“Jellwagger, wait! It’s not what you think! Stu and I are not an item! I repeat, we’re not an item! I have a boyfriend at home, you know that! I just wanted to fulfill two fantasies at once, and Stu was the only one equipped to do that! So to speak!”
Now here’s our man. He’s running like a madman through the softly lighted, softly carpeted corridors of Powell and Powler on a weeknight, hours after everyone had left. That is, almost everyone. He had logged four hours of overtime and still hadn’t finished inputting that data stack for the marketing department’s oh-so-important newsletters tomorrow. On his way to the elevator Jellwagger—heavy-eyed, famished, and dreading having to stalk that red-headed madam’s ex-husband—came upon Stu the mailroom guy going balls deep on Grant Prossich. Grant was out of the closet, Stu was still in the closet, and Jellwagger found both of them inside the office of a senior partner.
The image of Grant bent over with his arms splayed across the desk while Stu, dripping with sweat and looking even wider with no trousers on, punishing and pleasuring Grant with every thrust, would be burned into Jellwagger’s retina until the end of time. And into his eardrums would forever be imprinted the sound he heard now: Grant’s voice pleading with him to stop.
Jellwagger managed to get a good lead on his supervisor so that he was just out of earshot by the time he reached the elevators. His speed was all for naught, though. The elevators, as they are want to do when you need them most, took an eternity. When that blasted chime sounded and the gilded doors swished open, Grant sprinted into the receptionist’s area, knocked over the candy bowl, and leaped at Jellwagger like a frog on crack. Jellwagger practically jumped into the elevator and frantically pressed the button to close the doors only to realize he was pressing the one that kept them open. Grant had no control of himself as he flew into the elevator. His shoulder smacked into Jellwagger’s and threw him to the floor. Jellwagger used his arms to shield his face while turning over onto partly his side and partly his stomach to keep Grant from doing any damage to his front. Even though Grant had never seemed within a light year of being a violent person, Jellwagger was convinced he was about to stomp on him or something. As it turned out, though, his long-held impression of Grant proved accurate. While the elevator hummed down the forty stories, Grant rested against the wall with his hands on his knees. Tentatively at first, Jellwagger turned back around to look up at him. Grant looked more terrified than he did. His eyes came back to Jellwagger for a split-second now and then, but for the most part he looked at just about every other part of the elevator except our man on the floor.
When the elevator doors swished open to reveal the empty lobby, Grant reached out a hand. Again tentatively at first, Jellwagger reached up. Before he could reach all the way, Grant extended his reach, clasped Jellwagger’s hand in an iron grip, and yanked him to his feet. It was just as well for the rest of society that Grant was a pussycat at heart. Dude was strong.
They walked through the lobby with awkward paces. It was like neither of them wanted to leave the building because if they did, they wouldn’t have any idea where to go. Within a few feet of the glass doors which perfectly rendered their reflections, Grant stopped and turned to Jellwagger. “I assume you got everything done.”
Jellwagger had no idea what he was talking about.
“It’s just that Betsy really wants to get those mailings out tomorrow, and my ass is sort of on the line.”
“No pun intended, I’m sure.” Grant looked both glum and pissed off. “No I’m not done, but if I have to type one more street address with a suite number, my brain will explode like the Nakatomi building from Die Hard.”
“The what?”
“I’ll come in early tomorrow and finish the rest.”
“It was just a fantasy, Jellwagger. Haven’t you ever wanted to do something because you were sick and fucking tired of wondering if you’d ever get the chance? It’s like dreaming the same thing over and over again until it’s like this giant snowball fit to burst out of your head. And you’ve got to let it out.” Jellwagger was about to mock the snowball metaphor when he met Grant’s eyes and thought better of it.
“Jellwagger, where the hell is your skinny deflowered ass?” squawked a voice from Jellwagger’s pocket. Carla was calling him over the new cell she’d messengered over.
“Are you going to be okay?” he asked Grant.
“Jellwagger, you better fucking answer me. If you have any hope of ever working off the thousand dollars, that is.”
“When you were chasing me upstairs, you mentioned two fantasies.”
“Listen, bitch,” Carla squawked on. Her voice echoed throughout the lobby. “If you don’t want to do what you owe me, I can always have Neckman harass the shit out of you until you have enough cash to pay me off. You can forget about measly sore ribs. Next time I’ll make sure he breaks that shit. Jellwagger, I know your cell’s on so get off the porn and answer me.”
Grant reached into Jellwagger’s pocket and pulled out the phone delicately between his index and thumb as if it might be radioactive. “This is what I saw at your desk earlier. Hey, didn’t this model just come out?” He looked at Jellwagger, then back at the phone. “This is supposed to have the longest range yet. Like a thousand miles or something.”
“Jellwagger, answer me!”
“Which means theoretically she could be in St. George, Utah,” Jellwagger said. “I suppose there’s a silver lining to everything.” He took the cell from Grant and said into it: “I had to work late tonight.”
“He’s at Spago. Get your ass in gear.”
Jellwagger pocketed the cell. “Whatever.”
“You’re going to Spago?”
“I’ve gotta run. But look here, Grant. I won’t tell Betsy or anyone, okay? I’m not into getting you in trouble. You’re like the only person in this whole frickin’ God-forsaken place who’s not on my shit list.”
“So Betsy’s on your shit list? Is that why you stare at her ass all the time?”
“See ya.” Jellwagger headed for the doors, then stopped and turned back. “Wait a second. So what were those two fantasies?”
“Having sex in the workplace. And then there was scoring with a guy who is more than double my weight. I never thought I’d kill two sex fantasies with one orgasm, but after watching King Kong Bundy push that God damned squeaky cart by my desk every day for practically my whole life, I couldn’t help noticing that he played for my team. Doing it in the office of someone who makes more in an hour than you and I do in a month combined? That was just gravy. The good thing is that I’m not even sore. That whole stereotype about gargantuan fat guys having small dicks? Take my word for it. It’s totally true. Which makes me wonder. I mean you’re super skinny, Jellwagger.” Grant draped a pinky on his lower lip and looked at Jellwagger’s crotch.
“See ya tomorrow, Grant.” Jellwagger headed for the glass doors. This time it was Grant who had forgotten to say something.
“Is it that guy whose photo you were looking at today?”
Jellwagger turned back. “What was that?”
“That guy. Patrick Dinner. Is he the one who’s at Spago?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Good night.”
“But that woman who just called…”
“Grant, come on now, babe. You think I could afford Spago on my salary? Even Denny’s would be a splurge.” A small smile appeared on Grant’s face that drove Jellwagger nuts in no time.
“Jellwagger. I just wondered if that guy was there.”
“I am exhausted. And all I can think of right now? Is sleep. So sayonara.”
Jellwagger had just gripped the handle on the glass door to push it open, face to face with his beleaguered reflection, when he was stopped yet again. This time it was the security guard who said something. He was a young guy, younger than you’d expect for a guy charged with guarding an office tower chockfull of companies worth billions of dollars. In fact, if someone in nearby Hollywood had cast this kid as a student in a high school comedy, it wouldn’t have been remotely a stretch. “Hey man! Hey!”
The kid’s uniform made him look like he was dressed for a Halloween party where he’d be doomed to be the wallflower. Not that he noticed. He smiled at Jellwagger with a face full of stubble topped with hair that he’d spent hours messing up just the right way. Yeah, definitely an actor. And since the guard made him think of movies, Jellwagger used the line from Taxi Driver: “You talkin’ to me?”
“Hey man. How does it feel being yanked on a tight leash?”
