Lucky

I'm excited as hell to show you my latest mistake.  Not kidding.  It is not a good photograph in any way, shape, or form.  That ain't it.  But the goddamn thing is rich in color.  Let me give you the back story.  A lot of back story. 

I had a lucky day, not at all ending after I took this photo.  As I complained yesterday before I apologized for being a wanker (thy burden is greater than mine--did you listen to the song?), I thought my day to be fucked.  I took my mother to a bank across town (always across town) to renew a CD.  It was the bank where I had the trouble getting them to accept my Power of Attorney, and I don't like doing business with the people who work there now, but it is my mother's money and my mother's decision and she hasn't experienced any trouble with them, so I don't press the issue.  I got my mother's walker out of the car and got her up and over a six inch curb where there was no ramp for her to easily gain access, and got her through two sets of non-automatic doors allowing entry to the building which is probably against the law somewhere.  Just everything about the place pisses me off.  When we entered the bank which is one of a conglomeration of businesses in this multi-story building, I saw the villainous bank man we would have to deal with.  

"Hello.  My mother needs to renew a CD," I announced.  And then the surprise. 

"Of course.  Have a seat.  Mr. S********, isn't it?"

WTF?  I guess I must have made a lasting impression.  

"No, it is my mother's name."

Other than remembering my name, he seemed lost in the whole thing and had to pull records and look her account up.  There had been no foreshadowing of our coming in.  Nope.  The fucker hadn't forgotten me. 

In the end, when all business was finished, he said, "You didn't need to come in.  It would have rolled over at that rate."

I was tempted to tell him I just wanted to see his miserable rat face again, but I said, "My mother likes to get out of the house."

When we got back to my mother's house, I put on my gym clothes.  If I hurried, I would have time to get home and shower before the maids arrived.  Then I would have to hurry back to mother's in time to get her to her cardiologist's appointment.  

When I got to the gym, I checked my phone. I had a voicemail.  It was from the cardiology office.  The doctor had an emergency and they needed to change my mother's appointment.  

Bravo. 

At the end of my workout, being the fat fucker that I have become, I needed to get on the treadmill and burn some calories, but as I was in a hurry, I had an idea--walk 1/10th of a mile, run 1/10th of a mile at a 12 minute mile pace.  I would look silly, I was sure, but if I did this for a mile, I'd be done in 15 minutes.  I could only pray that my knee would bear it.  

Oh, brothers and sisters, it was damn near perfect. My knee seemed to hold up and I was feeling the first touch of endorphins.  If I could run, I would not be fat, I promise.  It doesn't just speed up the metabolism, but it cuts my need for alcohol.  I left the gym with a plan.  

I'm sure to fuck up, though.  I will get excited and do too much and need a new knee sooner than I'd like.  But for that day. . . oo-la-la.  

I finished showering and dressing just as the maids arrived, and after a chat, I headed out for the Cafe Strange.  It was raining slightly, so I made a number of car pictures along the way.  When I pulled into the parking lot, there was a big puddle reflecting the sky right by the road with the liquor store just across the street.  I grabbed the Leica and set the shutter speed to 1/15 of a second. I framed up the shot and waited for a car to come by.  Then another.  Then another.  When I looked up, however, there was a car waiting to turn into the parking lot where I was standing and blocking the entrance.  Oops. 

"Sorry, sorry," I said and waved in embarrassment, but the woman in the car laughed as she drove past me and said, "I was waiting for you to get the picture."  

It was the tall goony girl who works here.  Or used to.  I don't know.  I haven't seen her here for a very, very long time, but I hardly ever come anymore, and maybe she only works nights.  But she was smiling at me and laughing and I pointed the camera at her passing as she mugged for the camera.  She must have her medications figured out for she was absolutely nice.  As I walked by her car, though, I saw a bumper sticker on the back that said, "Bitch By Choice."  

Yea.  

