Reference: 

Post 196. 7UP, 

Post 171. Muster the Mark!

I meet Lou at the H Bar for our weekly lunch. He is already sitting at our usual booth and greets me as I approach.

“Hi Fred, it’s been a while!” 

“Looks like Mr. Hoffmann has got his staff back, for a full reopening.”

“The Patio Bar, outside, is still closed.”

“Yeah, no more color-coded drinks!”

“’Mkgnao!’, ‘Mrkgnao!’, ‘Mrkrgnao!’, ‘Gurrhr!’”

“If you say so, Lou.”

“Well, I don’t. It was all in Mr. Bloom’s ears.”

“I found him wandering through Dublin, when I read Ulysses.”

“He was trying to spell feline speak, in the opening of chapter 4, Calypso.”

“’They understand what we say better than we understand them.’”

Lou is tapping his phone. “Yes, that is a direct quote, I have the page on screen.”

“Funny how some of that stuck with me!”

“It is comical, to me.  Perhaps that is why you remember it?” 

“Don’t forget, Lou, he offered ‘pussens’ some milk.’”

“Right, the cat with ‘avid shameclosing eyes.’”

“Oh! That’s the book where quarks came from!”

“No, they are in a different book called Finnegan’s Wake.”

“That one! I opened it any number of times, but it remains a closed book to me.”

“Quarks were also calculated, later, by Mr. Gell-Mann.”

“Having first been written by Mr. Joyce.”

“Yes, Mr. Joyce filled the map in his head with a city full of stories.”

“How the hell did he know all that, anyway?”

“He didn’t. He just mingled memories with imaginings as he wrote.”

“I guess that’s what novelists do.”

“Yeah, there is no time in imaginings.  It is all now.”

“That’s not calculation!”

“You might say that novel is calculated to keep you puzzled and amused!”

“Agreed.”

“Mr. Joyce had a playful mind.”

“As in an imaginary cat just popping into existence to speak, ‘stalking around his writing table,’ for example.”

“Yes, very ‘quarkish’, Fred.”

“You might also say it all bubbled up in his mind.”

“In his calculations, Mr. Gell-Mann balances everything across an equals sign.”

“Didn’t Mr. Joyce have Homer’s Odyssey on his mind the whole time, in those city wanderings?”

“Well Fred, he might have named his wife, Molly, after a nymph!”

“Conjuring up his wife’s charms with mythology.”

“But he kept Dublin, where he was born, in his words.”

Lou puts his glasses on. Puts his phone down, and picks up the menu.

“Didn’t you order through the app?”

“Yes, just checking prices. A burger and fries is now sixteen bucks!”

“Seems like it was more like twelve a year ago!”

“Regular is up to four ninety-nine at the Light House Gas Station.”

“It might as well be five.”

“No, that breaks the spell.”

“What spell, Lou?”

“The illusion that you are still paying four dollars.”

I look around the room but don’t see any servers. “Have you seen any servers around here?”

“She just hurried back to the kitchen, serving a table behind you.”

“Still not enough staff.”

“That’s why the Patio Bar remains closed.”

“Why?”

“You know, The Authority for Ethnic Harmony have been holding his employees for months, and he can’t even find out where they are.”

“Okay, so he has hired new people.”

“Yes, but he still thinks he can get the others back.”

“Didn’t you say they have all the necessary paperwork?”

“They do, but they didn’t have it on them at the time of the raid.”

“What? How could that happen?”

“How indeed, they put their trust in our country to let them go home and get it.”

“Mr. Hoffman has it all, doesn’t he?”

“Of course, he was away, remember? They never gave him an opportunity to produce it.”

“I hear the AEH keeps moving people around before finally deporting them.”

“They are buying warehouses all over the country to hold more detainees, you know.”

“I just saw that grim news on YouTube.”

“They may not be sent back to their own country.”

“In some cases, that could save their lives!”

“True enough, isn’t it interesting that they don’t use that as justification.”

