Scene: The Frozen Food Aisle. Our Hero is stocking frozen cereal
Enter a Middle-Aged Man in Army Coat
MAMiAC
Do you have any just regular plain waffles?
OUR HERO
Nope. Just the gluten-free ones.
MAMiAC
Jesus! What the hell did people do twenty years ago? Gluten-free. Cage-free eggs. (Gestures to the dairy section) They’re showing mercy to chickens. When I was in Vietnam, we killed people; we didn’t show any mercy.
Hey, kids, if you haven’t heard, my buddy Dave Colon is putting out issue 2 of Stretch magazine, his own home-grown literary mag. Yours truly has submitted an original piece of terrible fiction, along with a few other Trader Joe’s writers.
We’re holding a launch party on Thursday, December 16th at WORD in Greenpoint at 7 p.m. Free beer, free readings, and free copies of the magazine. Come on by and check it out if your in the borough.
It is getting late and I have to work early the next morning, so I say goodbye to my bowling buddies and go to the bar to settle my tab with Pete the Bartender.
“Done already?” he says through yellow teeth.
I had explained my early work situation enough times that night to change my mind. What’s one more beer? Pete seems entertaining enough. I mean, with silver mutton chops and a red vest who wouldn’t be? I order a cheap macro.
In between ten other customers and conversations Pete manages to tell me a story. “So you know, some guy come in here four months ago and I says, ‘Hey! I know you!’ And he says ‘Yeah, I’m part of that band…’ Aw, what’s it called? You know it…”
Still waiting for clues, I say, “I don’t think I do.”
“Yeah, you do!” Pete makes two fists with his hands and starts pumping them back and forth from his body. He says with no tune, “I like to move it. I like to move it.”
I pull the name from the deep recesses. “Reel 2 Real?” That was one of the first songs I downloaded off of an FTP site back in 1996, thus beginning a long career of never paying for music.
“Yeah! That’s it! He come in here four months ago. Real nice guy. Buys everyone drinks.”
“One more beer,” I think, “and this will start making more sense.”
A couple beers later, a tall black man in his mid-forties appears beside me and orders four pitchers of Bud. He’s flanked by two young, attractive women who are showing more skin than not.
From the other end of the bar Pete lights up and points frantically at the man standing next to me. He yells “That’s him! That’s that’s the guy! I like to move it!”
I look up and behold a bald, aging man in a tan suit. Play it cool. “Reel 2 Real?” I ask, as if I knew all along.
“Yeeeah…” His voice was an octave lower than mine and twice as slow. “Hey, Pete. Buy this guy a beer.” He points to me. “And this guy,” he points to someone else.
“Uh, thanks man,” I say as he collects his pitchers and leaves. I call out after him, “Oh, and I dig your work!” I refrain from mentioning his role in my early piracy.
Pete comes up with the beer. “A nice guy. A nice guy,” he says.
Scene: The Frozen Food Aisle. Our Hero is stocking frozen cereal
(Scene: Friday, 2 a.m. underground at a Brooklyn subway station. The hallway is sparsely populated by a few lone late-night revelers.)