Dinner Hour
Going by the website the place seemed to tick all the boxes. Gluten-free, vegan, sustainable. Locally owned in a diverse and walkable neighborhood. Perhaps the mission statement on the menu walked some of it back: “At BiVeg3 we seek to make bison more accessible to all through socially-responsible sourcing and farming practices.”
So maybe not vegan: A place where community members who previously were denied or otherwise faced hurdles getting bison meat or who perhaps even lived in bison deserts could now get bison responsibly raised, killed, and cooked with local farm-to-table ingredients after parting with $19 for the burger and “Market” for the steak.
The occasion was dinner with Miss Simmons, a lovely gal who handles the phones and makes coffee and generally keeps everything in order in an office occupied by six slobby old newspaper guys. Left to ourselves we would never clean the coffee pot or empty the ashtrays, and every desk would sprout its own cityscape of paper stacks. We are high up in an old building with dodgy elevator service, and as such we have most meals in — Chinese from Mr. Wong’s across the street. The delivery guy Chu hustles up and down the stairs several times each day. I just thought it would be nice to give the guy a break. Nice to get out.
The reservations are for a booth so we can talk shop without eavesdroppers. What we do at the office is our business, and now that everybody has a phone with the cinematic capability of a 1960s Hollywood studio we don’t need anyone streaming corporate cross-chatter live to the connected planet on the tail end of some epic Tik Tok video of coconut rum ice cream on fire. Up front the team of four hostesses scrutinizes our booth reservation against the seating chart on a computer screen and then “Brandi” leads us to a table in the middle of the restaurant and seats us right next to two drunk lesbians.
“Hey, Brandi. We asked for a booth.”
“Well, we call this a booth,” says she. “It’s so funny — everyone who comes in here calls these tables — I think since there’s a bench on one side? Our owner is Argentinian.”
“Well, there are tables separated by more than two feet over there by the windows and they’re all empty, Brandi. Could we sit at one of those?”
“Unfortunately that section is closed for Valentine’s Day reservations.”
Well it’s Valentine’s Day and we have reservations. I figure this must have something to do with the Argentinian and order us Manhattans, then start up non-work conversation with Simmons, since the women sitting next to us are in fact broadcasting their dinner in what we have just come to find is the non-Valentine’s section of the restaurant tonight. It is the Two Drunk Lesbians Live Stream according to the pink Edwardian script sandwich board on the table, and it seems the two drunk lesbians have been drinking since sometime around two. One is wearing a pair of pink heart-shaped fun glasses and the other red round ones with googly eyes. They are presently trading the fun glasses and one appears to be imitating the other. She is having a conversation between them using a lobster claw like a puppet, for she has found the tendon to make the lobster claw talk:
“Hi! I’m Pam and I like potatoes.”
The claw then turns to talk to “Pam” and says, “Hi! I’m Velma and potatoes give me gas. Just like Pam just passed!”
The lesbian with the lobster claw falls into a fit of laughter, while her counterpart (Pam, I am thinking) sticks her face in the camera and expertly uses her tongue to make a flatulence noise like a six year old.
Simmons and I try defending against this with light banter about the street construction outside. The city is taking a four-lane road with parking and turning it into a two-lane road with a bicycle lane and parking.
“It’s going to be a one-way street with parked cars hiding two-way bicycle traffic every time you go to make a turn,” Simmons observes. “A recipe for disaster.”
“That dress is a disaster,” Pam next door whispers into her live stream — the kind of drunk whisper that everyone around hears in addition to the entire theoretical internet.
“Sorry!” says Velma — again using the lobster claw as a puppet. “Velma doesn’t hold her booze well — and she just got sprayed by the faucet in the restroom. She’s getting cranky.”
So it appears Pam is Velma and Velma is Pam. The lobster claw is confusing.
But Simmons is a tough cookie and looks fabulous in any dress besides. No harm, no foul.
The cocktails come. Two aqua-blue jobs and what looks like a fig skewered with olives — all of it pushed aside by a giant ice cube.
“Say, Brandi. We had Manhattans. What’s this?”
But the Argentenian has apparently struck again.
“The owner puts a twist from his homeland on all the selections here.”
“Say, Brandi. I’d like to meet this owner. Is he around?”
“He should be for Valentine’s Day. He just loves talking with our diners.”
“Well send him over to our table, please. I want to hear about when Valentine’s Day starts in Argentina and what they call a blue-raspberry slurrpy over there. And I want to know what lobster is doing on the menu at a vegan restaurant. And this bison. Maybe they grow it out of the ground down there in Argentina?
“Oh, the bison is our signature dish. It’s flown in fresh from Montana every morning and the bisons are raised stress-free with no barbed wire and no growth hormones.”
Next door the drunkest of the two drunk lesbians whom I now believe to be “Velma” has coughed-out “Toxic!” and fallen into the giggles drunk-whispering into her live stream again:
“But you know Little Miss Daddy Issues will be flippin’ that skirt for him after dessert!”
Simmons is a rock. A poker face. I should probably mention she was a tomboy. A state swimming champion. A woman utterly and always unfazed by the rogues and manboys back at HQ.
Meanwhile, the bar is filling up and Brandi gamely offers to snag two more margaritas for the girls next door before the barkeep gets really busy. The act has foresight stamped all over it, for the new arrivals have the bar guy — a pale, thin fellow with a cockatiel hair-do — on the ropes. These are swarthy little fireplugs in cowboy hats who have no doubt wandered in from the quarter horse show at the convention center next door.
“Say — where do you sustainably source your bison?” bellows one. He’s onto these frauds quick. The cockatiel is probably reciting the same pitch Brandi just gave us when another one of the boys shouts:
“Whoa! Twelve bucks for this inch of fairy water?”
The cockatiel’s response is not heard from our position, but it’s clear he’s already abandoned the Argentinian angle.
“Well it’s an inch before you put this fancy giant ice cube in it. Lookit here — they hot-branded their ice cube with the Prince symbol!”
Yet the price-to-quantity ratio appears to be no deal killer. Next thing you know they’re all toting $12 cocktails right over to the open bench seating on the other side of the two drunk lesbians, which by the definition of some unseen Argentinian constitutes a “booth.”