“I said you talkin’ to me?”
“If I had a girlfriend controlling me like yours does, I. Would fucking. Kill myself!”
“If you had a girlfriend,” Jellwagger said. “Which means you don’t. Which means you aren’t getting laid tonight. Because yeah. Mine’s a little bossy, but hey, at least she’s going to ride me like a tiger while you stress over your audition tomorrow morning.” Jellwagger pushed open the glass door as the kid’s smile vanished.
Jellwagger knew Grant knew he was lying about Pat Dinner, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t lying about being tired, though. Jellwagger was exhausted. He felt like one of those walking dead guys from Night of the Living Dead. You know, the ones who feasted on those corpses and munched on their organs like you and I would an Almond Joy? With that lip-smacking sound which seemed exaggerated to make up for the film being in grainy black and white? That’s exactly how Jellwagger felt now. Seriously, if he had come across a corpse that very instant, as he exited the Sanwa Bank building in downtown Los Angeles, he may just have gotten on his haunches and gone to town on the poor sucker’s liver and whatnot. The man was exhausted, he was hungry, and he didn’t really care how he addressed either problem at this point. And his ribs were killing him, which was how he knew he simply had to do Carla’s bidding and worry about sustenance and sleep later.
Have you ever been to Spago? If you live in Los Angeles, surely you’ve heard of it. And maybe you’ve even driven by it on Cañon Drive in Beverly Hills, right by the proverbial Rodeo Drive and all of that avenue’s shops hawking those horrifically overpriced scarves and gloves which no one with a brain would wear in a city that only dipped below seventy degrees for about one minute out of the year. That Spago. From downtown all Jellwagger had to do was hop onto Wilshire Boulevard westbound and crawl through enough lights to make any moth jealous. When he reached Beverly Hills, Jellwagger thought it more financially prudent to track down a parking garage or something, but as he drive up Cañon and spotted Spago on the right with those valet attendants outside, he couldn’t help veering his Shitty Shitty Bang Bang right on over. When I say Shitty Shitty Bang Bang, I’m referring to Jellwagger’s piece of shit Mazda. That’s what Jellwagger had always called it since he bought it back in the Stone Age. The Shitty Shitty part of the name needed no explanation. I mean, just look at it. The Bang Bang part came from the fact that every once in a while, usually when Jellwagger was least expecting it, his car would peel off two farts so massive and loud that, if you didn’t know what they were, would’ve made you think planet Earth was blowing up. And it was always two farts. Never one. Never three. Always two. One of the valets smiled at the hideous little shred of metal pulling up and whispered something to his fellow red-jacketed pal before walking around to the driver’s side. “Welcome to Spago, sir,” he said, his smile apparently stuck on his face as he handed Jellwagger one half of a lime-green ticket. The car farted as the first valet drove off. The second valet took cover.
Nine-thirty was usually too late for dinner, especially on a weeknight. Jellwagger liked to have dinner fully consumed and on its way to his bowels by seven at the latest, so that by the time he crashed between nine and ten, he wouldn’t be so full. Apparently that wasn’t the lifestyle people subscribed to in Beverly Hills. Spago was hopping tonight. Jellwagger wasn’t in the joint for ten seconds before he knew every table was full, even though the back part of the restaurant was out of view from the entrance. What confirmed it for him was the gorgeous young couple who’d come in just ahead of him and who were now being told by the hot Asian hostess that they were fully booked for the night. They walked past Jellwagger and back out to the valet with smiles barely hiding regret, but Jellwagger didn’t feel sorry for them at all. At least not for the guy anyway. Did it really matter where they had dinner tonight? The bottom line was, no matter where they ended up, they would still end up in bed together and wake up tomorrow morning in each other’s arms.
Jellwagger shook himself out of it. Man, that sad bastard was lonely as hell. Now onward to the hot Asian hostess. “I know this joint is full,” he said to her. “It’s full, right? See, I knew that already without you telling me. But lucky for me, I only care about that bar. You mind if I sit up there?”
The hostess shook her head no and gestured toward the bar with an open palm.
“Thanks, babe.” But Jellwagger only needed to take two steps toward the bar before he realized it was full. He turned back to the hostess to ask her why she hadn’t bothered to warn him, but she was already helping yet another hot couple. This pair did have a reservation. The hostess led them toward their table, which meant she had to walk past Jellwagger. She didn’t even look at him. Actually, he guessed she had looked at him in the corner of her eye and quietly relished that the cocky bastard who didn’t belong here and who’d invited himself to the bar found himself without a place to rest his legs. What a bitch. She probably didn’t have one more dime to her name than he did, yet she had to act like she was of the same status as this joint’s clientele.
After watching her disappear into the bowels of this coin sucker, Jellwagger’s eyes passed over the roofless courtyard dining area. Located right off the bar, the courtyard was a small square space with only a few tables. It was surrounded on one side by the bar and entrance area, on two other sides by the indoor dining rooms, and on the fourth side by the wall separating it from Cañon Drive. The largest table in the courtyard was a round metal piece of work which at the moment was chockfull of middle-aged men still in their business best. They hadn’t ordered much food yet, but each of them had in hand either a pint of beer or a glass of wine. Jellwagger wasn’t a big wine person, but all that beer sure made his throat feel parched. Yet it wasn’t the beer that kept his eyes glued to the scene. It was that dude with the loud laugh, the too-white-to-be-true teeth, and the nearly empty pint glass who was just now flagging down a young toned blonde waitress who no doubt did tons of yoga when she wasn’t toiling away in this shark tank. If that gal did indeed do yoga, perhaps it would have been a good idea to pass along her secrets of physical discipline to the guy now ordering from her, and who was inviting his fellow black-suited buddies to do the same. Even from this distance Jellwagger could make out the second chin that wasn’t quite fully formed but was clearly getting comfortable under and just behind the original chin. And even though the table concealed the lower half of his body, it was obvious that he was growing love handles commensurate with that extra chin. What made the twin chins look even funkier was the gray goatee. Perhaps the goatee was new to him, and he hadn’t yet figured out how best to take advantage of his facial hair to mask the chunk. Even if Jellwagger hadn’t noticed all of that, the guy’s side-frosted black hair would have been enough to recognize him. And even if Jellwagger hadn’t looked at the hair, the dude’s smile, the first thing Jellwagger noticed about him, would have been enough. It was the exact same smile from the photo that included Carla’s dispossessed hand.
And now Pat Dinner’s friends scanned their menus before shooting appetizer orders at the blonde while holding up their empty glasses. Pat Dinner nodded at her and thanked her before she walked away. Dude was obviously the one in charge here. Or at least he was the one footing the bill. Jellwagger knew he was supposed to be against him, or at least feel ambivalent about him, but looking at Pat Dinner running the show in the center of Spago’s courtyard, the center of the center of one of the most expensive friggin’ restaurants on the planet, magnet to power brokers everywhere, he couldn’t help but feel a modicum of admiration and respect. Thank Christ Carla wasn’t calling right now over the cell. Wonder Woman would no doubt have discerned Jellwagger’s feelings by the sound of his voice. She probably could have also deduced that her poor lackey had nowhere to sit. That is, until now.
A party of three gals in their thirties and hotter than Indian chili all vacated their stools when the Asian informed them that their table was now ready. To hell with spying on Pat Dinner. If Jellwagger had a spleen to speak of, he would have followed those babes to their table and introduced himself and asked if they wouldn’t mind if he joined them. Sure, they would have most likely spat in his face, but what did he have to lose?