“Comfort and security is far from the point. The idea is to make it so unpleasant to be here illegally, people will go back to what they left behind. Besides, brings in votes.”

“Well, deporting them does, cruelty is inappropriate. It is illegal here in the States.”

“The bitter lesson is, people only have the rights they can defend.”

“Yeah, supposedly, that’s what the courts are for.”

“If you have the money to get representation.”

“We are the United States of Money!”
Our server, Zlata, greets us with a heavy accent.

“Your burgers and fries, sir.”

She places our identical orders in front of us with a bottle of Heineken for Lou and Peroni for me.

“Slava Ukraini !” shouts from two broaches on her broad chest, one in Cyrillic and the other in the English alphabet, under her name tag.

Lou picks up his Heineken, and then I take the hint and raise my bottle too, “Slava Ukraini.”

Zlata tries to help us with pronunciation. We don’t get it. Zlata smiles and turns to serve customers in the next booth.

“Lou, have you been out of town?”

“Out of my mind, more like.”

“Too much social media?”

“Could be, but I am on the wagon as far as that goes. No, I have been battling electronic voices pretending to be customer service people.”

“You must have been trying to get tech help.”

“I was. My new smart TV is way too smart for me!”

We watch a party of customers walk towards a corner table. All in business suits and carrying identical black briefcases.

“I am a little worried about those guys.”

“They are okay, Fred.”

“Do you know them?”

“No, but I believe they are on a cultural exchange from Bulgaria at PU.”

“Look like Russian Mafia to me.”

“Yeah, with bags of cash for a payoff!”

“Well, I made two bucks in our community yard sale.”

“What fetched that extraordinary sum?”

“An extra-long lamp extension cord and a number of USB connectors, all on a table marked with three balloons to attract customers outside my house.”

“Be careful where you invest!”

“Bubble Tea is under consideration.”

“A medium black tea with bobas will set you back five bucks at ‘Bubble It’, over at the Hadron Shopping Center.”

“What an irony!”

“What do you mean?”

“Bubbles hit by inflation. It was only four fifty for a small when they first opened in March.”

“They don’t sell smalls anymore, it’s just Medium, Large, or ‘Monsta-with-Cream’.”

“How big is ‘Monsta’?’

“I think it’s a liter of tea with tapioca pearls.”

Lou is eating his fries one at a time. “You mean ‘bobas’!”

“Well, I guess so. They aren’t really bubbles.”

“I unloaded my lawn mower, weed whacker, and my bicycle, which has barely moved for about ten years.”

He pokes a single fry into the pool of ketchup on the side of his plate.

“Can it still be ridden?”

“Sure, it is properly lubricated with two-year-old tires and only few miles on the treads.”

Some ketchup drips from the next fry onto the side of his plate and his sleeve, as he gestures with it.

“What did you keep it for?”

“A promise I didn’t keep.”

He wipes his sleeve with his napkin.

“To ride it, you mean?”

“Yeah, tomorrow always feels like the best time to bike.”

Zlata returns with her smile wide.

“More beers, guys?”

We both raise our bottles and say, “Slava Ukraini !”

She laughs.

“Listen carefully, “Slava Ukraini” ! okay? Try one more time.”

Our pronunciation is still off.

“You guys need more beers!”

Zlata zooms off with our empty plates on her tray.

Lou drains his Heineken. 

Zlata returns with our replenishments in no time.

“For you, I have two teaching aids!”

“Thanks! Slava Ukraini !”

Zlata laughs, “Much better!” she says, and moves over to the new party across the room.

“You must be retiring from yard work, Lou.”

“Retiring from my backache too.”

“Sounds like a good idea!”

“Gave me time to read.”

“I’ll bet you needed every minute of your convalescence to read Ulysses and that other book.”

“Needed much longer with the other book.”

“Do you feel better off for the experience?”

“Yes, in another sense, I am nearly three hundred dollars richer.”

“That’s what a few balloons and a yard sale will do for you.”

“Nice idea to give us vendors ballons.”

“Yeah, it’s all inflationary!”