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Eleven
It seems impossible that we have
told our stories (mine about meeting Harvey in the Signpost Forest), eaten our
pizza and still have an evening of karaoke ahead of us, but that’s the nature
of Northwest Novembers. The darkness stretches, on and on, and it’s your job to
fill it up. We’re driving the Narrows Bridge in Ruby’s beat-up Toyota, and
we’re not even running late. I’m hoping Ruby isn’t as stoned as I am – but
then, I’m such an infrequent toker, it was bound to knock me around a little.
My
misty vision makes it easier to marvel at the construction on the New Narrows
Bridge. They’ve extended hanging footbridges from tower to tower so the workers
can spin the cables, and strung it with white lights. The result is a luminous
foreshadow of the bridge to come, lasered against the dark Sound. And you would
never, ever get me up there.
It’s
awfully nice to have my own roadie – much easier to lug the CD cases and set up
the PA. I get the feeling, also, that for Ruby this is good therapy – a tiny
vaccine of showbiz to fight off the gloom. I grab an extra chair and set it next
to my station, just to make it clear that she doesn’t have to brave the general
assembly.
I’m
setting out my business card holders, and Ruby’s scouring a songbook, when
Shari, Alex and Alex’s latest partner – a tempestuous-looking Russian lady in a
leather skirt – walk through the door in a cloud of laughter. When they spot
Ruby, they don’t exactly do the cliché stunned silence, but they do seem to
make a subtle adjustment. Shari skips the usual huggy greeting for a friendly
wave as they head for their usual table, just across the dance floor. Ten
minutes later, they’re joined by Harry and Kevin the Cop, who have lately
become quite the duo, and, a minute behind, Caroleen, looking unusually chic in
a leopard coat.
I
can tell that Ruby is taking careful notes (she is, after all, a student of
audiences), and I sense something simmering just beneath the surface. Just as
I’m about to tell her something reassuring, she’s up, clomping across the dance
floor with a determined expression. She stops before my regulars (who are now
exhibiting the aforementioned stunned silence), plants a hand on either hip,
and turns into Streisand in Funny Girl.
“Boy!
Do I have egg on my face!”
With
an opener like that, the ice breaks all over the place. I’m having a hard time
tracing the exact discourse, but the hills of verbiage have the shape of
excessive mutual apology and good-natured jokes (“You should’ve seen the look
on your face!”). She returns ten minutes later as if nothing has happened and
goes back to her songbook.
I
pick out a CD for sound check and give Ruby a stage aside: “You are a magician.”
“No,”
she sotto voces. “I’m an actress.”
When
I return to adjust the levels, the Choo
Choo Ch’Boogie tootles in on its newly revamped track with two
eggnog-and-vodkas. And a note.
Don’t think I don’t know what happens when
I’m away. You’re grounded! –H
When
I look to the bar, Hamster is whittling one index finger with the other, the
universal gesture for Naughty, naughty.
The
evening is odd in several other ways, as well. People keep arriving in groups
of three or four, hanging out for one round and then leaving, disappointed at
the lack of a crowd. If they had all stayed, we’d have a crowd.
Two
that do stay are a tall Latin beauty and her thin, very gay guyfriend. She
looks like Bizet’s Carmen as a
supermodel, and sings in Spanish, from a Mexican CD I keep around. But she
holds the mic away from her mouth like it’s a live rattlesnake, and we can’t
hear a thing. So she’s a shy Carmen
supermodel. Her name is Mariposa, which I believe means “butterfly.”
The
guy, Jamie, has big black-framed glasses, sort of Buddy Holly as a mad
professor. He also has a good upper range, handling some tough Bowie and Prince
songs, but then making faces afterward like he really sucked. I’ve never
understood that – it’s like some people think it’s uncool to think you might
actually be good at something.
Mariposa
and Jamie are also resoundingly drunk. Between songs, she sits on his lap, and
they conduct full-blown makeout sessions. This little sideshow can not pass by without comment, so I turn
off my mic and lean toward Ruby.
“You
watchin’ Will and Grace over there?”
“How
can I not?” she says.
“Two
possibilities,” I say. “Either my gay-dar is way off, or they’re both suffering
lengthy dry spells and trying to keep in practice.”
Ruby
snorts into her hand. “Perhaps Jamie is… bi-curious?”