The key word I used above was spleen, because that was exactly what Jellwagger lacked when it counted most. That, combined with his sore ribs that killed him the more he stayed on his feet, made him make a B line straight for one of those three empty stools, the one on the very end of the bar. Dude wasn’t seated for a nanosecond before the bartender, a man about the same age as Pat Dinner but shorter and stouter, slid a napkin onto the bar top in front of Jellwagger and asked for his poison of choice. “What the hell do you recommend?” Jellwagger asked.
“We don’t have Austrian beer, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Why in Christ would I ask for Australian beer?”
“Austrian! And you might have asked for that because our founder and head chef is from Austria. So if you want a good quality beer, just pick any off the menu.”
“I don’t have a menu.”
“But if you want something really good, I’d pick Spaten.”
“Never heard of it.”
The barkeep stepped away to refill someone’s martini halfway down the bar. When he came back to Jellwagger, he brought with him a frozen glass and a green bottle with a white label that read Spaten. “This is as close to Austria as you’re getting with us, pal. You read me? Spaten’s brewed in Munich. As in the far south of Germany. As in very close to the Austrian border.”
“What have I done to you that you would be such a smart-ass?” Jellwagger asked while watching the barkeep tilt the frozen glass to fill it with Spaten. As the Asian hostess walked by on her way to the front, her ponytail swinging back and forth and that smug smile planted on her face while she no doubt wanted Jellwagger to revel in her making him look like a friggin’ idiot, Jellwagger snapped at her with a “Ha!” Of course it didn’t faze her, so he did it again just as her back was to him. This time she turned partly to the side to catch him for a moment in her peripheral vision while not losing a beat in her high-heeled step.
“What are you doing here, pal?” the barkeep said, leaning against the wood. He looked down at the rest of his customers with a smile on his face as equally smug as the Asian hostess’s, then wiped it off when he turned back to Jellwagger with that zero-bullshit-tolerance glare you usually find in uptight English teachers.
Jellwagger shrugged and said, “Cheers.” He raised his glass and took a sip. His taste in beer wasn’t very refined. All he knew was that he wasn’t very partial to American light beers. The Europeans tended to make theirs a bit stronger and therefore more to his liking, which meant this thing called Spaten would suit him just fine.
“You don’t know?” the barkeep said, looking down the counter again. Someone down there raised their glass for a refill. The barkeep obliged and then came back. “So you don’t even know if you’re hungry? Or are you just going to sit there and drink Bavarian beer until I have to call you a cab?”
“Oh I’m definitely hungry. I haven’t eaten anything in…” He checked his watch. “…like a million hours. I could eat an Austrian horse.”
“Be careful how you use your food metaphors there, pal. We serve all kinds of things here at Spago Beverly Hills. But since you’re the poorest sonunvabitch here, there really isn’t much I can recommend to you. None of the main courses, anyway.” He went to refill someone’s drink. When he came back, Jellwagger didn’t waste a second in asking:
“What the hell was that?”
“My friend, how much would you like to bet that even the waiting staff… Hell, the cleaning staff, in this restaurant, make more than you? Let me ask you something, pal. What do you do? And don’t lie to me. I can smell lies through a hundred yards of L.A. smog.”
“Data entry in a law firm.”
“You’re kidding! That’s worse than I thought. You want another?”
Jellwagger didn’t realize the sip of beer he was currently taking was the last of it. He nodded. While the barkeep fetched another Spaten, Pat Dinner et al erupted in laughter behind him. Jellwagger turned in his stool to get a look at them. Their main courses had just arrived, and Herr Dinner had said something to the blonde waitress to which she showed no visible reaction but at which his pals had blown up in hysterics. Just as she finished serving all the entrees and was about to walk away, Pat Dinner lifted and lowered the empty champagne bottle in the bucket next to him and nodded at her.
“And that, my friend, is the richest sonunvabitch in here tonight. I should introduce the two of you. You each represent opposite ends of the city’s employment spectrum. Hold on a sec.” He poured wine for some new arrivals: a few fortysomething hotties who were dressed very professionally and, if it were possible, were even further out of his league than Betsy goddam Seth.
“I’m not a frickin’ bum,” Jellwagger said when the barkeep came back. “I have a job. I have my own place. I’m not on the opposite end of jack shit.”
“How much would you like to wager, my friend, that if you go ask any homeless person, they’ll tell you they prefer where they are than working as a God-forsaken data entry slug in a law firm, where all day you have lawyers walking by who make more in a month than you do in a year. What is that like? Don’t you feel your inferiority complex just dragging you deeper and deeper down? Your opinion of yourself must be just God awful. But I don’t know you so I’m just guessing.”
“Enough about me. What else can you tell me about Donald Trump over there? Besides the fact that he has the single most annoying laugh mankind has ever known.”
“How about some soup? We make the best chicken broth you’ll ever taste.”
“This must be another one of your brilliant jokes.”
“Look, my friend. It may not sound like much, but trust me. And besides, you’ve got to eat something. It’s depressing me to no end watching you have beer for dinner and nothing else. You’ve put in a lot of overtime tonight, am I right? You’re a law firm lackey, so I’m guessing your hours are fairly traditional. Being out this late on a weeknight is kind of strange for you. And overtime means you’ve got some extra pennies to play with. I know they’re just pennies, but still. Why not spoil yourself? And you said before that you haven’t eaten all day. So broth it is. It’s getting to be fall out there, my friend. As the temperature plummets, we could all use some good old chicken broth to warm us up.”
“What are you talking about? It’s in the seventies during the day and sixties at night.” The barkeep gave the broth order to the blonde waitress as she came up to the bar for a new bottle of champagne for the Dinner party. After that, he strolled down to the other end of the bar so that the other patrons could benefit from the sunlight of his overdressed wisdom.
Jellwagger turned to get another look at them. Pat was still laughing now and again, but at least he was keeping it down. The rest of them were too involved in their meals to give any indication, at least from this distance, that they were paying attention to a single thing their man said. Jellwagger would have to keep a closer eye on them. Since they were working on their entrees, he assumed this bottle of champagne would be their last. Or perhaps they’d stay for dessert so they could harass Goldilocks some more. What a nightmare that would be, for Jellwagger no less than her. At least she was making good coin if the barkeep was to be believed, but how long would Jellwagger have to sit here on his numb duff being ignored by the Asian hostess and made to feel unworthy by everyone else?
Jellwagger had already thrown down half of his second Spaten so he tried like mad to pace himself. Boy, was that tough. Dude had nothing to do. On top of that, he still felt awkward as hell. The beer glass became his security blanket. Instead of taking sips from it every two seconds, he simply held onto it with one hand and slowly rotated it. He also had a TV to look at. I stress look at, not watch. Jellwagger was much too distracted to have much of an attention span for anything, especially the hockey game that was on right now.
Goldilocks eventually returned with a large bowl with small bits of skinless chicken arranged neatly in the center. She poured the broth onto this with more precision than was really necessary considering it was broth. Instead of smiling at Jellwagger and telling him to enjoy this utterly lousy excuse for a meal, she hurried away. Could he blame her? If the situation were reversed and it was Jellwagger as a waiter being handled by a bunch of wealthy older female customers… Wait. Now that he thought about it, Jellwagger might actually enjoy that.
The barkeep came back down Jellwagger’s way while our man was fully focused on slurping his broth. “Let me tell you a little something about our man over there. The one you called Donald Trump. His real name’s Dinner. Patrick Dinner. He’s been buying and selling commercial real estate since forever. His net worth? Search me, but I’ll bet you anything that it’s in the nine-figure, hell maybe even ten-figure, range.”