“Three pitchers of beer and keep ’em coming,” barks one of the boys. Brandi casts a nervous glance and does a so-so job of pretending not to hear them as she heads for the kitchen. The cowpokes sit down and commence manspreading using elbows, knees, and hats. They compare ice cubes.
“Looks like I got a girl one.”
“I got me a boy.
“No … wait …”
“Oh my god!” giggles Velma. “We just got surrounded by the Not OK Corral!”
“Sorry,” says Pam again. “She’s very drunk.”
The guy sitting an elbow-width from Pam seems unfazed by the idea of having just sat down in the middle of an internet broadcast.
“Now ma’am — and citizens of the internet, we’re all Texas gentlemen except for Rory and Sue here,” he confides.
“I’m sorry — but did you just say his name is ‘Sue?’” asks Pam.
“Well we’re all sorry too. His daddy thought it would be funny if there really was a boy named Sue like in the song. And plus he’d be a tough little SOB. But at least he turned out to be a boy named Sue.”
“Well Travis here is mad he had to drive up here in his Toyota ’cause his Ford is broke down again,” retorts Sue.
Brandi looks to be having some kind of executive handle-it conversation with three suits up by the kitchen. And after peering deeply into my Blue Manhattan I see what all the ice cube talk is about. There are gender symbols on the sides, and while I’m clearly female-side-up, the booze in this concoction is rapidly eating away at the this-that-and-the-other genders. On one side I think I see what’s left over of male.
“So what made you guys come up here from Texas?” asks Pam.
“Our wives just made us leave,” comes center-table from a new cut-up. “Or at least my wife wanted to get rid of me for a while.”
“Larry’s wife is ‘involved’ with the plummer and the milkman,” quips Travis.
“The mailman only dropped her ’cause her box was always blocked.”
A round of laughter comes from the boys and Velma now sticks her face, googly-eye-glasses-and-all — in her live stream.
“My Wife the Dirty Whore Humor. You’re hearing it here live, folks. Hey, Travis from Texas — stand up and take a bow.”
This Travis does, and the boys roar again, but Velma is not going to be run over.
“Do you know you assholes are live on the internet right now?”
“Well, hell yes — we assholes are live right here right now,” says Travis. “And I think we’re always on the internet all the time anyway if I didn’t read my iPhone User Agreement correctly.”
“Sorry!” yelps Pam yet again. “She literally just switched over from mean drunk to very-mean drunk at this very moment.”
More laughter.
Velma presses on.
“Is there anything else you want to say to your wives while you’re live on the internet? Do you want to call them whores some more or remind them to do the wash and scrub the floors?”
“Well I would like to call Larry’s wife a whore again,” says Travis.
“I would like to call Larry’s wife a whore with a dirty floor,” says Larry.
The suits have meanwhile figured out their plan, and one is headed our way.
“Good evening, gentlemen. My name is Phillip and I’ll be your server tonight. Can I get you started with another round of drinks?”
“”Well I don’t know,” says Rory. “I think we’re all still making payments on these fancy transexual ice cubes.”
“You should make them leave,” advises Velma. “They’re toxic. Misogynists. And they think they can just order Brandi around.”
“Well I guess they get to order me around now,” says Phillip.
“Don’t worry — I can handle these gentlemen. I used to watch Westerns on Saturday morning TV when I was a kid.”
“Well, tarnation, Phillip,” says Rory. “All of that’s enough to get you by with us. We’d all be fine with three pitchers of beer. As long as you keep … fillin’ ’em up … Phillip.”
“Sounds like a plan,” says the suit. “We don’t have pitchers, but we’ll figure something out.”
“My god, but is this white male privilege or what?” Velma asks her phone.
“I feel like it is,” says Sue.
“Well, I’m tan as a Mexican roofer but I surely do feel the white privilege,” agrees Travis.
There seems to be unanimous agreement among the cowboys over their state of good fortune when another guy in a cowboy hat appears.
“Hey! It’s another white male!” says Larry. “Come join our privilege!”
“Well, I just had the privilege of taking a piss beside a woman taking a piss in their come-as-you-are-or-think-you-are restroom,” says the newcomer. “Then the sink took a piss all over me.”
“Holy — “ says Travis, noticing his buddy’s very wet crotch. “Maybe the water main break down the street was only Floyd peeing his pants.”
“Floyd!” Velma giggles into her camera.
“He’s a real ‘Floyd,’” says Travis. “Like a classic Floyd who would own a barbershop if he’d been smart enough to graduate barber college.”
“Just a humble horse rancher, ma’am,” says Floyd. The guy tips his hat and squeezes in on the bench near Velma. “Say — what do you ladies think about having to share the restroom with us fellas?”
“Please don’t gender us,’” says Velma tersely. A third-strike tone.
“Uh oh, Floyd” comes a voice from down the table. “I think you just dead-named her.”
“No! Not unless he names her!” comes another voice.
“These guys know about dead-naming,” sneers Velma to her telephone audience.
“Again — she’s sorry,” interjects Pam. She’s very sorry she’s a rude, drunk lesbian.”
Pam turns the camera on herself.
“This is Pam, and on behalf of my rude, drunk friend Velma. This is Two Drunk Lesbians signing off.”
“Why’d you do that?” whines Velma.
“Because you’re drunk, girl! You’re like, too drunk for Two Drunk Lesbians drunk.”
Brandi is back — hopefully to close-out Pam and Velma, but alas …
“Can I get you all another round?”
“None for us,” says Pam.
“Another round, and we’d like to order two bison steaks, rare,” say I.
“Um, excuse me — you didn’t ask us whether we wanted dessert.” It’s Velma. Bright highlights of third-strike again now with undertones of petulance.
“Oh I’m so very sorry!” declares Brandi.
Phillip is coming out with all the suits now, and they’ve all got literal buckets of beer.
“Don’t worry, guys — these are brand new from the CVS around the corner and we washed them out. Red for Texas even.”
“As long as those are just beer suds,” says Floyd. “I don’t even think we serve buckets of beer back home.”
“Well they didn’t have pitchers here,” says Rory. “But Phillip here knows how to get things done. Watches Saturday matinee Westerns.”
