Friday, July 13, 2007


Frydazed the thirteenth
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes

Have I not had a rough week? I drank polluted water, trying to retrieve money my wife hid from me, in urns I threw out in the East River... I just wanted to do the laundry yesterday and instead I get kidnapped and brought to a doctor for his first vasectomy and certainly my last. So, today I wanted to lay low. I'm not a superstitious person but if you've been reading about my life, laying low would be a good idea today... Not to be. Today was the weirdest day of all.
Me and Antoine were running the shop in the morning and then I was going to take Dawn to see Harry Potter. She loves Harry Potter. She'd be a witch except she doen't have the patience or time to learn the craft. ( Sometimes, I catch her casting spells on me.) My mother- in- law was coming to the house to watch the kids, and Dawn and I were going to go out for the first time since... we were going out, about seven years ago.We've been very busy domesticating ourselves and learning to piss on paper. (I don't know exactly what that means.) Let's cut to the weirdness of the day shall we. That's what we are here for .
Cut to the chase: So, the upstairs tenant comes running down into the store screaming that the heat is on in her apartment and it killed her old dog. She's screaming and carrying on, as I call the landlord to see what's going on. I tell Antoine to go upstairs and report back to me. Is the dog dead?. Are the heaters on?. What the fuck is going on?... I want to go to an air conditioned movie house and chill. I mean for two and half hours, I want that Harry Potter to have more shit happen to him than what happens to me in a week. I was looking foward to someone else having problems that seemed unholy. I don't want to deal with dead dogs in the heat and crazy old ladies carrying on. Is that too much to ask for? Yes, my friends that was too much to ask for.
Antoine is a really good guy, but he used to take a lot of drugs. A ton. A lot of heroin but that's not all... He's a big gawky burn out from too many years of day in and day out trying to score drugs. That my friends is a twenty four seven job. I don't think it's the drugs which ruin you so much as the trying to acquire the money for the drugs and then the actual acquiring of the drugs. I'm sure the affects of drugs have a part but I'm not so convinced that the drug ruins you. It's all the running around
Anyway, Antoine comes back downstairs white as a ghost, "The dog is dead. The heat is on, and the lady is hysterical."
I finally get ahold of the landlord who informs me that the boiler room is acting up. Something about the water in the radiator never got drained and so the hot water is still running through the radiator pipes.
"The plumber will be there tomorrow."
The old lady came back down into the store wailing away. She collapsed on the ground.
"Antoine, we can not have this lady lying on the ground in the store.
Go to the deli and get a couple of empty boxes, a case of Brooklyn Brown Ale and five bags of ice."
Antoine made a couple of trips back and forth from the deli,"Now what?" he asked.
Get the birthday wrapping paper from the back of the store."
"Now what?
"Take the lady upstairs with you and the ice. Get her drinking water. Turn the fans on and have the ice in front of the fan. Take the dead dog and put him in this box and bring it downstairs to me, I'll call ASPCA to come get him or whatever agency it is. Hurry up because Dawn will be here soon and it will be my only half a day off this year."
Antoine took off with the box and the ice and the old lady. I was feeling pretty smug about myself. What a great troubleshooter I was. And now for my piece the resistance. I put my six pack in a box and then put wrapping paper around it. This is how I have always been able to get beer into a movie theater. No one ever asked me to open up a box which was a "present for a party after the movie." Sheer genius.I used to sneak chinese food into a theater that way too.
Antoine finally came back downstairs as I held onto the phone trying to get some agency to take the defunct animal away.
"I gotta talk to you," he said
"Yes," I said. "Is the lady o.k.?"
"I wrapped the dog in plastic and put it in the box like you said."
"I never said anything about plastic, but I guess that was smart with the heat and all."
"When I picked him up to put him in the plastic he was warm."
I dropped the phone,"Where's the box, where's the box1."
"I wrapped the plastic pretty tight."
I stopped in my tracks when I saw the box. Antoine had wrapped the box with wrapping paper, "Why did you wrap the dog in wrapping paper?"
"Why did you ask me to get wrapping paper?
"Not for a dead dog. That was for my beer, so I could get my beer into the movie theater."
"How could you be multi-tasking in the middle of a crisis?" he asked sincerly.
"Well, the dog is dead now... Don't you know rigor mortis sets in pretty quick in a little animal. The dog was overheated or in a coma but not dead. There's no way the dog wouldn't be stiff . She said he died last night. We killed this dog."
"It's the ladies fault."
"An animal is not dead when its warm."
It's over a hundred degrees in that apartment, the ladies screaming and wailing. It was a very difficult situation for me to be in. She said the dog has been dead since last night. Why wouldn't I believe her?."
Dawn walked into the store,"Now what?" she asked. We're going to the movie right?"
"Yes, but its going to be a double date."

As the lights went down low, I shifted the box to my lap and looked at my wife who was esctatic to be at a new Harry Potter movie. I looked to my left at the old lady next to me. She had calmed down but was still wiping her nose with a very ratty tissue. Antoine was next to her, gawking at the screen. I went to open my beer and then had a fleeting worrisome moment that the box on the sidewalk for the animal people had a six pack of beer in it and the old ladies very dead dog was in my lap. Nah. I ripped open my present and opened up my six pack. I passed one to the old lady and one to my wife but never to Antoine.