Chapter 19: Air Conditioners (7/7)
And The Prowling Chinese Health Patrol
Everyone is still trapped by the government into working from home, so we’ve run out of air conditioners, and the calls become quite frantic: Home Depot is out, Lowe’s is out, even, according to some reports, Wal-Mart is out. And when Wal-Mart is out of something, you know the demand is overwhelming.
One Hispanic family has an Abuela who still refuses to leave her house and her son asks me to please help: “She’s melting.” …
The best I can do is one of our powerful 18” fans.
Addendum: In the meantime, down at my favorite family-owned Irish-Catholic watering hole, I’ve been taking over the jukebox on Fridays. (Fortunately, with the app you can program the jukebox from your table because, of course, you can’t touch the jukebox).
For a Friday there are just a smattering of people there, as most of their clientele were in the “got-the-heck-out-of-town” portion. In fact, hundreds of Boston restaurants would close this year. With no college students in class or business folks, or tourists, many of the restaurants on the college/tourist strip would shudder. For good.
I put on Little River Band’s “Cool Change.” Much to my surprise, the table next to me starts to sing along.
Time for a cool change /
I know that it's time for a cool change /
Now that my life is so prearranged /
I know that it's time for a cool change.
I remember thinking that “this song is about me” and it was just the latest sign I had to join the exodus sooner rather than later.
Things are pretty relaxed (we’re all separated by six feet, of course) when suddenly the staff gets tense.
“Guys, get your masks on,” the son says to his waitstaff.
Suddenly the door swings open and in walks a minuet Chinese lady with her phone out. She starts taking pictures and loudly speaking Mandarin.
According to the son/manager this is a regular routine. The restaurant borders Chinatown (Why is there a “Chinatown” in every major city, anyway?) and this lady has taken to become the COVID police for this area.
“She’s very annoying” the pugilist brother chimes in. “She reports us to the health department if we all don’t have our masks on or there’s ‘too many’ people in here.”
“That’s ridiculous!” I say.
“Yeah she lives on the top floor next door and she even has a video camera trained on our patio, so the staff has to mask up when they go out there.”
Sure enough, as I walk outside to see this for my self, there it is: A security camera—one of those in the little semi-globes—mounted to a wooden stake and wired back into the window. The Chinese were monitoring our favorite Irish pub, confirmed.
Ridiculous.*
I head back in and fire up the jukebox again.
Next week we will run out of American Flags… and the reason might surprise you:
*These are true stories.