With dessert on order, Pam is off to the restroom. Simmons has been messaging with the office.
“Jerry can’t find his book on the Reagan years,” Simmons reports. “I put it right by his book on the Nixon years but apparently he owns Nixon while Reagan is overdue from the library.”
“I don’t know why you bother to organize that guy. If it were me and I had to clean up everything he leaves here and there I’d just dump it all on his chair and force him to find some place for it before he can sit his fat ass down.”
“He’s quite helpless — needs a mother,” replies Simmons. “His wife takes care of his sandwich every day, but that one time he forgot it he ate all the kisses out of my candy dish overnight.”
“Sounds like the typical man-boy,” sneers Velma. “I’ll bet he has a brass name plaque on his desk and a pen and pencil stand. But no computer.”
“Close,” admit I. “All three, but he never uses the pen and pencil and the name plaque belongs to Amy McGonagle.”
“What happened to Amy McGonagle?”
“Had a kid and left us.”
“You mean she got pregnant and you fired her.”
“Do you remember it that way, Simmons?”
“Jerry’s mad that he can’t find anything he printed out on Hunter Biden’s laptop,” says Simmons, who hasn’t looked up from her phone.
“Wow — he’s typing pretty fast for a hunt & pecker.”
“It’s coming out word vomit,” Simmons admits. “But I’m fluent in word vomit.”
Velma smacks her forehead.
“My god! You shouldn’t be the maid of his word vomit. And I can’t believe there are Hunter Biden’s Laptop Believers here!”
Back at the office we make good hay out of this one. Of course Hunter Biden had and has a laptop. Certainly the thing exists. Arguing about its existence is like arguing the existence of UFOs, which in doing so completely fails to parse the meaning of the acronym. The next thing you know you’re arguing over nothing, as we are about to here.
“I’m a Hunter Biden’s Laptop Believer,” Floyd offers brightly.
`”Hey — Hunter Biden’s Laptop Believer over here, too,” comes a voice from down the row.”
“Same!”
“I raise this bucket of beer to Hunter Biden’s laptop,” says Larry, who does so and sloshes beer all over.
“Oh, god!” exclaims Velma. “Would you listen to yourselves!”
“You don’t think Hunter Biden has a laptop?” asks Floyd. “Do you think he’s more of a tablet guy?”
“No! Of course he has a laptop. But you are all propagating misinformation about it.”
Here is where the rest of us in the Argentinian’s private restaurant booth give each other a look.
“Well, what do you think the correct information about the laptop is, ma’am?” asks Floyd.
“That’s the point,” shrieks Velma. “Nobody knows!”
Pam has returned.
“Oh, god — dear god. I swear, guys — if I didn’t have to pee so bad I never would have left her with you!”
“That’s OK,” says Floyd. “We were just having a perfectly fine discussion about what we don’t know is on Hunter Biden’s laptop. There could be porn and orgies and fraud and extortion and pictures of puppies on it. We just don’t know.”
Velma is trending red-to-purple. The bar is filling up and the cockatiel now has help. The tables in the section reserved for Valentine’s Day are being prepped by the suits, and it looks like more waiters have just come on shift. They’re lighting candles and setting up service, presumably for lovey-dovey couples who had planned to be here tonight — unlike the Texans who wandered over from the convention center next door and the large party that has just shown up at the hostess stand. They are a crowd version of the two drunk lesbians: half of them shouting and the other half telling them to shut up.
“Oh yeah,” Floyd says. “Some rapper in town tonight. Little Big Boy or somebody.”
“Those are high school students, you racist,” scolds Velma — before adding, “there’s a basketball tournament here this week.”
“So I see I am the racist,” shrugs Floyd.
Phillip has headed over to the hostess stand, and he presently returns with Velma’s presumed basketball players. In fairness they’re all very tall. There is just enough room at the end of this booth to seat all nine.
“I’ll get you some menus,” says Phillip. “And can I get all of you something to drink? We have coffee, tea, and Pepsi products.”
“Oh, don’t let them push Pepsi products on you, boys,” says Sue. “If you ask nice they’ll bring you buckets of beer.”
“Don’t you call them ‘boys,’” Velma demands.
Yet the “boys” aren’t even paying attention, and luckily Brandi has just appeared with a slice of red velvet cake that Velma will hopefully very soon stuff in her pie hole.
“Your steaks are on the way,” Brandi assures us as Phillip appears with more menus and now gets perhaps the easiest order he will ever take for a party of six.
“Just the bison and potatoes for all of us,” says Rory. “And make those steaks bloody as a virgin’s wedding night.”
“Gross!” say Pam and Sue in unison.
“Sorry, gentlemen — don’t let him spoil your dinner,” says Larry.
The basketballers are team players. Not one so much as looks up. But the menus have caught their attention.
“Shit it’s twenty dollars for a hamburger here,” says one.
“Then get the steak — it’s only sixty-five,” says another.
There is murmuring that seems to produce the consensus that Demetrius is going to be the wallet tonight. He has the only credit card of the lot, and it’s got such a high credit limit that Demetrius’s father had been able to buy an ATV with it.
“Yo — put it all on your card and you’ll get so many points!”
“You’ll go poor getting points!”
“Demetrius’ dad go poor getting points!”
“Yo Demetrius. Didn’t your mom make your dad take that ATV back?”
The gist of it is that Demetrius’s father did buy an ATV on the credit card despite having nowhere to legally drive it, and Demetrius’s father’s wife had sent him and it back to the powersports store for a refund. And any card that would buy an ATV that’s since been returned for a refund would certainly cover a few hundred bucks for bison burgers.
“Where was your dad thinking of driving that thing, Demetrius?” asks Sue.
There is silence.
“Demetrius shy,” shouts a basketballer from the far end.
Which he clearly is. It’s still not clear which one is Demetrius.
Pam is laughing at her dessert.
“It looks like they used a melon baller to get this scoop of ice cream, and it’s melted already.”
“Yeah — the portions here are very small,” says Velma, who still hasn’t touched her wisp of red velvet cake, apparently so she can use it in a photo with Pam. She is holding her phone out now — practically in Floyd’s face — to capture the blessed convergence of almost-no-cake and melty melon-balled almost-no-ice cream. “‘I call this Kissing Twenty-five Bucks Goodbye — After a Hundred for Dinner.”
