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Talking Story |
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From The Asian Reporter, V17, #45 (November 6, 2007), page 7.
Early Tuesday at Peet’s
Ogh (Korean ogh — exactly how our northern cousins mean it: "Ogh!") Tuesday morning. Nothing’s worse than an overcast Tuesday morning — Monday’s adrenalin is already burned-off, Wednesday still seems a week away. And then, there’s this rain. October rain. Straight down and no end in sight. Ogh.
Tuesday morning’s so bad. Mine started with me smashing my Samsung. My cell tel.
I tell you true: It was an accident. Really.
Really, the first smash was. It seems my precious Samsung slipped out my slacks pocket onto my tired old Toyota’s seat. So as I slid out of my car, first thing this morning at U.S. Bank’s curb, it must’ve dropped onto the floor. When I slammed my door, it shut across my Samsung’s super-cool Korean face, right into her teeny-tiny qwerty keyboard, and of course smack in the middle of her high-res two-inch screen. She dropped in miserable little parts into ankle-deep run-off streaming along U.S. Bank’s curb. Ogh.
For some reason — for no reason I can clearly explain right now — I might’ve walked straight over to the scene of that probable crime and smashed my heel two, four, six, ten times into my Samsung’s shattered remains. I may’ve ground my Rockport’s heel into her, into that cold stream. I cannot honestly recall.
Though my right sock was soaked all day long. All Tuesday.
My next clear memory of this morning is me shoving my bank card into a slot precisely for that purpose. Our smart-aleck street corner UBank machine told me, told me first thing Tuesday morning, that I bounced my last three debit card buys: $1.55 for Monday morning’s Peet’s Coffee; $2.85 for yesterday’s Grand Central Bakery blackberry turnover; $3.69 for Kinko’s copies. "Pzzzt pzt pzt," it said with digital finality.
At 35 bucks per booboo that’s 115 Yankee Doodle dollars in big penalties for $8.09 in little stuff. Total: $123 for light breakfast and a short stack of papers. Pzzzt pzt-pzt-pzt — that smug machine spit out a little white slip. Ending our little talk.
She was not giving me a single red cent. My ATM wasn’t. Ogh.
I turned my back on my early-early morning tormenter, on her blinking little red eyeball too, and watched rain curtain lavish off U.S. Bank’s concrete overhang. Splattering me up to my shins. I stood there a long time. I stood there wishing I were Bill Gates. I wished I’d brought my big black umbrella. I wish I’d packed those Roy Rogers six-shooters Popa bought me when I was seven. Chrome with ivory handles. Two of them resting real pretty in a fancy studded leather holster you strap real low on your hips, gun-slinger style.
If I had them on this Tuesday morning I would’ve turned fast as an Arizona rattler, low and coiled I could’ve whipped out my twin Colt revolvers and pumped redeeming silver into that nasty bank machine. BLAM BLAM BLAM. Three big blams.
This town can use a new Sheriff. Sure we can.
Broke but not poor
It was thus, defeated and deprived — disconnected from my family and friends, disconnected from my money — that I got into Peet’s Coffee line along with the rest of leafy Irvington. Me, the only phone-less cowboy and gun-slinger in the place. Me, cashless and hoping for a miracle.
It was an awfully long line. Sodden Portlanders, sleepy and moody as early winter. Blackberries and Razors already going off. That’s when I noticed, way-way behind me in Peet’s loopy line, my best Mexican bud, wearing a bright red kid’s firefighter helmet, a gold shield sticker curled forlorn on his chest, and a plastic play axe, also red, stuck in his belt.
"Yo, Alberto saya," I said, joining him, twelve people back. "What’s with the axe?"
"Oh. That? Checking it like he’d forgotten about it. "For busting down doors. You know, yanking families out of fires."
"Your father bring it home from you?" I said, running my thumb along it’s edge, finding it surprisingly sharp. Ouch.
"Yeah. Yeah, he did. When I was eight. It still works pretty good too." Our line moved forward four full inches. "Hey, can I buy you a coffee?" he said.
That’s when I noticed those two other guys, old friends too, another twelve places behind. An Indian wearing a discount store five-piece junior cop set: A shiny badge, a snub-nose .38 tucked in an armpit holster, a little billy club and handcuffs rattling from his back belt loop. And a Viet Kieu cousin with a nasty snake wrapped around his neck. We joined them.
"My dad knew I wanted to be a cop, and this stuff did it," said David, straightening his Special Highway Patrol badge, handing us each an apple handpie. Grand Central Bakery’s best.
"And you Thuyen, your pop wanted you to be lunch so he wrapped a big fat boa around your skinny neck?"
"No-no," he smiled a smile remarkably similar to that snake sipping the air near his ear. "No one had to bring home pets. We found them in dark corners, under eves, in your shoes every morning. I wanted to be a king’s knight, a hero from our mythical past, picking up my superpowers from heavenly dragons." He glanced at our guns, Alberto’s red axe, David’s black night stick.
Outside we sat, under Peet’s cover — Sumatra coffees steaming, flakey pasties crumbling, oily snake hovering. Rain falling, straight from heaven now. An esteemed retired street cop who never fired a shot in anger; a barrio big uncle always running into fires others are fleeing; a man in love with Creation’s most unloved and craziest designs; and me, a guy without cash, without in-coming calls — a cowboy without cattle but not without familia or friends.