“Where’s he from? Wait, let me guess. Germany. Bavaria!”
“Oh hell no. The man could buy Bavaria if he wanted. Nah, he’s from the Midwest somewhere. Kansas or some shit.”
“Is he married?”
The barkeep stared at him. “Oh really, slugger? I didn’t know you batted that way.”
“I’m just curious to see what kind of woman a guy with all that money can get.”
“Get? Or buy? You think that man will ever land himself a gal who likes him for who he is? Come on now.”
“So he’s single.”
“He was married. To this foxy redhead much younger than him. Word around town was that she was a madam for high-class call girls and this genius somehow didn’t know anything about it. Then when he found out, he decided it was too much of a liability to be married to a boss of whores, so he called it splits. Personally I think he just wanted to see what it was like to score with a redhead, and once he got that out of his system, it was like, ‘Next!’”
Jellwagger finished off his broth and could pace himself through the Spaten no longer.
“How about another one? And this time, use it to chase down some juicy German sausages.”
“I don’t bat on that side of the plate, remember?”
“No, I mean real sausages. It’s labeled on the menu as our head chef’s childhood favorite. Personally I think that’s some sort of bullshit to get people to order it. But who knows? It is just about the cheapest entrée on our menu. Oh come on. You can’t tell me that broth was enough. If anything, it made you hungrier, am I right? That’s why we call it an appetizer, my friend.” And right on cue, Goldilocks came up to the bar with more drink orders. The barkeep gave her the order for Jellwagger’s sausages. When he gave Jellwagger his third Spaten, he served it to him in a brand new glass fresh from the freezer. “Because we take care of our customers, no matter where they live—or don’t—in the financial stratosphere.”
“The fact that you use words like stratosphere and inferiority complex is the funniest thing in the world to me right now. You’re a barkeep! For the sake of Peter and all who are underpaid!” The barkeep walked back down to dote on the richer drinkers. Was he now sore at Jellwagger, or did he want to stay away because he could see Jellwagger getting buzzed? But if that was the case, what was the deal with the third drink? Well, regardless of what the barkeep may or may not have known about Jellwagger’s mental state right now, Jellwagger himself knew that he was most definitely straddling that hazy border between buzzed and drunk. Yes, even after two beers. Perhaps, between his lecture on all the rich people here and the one about Jellwagger being a low-class piece of shit, the barkeep should have issued a caveat drinker about how lethal Teutonic brew could be on an empty tummy.
Jellwagger got better at pacing himself. He rotated his glass a lot and gazed with glazed eyes at the hockey game. It wasn’t until Goldilocks arrived with the sausage that he realized he’d been sitting there with a dumb smile on his face. During that not-quite-a-second that he and Goldie made eye contact, just when he became self-conscious enough to feel the smile on his face, she offered a small smile of her own, just as she set down the three varieties of mustard.
Jellwagger squirted the spicy mustard on his plate and dove into his sausage. Wow, who’d a’thunk it? This poor babe had been toiling in that courtyard for who knew how long and had been getting harassed by Pat Dinner to no end. She never laughed at his jokes and made no secret she was less-than-thrilled with the Dinner party in general. And then finally, at long last, she met Jellwagger’s eyes and found a reason to smile. Jellwagger, of course, knew it would add up to nothing. He would never have the courage to ask her out. He didn’t know where she lived, so parking outside her house and watching Live Free or Die Hard until he found out where she hung out was no good. And besides, as evidenced by his current situation, that just wasn’t the way to meet women.
Still, her smile had been a definite ego boost, and because of that, combined with being tipsy, he didn’t care at all that this mustard was so nuclear that it was stinging the very back of his brain. Unfortunately, he didn’t get the chance to wolf down all the links before the Dinner party decided they were done. They all stood with a clatter of their chairs. Jellwagger immediately flagged down the barkeep and gave him his credit card.
“What, we’re not good enough for you?”
“I have to get back to work.”
“Relax, pal, I’m joking. Let me get you your receipt.”
Trying not to be too obvious, Jellwagger pretended to look around the place while all the while keeping Pat Dinner in his peripheral vision. Dude and company were already headed for the exit. Shit, what now? Did Jellwagger really have to follow him? Or was this all Carla wanted him to do for tonight? He sure as shit couldn’t call and ask her from the bar and risk having someone hear him ask if he should continue tailing a billionaire. Where the hell was that stupid barkeep? Jesus, look at him! What’s he doing talking to some nine-foot-tall fox when Jellwagger had specifically asked to pay? He looked back toward the front just in time to see Herr Dinner walking out the door.
“Seriously, though, how was it?” the barkeep asked as he placed on the wood both the receipt and a particularly classy-looking black pen with gilded trim and the word Spago etched across it in delicate cursive. Oh yeah. Jellwagger would definitely be keeping that puppy. He told the barkeep that everything was great and thank you so much for recommending the Bavarian beer. No, really. Jellwagger felt millions of times better than he did when he first walked into this place. “Take care, my friend. And hey, maybe I’ll see you again soon, eh?” The top of the receipt listed the server’s name as Simon. And below that, much to Jellwagger’s horror, was the tally. Judas Priest on a stick! He owed that much for three beers, soup, and sausage? Where the hell was Simon? Once again he was bantering with Big Bird. Jellwagger was on the verge of calling out for him but thought better of it, not for Simon’s sake, but because he didn’t want to advertise to those rich babes how poor and pathetic a bastard he was.
Jellwagger always signed receipts with just the word Jellwagger. This time he tried to make it look as classy as the word Spago on the pen but failed miserably. It looked like someone threw up ink. Then he pocketed the receipt and the pen and hunted down the bathroom to break the seal.
Jellwagger only had to take a leak, but he chose a stall anyway and had a seat. No, he wasn’t normally a sitter when it came to pissing, but this was the best way to get some privacy while getting Carla on the horn. “You owe me big time,” was the first thing he told her.
“What are you talking about?” Carla said. “And quit yelling. Your voice is echoing.”
“That’s because I’m in the can.”
“You’re calling me while taking a dump? You’re such a classy bitch. Where are you?”
“Spago. And your boy’s just left. I spent more money on my goddam dinner than other people do on a Porsche. What the fuck do you want me to do now?”
“What did he do?”
“He ate dinner, Einstein. What did you expect him to do in a restaurant?”
“Follow him.”
“You’re shitting me. And spend even more money? You better reimburse me. This is a work-related expense. Have you ever given up a leg for friggin’ broth? Because that’s pretty much what I did.”
“I never told you to eat, Jellwagger.”
“Golly shucks, Beaver, you’re right. What was I thinking? God forbid I should seek sustenance. Oh, and by the way, dude has the single most annoying laugh this side of the Pecos.”
“Where is he now?”
“Fuck if I know. He left. He could be miles from here by now.”
“Follow him!”
“You are un-fucking-believable. Has anyone ever told you that you have bigger balls than an elephant?”
“And you can forget about reimbursement. Do a thousand dollars’ worth of work for me? And then we can try to set up a more normal business relationship. But don’t forget: You stalked me, bitch. For a week. You’re a sicko stalker, and right now I owe you dick. And considering the way you’re acting? Maybe a little dick is what you’d like.” She clicked off, but Jellwagger still said:
“Fuck you!”
And he regretted doing so the moment he stepped out of the stall. In fact, he regretted having had the whole conversation with her. Because as soon as he stepped out, he was staring at the back of a man washing his hands at the sink. Thanks to the mirror Jellwagger could see that it was none other than Patrick Dinner.