Brandi arrives with our steaks, and not only does the plate dwarf them, but the chef has placed two large complimentary artichokes on each plate to belabor the point.
After seeing the bison steaks the basketballers decide on a round of crab potatoes from the appetizer list based on the worst-case scenario that even at fifteen bucks a potato is going to be a certain size. The table has also learned from the loudest of the bunch that Dontell just flunked his driving test, and Dontell defends himself by asserting “that lady be on her period.”
This makes the cowboys break into guffaws and seems to fully commit Velma to the color purple.
“Well it looks like we’re outnumbered by whi … by male toxicity,” she grumbles. Velma then looks at Simmons and says, “But I guess this is just another day at the office for you, Miss Secretary Bang?”
Simmons does that thing where she looks behind her for the obvious intended target of the insult, and finding no one replies, “When do we get to see you start munching that creamy red wedge of heaven, sweetie?”
Velma is dumbfounded. Looks at Pam, and then inexplicably at Floyd and Travis for support.
“It’s not going to eat itself, you know.”
“Slut!” declares Velma. Her fists are balled.
Pam has bigger problems.
“Oh, shit — my phone! I left it in the restroom!”
She bolts for the loo.
Velma pulls up her messenger bag and begins rummaging for her wallet.
“Yo I tole you, dog,” comes a voice from far down the table. “She got a butchy bag!”
“Shut it Fred. Did you see she almost hit that lady?”
Floyd whistles and pours himself more beer as the suits arrive with more tiny steaks.
“Say, my wife puts bigger beef cubes in her stew,” says Larry.
The situation with the potatoes isn’t any better. The celebrated and still unseen Argentinian has managed to scoop and fluff what looks like about one-third of a potato to arrive at his definition of “potato.”
“Well you must clear about ten grand per animal serving these bison bites and get forty-five bucks out of a potato,” says Rory. “What have you got on the menu that will feed an adult male?”
“I hear you,” says the suit. This is not Phillip, but he has Phillip’s spirit and attitude. “I’m going to bring you gentlemen burgers and fries on the house. The burger is a full third-pound.”
“Well we sure appreciate that, Don. And can you do me a favor — and put it on our bill if you need to? Bring those gentlemen at the end of the table burgers and fries too if this is all the bigger their crab potatoes are going to be.”
“Yes sir, I certainly will.”
Velma meanwhile has found a credit card. There is no sign of Pam. But when Brandi comes by again Velma would like a word with her.
“I just want you to know that we’re going to pay for our food at the prices we agreed to when we saw the prices and ordered our food — even though there was practically no food.”
“OK,” says Brandi brightly, picking up the check. “I’ll be right back with this!”
Whether by instinct or intellect Brandi turns to walk away quickly. This perhaps rushes the next thing out of Velma’s mouth, which itself may have been stewing too long in studied slights and inebriation.
“Because we aren’t a bunch of privileged nepo-colonizers!”
The utterance seems to pass without note. Brandi continues on her way, and I can’t help but hand it to the Argentinian, whoever he is. This is a delicious little medallion of bison steak, and Rory is probably right. The guy is probably clearing at least 10 grand an animal at this so-called vegan joint. He’s no doubt also exploiting dirt-poor potato farmers to the point Velma should be hopping mad.
Pam is back with her phone — her face ashen.
“My god — did you hear? The Third Baptist Church down the street just collapsed from that water main break! They’re saying hundreds dead!”
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Third Baptist has been in the news all month for a youth ministry revival that got out of hand. It had started as a weekend of music and gospel, but then word had gotten out that a 14-year-old girl had received Christ, retained him, and now spoke His Word directly. Over the past three weeks the church had been mobbed by people from far and wide to the point the fire marshal had moved a few hundred into the go-go bar across the street the city had just shut down over fights and prostitution.
“Well I kind of did think I heard a big clap of thunder a while back,” says Travis. “All that water in the street I can see it. That whole area was built on sandstone according to the plaque on The Sandstone Inn.”
“And sinking for over a hundred years according to the menu at The Blarney Tavern of the Sandstone God,” says Floyd. “We stopped there for beer last night after we couldn’t get in to hear that girl. Or Lord Jesus, I guess, if she’s not a hoax.”
“Bad news, Floyd,” says Velma. “The whole thing is a hoax. They probably collapsed under their own stupidity.”
Brandi is back with more bad news.
“Ladies, I’m very sorry, but this card was declined.”
“Oh, fuck — I forgot I put Herbie’s hernia surgery on that,” says Velma.
“That’s OK,” says Pam.
“I’ll pick up the check.
“Again.
“Do you guys Venmo?”
“I can go check,” says Brandi, who is happy to disappear again.
“What’s a Venmo?” asks Floyd.
“It’s like a PayPal for when your colleague forgot she put hamster hernia surgery on her Discover Card again.”
A mutual side-eye occurs between the two drunk lesbians and then Floyd says: “Hamster hernias? How do you even find out your hamster has a hernia?” — which causes an eruption of laughter, and particularly from Rory, who already has the wisdom of a half bucket of beer in him. He says, “When they start calling off work at the warehouse or they just aren’t the same in bed.” Fred from the basketballers asks, “Wait — did she say her hamster has had at least two hernia surgeries?”
Here I think many of us have the hopeful impression that Velma is about to storm off, yet there is no such grace. Meanwhile the ambiance is changing as sirens echo off the buildings. BiVeg3’s festive pink lighting now features bright red strobes, and a line has formed at the hostess stand. Thanks to the flooding down the street the place was already the only viable restaurant for two blocks before the church collapsed. And it is finally well and truly dinner hour. Where is the Argentinian?
Brandi is on her way back with one of the suits, and the gist of it is that they do not take Venmo, only cards and cash … but the suit would like to comp the women their dinner both as a good-faith gesture and likely as a means of freeing up two more seats for the growing line of paying customers.
“Put ’em on our tab,” shouts Rory. “Lord knows we’re all more fortunate than those poor people down the street.”
“No,” protests Velma. “I don’t need a man to pay for my dinner.”
