When I moved back to San Francisco I needed a job...fast. Then I met "Jack".
Enjoy...
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The phone rang much too early. I heard the digital bleeping from Amanda’s phone in my dream, which cut through some kind of action involving Charo and a roller disco contest. Sometimes I wish I just had falling, flying or sex dreams. Mine usually involve characters from the pop culture vault and some kind of forgotten fad in a cartoonish landscape. Come to think of it, I’ve always liked my dreams.
The phone lay on the night stand, which was still cluttered with some of Amanda’s stuff. Cleaning and organizing her place had proven to be a serious undertaking. I don’t think she threw anything away. I mean, what’s with all the boots and vibrators?
After half blindly reaching for the phone, I let out a groggy, “Hello?”
There was a pause. If nobody answers me within 5 seconds, for the most part, I just hang up, figuring it to be some kind of salesman or telemarketer that can’t pronounce my last name. I usually get a “Hello, Mister Whit...Wha...Whit-takker?” Because there are 2 T’s in my last name it always throws people off. Guys like Forest Whitaker are lucky. One T in then name gets it pronounced correctly. Two and I sound like I have some kind of stuttering inducing sur name, which is good because only people I care to speak to know how to pronounce it. Otherwise, phones are the devil.
“Yes,” said a guttural and stammering mans voice, “is this Mark Whit-takk-er?”
“Oh jeeze,” I said. “I knew it. What are you trying to sell me? If it’s not some coffee or aspirin then go die.”
Another pause. Just as I was about to hang up the man came back.
“My name is Jack Roth and I’m the owner of Bill’s bar. You, uh, submitted a resume?”
I shot up and cleared my throat.
“Oh yes, hello mister Roth. Thanks for calling me back. I, um...”
“Yes I realize that’s it’s early,” he said sounding as if he didn’t care that I told him to go die, “but I was wondering if you could come in today for an interview?”
“Oh. Today? Uh, yeah, sure. No problem. What, uh, what time is good for you?”
“Let’s say after lunch,” said Mr. Roth with a weird sputter in his voice. “You can’t come anytime before or during lunch because we get busy. And I need to be here and ready if anything gets out of hand. Understand?”
This guy sounded wacko. But, according to Hal, the owner was indeed a nut job. It didn’t matter, I definitely needed some kind of income coming in. So I gave him a “yes, of course I understand.”
“Good. Let’s say 2 o’clock. Is that good for you?”
I looked at the clock which read 9:45. “Yeah, that’s perfect. I’ll be there at two.”
“Oh and if you have any references please bring them,” he said sounding a bit irked. “You forgot to include them on this, well...what’s the word I’m looking for here? Interesting resume.”
He then let out a weird breathy laugh. Not really knowing what to do I just laughed right along.
“Ha ha,” I said. “Yeah, well, no problem. I have references. In fact, I have...”
“Have you ever bartended before?” he interrupted.
“Um, yeah...I...”
“Good. We can talk about that when you come in.”
Click.
I sat there in bed holding the phone for a while. Slowly I set the receiver down and wondered what just happened. Coming back to San Francisco and taking care of an estranged girlfriends apartment is one thing. Possibly bartending in a huge ghost ship of a place with Captain Crazy Britches at the helm really began to worry me. So I just laid back down and tried to go back to sleep, which never came.
About ten minutes to 2:00 I strolled into Bill’s. The place was deserted except for a few grubby guys at the bar sucking down light beers and watching some kind of sport on that ancient television. The bartender on duty was an attractive thin blonde girl who looked totally out of place here. Hal was alright, a bit young, but better suited to serve smelly beer guzzlers in a spooky wharf side establishment than a good looking blonde in a clean white tank top. Maybe I had this place figured out all wrong. There must be an undercurrent of cash and coolness that I just wasn’t picking up on.
“Can I help you?” she asked in a strange accent. British, I wondered. Australian? Jersey?
“Yeah, my name is Mark I have an interview with Jack.”
“Oh right,” she said coming around the bar. “My name is Mindy.” She stuck out her right hand which I shook. She had a stronger grip than I did. “Jack is right inside there.”
She pointed to a door directly under the TV and to the left of the bar. Mindy walked up and knocked on it. I heard a muffled “What?” to which she opened the door and told him I was here. Mindy then gestured for me to go inside, which I did.
And, wouldn’t you know it, the crazy guy in the corner talking about broken glass was the owner. That both totally amused me and sent me almost running away screaming at the same time.
“Come in,” he grumbled. “Sit down.”
His office was no bigger than a broom closet and just as cluttered. Shelves on either side of his muddled desk with a smaller, black and white TV on it showing the exact same game as in the main bar, was crammed with all sorts of old bar taps, tools, holiday decorations, invoices, pest control cans, whatnots, gewgaws, this and that and a coffee mug that said “I’m so horny even the crack of dawn looks good.” Looking around I saw that there was no place to sit, except for an old milk crate which he gestured toward and I hunkered down on. It smelled too, like a combination of stale work boot and old man fart. Mindy shut the door behind me and I felt as if she had sealed my coffin.