To be continued...
Now here’s our man. He’s running like a madman through the softly lighted, softly carpeted corridors of Powell and Powler on a weeknight, hours after everyone had left. That is, almost everyone. He had logged four hours of overtime and still hadn’t finished inputting that data stack for the marketing department’s oh-so-important newsletters tomorrow. On his way to the elevator Jellwagger—heavy-eyed, famished, and dreading having to stalk that red-headed madam’s ex-husband—came upon Stu the mailroom guy going balls deep on Grant Prossich. Grant was out of the closet, Stu was still in the closet, and Jellwagger found both of them inside the office of a senior partner.
The image of Grant bent over with his arms splayed across the desk while Stu, dripping with sweat and looking even wider with no trousers on, punishing and pleasuring Grant with every thrust, would be burned into Jellwagger’s retina until the end of time. And into his eardrums would forever be imprinted the sound he heard now: Grant’s voice pleading with him to stop.
Jellwagger managed to get a good lead on his supervisor so that he was just out of earshot by the time he reached the elevators. His speed was all for naught, though. The elevators, as they are want to do when you need them most, took an eternity. When that blasted chime sounded and the gilded doors swished open, Grant sprinted into the receptionist’s area, knocked over the candy bowl, and leaped at Jellwagger like a frog on crack. Jellwagger practically jumped into the elevator and frantically pressed the button to close the doors only to realize he was pressing the one that kept them open. Grant had no control of himself as he flew into the elevator. His shoulder smacked into Jellwagger’s and threw him to the floor. Jellwagger used his arms to shield his face while turning over onto partly his side and partly his stomach to keep Grant from doing any damage to his front. Even though Grant had never seemed within a light year of being a violent person, Jellwagger was convinced he was about to stomp on him or something. As it turned out, though, his long-held impression of Grant proved accurate. While the elevator hummed down the forty stories, Grant rested against the wall with his hands on his knees. Tentatively at first, Jellwagger turned back around to look up at him. Grant looked more terrified than he did. His eyes came back to Jellwagger for a split-second now and then, but for the most part he looked at just about every other part of the elevator except our man on the floor.
When the elevator doors swished open to reveal the empty lobby, Grant reached out a hand. Again tentatively at first, Jellwagger reached up. Before he could reach all the way, Grant extended his reach, clasped Jellwagger’s hand in an iron grip, and yanked him to his feet. It was just as well for the rest of society that Grant was a pussycat at heart. Dude was strong.
They walked through the lobby with awkward paces. It was like neither of them wanted to leave the building because if they did, they wouldn’t have any idea where to go. Within a few feet of the glass doors which perfectly rendered their reflections, Grant stopped and turned to Jellwagger. “I assume you got everything done.”
Jellwagger had no idea what he was talking about.
“It’s just that Betsy really wants to get those mailings out tomorrow, and my ass is sort of on the line.”
“No pun intended, I’m sure.” Grant looked both glum and pissed off. “No I’m not done, but if I have to type one more street address with a suite number, my brain will explode like the Nakatomi building from Die Hard.”
“The what?”
“I’ll come in early tomorrow and finish the rest.”
“It was just a fantasy, Jellwagger. Haven’t you ever wanted to do something because you were sick and fucking tired of wondering if you’d ever get the chance? It’s like dreaming the same thing over and over again until it’s like this giant snowball fit to burst out of your head. And you’ve got to let it out.” Jellwagger was about to mock the snowball metaphor when he met Grant’s eyes and thought better of it.
“Jellwagger, where the hell is your skinny deflowered ass?” squawked a voice from Jellwagger’s pocket. Carla was calling him over the new cell she’d messengered over.
“Are you going to be okay?” he asked Grant.
“Jellwagger, you better fucking answer me. If you have any hope of ever working off the thousand dollars, that is.”
“When you were chasing me upstairs, you mentioned two fantasies.”
“Listen, bitch,” Carla squawked on. Her voice echoed throughout the lobby. “If you don’t want to do what you owe me, I can always have Neckman harass the shit out of you until you have enough cash to pay me off. You can forget about measly sore ribs. Next time I’ll make sure he breaks that shit. Jellwagger, I know your cell’s on so get off the porn and answer me.”
Grant reached into Jellwagger’s pocket and pulled out the phone delicately between his index and thumb as if it might be radioactive. “This is what I saw at your desk earlier. Hey, didn’t this model just come out?” He looked at Jellwagger, then back at the phone. “This is supposed to have the longest range yet. Like a thousand miles or something.”
“Jellwagger, answer me!”
“Which means theoretically she could be in St. George, Utah,” Jellwagger said. “I suppose there’s a silver lining to everything.” He took the cell from Grant and said into it: “I had to work late tonight.”
“He’s at Spago. Get your ass in gear.”
Jellwagger pocketed the cell. “Whatever.”
“You’re going to Spago?”
“I’ve gotta run. But look here, Grant. I won’t tell Betsy or anyone, okay? I’m not into getting you in trouble. You’re like the only person in this whole frickin’ God-forsaken place who’s not on my shit list.”
“So Betsy’s on your shit list? Is that why you stare at her ass all the time?”
“See ya.” Jellwagger headed for the doors, then stopped and turned back. “Wait a second. So what were those two fantasies?”
“Having sex in the workplace. And then there was scoring with a guy who is more than double my weight. I never thought I’d kill two sex fantasies with one orgasm, but after watching King Kong Bundy push that God damned squeaky cart by my desk every day for practically my whole life, I couldn’t help noticing that he played for my team. Doing it in the office of someone who makes more in an hour than you and I do in a month combined? That was just gravy. The good thing is that I’m not even sore. That whole stereotype about gargantuan fat guys having small dicks? Take my word for it. It’s totally true. Which makes me wonder. I mean you’re super skinny, Jellwagger.” Grant draped a pinky on his lower lip and looked at Jellwagger’s crotch.
“See ya tomorrow, Grant.” Jellwagger headed for the glass doors. This time it was Grant who had forgotten to say something.
“Is it that guy whose photo you were looking at today?”
Jellwagger turned back. “What was that?”
“That guy. Patrick Dinner. Is he the one who’s at Spago?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Good night.”
“But that woman who just called…”
“Grant, come on now, babe. You think I could afford Spago on my salary? Even Denny’s would be a splurge.” A small smile appeared on Grant’s face that drove Jellwagger nuts in no time.
“Jellwagger. I just wondered if that guy was there.”
“I am exhausted. And all I can think of right now? Is sleep. So sayonara.”
Jellwagger had just gripped the handle on the glass door to push it open, face to face with his beleaguered reflection, when he was stopped yet again. This time it was the security guard who said something. He was a young guy, younger than you’d expect for a guy charged with guarding an office tower chockfull of companies worth billions of dollars. In fact, if someone in nearby Hollywood had cast this kid as a student in a high school comedy, it wouldn’t have been remotely a stretch. “Hey man! Hey!”
The kid’s uniform made him look like he was dressed for a Halloween party where he’d be doomed to be the wallflower. Not that he noticed. He smiled at Jellwagger with a face full of stubble topped with hair that he’d spent hours messing up just the right way. Yeah, definitely an actor. And since the guard made him think of movies, Jellwagger used the line from Taxi Driver: “You talkin’ to me?”
“Hey man. How does it feel being yanked on a tight leash?”
“I said you talkin’ to me?”
“If I had a girlfriend controlling me like yours does, I. Would fucking. Kill myself!”