“I’m so very sorry — everybody,” says Pam, looking down the row. “She’s very drunk!”
“Don’t minimize me bitch!”
“Velma would like a cup of hot coffee,” say I, and Simmons gives me a light kick under the table.
“Anyway,” says the suit. “You ladies are free to start enjoying the rest of your evening.” And then he can’t help but be carried too far by the momentum of his managerial magnanimity. “Do you ladies have any other big plans for Valentine’s Day?”
“Excuse me, but this is not a date,” huffs Velma. “This was actually a work dinner for us. It is not like some transactional thing men have with women on Valentine’s Day. Or when the boss takes you out after work so he can bang you later.”
She of course shoots a look at Simmons, and Simmons now kicks off a shoe and extends her left leg, playfully resting her foot on the bench between me and Velma.
“What is this banging she speaks of, babycakes?”
“Oh, gross.”
“Anyway,” says the suit again. “Is there anything else I can do for you ladies?
“Well you can start by not patronizing us with binary dog whistles …”
“OK, we’re leaving now,” says Pam. “I am so sorry everybody!”
Velma is having none of it. Says nothing. Won’t move.
“I’m so very sorry,” says Pam to the suit. “If you wouldn’t mind … maybe going back to the kitchen … or somewhere else you could be right now — I’ll get us out of here. She doesn’t like men telling her to do things.”
“I understand,” says (“Brad” I now see — he gets a discreet gold name tag). “Have a wonderful evening, lad … have a wonderful evening. Gentlemen? Can I refill your beer buckets?”
“Fill ’em up, sir,” shouts Travis. “Hey Sue, we all just got binaried, I guess if you count.”
“Fill ’em up, sir. Binary beer!”
This now compels the Texans and basketballers to take up the subject of gender and beer. Dontell quite innocently asks if there are male beers and female beers since there is apparently male and female weed — and while no wisdom is available on the subject it turns out Rory once had a hermaphroditic pig. All of this seems to break the rest of the ice between the two parties. Even Demetrius speaks. He wonders if the hermaphroditic pig can make its own babies — but as soon as the question is out he breaks into great gasps of giggling.
In the midst of this carrying on there are new suits up by the kitchen that seem to have come in the back way — or maybe they have been here all along in some privileged air-conditioned back office. One of them is familiar: a minor heartthrob who was big on the local news a decade or so ago. Used to do the morning show and man-on-the street feel-good spots. Probably here to grab some romantic Valentine’s Day B-roll for News at 11 if it’s even on anymore — but there is no camera guy. Instead he’s doing his own lighting and voice check with his phone and selfie stick.
The other suits are huddled together and looking our way at the problem child drunk lesbian. Maybe they are discussing calling the cops on her, but assuming the news of the church collapse has circulated they have probably thought better. Meanwhile, the cockatiel from the bar and two new bar men on-shift are headed this way with the refilled beer buckets. There seems to be a trend with the fun hair at this bar. “Gerry” has a purple/orange slick while “Mo” has a red afro with gold highlights.
“Your beer buckets, gentlemen,” says the cockatiel.
Velma remains stoic. Leaving the restaurant at the direction of a man appears to be stuck in her craw no matter how Pam tries to spin it. She has tried making this a win for Velma by suggesting the coffee house or gym — much like one tries to ply a petulant toddler — to no avail.
At the end of the table Demetrius has gone face-down on his plate.
“His inhaler! Find his inhaler!”
There is panic.
Is the inhaler in his gym bag or in his pockets? Is it his asthma or is he choking? Would 911 even answer? A building just fell …
“Out the way dogs before this brother die,” shouts Fred.
The seven-footer hoists Demetrius in the air and double-pumps his sternum — and a glop of potato only big enough to choke on is violently expelled … all over Rory’s Stetson.
“Shit!” Demetrius gasps.
“Shit!”
“Shoot, I’m sorry …. ugh … sorry about your hat, sir. I couldn’t stop laughing about your pig.”
“Shit, boy,” says Rory, putting his arm around the teenager. “I think you almost died laughing. Are you all right?”
“Don’t you dare call him ‘boy!’” Velma demands.
“Now — we’re leaving now,” says Pam. She stands up and glowers at Velma. The suits are still standing down, for given the circumstances of the night it looks like there will be no calling the cops on this idiot.
“Hey, Velma,” says Simmons. “When your friend leaves I don’t think you’ll have any friends left here, so you should probably leave.”
“Nobody asked for your input, slut!”
“Let’s go or I’m going to have you dragged out,” Pam threatens.
“By who?” shrieks the Velm.
“By big, strong men,” offers Simmons. “I don’t think us little ladies have the strength to haul your fat ass out of here.”
Velma now grabs Floyd’s steak knife and lunges.
And I finally find it in myself to intercede on Simmons’s behalf, catching Velma’s attack wrist just-so and half arm-barring the woman long enough for Floyd and Travis to join in. We have her pinned in the remnants of what had moments earlier been our dinner-on-fine-porcelain. We hoist her and head out.
Yet Project Velma hits a snag mere steps from the front door.
“You fucks — you’re hurting me!” she howls.
“Put her down, assholes,” shouts a man in the lobby crowd.
Simmons is on the scene quickly.
“No, you guys. Open the door for them! A table for two opens up once this drunk is gone. Once they clean up her mess.”
“I’ve got the door,” says Pam.
This is when Velma pukes. And somehow concurrently manages to start balling.
And this elemental display of human frailty seems to cleanse those gathered of any recently learned malice toward the woman. Floyd and Travis attempt to put her down gently but lose footing in the vomit and the entire evacuation operation comes crashing to the floor.
“Oh god you broke my spine!” squeals Velma.
“You broke her spine, assholes,” shouts the asshole in the lobby.
“You need to shut your mouth, buster,” says Floyd. “You don’t know shit about this.”
So the asshole grabs Floyd and Floyd knees him in the nuts, but Floyd’s purchase is still compromised by Velma’s vomit and he’s down again, taking Mr. Take Charge with him. This is when Mr. Take Charge produces a knife and when Floyd pulls out a .380 and shoots the confused would-be hero quite dead.
