Sam was a funny mother. He was probably nuts, a sort of part time sociopath with a mean-kind streak like so many other people I’ve run into. Chinny had a talent with getting literary with the menu. It wasn’t too bad. I could understand it, and I understand you gotta do those things if you don’t want to be lumped in that pile of every other two step-up from the fast food ladder. Little Chinaman of Chittenango was a fearless dresser to. I didn’t talk about that much with him, probably should have. He calmed me down. I felt like kid around him. Not afraid to say whatever I wanted to.
I never got all into Sam’s crazy game like a lot of other people at school did. I did get involved, but not like so many people. That was a while ago. I never cheated or anything. Sam was just so paranoid after a while, and he had some people point to me about cheating, because I was winning. I looked guilty, but it was those guys that cheated. You can keyword ‘Chinny Ray’ on a searchy and come up with people blogging about that shit like it was some famous national joke from the late shows, a joke from some important douche bag from whenever.
It was fun to tease Chinny Chin as if nothing ever happened. But there is probably no such thing ‘as if nothing ever happened.’ The best sort of forgetting isn’t usually possible until it’s too late to make a damn of a difference. When ‘The Oldest Tree House,’ opened up for business on a snowy November Saturday, the three of us were dressed in our finest. That’s no joke. I had been reading up on the restaurant business shortly after moving to Delphi 2, which happened to be the same week Sam did.
I don’t know how it happens like that. Crazy shit really, where people who you were never really close to, but came across at some early feeling part of your life, they come back body and all, or come back differently, into your life, and make this smashing impact in some pinprick way that really soaks you up in a common fluid, and I have no idea. Telling these stories about this DJ we all were getting with now and then, dating and everything. It all seems so insignificant or way over-blown at first, that impact, and then it turns and turns.
I try not to think much about why we are all in this town now. We all moved to this state, to this little city, and it’s not like we got much in common outside of going to college, you know….. as people. I know Ray grew up in a little shit town like me, but that’s about it. I didn’t dress up like a doll or whatever he did growing up with that wizard business. I worked with my dad cleaning up animal shit, and driving a truck up and down for hours and hours every day.
I was in a whistling club once. It was a group of hearing impaired people. It was suppose to be a sort of you can do it thing, a support group.
I find whistling disturbing. I get angry when I hear too much whistling. I once thought that gay people whistled more than straight people, that I could tell a queer gay whistle like a bad guy you’ve seen a bunch of times in everyday life, in a line up, but with sound… I could identify that whistle. I remember having a friend tell me he was gay, and I had to not be friends with him anymore. Now I feel like shit about this, but back then I was just like…. I knew it, and a queer whistle haunted me. Then, I had ideas about helping him not be gay. Maybe if I could teach him to whistle like a straight guy, really work on it. He would change. Can you imagine? A sort of un-gaying whistle camp program! I would start a whistling straight camp or something. This was my idea. I remember writing about this in a one subject spiral like I was trying to save my life with a secret letter I had to sneak out of a prison or something.
We all worked so hard to put this restaurant together. Each of our strengths we’re harnessed to make it as successful, as different from the pack as it could be. It’s not like we became best buddies and just decided to do this. It’s weird, and don’t make much sense, like getting married, or believing god talks to nice guys only as opposed to pissed off Polar Bears or bored women.
Most days I would just shut myself in Delphi 2’s main library, or occasionally sit outside pouring over my notes, or reading certain books or expensive magazines that covered the news about restaurants, or new business ideas in general. I needed to know if gin would be the new vodka, and emerge from its long held position of obscurity. I took a bunch of notes, and tried to befriend as many people in the business as possible. Can’t even remember how many hostesses I dated. I always found the day hostesses to be very different from the night hostesses, but I could have just made a whole lot of phony correlations like everyone else about so many things.
The library was always crammed with hot little missy fingers, adorable bite-my-neck-now babes, combing the special periodicals, digging into their books as they dragged on 100 length cigarettes, smiling at me. A guy’s got to be hopeful. I thought being an owner in a restaurant would be a ticket to poly-tang central. That wasn’t the only thing on my mind, but quite often it was.
We had all raised a large amount of capital, and built our free standing building in a vacant lot where a gigantic white ash tree grew. The lot had been some kind of superfund site, a dry cleaning place or something like that had been there before. It had been cleaned up. We got the land cheap. ‘The Oldest Tree House,’ was located on a fairly well walked strip of the south side of Delphi 2, where pedestrian traffic was heavy. The fading film star, Oren Sazer was still a favorite home town son, and owned a large and damn charming home dating from the 1890’s not more than a few blocks away where many artists had once lived, and now some rich people or their kids in college lived.