“If you had a girlfriend,” Jellwagger said. “Which means you don’t. Which means you aren’t getting laid tonight. Because yeah. Mine’s a little bossy, but hey, at least she’s going to ride me like a tiger while you stress over your audition tomorrow morning.” Jellwagger pushed open the glass door as the kid’s smile vanished.
Jellwagger knew Grant knew he was lying about Pat Dinner, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t lying about being tired, though. Jellwagger was exhausted. He felt like one of those walking dead guys from Night of the Living Dead. You know, the ones who feasted on those corpses and munched on their organs like you and I would an Almond Joy? With that lip-smacking sound which seemed exaggerated to make up for the film being in grainy black and white? That’s exactly how Jellwagger felt now. Seriously, if he had come across a corpse that very instant, as he exited the Sanwa Bank building in downtown Los Angeles, he may just have gotten on his haunches and gone to town on the poor sucker’s liver and whatnot. The man was exhausted, he was hungry, and he didn’t really care how he addressed either problem at this point. And his ribs were killing him, which was how he knew he simply had to do Carla’s bidding and worry about sustenance and sleep later.
Have you ever been to Spago? If you live in Los Angeles, surely you’ve heard of it. And maybe you’ve even driven by it on Cañon Drive in Beverly Hills, right by the proverbial Rodeo Drive and all of that avenue’s shops hawking those horrifically overpriced scarves and gloves which no one with a brain would wear in a city that only dipped below seventy degrees for about one minute out of the year. That Spago. From downtown all Jellwagger had to do was hop onto Wilshire Boulevard westbound and crawl through enough lights to make any moth jealous. When he reached Beverly Hills, Jellwagger thought it more financially prudent to track down a parking garage or something, but as he drive up Cañon and spotted Spago on the right with those valet attendants outside, he couldn’t help veering his Shitty Shitty Bang Bang right on over. When I say Shitty Shitty Bang Bang, I’m referring to Jellwagger’s piece of shit Mazda. That’s what Jellwagger had always called it since he bought it back in the Stone Age. The Shitty Shitty part of the name needed no explanation. I mean, just look at it. The Bang Bang part came from the fact that every once in a while, usually when Jellwagger was least expecting it, his car would peel off two farts so massive and loud that, if you didn’t know what they were, would’ve made you think planet Earth was blowing up. And it was always two farts. Never one. Never three. Always two. One of the valets smiled at the hideous little shred of metal pulling up and whispered something to his fellow red-jacketed pal before walking around to the driver’s side. “Welcome to Spago, sir,” he said, his smile apparently stuck on his face as he handed Jellwagger one half of a lime-green ticket. The car farted as the first valet drove off. The second valet took cover.
Nine-thirty was usually too late for dinner, especially on a weeknight. Jellwagger liked to have dinner fully consumed and on its way to his bowels by seven at the latest, so that by the time he crashed between nine and ten, he wouldn’t be so full. Apparently that wasn’t the lifestyle people subscribed to in Beverly Hills. Spago was hopping tonight. Jellwagger wasn’t in the joint for ten seconds before he knew every table was full, even though the back part of the restaurant was out of view from the entrance. What confirmed it for him was the gorgeous young couple who’d come in just ahead of him and who were now being told by the hot Asian hostess that they were fully booked for the night. They walked past Jellwagger and back out to the valet with smiles barely hiding regret, but Jellwagger didn’t feel sorry for them at all. At least not for the guy anyway. Did it really matter where they had dinner tonight? The bottom line was, no matter where they ended up, they would still end up in bed together and wake up tomorrow morning in each other’s arms.
Jellwagger shook himself out of it. Man, that sad bastard was lonely as hell. Now onward to the hot Asian hostess. “I know this joint is full,” he said to her. “It’s full, right? See, I knew that already without you telling me. But lucky for me, I only care about that bar. You mind if I sit up there?”
The hostess shook her head no and gestured toward the bar with an open palm.
“Thanks, babe.” But Jellwagger only needed to take two steps toward the bar before he realized it was full. He turned back to the hostess to ask her why she hadn’t bothered to warn him, but she was already helping yet another hot couple. This pair did have a reservation. The hostess led them toward their table, which meant she had to walk past Jellwagger. She didn’t even look at him. Actually, he guessed she had looked at him in the corner of her eye and quietly relished that the cocky bastard who didn’t belong here and who’d invited himself to the bar found himself without a place to rest his legs. What a bitch. She probably didn’t have one more dime to her name than he did, yet she had to act like she was of the same status as this joint’s clientele.
After watching her disappear into the bowels of this coin sucker, Jellwagger’s eyes passed over the roofless courtyard dining area. Located right off the bar, the courtyard was a small square space with only a few tables. It was surrounded on one side by the bar and entrance area, on two other sides by the indoor dining rooms, and on the fourth side by the wall separating it from Cañon Drive. The largest table in the courtyard was a round metal piece of work which at the moment was chockfull of middle-aged men still in their business best. They hadn’t ordered much food yet, but each of them had in hand either a pint of beer or a glass of wine. Jellwagger wasn’t a big wine person, but all that beer sure made his throat feel parched. Yet it wasn’t the beer that kept his eyes glued to the scene. It was that dude with the loud laugh, the too-white-to-be-true teeth, and the nearly empty pint glass who was just now flagging down a young toned blonde waitress who no doubt did tons of yoga when she wasn’t toiling away in this shark tank. If that gal did indeed do yoga, perhaps it would have been a good idea to pass along her secrets of physical discipline to the guy now ordering from her, and who was inviting his fellow black-suited buddies to do the same. Even from this distance Jellwagger could make out the second chin that wasn’t quite fully formed but was clearly getting comfortable under and just behind the original chin. And even though the table concealed the lower half of his body, it was obvious that he was growing love handles commensurate with that extra chin. What made the twin chins look even funkier was the gray goatee. Perhaps the goatee was new to him, and he hadn’t yet figured out how best to take advantage of his facial hair to mask the chunk. Even if Jellwagger hadn’t noticed all of that, the guy’s side-frosted black hair would have been enough to recognize him. And even if Jellwagger hadn’t looked at the hair, the dude’s smile, the first thing Jellwagger noticed about him, would have been enough. It was the exact same smile from the photo that included Carla’s dispossessed hand.
And now Pat Dinner’s friends scanned their menus before shooting appetizer orders at the blonde while holding up their empty glasses. Pat Dinner nodded at her and thanked her before she walked away. Dude was obviously the one in charge here. Or at least he was the one footing the bill. Jellwagger knew he was supposed to be against him, or at least feel ambivalent about him, but looking at Pat Dinner running the show in the center of Spago’s courtyard, the center of the center of one of the most expensive friggin’ restaurants on the planet, magnet to power brokers everywhere, he couldn’t help but feel a modicum of admiration and respect. Thank Christ Carla wasn’t calling right now over the cell. Wonder Woman would no doubt have discerned Jellwagger’s feelings by the sound of his voice. She probably could have also deduced that her poor lackey had nowhere to sit. That is, until now.
A party of three gals in their thirties and hotter than Indian chili all vacated their stools when the Asian informed them that their table was now ready. To hell with spying on Pat Dinner. If Jellwagger had a spleen to speak of, he would have followed those babes to their table and introduced himself and asked if they wouldn’t mind if he joined them. Sure, they would have most likely spat in his face, but what did he have to lose?
