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22.4.03
I sensed the jig was up when shortly after choking myself with the tuxedo tie, I was summoned to speak with Gonzo, the Uruguayan jefe of the restaurant and bar of this overrated, chrome polished mirage of a hotel. Gonzo looked sad. The bearer of bad news. We never knew each other well, thankfully. By the start of my evening shift, his daily hectics had already subsided. The day was nearly over. He would go back to his South American faux-aristocrat environs, eat a meal with the wife and kids, then sit in the living room sipping on a cognac while letting the day's annoyance to sweat out of him.
First of all, Gonzo wasn't the only person in the room. There was a man with a tight asshole overseeing the get together, a man feigning a combination between officious and thuggish who pored over the open file in front of him as though he were dissecting state secrets.
Their opening salve was the report of a house detective. I didn't bother pondering aloud the use or the need for a house detective in a second-rate luxery pied a terre masquerading as a hotel. Clearly, some sort of problem had been brewing beneath the surface, something an insignificant night bartender like myself wouldn't have concerned myself with, even had I been aware of it. But the report of the house detective was lip-biting funny, comprised of an exchange between himself and myself one night a few weeks before wherein he'd commented aloud on the strength of the drink I'd just poured him. As Gonzo read it, I tried to picture the man and the exchange in my head but I didn't need to as Gonzo recited verbatim the report; my laughing reply of pouring more vodka into his drink and following with the observation that I didn't care if he had the whole bottle, it wasn't my vodka. The indelicate banter that followed, disparaging the crassness of my environs, the shitty excuse for a bar, the recommendation of a better jazz combo a neighborhood away...it was a damning report. The antithesis of the employee of the month. The man with the morals of a communist border guard. It was all there in black and white. Gonzo barely breathed while my body trembled from the exertion of holding in my laughter.
The other man cleared his throat importantly and began his review of exhibit B, the case of the missing cash from my register which had disappeared one day and returned a few days later in full. It was a loan, I offered. To pay rent until the checks cleared. Also against hotel policy. It was a time of need. I don't quarrel with logistics when I'm fending off eviction. The money was paid back within two days, I noted.
But these damning evidences were not brought to my attention for the sake of firing me, Gonzo finally explained. Aha. The plot thickens. It seems certain bartenders or waiters have been stealing on their own: cutlery, table cloths, food, money. The works. Anything that wasn't nailed down. And it was my decision as to whether or not I would be terminated. If I cooperated with their efforts to find out who, specifically, was doing the stealing, it would be agreed that these two rather large oversights of conduct of mine would be overlooked given my otherwise spotless history. So you want me to narc on my coworkers?
I stood up, offering my hand to Gonzo. While it's been an almost unconscionable delight working in this fine hotel, while it's been an experience for the scrapbook, the memories illuminating, see ya.
*****
Albert didn't look up when I came home. The headphones were on, the music was audible from the hallways and a half a case of Harp had already seen its way into the recycling bin. I didn't have any big speech intended but there was still the matter of announcing the resolution of our housing problems. We were clearing out. Splitting, running on the tab, smashing our eggs before the chickens were hatched.
Albert assured us we had money. As always, his insurance settlement was due within a few weeks, the baseball card collection had been sold of in its entirety for a tidy sum and there was always my savings.
So where are we going to start?
Albert, with all the spare time in the world on his hands, had the answer: The Euro2000 tournament starts in three days. Why don't we start in Brugges?
*****
..."All travelling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity." -Ruskin, "Modern Painters"
Utrecht, June 2000
Albert begins a slow whine about his creaking knees, fresh out of the train from Antwerpen, stopping in the middle of the station's tides of passersby to mewl and set down his bag for a moment. It's almost too much to bear. An entire town to be eviscerated by our greedy, insatiable needs waits and a middle aged ache cripples him as if he were kicked in the balls. I make a rotten cabbage face, set down my bag and roll a cigarette, clenching it between my digits with unquenchable agitation before firing up the butane and touching it to the cigarette tip. I exhale a mind suddenly dull for its lack of curiosity. Will this be requiring immediate surgery? I ask, my eyes begin to race around the minor circus of food peddlers, discount record stores, blaring video screens and this tiring chatter of humanity around me. Should I be concerned? Should I consult the phrase book for the appropriate foreign phrases dealing with emergencies; "Will this require a thrombectomy?", "this food disagrees with my digestive system and is planning an uprising."?? I spatter these questions out to Albert who already has the Winston in the yap, wincing from his knee pains and searching out a cafe or a pub to dull the aches.
