customers: May 2006 Archives
Scene: Half & Half, approx 11:30 am. ROBIN and JEFF are working, recovering from lunch prep and getting ready for an imminent rush. No one else is in the cafe. Jeff looks out the window and sees DENNIS walking up the street.
JEFF: Here he comes!
DENNIS walks in, wearing a short-sleeved button down with a tropical bird pattern. He is clean-shaven and he's had a hair cut. He looks healthy and renewed. ROBIN hasn't seen him since he's returned to Portland from an extended sojurn in Roseburg with his family. She wipes down the work table and turns to meet him at the counter
ROBIN: Dennis, I thought we finally got rid of you.
DENNIS: (laughs) I thought you'd go out of business by now.
R: I told you to call if you're going to be gone for a long time. That's rude.
D: I know, I know. I thought about it, but...
Some people come in and order sandwiches, DENNIS gets his coffee and reads the paper, ROBIN makes sandwiches, JEFF fiddles with espresso machine. When no one's at the counter, DENNIS returns. He looks at JEFF, then back to ROBIN
D: So, I guess he hasn't dumped you yet.
R: Why, Dennis, would you like to cut-in?
D: No! (laughs) Did you lose weight?
R: I don't think so, probably not
D: Yeah, it doesn't look like it.
Well, that didn't take long. One day after yesterday's post, Dennis has returned to Portland. I got the phone call this afternoon. The dutiful son was back in Roseburg. This week I am giving him some self-addressed stamped postcards and plenty of shit for his lack of courtesy. Very excited to see him tomorrow, I hope he notices my new hair-cut.
One of our favorite customers is missing. He periodically disappears for a while, a couple of weeks at a time, but usually by the time we really get worried he shows up again. His name is Dennis and if you've spent much time at Half & Half you've probably seen him sitting at the counter, quietly reading the New York Times and drinking a gigantic coffee. He's in his 40's, rotund and balding but incredibly hairy every where else. Usually he wears pants and a t-shirt--my favorite t-shirt is royal purple and says "trouble" in iron-on letters. He always keeps to himself and doesn't talk much unless there's no one else around. Then, he'll say things like, "Why is it so dead in here, did you scare everyone off with your cooking?" to which i'll reply, "No, Dennis, everyone could smell you coming up the street and cleared out of here!" I'll never forget one morning he delivered the zinger of all zingers. I get up at 5 in the morning, so I try to overlook the fact that I usually look like shit when I work. Dennis came in, I switched out the coffee airpots and used the usual joke, "Here Dennis, this is leftover from yesterday!" He gave me the once over and simply said, "nice hair." It was such a burn; deadpan and undeniable. I tried to come back with, "at least my hair is on my head, not on my back." But whatever, I got served.
When Dennis is around Portland, he spends at least an hour or two a day here, reading the paper and magazines. His mom lives in Roseburg, which is where he usually goes when he disappears. Lately he'd been talking about going to get a degree in art history in Venice, Italy, but I don't think he has the resources. When he's around, he's just a regular fixture that you will barely notice him. When he leaves town, it sometimes takes me a week to pick up on his absence. But then it's a gaping hole; there's a stool he should be planted at, there's an zinger suspended in midair. I worry that I'll never see him again, and he'll just be a memory of an old customer. I told him to call us if he was going to leave town for extended periods, so we didn't have to worry. He phoned over Christmas when he was gone for 3 weeks. For his birthday I gave him a gift certificate to Powell's so he could buy his own Sunday Times instead of complaining that we're too cheap to get it. Now he's been gone for more than a month, and we haven't heard anything from him. Dennis, come back to us!