The key word I used above was spleen, because that was exactly what Jellwagger lacked when it counted most. That, combined with his sore ribs that killed him the more he stayed on his feet, made him make a B line straight for one of those three empty stools, the one on the very end of the bar. Dude wasn’t seated for a nanosecond before the bartender, a man about the same age as Pat Dinner but shorter and stouter, slid a napkin onto the bar top in front of Jellwagger and asked for his poison of choice. “What the hell do you recommend?” Jellwagger asked.
“We don’t have Austrian beer, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Why in Christ would I ask for Australian beer?”
“Austrian! And you might have asked for that because our founder and head chef is from Austria. So if you want a good quality beer, just pick any off the menu.”
“I don’t have a menu.”
“But if you want something really good, I’d pick Spaten.”
“Never heard of it.”
The barkeep stepped away to refill someone’s martini halfway down the bar. When he came back to Jellwagger, he brought with him a frozen glass and a green bottle with a white label that read Spaten. “This is as close to Austria as you’re getting with us, pal. You read me? Spaten’s brewed in Munich. As in the far south of Germany. As in very close to the Austrian border.”
“What have I done to you that you would be such a smart-ass?” Jellwagger asked while watching the barkeep tilt the frozen glass to fill it with Spaten. As the Asian hostess walked by on her way to the front, her ponytail swinging back and forth and that smug smile planted on her face while she no doubt wanted Jellwagger to revel in her making him look like a friggin’ idiot, Jellwagger snapped at her with a “Ha!” Of course it didn’t faze her, so he did it again just as her back was to him. This time she turned partly to the side to catch him for a moment in her peripheral vision while not losing a beat in her high-heeled step.
“What are you doing here, pal?” the barkeep said, leaning against the wood. He looked down at the rest of his customers with a smile on his face as equally smug as the Asian hostess’s, then wiped it off when he turned back to Jellwagger with that zero-bullshit-tolerance glare you usually find in uptight English teachers.
Jellwagger shrugged and said, “Cheers.” He raised his glass and took a sip. His taste in beer wasn’t very refined. All he knew was that he wasn’t very partial to American light beers. The Europeans tended to make theirs a bit stronger and therefore more to his liking, which meant this thing called Spaten would suit him just fine.
“You don’t know?” the barkeep said, looking down the counter again. Someone down there raised their glass for a refill. The barkeep obliged and then came back. “So you don’t even know if you’re hungry? Or are you just going to sit there and drink Bavarian beer until I have to call you a cab?”
“Oh I’m definitely hungry. I haven’t eaten anything in…” He checked his watch. “…like a million hours. I could eat an Austrian horse.”
“Be careful how you use your food metaphors there, pal. We serve all kinds of things here at Spago Beverly Hills. But since you’re the poorest sonunvabitch here, there really isn’t much I can recommend to you. None of the main courses, anyway.” He went to refill someone’s drink. When he came back, Jellwagger didn’t waste a second in asking:
“What the hell was that?”
“My friend, how much would you like to bet that even the waiting staff… Hell, the cleaning staff, in this restaurant, make more than you? Let me ask you something, pal. What do you do? And don’t lie to me. I can smell lies through a hundred yards of L.A. smog.”
“Data entry in a law firm.”
“You’re kidding! That’s worse than I thought. You want another?”
Jellwagger didn’t realize the sip of beer he was currently taking was the last of it. He nodded. While the barkeep fetched another Spaten, Pat Dinner et al erupted in laughter behind him. Jellwagger turned in his stool to get a look at them. Their main courses had just arrived, and Herr Dinner had said something to the blonde waitress to which she showed no visible reaction but at which his pals had blown up in hysterics. Just as she finished serving all the entrees and was about to walk away, Pat Dinner lifted and lowered the empty champagne bottle in the bucket next to him and nodded at her.
“And that, my friend, is the richest sonunvabitch in here tonight. I should introduce the two of you. You each represent opposite ends of the city’s employment spectrum. Hold on a sec.” He poured wine for some new arrivals: a few fortysomething hotties who were dressed very professionally and, if it were possible, were even further out of his league than Betsy goddam Seth.
“I’m not a frickin’ bum,” Jellwagger said when the barkeep came back. “I have a job. I have my own place. I’m not on the opposite end of jack shit.”
“How much would you like to wager, my friend, that if you go ask any homeless person, they’ll tell you they prefer where they are than working as a God-forsaken data entry slug in a law firm, where all day you have lawyers walking by who make more in a month than you do in a year. What is that like? Don’t you feel your inferiority complex just dragging you deeper and deeper down? Your opinion of yourself must be just God awful. But I don’t know you so I’m just guessing.”
“Enough about me. What else can you tell me about Donald Trump over there? Besides the fact that he has the single most annoying laugh mankind has ever known.”
“How about some soup? We make the best chicken broth you’ll ever taste.”
“This must be another one of your brilliant jokes.”
“Look, my friend. It may not sound like much, but trust me. And besides, you’ve got to eat something. It’s depressing me to no end watching you have beer for dinner and nothing else. You’ve put in a lot of overtime tonight, am I right? You’re a law firm lackey, so I’m guessing your hours are fairly traditional. Being out this late on a weeknight is kind of strange for you. And overtime means you’ve got some extra pennies to play with. I know they’re just pennies, but still. Why not spoil yourself? And you said before that you haven’t eaten all day. So broth it is. It’s getting to be fall out there, my friend. As the temperature plummets, we could all use some good old chicken broth to warm us up.”
“What are you talking about? It’s in the seventies during the day and sixties at night.” The barkeep gave the broth order to the blonde waitress as she came up to the bar for a new bottle of champagne for the Dinner party. After that, he strolled down to the other end of the bar so that the other patrons could benefit from the sunlight of his overdressed wisdom.
Jellwagger turned to get another look at them. Pat was still laughing now and again, but at least he was keeping it down. The rest of them were too involved in their meals to give any indication, at least from this distance, that they were paying attention to a single thing their man said. Jellwagger would have to keep a closer eye on them. Since they were working on their entrees, he assumed this bottle of champagne would be their last. Or perhaps they’d stay for dessert so they could harass Goldilocks some more. What a nightmare that would be, for Jellwagger no less than her. At least she was making good coin if the barkeep was to be believed, but how long would Jellwagger have to sit here on his numb duff being ignored by the Asian hostess and made to feel unworthy by everyone else?
Jellwagger had already thrown down half of his second Spaten so he tried like mad to pace himself. Boy, was that tough. Dude had nothing to do. On top of that, he still felt awkward as hell. The beer glass became his security blanket. Instead of taking sips from it every two seconds, he simply held onto it with one hand and slowly rotated it. He also had a TV to look at. I stress look at, not watch. Jellwagger was much too distracted to have much of an attention span for anything, especially the hockey game that was on right now.
Goldilocks eventually returned with a large bowl with small bits of skinless chicken arranged neatly in the center. She poured the broth onto this with more precision than was really necessary considering it was broth. Instead of smiling at Jellwagger and telling him to enjoy this utterly lousy excuse for a meal, she hurried away. Could he blame her? If the situation were reversed and it was Jellwagger as a waiter being handled by a bunch of wealthy older female customers… Wait. Now that he thought about it, Jellwagger might actually enjoy that.
The barkeep came back down Jellwagger’s way while our man was fully focused on slurping his broth. “Let me tell you a little something about our man over there. The one you called Donald Trump. His real name’s Dinner. Patrick Dinner. He’s been buying and selling commercial real estate since forever. His net worth? Search me, but I’ll bet you anything that it’s in the nine-figure, hell maybe even ten-figure, range.”
