Yesterday I fell asleep in savasana. Bloody hangover. I woke up at 4.59 pm and stumbled groggily downstairs to open the bar.

My first customers were two middle-aged Americans, who have a bar in a coastal town in Maine and a house in the south of France and have been looking at property in our area for months now. They want a fixer-upper for 70k with a spectacular view. I more or less told them good luck with that; everyone was looking for fixer-uppers, even derelict houses, with prices well exceeding their budget for those with a view. They smiled wryly. They have looked for so long, I think they only want to look now, they want the dream, and not really the reality.

Then old Joe tottered in. He is let loose into town on a Friday afternoon, migrating from one bar to the next, to all four bars on the street, until the bartender in the last bar drives him home. He’s known for offering sweets to women of all ages, and buying a round for whoever’s nearest. Calling me “California,” Joe will order a glass of porter and whiskey with a drop of red lemonade. Then he’ll shout “A box of fags! A box of fags!” “Which one, Joe? Marlboros? Silk Cuts?” Blinking owlishly at me, mustache frothy with beer foam, he’ll only say, “A box of fags!” and I’ll have to choose one for him from the machine. I never see him smoke the fags. Sometimes he exclaims, smiling, “5 million women!” (This is apparently the number of women in California.) That afternoon he repeated, apropos to nothing and pointing at my waist, “Yer not fat! Yer not fat!”, as if astonished by this fact.

Somehow we got onto the subject of rabies. After trying to buy the Americans a round (which they refused as they had a viewing early in the morning), Joe shouted, "Rabies—do they have rabies in California?" How do you cure a person with rabies, I wondered aloud. I could have googled it, but I'm sick of phones these days. "You get 70 shots," one of the Americans says. They knew this because there had been a rabies epidemic in Maine, mostly among raccoons, and it was ever old women who were getting bit, defending their small dogs from these furry zombies. Oof.





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