“So, tell me a little about yourself,” Jack said. He had this rumbling voice that indicated a combination of age, madness, alcohol abuse and yelling at the television when his team fumbled a ball. Plus his eyes were sunken, yellow and appeared to be leaking a bit. He was unshaven, he had a huge gut protruding from a cheap flannel under a puffy work vest. Even sitting down I could see that he was extremely tall. Jack frightened me. Almost as much as being broke.
“Well, let’s see,” I began. “I just moved back from Palm Springs...”
“What the hell were you doing there?” he demanded.
“Um, well, I was living with my dad and writing for this local paper.”
“Is that what you do,” he asked almost inquisitory. “You a writer?”
“Well, sort of, I’m also a DJ...”
“Says here you write a lot,” Jack said picking up my resume that was perched to his left. “I don’t need a goddam writer. What I need is a bartender.”
Before walking down to Bill’s I had made a quicky bar resume with some “references”. Basically the few restaurants and one bar I worked at briefly became year long endeavors and the references were Jose and Kevin and a few made up ones with fake phone numbers. If this guy actually calls any of my references I’d be shocked. But, you never know. By the look of it, Jack was just wacky enough to do so. And probably in the middle of the night. So I gave him some speech about how my “writing gigs” were in-between my real jobs, which were being a server and bartender, as I handed him the new resume.
“Why the hell didn’t you hand this one to me in the first place?”
He had a good question and, in a way, he got me. I then came up with a quick and brilliant explanation which involved me just coming back from an interview with a publishing house down the street and, you know, they might offer me a job so better nab me up quick buddy.
“What publishing house?” he asked, again, sounding totally incriminating.
“Uh, Fields & Cohen,” I said. For some reason Mindy Cohen and Kim Fields of “Facts of Life” came to mind. Maybe it was because the bartender was named Mindy. Maybe it was due to the fact that I always had a crush on Jo. Then why not call it “Polniaczek Press”? I couldn’t figure out either of them.
“Never heard of it,” Jack said.
“It’s small. It’s...new.”
“Here’s the thing,” he started, adjusting his lumbering body in a squeaky chair holding on for dear life, “the outside bar is getting more popular. They got bands and singers and all sorts of acts on that new stage of theirs outside. Have you seen the stage yet?”
“Oh yes,” I said trying to get an angle in. “In fact, that’s how I...”
“Good, because I can’t have a one bartender doing both bars. It’s...it’s just not possible. They just can’t. This place is too big. Have...have you seen this place?”
“Yes, I...”
“It’s just not possible.”
I sat there nodding holding back tears and giggles while at the same time trying not to breath through my nose. What were those other smells? Embalming fluid? Forgotten underwear left for dead under heaping mounds of boxes filled with staining account statements from the Carter administration? Or was it just Jack? He looked like a man that would forget to bathe after giving himself several beer ties and swallowing a slat of chili cheese dogs. Whatever it was it was thick and grim and I wished that Mindy would come back and open the door to release some of the heavy old guy musk stench. But she never did.
“Well,” I began waiting to be interrupted again. “Uh...I’m available. I live right up the street and can...”
“You live right up the street?” Jack almost shouted in surprise. “Where?”
“Columbus and Union.”
“When can you start?”
Jack and I settled on the day after to get me trained and acclimated to the place. As I walked back up Columbus to the apartment I felt a twinge of fear enter my body. I don’t know why, but it felt as if I had sold my soul in some weird way. Then I kept repeating to myself “Its just a job, it’s only temporary” and that seemed to calm me a little. If anything I would walk away with a new experience and some stories. I already knew I could write a whole novella on just Jack alone. That guy was a mess. What threw me off was why he agreed to hire me on the fact that I lived just up the street. That gave me pause and made me shudder a bit.
When I got back to the apartment I saw Khamish walking out of his room. He had the turban, along with an expensive looking tee shirt, some super stiff and hip jeans on and holding onto an expensive looking laptop computer.
“Oh hi.” he said. “I’m just on my way out.”
“I’m just coming in,” I said meeting him midway through the hall.
“Well...see ya,” he said leaving in a hurry.
“Yeah. Okay. See ya.”
Khamish closed the door behind him and was gone. I then found it weird to be living in a place where a guy like Khamish came and went as he pleased. It wasn’t the turban or Hindu thing, far from it. I just found it odd that someone actually did in fact “live” in a tiny room right next to me. Someone that I never saw. Sure I had room mates before, lots of them, but usually I either knew them or I saw them on a regular basis.
Life was becoming quite psychedelic at this point.
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