It was Chinny’s idea to create an actual tree house above the restaurant that one could walk up a short flight of carved and beautifully stained wooden serpentine like stairs to. This special tree house dining area would have a through the classic ages of many civilization look to it, a sensual and simplified composite set of décor and over all feel from materials and what not, of civilizations thought to be ‘classic’ in maybe an arty sense. That wasn’t my thing, my description, but I heard it spoken about all the time and could talk like that if people asked.
Patrons sitting in the main dining room could see portions of the exclusive tree house dining area if they looked up through the large opaque sky roof. It was a teaser alright. It was a media buzz reservoir that never got over tapped. We wanted to create a one of a kind curiosity and wonder-whip, entice people to want to make reservations and pay a premium to dine up there far in advance. Book it up baby! We spent so much money on an elaborate lighting system, and all these odds and ends from these time periods. It all combined to give this exclusive space (enough room for about eight) a feel of timelessness, of childhood too. We gave a lot of consideration, and brainstormed our asses off at many a session at various restaurants and drinking spots, trying to get the whole fucking plan just right. But it was that tree house dining part, our centerpiece that we spent the most time on. I think too much time. Our business plan itself could have used all that damn attention.
It wasn’t a lack of business plan that fucked us. It wasn’t a woman either. That’s what Sam thinks, but that’s too simple. He started in with his weird fucking gambling stunts. Should have broken his neck when I first got a tingle about all that. She was in on it somehow…gambling on people’s weight, that stupid invisible scale and the weight on the wall. It was supposed to be daring and funny, and bohemian fuck-off different. But it was fucking stupid. I thought Sam was all done with all of his gambling urges. He told us all about his counseling, remorse, how he was really just a professional now who longed for……and so on and so forth.
Chinny was really into to this whole tree house concept, this place where couples would go for an extra romantic date in an unusual place both friendly and old fashion, and strange or unfamiliar as a place to enjoy a meal. I loved it up there, but was more into the business end, including interviewing. Christ did I interview a lot of dickhops, and bingyfinggys. I did a hell of a lot of firing in that almost three years we were open. This was all before we decided to put invisible scales on the flooring of our popular outdoor dining section which was run by Emmy Louise.
It was a mistake hiring her. I still think Chinny Ray was having phone sex with her. Ray was always saying shit on the phone in that hanky panky loud-soft gulping way: yeah, you deserve that righh, righh? It fits perfect righh? How’s it going to fit perfect? It’s going to fit just perfect, righh? You’re going to be good now? How good is it? Then you will get rewarded. Stuff like that, really corny, lots of heavy-quiver questions. It was sexual. It was obviously sexual. Never heard those ‘T’s’ at the end of ‘right’ for whatever reason. That was the grossest part about overhearing those calls, not hearing those ‘T’s. There was something chaste about the letter T, or something wet leafy on a shivering tummy and lewd about the absence of them in such a context. I confronted Ray about it. I knew it was Emmy he was getting all worked up with on those calls.
She was never around when he would be talking like that during operating hours. I never heard Ray have phone sex when Emmy was working. He said he was checking inventory or some shit, but he was getting his phone jollies with that crazy bitch. We got really high one night smoking this pot that Emmy said she got from one of the top surgeons in town, Doctor Shineblast (that’s what it sounded like at least.) I think it was laced with some Crystal Meth, or something even worse than that. I’m not sure. I don’t fuck with any hard drugs. Life is fucked up enough.
That night Emmy began flirting with Ray overtly. She complimented him on his scarves and shoes, and after shave. It got annoying. She was waxing poetic about these compliments. I didn’t trust the bitch. I felt there was something more than just pot we were inhaling into our blood. I even said something casual, not accusatory or anything, about how the pot must have been laced. Everyone sort of chuckled it off, dismissing my claim as if I was just saying what I said to compliment the grass, or just a jawing stoned sophomore getting all verbally kablooie. That night stands heavily in my mind as the beginning of a very messy end. It happened about two years and a half or so.
We closed up the Tree House a little early, and lit this laced doob on fire. I had a great mixed CD that no one ever let me put on. It was a countrified version of Salt and Pepper’s ‘Shoop.’ No one gave a damn, but I did. I liked it a lot. I began to get irritated because Emmy got everyone to agree to put on her The very Best of England Dan and John Ford Coley. How many times can you listen to that? Ray held a big laugh in check. I knew he thought the album was a bunch of laughable crud. He continued to get close to Emmy, almost breathe on her. I could see his hand just levitating over her creamy white legs under those short pink corduroy shorts. I was racing around our restaurant with the reckless speed of a time traveling skinny raccoon just let loose in a maze of exotically putrid garbage cans.
I was hopped up on something. This wasn’t just some high grade marijuana. Gary tried to calm me down, but I thought he was trying to pin me to the ground and hurt me. It took a while to come down off that. I was a little unclear of what was going on.