Tag Archives: Harpy

I Love The Flower Girl

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So tired. Been a long day. Close to 10 hours on my feet. Now, Bill is in Washington DC, supposed to be dead heading back to Manhattan, estimated time of arrival 6:30 tomorrow morning. I wish he were here, but he isn’t so I am enjoying a little time to myself.

Juan is around somewhere, he could be making the trek up from Trenton back t Union City. He said he might stop by if it isn’t too late. But what is too late? Now is too late. Still I would welcome him here, no matter what.

I heard from the former president of my former job this morning. He asked for the info, a copy of my resume so he could tailor a letter to mail to my prospective employers. He’s using snail mail, not email since he’s not that computer savvy. I have no idea what he is writing.

Perhaps he’s writing that I am the absolute worst and the company would be smart to change their address lest they receive contact from me again. But I doubt it. Harpy made an appearance at the cigar shop today and that was nice, it was good to see him. Not much time spent, he was off doing things and I was off standing on my feet for the first of many hours.

Marcus split the scene soon enough, leaving Bradley and myself. And lately Bradley has been pretty funny. Funny ha ha, not funny strange though he is a bit strange in a funny way as well. It certainly was a busy day, lot’s of people, the majority were men, buying cigars for a long weekend.

I remember those long weekends. And quite a number of those guys sat in the backroom, and drank and smoke the afternoon away since they were off of work early. It got so crowded that we had to turn people away from the boisterous, smoky scene.

Sean came in and worked but mainly talked on his phone, out of the view of the cameras. If we wanted him to do something, like his job, we had to ask him. Large packages came in, quite unexpectedly as well as cigars ordered earlier in the week.

I put a box on the side and called a customer who asked me to call him when the cigars he liked came in. Got his voice mail and after a few hours figured he wasn’t coming in so I put them back in stock. The time did not fly by, it was quite a long day.

Eventually I left the store, closing the register and ignoring a $0.40 discrepancy in the receipts. I was too tired to figure it out and it would have taken some time. I just wanted to go home. I’m sure that will come up in a week or two.

I made it to the bus terminal, listening to Mezzanine by Massive Attack. At the gate was Hyman Gross and we chatted while we waited and as we rode on the bus to Hoboken. He expressed doubt that Bill would make it back in time for dinner and I took exception to that, and told him so.

Until then, I had no doubt that Bill would make it and if it wasn’t for Hyman’s negative attitude I would have had 100% positivity that Bill would be there. I suppose if you make it to 80 something years old, you can be as grouchy and curmudgeonly as you’d like.

I did speak with Bill a few minutes ago, and he said he should be back here, in the NYC area on time. Hyman might have picked up on my discomfort and changed the subject to Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann and James Joyce. He recommended that I read The Dead by Joyce, it’s supposed to be quite beautiful.

So I just requested the DVD from the bibliothèque as well as Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Will I have the time to watch the DVD or read the book? Will you have the time to read this?

What are you looking at?


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I Want You Around

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Let’s face it. Most of the time lately, I have no idea what day it is. I was trying to help a customer on the phone, someone who was trying to get cigars sent to his home in Connecticut. I remarked that if he called early enough tomorrow morning, he should get them by Friday.

He said, that tomorrow was Friday. There went my plan for him to satisfy his cigar needs. It didn’t really matter since I was fobbing him off to another cigar shop in Manhattan. But I was taken aback by the fact that today was Thursday for most people but for me it was Tuesday.

And Harpy is somewhere in New Jersey. Attending some wake. As long as it isn’t Harpy’s wake I am fine with it. Hopefully the border will be open when he decides to leave the mainland and return to that island off the coast of America.

Last night I slept especially well. Bill was somewhere in Pennsylvania and didn’t come home until 5:30. He was off from work today so he lay sleeping as I was the one dressed up and headed out the door.

I saw the 10:15 bus at the stop but decided to wait for the 10:30 bus. I sat there on a bench and finished last night’s cigar which would have horrified my cigar shop co-workers. I had no problem with it and stayed far enough away from anyone who was waiting for the bus and might have had problems with the cigar.

I walked through the terminal listening to New Order, Blue Monday. I guess there was a karma pay off with the fact that when I got to the subway there was a train at the station. An express train at that.

I made it into the cigar shop early enough and explained to Calvin the problem with the printer not being connected to the network. He didn’t think it was that much of a problem since all the info was in the database and easily accessible. I didn’t know that and my worrying was all for naught.

It was an interesting day at the cigar shop. In the afternoon an elderly gent came in and I of course welcomed him with a ‘Hello Sir’, like I do with all the male customers. Women get a ‘Hello Miss’. It makes the older women feel younger and the men feel like gentlemen (though most of them aren’t).

I asked the elderly gent if he was at the shop to buy a cigar and he said that he wasn’t, he didn’t smoke anymore. His name was Bill and he was 81. He just wanted to come in and talk about how he first started smoking cigars when he was 13 years old, growing up in an orphanage.

It was a convoluted story but that was the gist of it. He had a few jobs when he was 13 years old, and thrilled at that age when he was making $14.00 a week for stocking the shelves in a grocery store.

He mentioned that his whole life was stories and that he needed a ghostwriter to get them all down before it was too late. I suggested that he go to a nearby college and speak to someone in the English department, maybe they could suggest a student to help him out with what he wanted to do.

I don’t know if that’s how things get done on campuses these days, but it was an idea that he seemed to like.

Just another day I suppose in Manhattan, working in a cigar store. Thursday’s with Old Bill.