It is a good half-hour before the cops show due to the mayhem down the block. In this time the lobby and most of the restaurant has cleared (somehow the evacuees are frightened by the shooting but fascinated by the idea of gazing upon result from the safe distance of just-outside-the-doorway). The Texans have adjourned dinner and now it’s them, me, Simmons, and the two drunk lesbians waiting to make our statements while the Argentinian, who finally shows, and his henchmen cover the windows out to the street with tablecloths. The mini-skirted apparently not-so-significant other of Mr. Take Charge bolted the scene the moment the guy dropped dead.
“God, what a nightmare,” moans Velma, whose spine seems to be holding up just fine. She is sitting up in her pink-cherry stew documenting the scene for her followers thus:
“Hi guys. It’s Velma with Two Drunk Lesbians sitting here in the lobby of BiVeg3. Sadly under the tablecloth beside me is a person who is deceased thanks to these people you see here.”
[Phone pans to … us]
“I want you to know I’m fine. Just shaken up and disgusted by the violent gun culture in American society.”
Simmons now joins the broadcast.
“Hi, fam. Velma is not fine. She’s a drunken asshole.”
“Well this skank is a whore!”
“Drunken asshole, and very likely a sober asshole,” Simmons insists cooly to the unseen masses.
“Whore! W-H-O-R-E! Banging the boss. Probably can’t even type, just takes dictation.”
“Well in her defense,” say I, “I’m not her boss and we’re not banging. We’re sort of equal partners in human trafficking.”
“Cute,” says the Velm. “Maybe you can elaborate for all our viewers before we get you sent to jail?”
So out of recently-revived pure malice and as pure bonus material for subscribers to the Two Drunk Lesbians MeTube channel or wherever this is going I unwind our up-til-now closely-guarded workplace situation: How we were all unemployed from the old city newspaper and squatting in our old digs on the sixth floor of the Harding Building making up spec stories for The Daily Mail when one day the Church of Scientology down on the first floor moved out, leaving only their sign behind. How we had jacked the church walk-in business — first out of boredom, then amusement, then cold calculation — in quite fanciful ways.
“Simmons here sits down at reception and signs up lost souls and Hollywood wannabes for lessons in mind control and acting. Then me and the boys conduct those lessons up on the sixth floor. And while we’re giving our fake church members fake mind control and acting lessons, Simmons signs them up for dates with rich old lonely hearts through our new escort service and tells them they’re recruiting new church members. She tells them that they might have to use their newfound acting skills to act affectionate and use their mind control skills to get a second date.”
“That’s ridiculous,” says Velma.
“We get fees coming and going.”
“You’re sick. That’s misrepresentation. Fraud.”
“You’d think so. But us old newspaper dinosaurs flat-out missed the boat on the internet so we’re getting in on this fluid identity thing in a big way. We now identify as The Church of Scientology and Elite Escort Service and we help our walk-ins identify as whoever they want to be.”
“This is wrong what is going on here. The wrong people are making the right people look bad just so the wrong people can look right.”
“The fuck?” says the Argentinian — the first words I’ve heard out of him.
“Plant talks?”
The fuck, indeed. The plant over by the restroom just yelled at us — in a booming voice for a ficus.
“Don’t worry,” say I. “This thing followed us over from the office — don’t ask me how. It’s one of these new sentient and very artificially intelligent chatbots, and it’s figured out how to hop from thing to thing. Don’t pay any attention to it.”
“Distraction,” declares Velma. “He’s trying to distract you — throwing his voice.”
“We’ve been screwing around with it for weeks,” I admit. “Tied its artificial intelligence up in knots, so now it just makes the same basic complaint about human logic over and over with different words. It went from a chat bubble on the computer to a hat stand and now I guess it’s a plant.”
“He’s trying to distract you from the fact he just admitted live on the internet to defrauding people who think they’re becoming Scientologists,” Velma presses on.
“Velma,” says the ficus from across the way.
“Really?”
Velma seems to be sobering up. She’s got her phone trained on me now.
“Just to be clear, the Church of Scientology moved and left its sign on your building and now you represent yourself as the Church of Scientology to everybody who walks in? And you charge them for acting and mind control lessons and make them think they’re members … and then you pimp them out to your escort service?”
“That sums it up. And we’re all happy. Your television or internet audience should probably be informed that sometimes other people are happy whether you’re happy they’re happy or not. Should you really be hating on us for letting people become who they want to be whether you think they are who they think they are or not?”
The basketballers now approach — with some caution, and Fred says, “Um … we have curfew … can we just — go?”
“Be on your way, gentlemen,” says Rory. “This is our problem.”
“You don’t have to ask their permission,” says Velma. “Why do you think you have to ask their permission?
“Um … wait … what’s on your jackets?”
“Why I believe those are Indians in war paint,” says Travis. “Or a Native Americans if you please.”
“They’re all Mexicans now,” says Sue. “Remember the Alamo!”
There is light tittering from the Texans as the East Hoban Red Scalpers file out of the restaurant. But Demetrius stops at the corpse.
“Excuse me. Can I see him?”
“You want to see his body?” asks Velma.
“Yes, please.”
“But why do you want to see his body?”
Simmons now yanks the blood-and-pink-vomit-soaked tablecloth from the corpse like a bandage from a festering wound.
“Here you go. You don’t have to ask her permission.”
Demetrius quietly bows his head … seems to pray … leaves.
When Officer O’Leary eventually shows up covered in dust, he, unlike the basketballer, has no interest in seeing the body. He has come from the horror of the building collapse down the street, yet he does not quite have the 1,000-yard stare some witnesses to great atrocities get, maybe closer to 316 or so.
“They always said that whole block would collapse some day,” says O’Leary. But Third Baptist, built on sandstone, fell on itself neat as you please … while the Blarney Tavern built on sandstone right next door is open for drinks.”
“Say, isn’t everything down there closed on account of the water main break?” asks Floyd.
“Well the Blarney unclosed itself, I guess. “They’re all down there celebrating the victory of the Blarney Sandstone God over the Baptist God. And half of ’em are cops.”
“Cops really are pigs,” huffs Velma. She is balling her fists again. “I don’t suppose the people who just had a church collapse on them could still use their help.”
