It was 4:15am on an abandoned
Sunday morning in Los Angeles when I found myself sitting alone, drinking a cup
of coffee at Canter’s Deli. Outside in Fairfax Village, a deafening silence
hung like a menacing spectre above the dust-swept streets. Neon signs flickered
and hummed, permeating an electrical pulse in the noiseless night. The
sunburned vagrants of the neighborhood had retired to their chosen sleeping
spots: some huddled under tattered blankets while nestling the doorframe of a
local business while others sought less traveled locations on the darkened side
streets. A lime green taxi cab barrels north along Fairfax, the lights on the
roof off and the meters running as it transported someone to unseen homes. A
lone dog began barking, no doubt spooked by some nocturnal creature lurking
nearby.
I
was sitting at the counter, facing the old school coffee percolator, reading my
first copy of On the Road. The cover had long since gone missing and the
spine had more cracks than a Detroit sidewalk; the pages, now yellowed by years
in the sun, looked like peeling bark on a white birch tree. My head was propped
up, supported by my left arm while my right lingered just within reach of my
coffee mug. A plastic bag full of ice was resting atop my right hand, held in
place by a crude rigging of rubber bands.
Though
I wasn’t alone in the famous delicatessen, it certainly felt like it. A quartet
of young hipsters, most likely in from the Dime across the street, sat
jabbering away over a communal plate of french fries. Their stylized
accessories such as glasses frames without the lens, scarves, gloves, and
buttons seemed to be the topic of conversation.
Other
than the neophytes, there were only individuals in this waking morning. Tired
and embittered souls… lost in a bowl of soup and entrenched in their own
despair. And the skeleton crew in
the restaurant, the few who managed to stay awake and on their feet, surveyed
the patrons with an apathetic look of malcontent. Doldrums ran rampant in the
heavy, longing night. Such is the way of early morning in the city of angels.
A
haggard waitress, entering her twilight years and straining to see through the
bifocal half glasses on her nose, rounded the counter and approached me with a
coffee pot.
“Need
a refill,” she asked monotonously. She held her offhand against her hip and
gently rocked back and forth.
“Please,”
I replied, looking up from the book. In the moment that I made eye contact with
this veteran waitress, I noticed a fatigue and weariness in myself. It showed
in her return gaze… in the recognition of the same state of existence. She
flashed me a subtle smile in a somewhat trite display of sympathy.
“Rough
night,” she asked, nodding towards my swollen hand.
“You
could say that,” I replied with a shrug. I shut my book, leaving my finger at
the right page. “More like a rough weekend, though.”
“They
keep adding up as life goes on, hon. It’s always the ups and downs.”
“It’s
the name of the game, then?”
“I
wouldn’t call it a game, kid,” she retorted dryly. She topped off the coffee
and went off without another word.
Not a game, I mused to myself. I
couldn’t help but smirk at the waitress’s remark. I marked my page with a
bookmark and took a slow sip of coffee. And like a torrential flood ripping
through the alleys of my mind, I started thinking about the last seventy-two
hours. In a series of seemingly innocuous events that rapidly spiraled out of
control, I was overwhelmed by disaster, hilarity, shenanigans, and nonsense. It
takes days of madness to end up sitting alone drinking coffee at 4:30 in the
morning, after all.
Not a game, I though once again. I
chuckled, opened my book, and began reading again.
How
wrong she was! It might be crazy, unpredictable, and mildly sado-masochistic… but
this gonzo little life of mine is nothing but a game! Because only a game could
be so odd. Just look at ‘Mousetrap’….
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