Can You Believe These People?

Weird things are always happening to me. I was at a café where they play bossa nova Thursday nights. I was outside sitting on a wrought iron chair that was unsteady on the cobbled stones with my cigarette smoke glowing in the soft yellow street lights. It was one of those dark blue and yellow nights with music and espresso, cigarettes and sherry. A tall man with roses walked to me, saw that I was alone and walked off. There was no room for red or white tonight.

“Another sherry, sir?” It was my waitress in black with muted makeup and hair held high with crisscrossed metal chopsticks.

“Yes.”

“Would you like some sushi, sir?”

“No, thanks. I don’t believe in wasabi.”

“You can order it without—“

“Okay, but remember: I don’t believe in wasabi,” I stressed and she left for my sherry and sushi. I sipped my espresso and listened to the Portuguese music vibrating the glass table before me. An old janitor with gray hair and a blue jumpsuit stepped outside to sweep around me. He swept around my table, under it and he swept my shoes. "Thank you," I told him before he walked back to the door.

Rounding the corner of the café was the rose man with fewer roses.

“Would you like to buy a rose for the lady,” he asked.

“What lady?”

“The lady sitting there,” he motioned with his hand to the empty chair opposite of me.

“There is no lady.”

“Do you insult me, sir,” he asked taking a step closer.

“Are you blind? There is no lady. Please, sir, there is no room for red or white tonight,” I said as I stood and took a step closer to him.

“You are a fool, sir!” He swiped at my face with his thorny roses with a force that knocked me into my chair. I picked up my espresso and flung it into his eyes and he turned around, clutching his sizzling face. I frisbeed the saucer at the back of his neck, but he kicked backwards and shattered it midair. He pulled a switchblade from an ankle strap and lunged at me and I parried. He lunged again at my gut and I dodged to the side, lifted my hands and crashed them both onto his back. He fell to his belly and I stepped on his knife-wielding hand until he let go. I lifted him by his hair and put him in a chokehold and held him there until I heard the shattering of a wine glass against the side of my head. It tasted like sherry.

I dropped the bloody roseman and felt a chopstick graze my sherried ear. I turned around to see another spear my left thigh. I reached for the chopstick and tried to pull it out, but the waitress charged and drove it deeper with her palm. We jostled for a few seconds until I clamped my left fist and swung my right hand into her chin. She flew back into a telephone poll and I thrusted my right knee into her belly. She heaved over my knee and I felt her body relax. I was about to let her down when she grabbed hold of the chopstick and began twisting it like a joystick in my thigh. I reached for my order of sushi on the table and picked up some wasabi and thumbed it into her left eye. She let go of the joystick and began screaming frantically. I tried going after her but the roseman had latched onto my legs. I pulled out the chopstick and nailed his hand in between the cobble stones. His fingers twisted and his eyes bulged as he let out a scream that overtook the Portuguese music.

I turned the corner and saw the waitress running away in a frenzy. I snatched the broom from the janitor and threw it between her legs. She tripped and fell on her face with a splatter of blood from her nose. I began walking to her when I heard the cocking of a shotgun.

“Don’t move,” the janitor said. I turned around and stared down the barrels of a shotgun. He put his foot onto my chopstick wound and turned his heel. I cringed and sank down onto one knee. “Now you die, sherry man.” I put two fingers in the barrels before he pulled the trigger. The explosion concentrated and ballooned through the barrels, bursting into his face in a flurry of black gunpowder. He collapsed.

I walked back to my table and paid for my espresso and sherries, but not for the sushi because I don’t believe in wasabi. Because of that I only left the waitress a fifteen percent tip.