidney stone, I stood behind a shopping cart with a little tow-headed boy in the basket. He could not have been more than five. He said “hi” and I said “hello.”

The rest of the conversation:

Boy (plucking at his sweatshirt, which was grey and emblazoned with a large, orange letter B): “This is my shirt”

Me: “I know it. The letter B.”

Boy: “Yeah, B.”

Me: “Stand for anything?”

Boy: (looks down at his chest, looks back at me, says nothing).

Me: “I know. It’s because you like the Beatles so much, right? Because of that song ‘Letter B.’”

I could be misremembering, but I swear an audible groan escaped the lips of the woman in line behind me.

I felt I was a condescending and patronizing ass, making jokes at the expense of a little kid’s ignorance of sixties pop music just to amuse myself. And I thought I had probably scared him off altogether, ruining what promised to be a fun little vignette.

The mom has made one or two glances at me and they weren’t of the ‘oh how cute’ variety. I frantically began to read earnestly from the ingredient list of whatever balm or salve I could grab from the shelf to my immediate left.

Instead, after a lengthy pause:

Boy: “You know, we only have two of the Beatles left.”

Me (stunned): “Yes, I know. Two.”

Boy: “One died of cancer.”

Me: “George Harrison.”

Boy: “George Harrison. Brain cancer, maybe.”

Me: “Yeah, that’s right. And the other one?” (I make a gun with my hand and affect a face that says ‘s.o.l., huh?’)

Boy: “He was shot.”

Me: “Pretty sad.”

Boy: “Yeah.”

Me: “Who do you think will be next?”

Boy: “Paul.”

Me: “Yeah, just our luck. We’ll end up with Ringo.”

Boy: “Ringo. Just our luck. My mom is getting medicine for my throat.”

Me: “Sore throat? They’re terrible.”

Boy (withdrawing his arm into his shirt, leaving the sleeve limp): “I lost my hand.”

Me: “I don’t think they make medicine for that.”

Boy: “No. They don’t. But I lost my hand.”

And then the mom turned around, her business with the pharmacist complete, and gave me a peculiar look. I told the kid good luck with his sore throat and stepped up to the counter to get my opiates.

The woman behind the counter suggested that the young boy ought to run for president, that at least he might have cancelled his vacation a bit earlier than three days after the hurricane.

I paid for my pills and went to sit in my car where I read from my book by James M. Cain. I would have loved to discuss the story with that kid.

I Discuss Houseplants in a Hot Tub (Much to My Consternation)

Chiara asks me to go with her to the apartment complex’s hot tub sometimes. She calls it the jacuzzi, which she pronounces “Yah-Kootsie.” I usually decline for one of several stock reasons: that it will be crowded, that it is too late, that I just showered.

Last night, feeling a bit down on myself for not having left the house all day, I accepted her offer on the condition that, if it were full of assholes, we could leave.

I should have been more specific.

We arrived and thought that we were alone. The lights of the hot tub itself were off and none of the usual flotsam associated with pool-goers was to be found on any of the chaise-longues (sunscreen, wadded t-shirts, sunglasses, Da Vinci Codes).

It was only after we began our slide into the burbling water that we realized we had company - hiding, submerged nearly to the head, in the shadows on the far side of the hot tub.

It being too late to back out with any kind of plausible excuse, I said good evening and slurped over to the far side of the hot tub with Chiara, arranging myself so as to have my back more or less toward the gentleman. He seemed nice enough, but who needs conversation with that kind Heffnerian overtones?

This guy clearly didn’t see it that way.

Guy: “No swimming for you two, huh?”

Chiara: “No, it’s cold!”

Guy, looking at me now: “Well, you made the right choice. A sign of maturity, I’d say.”

Me: “Yes.”

A pregnant pause.

Me: “It is pleasant to sit in warm water, isn’t it?”

Guy: “Yes.”

So now I think I’ve awkwarded my way out of any further smalltalk. I even begin - as a sort of preemptive strike against any further chattiness - a conversation with Chiara about quotidian and personal details of our life together that could not possibly invite third party commentary.

I bring up the houseplants and my earlier visit to the nursery in search of the large indoor palm tree I am still angling for. I tell Chiara about how, after I had asked five or fifteen well thought out and important questions of the woman helping me (“How much water should I give it?” “How much light does it need?” “Does it have a smell when you cut the leaves?“), she rather snarkily replied that there were “really no such things as indoor plants.”

The man from the other side of the Jacuzzi, his face shaded by the night like a sweaty Bloefeld, volunteered that he bought an indoor plant just the other day, at Costco.

I nodded. But thinking he may not have seen me, I said “yeah?”

Guy: “It should live for a hundred years.”

Me: “Wow!”

Guy: “Wanna know why?”

Me: “Sure.”

Guy: “It’s a silk plant.”

And now I want him to die.

Luckily, just then some kids jump into the hot tub and distract the guy. “Is it better in here?” he asks of them.

Kid 1: “Yeah.”

Guy: “How much better?”

Kid 1: “Like 110%

Guy: “And it took you how many years to figure that out?”

Kid 1: “Um, like fourteen.”

Guy: “And how old are you?”

Kid 1: “Sixteen.”

And now I kinda love this kid.

Guy, to Kid 1: “Got your permit yet?”

Kid 1: “Yeah. Two months ago.”

Guy: “See any bad drivers?”

Kid 1: “Yeah. I saw some today!”

Guy: “That’s good. Because if you don’t see any. . .you’re probably the bad driver.”

Me: Barf.

I embark on a description to Chiara of my genuine respect for the gardening staff here at the complex. Some of their birds of paradise are twelve feet tall and thriving. Ours is slowly dying after having spent six months in some kind of botanic coma; ours always looks like it is about to cough.

Anyway, the fucking guy has overheard me and smells blood in the water again. The kids have gone back to the main pool.

Guy: “You ever been in the model units they got here?”

Me: “No, why?”

Guy: “They have plants in those that never die.”

Me: “Why’s that?”

Guy: “They’re silk.”

Me: “You got me.”

And I got out of the water and went to the main pool to swim angry laps.

The only other notable moment from last night was, after the guy had finally left, a young couple arrived at the hot tub. They were comprised of a handsome frat guy type with a shaved chest and his curiously overweight and frumpy girlfriend who carried all of their stuff.

The frat guy gets in to the hot tub and she hands him a beer. He sits there, drinking it while she perches on a pool chair on the other side of the Jacuzzi.

They do not speak to one another until he asks her to give him another beer and she complies. She is not drinking. I think he has agreed to sleep with her out of pity or as some last-ditch attempt to thwart his onrushing homosexuality. I imagine he propositioned her, but insisted that she provide the atmosphere.

By which he meant Corona.

I would have liked to stay to see what became of them, but the hot tub had more or less fizzled out and my enjoyment was prunier than my hands.