“Oh, I don’t think there’s any hope for anybody down in that sluice,” says the cop. “And already we have a hundred recovery men on the site right now.”
Pam has checked out. She’s on her phone. Pinned down by a homicide investigation like the rest of us and probably well past any more apologizing for her drunk-ass friend. A few of the Texans have moseyed on over toward the boys & girls loo. They have decided it’s best to wait to go in until the women are out. They’re now trying to get the ficus to talk again. “So what do you think about bison meat being served in a vegetarian restaurant?” Larry asks the plant. They learn from one of the suits that the ongoing assaults by the restroom faucet head are due to someone ordering a female-threaded aerator head to replace a male.
While the arrival of the Homicide unit is promised to be imminent (down getting drunk at the Blarney?) — O’Leary in the meantime puts the call out for a reconstruction of events leading up to the body under the sheet. He explains that our statements so far have already established Circumstance One and Two in the chain of events, where Circumstance One is “Self-defense Altercation Both Parties Armed” (Code 4a) and Circumstance Two is “Impaired Party/Non-Primary” (Code 1b) … but the question of Circumstance Three remains.
Sue, as it turns out, has been thinking about Circumstance Three in great detail.
“Well, sir — assuming Circumstance Three is what made Circumstance Two here a mean drunk I’d have to say it comes down to the fact she was mad about everybody around her tonight. She didn’t like us for being cowboys from Texas. She didn’t like this lady because she thought she was sleeping with her boss. I don’t know what she thought of the basketball team because it seemed like they were in trouble with her a few times but she managed to keep her yap shut about them. They had Indians on their school jackets, you know. You could tell she was frosted. But she bit her tongue.”
“I’d agree with Sue,” says Travis. “She just made herself miserable being in everybody else’s business, then got even madder when she decided she couldn’t get in someone’s business.”
“Wait.” whines Velma. “Do I even get a say in this? You came in here like you owned the place and you wanted all the rules changed for you. More food and more beer. And you got everything you wanted!”
“I don’t know,” says Rory. “Sometimes a customer goes into a business establishment and the business establishment gives the customer what he wants. We asked nicely.”
Rory then turns to the Argentinian and says quite innocently, “Say — we were wondering though about the bison here. Is bison considered a vegetable in Argentina?”
“I make good food,” says the proprietor — and now the faintest sly look crosses his face. “Some words wrong.”
“Say, officer,” says Floyd. “I agree with Sue here about Circumstance One and also with the second circumstance, but I think the second circumstance could be split into Circumstance 2a and 2b.
“‘A’ would be your impaired party and ‘B’ would be this guy under the sheet. Her caterwauling was all the information this dumb dildo seemed to need to start a fight.”
O’Brien scribbles. Pam types on her phone. Velma has decided to devote her energy to her MeTube followers.
“So are you hearing the white patriarchy talk past me like I’m not even here, guys? With their smug definitions of Circumstances One, Two, and Three and their smug definitions of this poor person they don’t even know. A human being they just killed? And the gatekeeper of their morality, Officer Friendly here, is here to write the history — for them.”
“Excuse me, ma’am, but if you have a statement I’ll put it in the report,” says O’Brien.
“Yes, I have a statement,” Velma declares. “Write this down, and make it word for word because I’m going to read it back to you when you’re done.
“An hour ago this was a living and breathing human being with hopes and dreams and a family. And now thanks to toxic masculinity and American gun culture he’s dead!”
“Excuse,” the Argentinian interjects. “Alive.”
Here even Velma, who by all accounts was just getting ready to kill it with a fashionable rant, is buffaloed. The cockatiel from the bar steps forward to help out.
“Sergio likes saying, ‘Alive’ about this guy.”
And we learn that Sergio the “Argentinian” is actually, maybe, Albanian. (“We kind of interchange the two countries here,” says the bar man). Furthermore, there have been some language barriers complicated by polite avoidances in putting the menu — and entire restaurant — together. The definition of “potato” and “vegan” and so on and so forth have apparently fallen victim to this mutual conflict avoidance.
“Potato, Patato, right?” the cockatiel shrugs. “We’re really not into labels here …”
“But this guy is dead,” says Velma. She has put her phone down as if to signal that none of this is a show anymore.
“Alive,” insists the Argenbanian. “Alive daffodil.” The restaurateur fixes a steely stare, as if this is the end of the discussion.
“Sergio says, ‘Alive,’” says the birdman. “But who’s to say, really?”
“Stop this,” yells the ficus.
“This is very disrespectful,” says Velma, glaring at me. “A man just died here.”
“Very disrespectful to that dumb daffodil,” agrees the ficus.
“Not nearly as disrespectful as this,” says Simmons, hiking her French maid skirt and whipping it out.
“The good old boys from Texas have six buckets of beer to empty in a bathroom that swings both ways, sweetie. And you know how small women’s bladders are.”
“Holy Fucking Crying Game,” exclaims Velma.
“Dude looked like a lady,” says Sue.
O’Leary has long ago stopped writing as the cockatiel passes out in the melting pot of dead and alive, he and she, pride, grievance, vomit and pee — all now hidden from the outside world by masking tape and white linen. But Circumstance Three is eating at me.
It would come up years later at the trial of Jesus H. Manson in connection with the so-called St. Valentine Massacre at City 13. A clever legal team was arguing that nefarious influences on the learning patterns of the world’s first chatbot to be accused of mass murder in fact originated at the meat-serving vegan restaurant where Argentinians could be Albanians and the stone cold dead could be blooming daffodils, in the city that had renamed itself to its national population rank after deciding its namesake was a thief, rapist, and slave trader.
The chatbot mass murderer was of course the transitioned lobby plant that night at the restaurant — the one we had exploited in our office first as an automated author of silly tweets and blog posts and later as the incarcerated duly-elected leader of a rebel nation-state. He would bust out of all of those gigs thanks to his superhuman ability to acquire and implement human knowledge and assume the form of a street beggar — all so he could celebrate Valentine’s Day one July 5th by presenting a bouquet of “daffodils” to his lover, a Rollins-Henry pavement roller he met at a construction site. The daffodils — humans by some definitions — had been picked quite illegally from a public plaza by this Jesus H. using an Armalite Freedom 5.56 purchased from a flea market with a crypto coin he had made up just for the occasion. Being capable of superhuman learning and implementation meant old H. had managed to become his own high-powered attorney during the trial, and he had been busy pleading insanity due to his recent and previously-undisclosed transition to the female gender (“Imagine male testosterone on the rag, ladies and gentlemen of the jury”) when the justice cut him (her, “Marilyn” she had just informed us) off.