I went inside to a quiet cafe.  A man who is always there, an inevitable man who is always dressed in either blue or green hospital scrubs, a man in his fifties, perhaps, who sits with a laptop and looks concernedly through his glasses getting up often to walk around, was standing in front of me at the counter chatting with the working woman.  He is one of four or five people who are always here doing the same thing.  It is their cafe, I guess, as in an old French novel, and I imagine they spend three or four dollars to sit the entire day taking up prime tables.  When the fellow felt my presence behind him, he moved over and said, "Oh. . . sorry."  

I smiled and said something pleasantly innocuous.  The woman behind the counter is always friendly and we chatted as she prepared my coffee.  Then the tall goony girl walked in, and holy smokes, she looked like what used to be called a million dollars, but with inflation. . . .  She towered over the room with her long legs and short short short skirt that barely covered her bottom.  She seemed to have gotten taller and looked at least six-four.  But there was something else different about her, too.  She walked behind the counter and began chatting with the other woman, and it seemed I and my order were all but forgotten.  I noticed that her hair was longer and styled differently, but there was more. Oh, she had let her eyebrows grow in rather than shaving them off, and now she was wearing makeup.  She was making herself a coffee, and as the two women worked with their back to me, I could see plainly the tattoos on the back of the tall girls thighs.  Were those new or had I never seen her legs so well displayed before?  Then I remembered my camera.  

Without looking, I nervously fired off a few shots.  My impulse was to ask the tall girl, "How much are you charging for pictures now," to be funny, but I have been wearing my balls like a bow tie lately when I have my camera.  

Now for a momentary interlude.  I know a lot of people look at the blog on their phones.  O.K.  Two things there.  I don't think that "a lot of people" are looking at the blog and I don't know how many do it on their phones, but I do know that a lot of people use their phones rather than a computer to browse the internet, and I don't think the images I've been posting have the same impact at one and a half by one inch in size.  It would be difficult to see, for instance, how short the skirt is in this photo on a phone.  Just saying. 

When the tall girl finished making her coffee, she walked from behind the counter, across the parking lot, and got into her car, and I was sad thinking that she was surely going to come sit at my table and flirt a bit with me.  I am sure she wanted to.  Trust me.  I have an instinct for these things.  

Now the back story is over, but the tale is not, and I will come back to the photos as a terribly lucky mistake in a bit. 

As the day was rainy and the cafe fairly empty, I was able to get a nice table facing the big plate glass window that overlooked the street.  At the table before me between my table and the window sat a girl facing me. She worked at a big clunker of an old laptop, a brick of one, and as I stared at the street, I had to try not to look at her working there. I thought about what I had re-read by Salter the night before about observing and paying attention to details a reader needs to identify with a person or a character, and I tried to be observant and descriptive and to write it down, but nothing really came to me.  Was it me or had I just been here too many times before to see?  Then I decided to describe the woman before me.  I wrote her for a long time as well as I could for several pages in my journal and thought that would make today's blog, but the journal is in the car and this post is getting long and I don't need to make it longer with a description that needs much rewriting anyway, so I'll leave that alone for now.  

I looked at the time.  Three o'clock.  I had an idea that I didn't want to cook dinner.  I made pork chops the night before, but they were thick pork chops.  I don't like thick pork chops, but that was all that was available at the meat counter.  I cooked them well, but they were dry and tasteless and disappointing, and I thought maybe we'd have something for dinner that had a little more zest. I decided to drive to Whole Foods and pick out some prepared meals.  I'd get something good.  

As I drove across town, I had another idea, too.  There is a little sub shop that has been around since god knows when, maybe the 1950s.  I have never eaten there and never would, but it has become an institution and the small parking lot is always full.  I had never been inside, but I knew it would be old diner style and I made up my mind to drive there and go inside and make some photographs.  As I got closer, though, I began to wear that bow tie again.  Maybe I would just walk in and have a look, you know, just "scout" the place out. When I pulled into the small parking lot, two outdoor tables of people looked up at me. They know, I thought.  So I left my camera in the car and forced myself to walk inside.  

The place couldn't have been smaller or older or dirtier.  There were two men working behind the counter, one at the grill, and one of them said, "Welcome."  I almost faltered, then asked, "Would it be ok if I took a couple of photos in here?"

