Everyone has a price. Apparently, mine is a dollar. One sober-faced Washington on a germy rectangle of Federally-authorized, cotton-fiber paper.
Last night I was the doorman at Caroline’s Jazz Club, where I collected the five-buck cover charge from the odd assortment of customers. Among them, mismatched couples, lone men—wolves, an attractive woman with a limp, a couple of young guys with a top-heavy girl, and a pretentious dude, with his henchman and a writhing young woman, who announced that he’s with an Atlanta recording studio. “Impressive...,” I said. “That’ll be five bucks each,” as I stopped them from entering without paying.
There were also a couple of drunken guys— musicians they claimed—who wanted a two-for deal. I maintained my doorman face, which combines a duh-I-don’t-understand-much look with a don’t-f-with-me glare. They feebly tried $7 for the two of them, until they relinquished and handed over crumpled-up fives dug out of the pocket-fuzz forest in their jeans.
There was the sad, homeless woman who wanted me to step outside into the relative quiet where she could unravel her tale of woe and desperation. Fortunately, Scotty the bartender spotted her and rescued me. As he escorted her out, I heard him say in an uncharacteristic compassionate tone, “What happened to the shelter we hooked you up with a few days ago?”
Not long after that, a foursome—two suburban couples—entered, wearing their bland, pastel suburban clothes and wary, distrustful faces. Their eyes widened as they took in the club and its patrons, all the while I imagined them thinking, “This doesn’t look like TGI Fridays, Ponderosa, or Applebee’s.” A bit gruffly I said, “Five bucks a head.” Startled, they looked at each other until the guy wearing the robin’s egg blue polo fidgeted with the mini-van key while shaking his chinless face “no.” They scurried off.
Then she walked in…a tall, thin woman in that 30’s to early 40’s age bracket. Did the five-dollar cover spiel. She dug in her big purse and pulled out a wallet and carefully peeled out six bucks. It’s only five I said. Being tall, she towered over me, so she bent her head down and said, “Listen, I’m giving you six—the five is for my cover and the extra dollar is for you. My friends will be arriving any time now and they were planning to pay my admission. I need you to tell them that I got in free because I’m sort of a VIP here. Can you do it? Here’s the dollar.”
In a matter of seconds, I needed to decide what to do. Instinctively, I tried to give her the buck back, but she pushed it back at me, while walking away and saying, “Remember our little deal.” Yeah, it’s a harmless little lie, but I had been bought for a measly buck. My silence – no, my lie had been purchased.
I watched for her friends. If they showed up, they never offered to pay her cover charge. They may have “conveniently forgot to pay for her,” probably already seeing her in the club. Figures that her friends would be scoundrels, who had made an empty promise to her, the tall lady. And me, the doorman, was ready and willing to cover for her and inflate her importance. If only I had the chance, I would have properly earned that dirty dollar. How easy it would have been to lie and how difficult it would have been not to lie…with that dollar already tucked deep in my pocket. |