Fuck you. He says this matter-of-factly, as though he'd just wished gesundheit to an old lady following a sneeze. He sees me like a sort of flying, buzzing insect around his face and ears, but instead of swatting, he picks up the bag again, nodding over to the station cafe where a gang of stragglers putter around their little round tables, pushing cigarettes into ashtrays, glasses to lips, weakly attempting to prop up the jowls with a feigned interest at every item of human flotsam floating past in a vaguely intoxicated dream. "I'm going to have a beer." And he sets off to cross the floor and find a table to unload himself, peel off the sport jacket and pork pie hat, loosen the knot of the tie and swallow some of the local brew. When he travels, he is like an old Southern Baptist dressing for Sunday sermons. Dignity distinguishes, he often complains.
If I don't follow him, it leads to a lot of confusion. We don't have a place to stay and if I wander off in search of one while he sits, beer after beer, getting groggy and oafish, he will be in no condition to be anything less than carried through the discrete lobby of some pension, drawing unwanted stares and stern consternation faces from the onlookers and proprietor. I must follow him, realizing as I do, that we will not stay here this evening. We will sit all afternoon in this very same station cafe, staring out the window at the rain, matching beer for beer, cigarette butt mounds growing like little anthills of civilization, nothing accomplished but enough sobriety to find the ticket counter and find some overnight train to ditch us off somewhere by morning's sobriety.
*****
Euro2000 was in full gear. We'd already had a heady week of bars and cities and football matches in Belgium, the co-host nation. We'd gotten caught up in the mini-riot between the Belgian police and the German and English hooligans. Actually, they weren't technically hooligans. The real ones, despite the pre-tournament hysteria, had by and large, been kept back in their respective countries. What was left was just the core of drunks and the core of riot cops itching for action.
We got into Charleroi on a morning train from Brussels. It was an fleeting industrial town, devoid of anything of interest, far away from refined humanity, a prison-like town far enough away from the action to hold a match between the two rival countries with the worst fan reputations in Europe. Throughout Belgium, measures had been taken, in a haphazard sort of way, to control the masses. The riot police were out in number a great deal, some cities restricted the sale of beer to only the legally weakest kind and there was the general self-vigilence that being aware of one's reputation preceeding one's arriuval was likely to fertilize. But not Charleroi. Their economy was so depressed, the local propriaters didn't care about hooligans. They just knew they drank alot of beer and would spend alot of money doing it.
The June sun was already bearing down us heavily by 9. As people began to arrive, the old town square was opened to numerous cafes and outdoor terraces which, of course, with nothing else of interest to do in such a dump, was the first place everyone headed out of the train station.
And people drank as though the world were about to end. The Germans and the English aligned themselves on opposite sides of the square, staking out their cafe terroritories, content to swill troughs of Belgian beer under the Belgian sun with the football match still another 10 hours away. Albert and I nabbed a pair of seats on the English side as their side already had the worst reputation and it seemed appropriate since Albert didn't speak any German beyond bier and knew England's football songs. The beer wasn't a gradual swell either. It began suddenly and swiftly, as soon as the overwhelmed cafe staff had been able to assemble themselves in the factory line type of service required for the sort of instant beer gratification that was demanded with the pounding of plastic tables and empty bottles.
By the afternoon however, the singing began, somewhere in synch with the level of intoxication on each side. Before long both sides were singing and chanting with equal passion, snarling and screaming with the sort of red-faced relish that they seemed so accustomed to under the conditions. The singing only heightened the tensions and not long after, someone tossed the first plastic chair in the direction of the other. It was impossible to tell from where it came since the first thing anyone noticed was a plastic chair whistling towards and coming to rest in the no man's land part of the square between us. It didn't matter really. The act was good enough. Soon chairs were flying across the square from all directions, followed in short order by the plastic tables and the Carlsberg umbrellas. The Belgian riot police, who for hours had been salivating like leashed dobermans at the prospect of trouble, didn't hesitate to jump into the fray with their riot clubs and mace. Following them was the water cannon.
The water cannon kind of snuck up on everyone. One minute there was chaos, with both German and English alike turning their assault on the riot police, fending off the blows and delivering their own. The burst of activity had come so suddenly, the best Albert and I could do in response was to stand up, holding our beers and watching as the water cannon aimed and unleashed its potent force, blowing people off of the pavement, flying in the air, smashing into tables and chairs, scraping along the ground. Despite the fact we merely observed from the vantage point of our beers, the eye of the storm rising around us, the riot police grabbed us as well, dragging us away from our beers like jailors and demanding to know whether or not we were English. Apparently, their orders had specifically been to sort out the English. Fortunately, we were able to produce passports proving we weren't and were released in time to have a few more beers once everything had settled down and the realization that the match was still to be played had settled in.
4:55 PM
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