“Where’s he from? Wait, let me guess. Germany. Bavaria!”
“Oh hell no. The man could buy Bavaria if he wanted. Nah, he’s from the Midwest somewhere. Kansas or some shit.”
“Is he married?”
The barkeep stared at him. “Oh really, slugger? I didn’t know you batted that way.”
“I’m just curious to see what kind of woman a guy with all that money can get.”
“Get? Or buy? You think that man will ever land himself a gal who likes him for who he is? Come on now.”
“So he’s single.”
“He was married. To this foxy redhead much younger than him. Word around town was that she was a madam for high-class call girls and this genius somehow didn’t know anything about it. Then when he found out, he decided it was too much of a liability to be married to a boss of whores, so he called it splits. Personally I think he just wanted to see what it was like to score with a redhead, and once he got that out of his system, it was like, ‘Next!’”
Jellwagger finished off his broth and could pace himself through the Spaten no longer.
“How about another one? And this time, use it to chase down some juicy German sausages.”
“I don’t bat on that side of the plate, remember?”
“No, I mean real sausages. It’s labeled on the menu as our head chef’s childhood favorite. Personally I think that’s some sort of bullshit to get people to order it. But who knows? It is just about the cheapest entrée on our menu. Oh come on. You can’t tell me that broth was enough. If anything, it made you hungrier, am I right? That’s why we call it an appetizer, my friend.” And right on cue, Goldilocks came up to the bar with more drink orders. The barkeep gave her the order for Jellwagger’s sausages. When he gave Jellwagger his third Spaten, he served it to him in a brand new glass fresh from the freezer. “Because we take care of our customers, no matter where they live—or don’t—in the financial stratosphere.”
“The fact that you use words like stratosphere and inferiority complex is the funniest thing in the world to me right now. You’re a barkeep! For the sake of Peter and all who are underpaid!” The barkeep walked back down to dote on the richer drinkers. Was he now sore at Jellwagger, or did he want to stay away because he could see Jellwagger getting buzzed? But if that was the case, what was the deal with the third drink? Well, regardless of what the barkeep may or may not have known about Jellwagger’s mental state right now, Jellwagger himself knew that he was most definitely straddling that hazy border between buzzed and drunk. Yes, even after two beers. Perhaps, between his lecture on all the rich people here and the one about Jellwagger being a low-class piece of shit, the barkeep should have issued a caveat drinker about how lethal Teutonic brew could be on an empty tummy.
Jellwagger got better at pacing himself. He rotated his glass a lot and gazed with glazed eyes at the hockey game. It wasn’t until Goldilocks arrived with the sausage that he realized he’d been sitting there with a dumb smile on his face. During that not-quite-a-second that he and Goldie made eye contact, just when he became self-conscious enough to feel the smile on his face, she offered a small smile of her own, just as she set down the three varieties of mustard.
Jellwagger squirted the spicy mustard on his plate and dove into his sausage. Wow, who’d a’thunk it? This poor babe had been toiling in that courtyard for who knew how long and had been getting harassed by Pat Dinner to no end. She never laughed at his jokes and made no secret she was less-than-thrilled with the Dinner party in general. And then finally, at long last, she met Jellwagger’s eyes and found a reason to smile. Jellwagger, of course, knew it would add up to nothing. He would never have the courage to ask her out. He didn’t know where she lived, so parking outside her house and watching Live Free or Die Hard until he found out where she hung out was no good. And besides, as evidenced by his current situation, that just wasn’t the way to meet women.
Still, her smile had been a definite ego boost, and because of that, combined with being tipsy, he didn’t care at all that this mustard was so nuclear that it was stinging the very back of his brain. Unfortunately, he didn’t get the chance to wolf down all the links before the Dinner party decided they were done. They all stood with a clatter of their chairs. Jellwagger immediately flagged down the barkeep and gave him his credit card.
“What, we’re not good enough for you?”
“I have to get back to work.”
“Relax, pal, I’m joking. Let me get you your receipt.”
Trying not to be too obvious, Jellwagger pretended to look around the place while all the while keeping Pat Dinner in his peripheral vision. Dude and company were already headed for the exit. Shit, what now? Did Jellwagger really have to follow him? Or was this all Carla wanted him to do for tonight? He sure as shit couldn’t call and ask her from the bar and risk having someone hear him ask if he should continue tailing a billionaire. Where the hell was that stupid barkeep? Jesus, look at him! What’s he doing talking to some nine-foot-tall fox when Jellwagger had specifically asked to pay? He looked back toward the front just in time to see Herr Dinner walking out the door.
“Seriously, though, how was it?” the barkeep asked as he placed on the wood both the receipt and a particularly classy-looking black pen with gilded trim and the word Spago etched across it in delicate cursive. Oh yeah. Jellwagger would definitely be keeping that puppy. He told the barkeep that everything was great and thank you so much for recommending the Bavarian beer. No, really. Jellwagger felt millions of times better than he did when he first walked into this place. “Take care, my friend. And hey, maybe I’ll see you again soon, eh?” The top of the receipt listed the server’s name as Simon. And below that, much to Jellwagger’s horror, was the tally. Judas Priest on a stick! He owed that much for three beers, soup, and sausage? Where the hell was Simon? Once again he was bantering with Big Bird. Jellwagger was on the verge of calling out for him but thought better of it, not for Simon’s sake, but because he didn’t want to advertise to those rich babes how poor and pathetic a bastard he was.
Jellwagger always signed receipts with just the word Jellwagger. This time he tried to make it look as classy as the word Spago on the pen but failed miserably. It looked like someone threw up ink. Then he pocketed the receipt and the pen and hunted down the bathroom to break the seal.
Jellwagger only had to take a leak, but he chose a stall anyway and had a seat. No, he wasn’t normally a sitter when it came to pissing, but this was the best way to get some privacy while getting Carla on the horn. “You owe me big time,” was the first thing he told her.
“What are you talking about?” Carla said. “And quit yelling. Your voice is echoing.”
“That’s because I’m in the can.”
“You’re calling me while taking a dump? You’re such a classy bitch. Where are you?”
“Spago. And your boy’s just left. I spent more money on my goddam dinner than other people do on a Porsche. What the fuck do you want me to do now?”
“What did he do?”
“He ate dinner, Einstein. What did you expect him to do in a restaurant?”
“Follow him.”
“You’re shitting me. And spend even more money? You better reimburse me. This is a work-related expense. Have you ever given up a leg for friggin’ broth? Because that’s pretty much what I did.”
“I never told you to eat, Jellwagger.”
“Golly shucks, Beaver, you’re right. What was I thinking? God forbid I should seek sustenance. Oh, and by the way, dude has the single most annoying laugh this side of the Pecos.”
“Where is he now?”
“Fuck if I know. He left. He could be miles from here by now.”
“Follow him!”
“You are un-fucking-believable. Has anyone ever told you that you have bigger balls than an elephant?”
“And you can forget about reimbursement. Do a thousand dollars’ worth of work for me? And then we can try to set up a more normal business relationship. But don’t forget: You stalked me, bitch. For a week. You’re a sicko stalker, and right now I owe you dick. And considering the way you’re acting? Maybe a little dick is what you’d like.” She clicked off, but Jellwagger still said:
“Fuck you!”
And he regretted doing so the moment he stepped out of the stall. In fact, he regretted having had the whole conversation with her. Because as soon as he stepped out, he was staring at the back of a man washing his hands at the sink. Thanks to the mirror Jellwagger could see that it was none other than Patrick Dinner.
To be continued...