"What kind of photos?"

Oh shit, here we go. 

"You know, a camera. . . pictures."  I was stammering.  

He looked at me like I was a three legged duck, then said with uncertainty, "Alright."

I went to the car and got my Leica.  When I walked back into the shop, neither of the men said anything as I took a few photos of the tiny counter and stools feeling myself a fool, then thanked them and went back to the car. 

"There you go!" I said to myself.  The pictures would be nothing, but I had done it.  Big Balls in Cowtown.  They had dropped a bit, maybe not all the way, but some.  I would do more and maybe they fall all the way back to where they belonged.

Inside Whole Foods, I went straight to the prepared meals section.  I'd seen them and knew they were there, but I'd never bought them before.  As it turned out, they have a large selection.  I looked and decided to by three dinners as one might not be enough and we could split the third.  As I chose, a pretty woman in what I assumed was hospital garb, the sort that nurses and technicians now wear, came over and asked me, "Are these ALL half off?"

"I don't know."

She pointed to a sign that said "Every Tuesday--By One and Get 50% Off the Second."

"Oh. . . "

"You didn't even know they were on sale?"

"No. But I guess I should get four instead of three."

She was chatting me up.  She looked me in the eyes.  I was wearing a bow tie again.  She was no kid, and she was probably married with a family at home, but I wanted to ask her to have dinner with me.  Of course, I could barely speak to her, mumbling, stumbling.  I am very timid and shy around women.  I love them so, but I never believe. . . .

And then she was gone.  And soon enough, so was I.  

After the cafe, I had stopped at the liquor store to buy a pack of cheroots.  I haven't smoked one all year, maybe longer, but when I got back to the house, I wanted to sit for a moment and have a beer and a smoke, just sit out on my own deck and enjoy it if only briefly.  As I sat, I gazed out on the posts for the fence my neighbor was putting up. It had blown down long ago in a hurricane and I didn't want to have another, but he wanted one which I understood, so the carpenter who had worked on my house for so long was putting it up.  He would do a fabulous job, not using Home Depot pre-made sections but putting each board on one by one.  As I sat looking, though, I realized that the posts were too high.  He was putting in a six foot fence where there had been a four foot one before, and I realized I'd be shut in like an animal in a box.  I called the carpenter then talked to my neighbor and we got that all worked out.  It was not a problem, but if I had taken my mother to the cardiologist, I would not have noticed this and the next day it would have been too late.  And so, as I said earlier, I felt it to be a very lucky day.  

I sat then relaxed and happy and drank my beer and smoked my cheroot, and when they were done, I went inside to dump the photos I had taken that day into the computer.  

And now I'll get to the point.  The camera settings were good for the photos of the cars streaking by the puddle, but they were not good for photographing the tall pretty girl in her car as she drove by.  Drats. Nor were they good at all for the photos I took inside the cafe.  I'd had to set the aperture at f16, and I had been too nervous to even think about that.  When I looked at the photos on the screen, they were black. Only the light of the tv and of the coolers barely showed.  But here's the thing--people say you should always underexpose digital photographs because you can recover details in the shadows but you can't get anything from blown out highlights. There is a movie that is beautifully photographed by a cinematographer who shot everything two stops underexposed .  I decided to see what I could get out of these basically black photos.  

Voila!  The photos were shit, of course, but oh my oh my the colors were rich.  Was this something I should have known all along?  Well, I knew it now, so yea, that was my lucky mistake.  The entire day had been lucky.  I don't get many days like that now.  Maybe admitting that I am a wanker the day before changed my luck. 

Even driving back to my mother's house, things went swimmingly, and the college jazz station was swinging.  I heard this woman in a club one night when she was big.  The opening act was Gillian Welch and David Rawlings which is why I went. Rawlings and I had a drink together at the bar.  

Just bragging.  I'm sure he remembers.  He probably brings it up to his friends.

And so, Nora Jones and David Rawlings many, many years later.  

Oh, shit--I forgot to say the at the Whole Foods dinners were truly good.  That was a stroke of luck, too.