I
slap her on the arm. “You’re bad! Bad I say!” But then I realize we’re
distracting from Shari’s “Me and Bobby McGee,” so I try to regain my composure.
Anyway, Ruby’s next.
“She’s
doing “Mama Look a Boo-Boo” by Harry Belafonte. Last time she did “Mambo No. 5”
by Lou Bega. Our little control freak, who took such care shepherding each note
of her first two Gig Harbor sorties, has now decided to try every novelty song
she can find. And still, every note out of that mouth is golden. I am
pathetically envious.
And
then the luau hits. No kidding. In the middle of Ruby’s calypso, a long train
of youngsters spills into the bar, adorned in grass skirts, leis and aloha
shirts. I scamper over to hijack a hula girl.
“What
the hell’s going on?” I ask.
“Hi,”
she says, half-crocked. “Luau party! UPS! Neighbors called the cops, so we said
screw it! Let’s kay-ray-OH-kay! Whoo!”
UPS
is the University of Puget Sound, across the Narrows in Tacoma.
“How’d
you get here?” I ask.
She
opens her sweet, perfectly betoothed mouth and says, “I have no fucking idea!”
“Okay,
honey,” I say. “Sorry to keep you.”
There’s
only one way to handle a drunken college party. I turn to Hamster at the bar
and flash my middle finger, our little joke signal for Get me a fucking drink! What arrives on the Metro, two singers later, is a big bowl-shaped glass holding a
lime-green drink with a stripe of raspberry red syrup. It’s mightily delicious.
I take a long draught, then turn to find a dozen singers lined up at my
station, song slips in hand. The first is “Tiny Bubbles.”
After
that, I can’t tell you. It’s like driving a long ramp into a hurricane, and
somewhere along the line you forget where you came in. The world is walled off
at the bar windows, a swirling sherbet of color and noise, blurred like a
slow-shutter photograph. When the bus rolls into the station I am screaming
“Rock ‘n’ Roll” by Led Zeppelin as youthful bodies bump their parts around me
(so clever how this generation has
turned simulated sex into choreography). Just as I reach the tough part, I feel
a hand gripping my left nether cheek. I turn to find Shari, wearing a Little
Mary Sunshine smile.
“Oh!”
she says. “Was that you?”
I
pat her on the left (upper) cheek and return to my wailing. Zeppelin crunches
to a finish, and the room explodes. I call up Kevin for “Suavamente,” wait till
he gathers the inevitable salsa mob, reach into squeeze that firm constabulary
butt and scuttle away like a cockroach.
I
wake up on the floor. I can’t move my arms, and I feel something smooth and
plasticky against my face. When I open my eyes, the ceiling is a maze of color
and slowly moving dots. And a large brown blob with a single white stripe. And
a shower of green confetti.
“Hamster?”
God. I sound like Tom Waits doing a Louis Armstrong impression.
“Good
morning, my little cash cow. This is your bonus for last night.”
I’m
surrounded by presidents: Washington, Lincoln – Franklin?
“Jesus.
What’d I do? Sleep with you?”
He
laughs entirely too much. “Now that
would be funny!”
I
go to give him a playful slap, and discover why it is I can’t move. I’m wrapped
up tight in a sleeping bag.
Hamster
grins. “I don’t know what major corporations those kids’ parents own, but last
night we separated them from large chunks of their trust funds. The biggest
night in Karz Bar hiss-tow-ree!”
Hamster
kisses me on the cheek – for him, an exceptional gesture. He claps his hands
together and gives them a robber-baron rub.
“Now!
What does my prize employee wish for breakfast? Sausages? I’ve got kielbasa.”
Just
the word “kielbasa” makes my stomach gurgle. “Ooh! Can I start with a glass of
Sprite? By the way, what was that evil
drink you gave me last night?”
“Hamstah
Hooch. Its exact ingredients shall remain a secret.”
“But
probably include tequila.”
“Probably.”
He
hops to his feet like a Ukrainian dancer and heads for the kitchen. “Sprite
followed by coffee!” he declaims.
I
snake my hand up next to my throat and locate a zipper pull.
“Hey!”
I croak. “What happened to Ruby?”
Hamster
leans into the room with a salacious expression. “Ruby was last seen leaving
the bar with Harry Baritone.”
“Oh,”
I say. Ten seconds later, the information arrives at my brain. “Really?!”
Photo: The Alfonzo Special, from Tacoma's Guadalajara Restaurant
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