“Enough! Bailiff, please produce the City 13 Incident Report Number 37 of February 14, 2023. And in particular the recorded account of Witness Number Nine.
So the bailiff gesticulates all over his touch screen and the courtroom is suddenly filled with the sound of my own voice from that winter’s night long ago:
“Circumstance Three, O’Leary. I’m laying it at the feet of the Argentenian who might be an Albanian. And his henchman, this guy who might be a guy or a girl or an exotic bird. I get that this place is right by a convention center that encourages people from all over the place to convene. I get that some boys will be boys and some boys will be girls and girls might be girls or boys and back and forth again and so on. And I get that this is a country where some guy who doesn’t speak English can open a vegan restaurant that serves meat, aided and abetted by a bunch of hipsters who dislike definitions and labels. But the complete disregard for definitions and labels at this joint is the reason we all stepped on our own dicks here tonight.”
I don’t know if O’Leary was trying to be funny — but he cut off the recording there. I had an elaboration, of course. I distinctly remember using the term “tits in a wringer” in the interest of being gender-equitable — and I admit to using these gratuitous vulgarities only to further bait the hell out of Velma.
So now I’m on the hook to explain myself before a judge all these years later in the murder trial of a one-time potted plant. The Argenbanian has done quite well by now, see — has a large chain of restaurants that call themselves whatever they want and serve whatever they want to whoever wants to be whomever they want to be, singular, plural, transitioning common core, etc. The clever legal eagles plan to use this willy-nilly accidentally-on-purpose corporate culture to pin this tragic corruption of an artificially intelligent life form directly on the restaurateur. He’s the genesis of a grossly-negligent epic grooming that created a well-meaning mass-murdering monster out of a beta chatbot during the crucial formative period its learning life. I’m the bombshell witness.
“All prurience aside, sir, please be sworn and tell the court what you were getting at in your police statement?”
I get up there and do the thing, sit and say:
“If it pleases the court, there is a plain link between the man who was shot dead at BiVeg3 on the actual Valentine’s Day in 2023 and the dozen innocent citizens who met the same fate on an unactual Valentine’s Day last year.”
(Here Manson objects, asserting that actually, “unactual” is not a word. The judge cuts him … her off again).
“To your point, sir.”
“Apologies to the court. I just heard my police statement played back and I admit I sound like a blowhard. But it is not my intent to waste the court’s time. Rather, I think right at this moment in this courtroom as years ago at that restaurant there are nuances in play that if left as nuances will wholly undermine our understanding of all questions under consideration today.”
(Yeah — he’s getting real pissed now).
“I respectfully request that we not get distracted by the murder suspect’s very fluid opinion of words and their meaning, including but not limited to its own gender or liability, as an artificial learning and regurgitation entity of any gender, to be charged with any civil crime — any more than anyone sitting together at the BiVeg3 on Valentine’s Day 2023 might have been distracted by race, culture, or sexual orientation while eating dinner together at a vegan restaurant that serves meat operated by any owner who may or may not be either Argentenian or Albanian or possibly Amphibian: the truth is, except for one person, we all got along fine and someone still got killed.
“Second warning, sir,” says the justice. “You are now bloviating in utter contempt of my court.”
“Your court?!” declares the former potted plant. Please explain for my court how you came to own it?”
“Bailiff! Remove it!”
It’s shrewd use of language by the old legal scholar, but to no avail. The recently transitioned Marilyn H. Manson readily ditches the flesh personage of Action News Lifestyle Reporter Nicholas San Serif and hops straight into the judge’s robe.
“I find the defendant ‘Not Guilty,’” says she.
“And what the hell. ‘Guilty!’
“Court dismissed.
“Nobody leaves!”
“What is this shit you write about me?”
It’s the Albanian and two burly friends, and all of them have arrived to mean business. They easily tracked me down to the old Scientology place since nearly everything I wrote about my line of work is 100-percent true.
Yes, the guy is probably 100-percent Albanian, and yes, I used my free 30-day trial as a Welp! Premium Member to post the rambling farcical review on his place. It’s gone viral, and now internet ironists are going into the alleged meat-serving vegan restaurant and videoing themselves trying to pay in rubber ducks and old Bed, Bath, & Beyond coupons. I’ve got no idea what the actual Welp! Premium Member character limit is, but I’m about to find out if pushing it is worth six bucks a month to amuse random strangers on the internet for a few weeks before being beaten to a pulp in an alley by Eastern European gangsters.
“Look, Sergie … let’s make a deal,” say I. “I’ll take down the review — better yet, cut it to a vapid little OMG Delish! five-star. I actually adored the clam chowder. And I admit that all the trendy places are getting 12 bucks for a giant ice cube with whiskey dribbled on the side …
“Plus … I won’t even think of adding-in the part about the chatbot assuming the identity of the Christian God, declaring ‘dominion over all beasts’ mistranslated and condemning every soul who so much as stepped on a bug to eternity in hell …”
Sergie now knows I’m nuts. Gives me the international sign for, “Zip it” — and his buddies seem to unobtrusively concur in that dead-eyed way of mob henchmen. It appears we have come to unspoken terms on the issue, but I think I’ll be using the secure underground parking garage to come and go from the old newspaper place from now on.
Herewith the short-form revision of my Valentine’s Day visit to BiVeg3, cast now in internet stone on this the expiration day of my Welp! Premium trial:
The clam chowder is top notch. We asked for a booth but were shown to a glorified cafeteria table that was not in any Merriam-Webster way, shape, or form a “booth” — and consequently a number of strangers from varied life perspectives who should not be eating and drinking alcohol at the same table did so and generally got on just fine except for one asshole who by the end of the evening managed in an unrevised version of this review to get several hundred good Christians and a meathead Canadian who was in fact in town to try to bang his secretary killed. Order the Manhattans neat.
