sorry, wrong number
I’ve just returned from lunch, where, as usual, I was the person amongst many persons who gets stopped by another person looking for money. I must have SUCKER written on my face. And I had my headphones in. WTF??? LEAVE ME ALONE, what is the matter with you? Don’t you observe social signals that say someone is occupied? It’s like when someone’s intently reading a book on the plane, head down, and who sits next to you (and by “you” I mean “me”) but some goddamn chatterbox. You know how on TV there’s always some story on some channel about some woman who got on a plane and who should sit next to her but the most fabulous, intelligent, drop-dead-gorgeous, funny, witty, wonderful man in the history of the world and they just happen to be going to the same place and they are completely suited to each other and they fly off to Paris (it’s always Paris, never some dump like Lagos, Nigeria) and get off the plane and head straight for the Hôtel de Crillion (it’s always the Crillion, never some $20/night hellhole in the 19th Arrondissement) and they have mad passionate sex which is PERFECT and then they wander down to the Eiffel Tower (at night, never during the day when the lights are off) and then have an espresso at some perfectly charming little place (and it’s always some picturesque family place, never the McDonald’s in the run-down section of the Arab neighborhood) and they each wonder where the other has been all their lives and it’s a magical fairytale of light and love? Well that’s all a bunch of bullshit. It don’t happen. It just doesn’t. Those guys don’t sit next to anyone. They are somewhere, they do exist, but they don’t sit next to people on planes. Only chatterboxes who won’t shut up when I want to read do.
Anyhoo, this guy said he was a former homicide detective who needed to get a hotel room to take a shower. (Well props for a new story at least; that old “I just need $2.00 more for a bus ticket to New Hampshire is so 2006.) Then he said he would make a deal with me: he’d bet me $5.00 that he could tell me where I got my shoes.
Well I worked in a bar for more than 10 years and I have heard every scam/joke “bet” on the planet. Nobody’s getting free drinks out of me unless I want to give them to them.
So I just looked at him and said very matter-of-factly, “I can tell you where I got them too. I got them ON MY FEET.”
A look of surprise at being beaten washed over his face. It was really visible, like a theatre curtain dropping down embroidered with the silky letters of BUSTED in curlicued script. He knew the game was over right then. I should have asked why he didn’t just pop by the precinct headquarters about a half mile away if he was a police. Surely they would help one of their own.
Not that I’m heartless, if he really needs money for whatever reason, I feel bad for him, not that it’s going to make me give him any, but a *hotel room*??? He needs a hotel room to take a shower? The ocean is down the street! Or if he really wanted fresh water for washing, $1.70 buys a train ride to a beach with indoor plumbing.
If you have a bar bet that you think I can’t answer, let me know and if I can’t figure it out I’ll possibly buy you a shower in a hotel room. There’s probably a few of these tricks somewhere that are new to me.
Or maybe not.