I Wish I Were In Love Again article @ All About Jazz

The Dance of the Infidels

Word around the Whispering Palms Trailer Court was that Barb, the lady who ran the place, could have cleaned Mike Tyson’s clock, in his prime, if it had ever come to that. It never did, but she came on top of about every physical confrontation she got herself into. If your let bougainvillea bush encroach on your neighbor’s trailer space, she might march right up and let you know about it, and if you gave her any lip she just might slap you silly, knock a crown or two out of your mouth, or more likely—for they were and older crowd who lived in “The Palms”—send your full or partial denture flying. And if, when you were bringing in your trash can, and she ordered you to turn down the volume on that shitty music you kept playing—that God-awful heavy metal rock crap that drowned out the beloved jazz she played on her Elon Cube—and you told her to kiss your as, she was more than likely to wrap you in a headlock, scuffle you down the hill and toss you into the lagoon. And if you brought into “Her Park” a woman of questionable character for a trailer-rocking night of sin, and she confronted you with the “No Overnight Guests” rule, and you told her to mind her own business, there was the possibility that she would wrestle you around, dig down in your pants for your underwear, pull the tighy-whitey little garment up toward heaven and march you around the entirety of Lupine Lane under the duress of a major wedgie, for all the park to see..

Barb was not a woman to be trifled with; she was funny that way.

Her last tango with one of the Whisper Palms Incorribles came about when she ran Hobgood Rivard out of trailer 47, for failure to pay his rent.

Rumor had run through the park—originating, of course, with Barb—that old Hobsie was getting the boot, and cell phone cameras behind frayed curtains and untamed bushes and rusted-out broken-down cars were at the ready on the afternoon in question. From various angles and different distances, these cameras captured a brief conversation followed by a seemingly amicable hug on Barb’s part, a reluctant one on Hobgood’s. Then Barb slipped a piece of currency into her former renter’s pocket and attempted a passionate lip lock on the man, the object of her desire. But Hobgood moved away from the kiss and pushed her away, and she grasped at him to keep her balance and lost, tearing his shirt pocket off, releasing the money she had given him as she fell on her ass.

She got up in a fighting mood. Hobgood went after the errant, windblown currency, but Barb wanted it back. They came together like sumo wrestlers. Barb, after throwing a bunch of punches to Hobgood’s head, grabbed his neck. They shifted into a brief and potentially deadly cha cha, as Bud Powell’s “Dance Of The Infidels” played Barb’s little Elon cube, a soundtrack to this confrontation that was captured by Mary Schrum, the wielder of the closest cell phone, who was hunched down behind a potted rose plant by Barb’s porch.

The dance was brief. It ended when Barb and Hobgood, entangled, fell to the ground. Barb won the subsequent wrestling match, pinning Hobgood down in the gravel and digging into his front pants pocket for the money.

Interview With A Pelican

The local news station’s interview with Charlie, the pelican who hung out on the pier railing just west of the bait shop, was a bust. Though it started out fine—Charlie hunched down on the railing, looking like a disgruntled old man; the news lady, Angelina, smiling brightly and acting as if Charlie could talk.

“So tell me, Chuck. How’s life on the Loma Alta pier?”

She was using a hand mic. When she brought it up to Charlie’s face so he could answer her, he did so with a quick and vicious bite, taking the arm that poked this foreign object at him ln up to the elbow. Angelina screamed and tried to pull herself free. Charlie held on. The cameraman kept filming as she called the bird a motherfucker and punched his head repeatedly with her free hand to get him to let go. Feathers flew. Angelina’s dark hair danced. Jeff, the cameraman, continued with the filming of the incident. Finally, when Angelina resorted to poking the bird in the eye, he let her go. She pulled her hand free. The bird blinked. The microphone remained inside the bird; so did her wristwatch. Charlie gulped, spread his wings and took to the air, looking like a small pterodactyl with a lump in his throat, as Angelina grabbed Jeff by the front of his shirt and told him to delete her interview with that fucking bird, or she would take that camera from him and throw it into the deep blue sea. Jeff pretended to do this, knowing that he had one of the year’s great blooper segments in the can. “There,” he said, after pushing a button that did nothing to remove the scene he’d just captured. “Now it will never see the light of day.”

“It better not,” Angelina hissed, “Or you’ll never see the light of another day.”

I Wish I Were In Love Again

Larry Lenihan, who had witnessed his friend Hobgood’s tussle with Barb from the corner of the trailer, commiserated with his beaten buddy and suggested a pint at The Oceanic Brewpub for recuperation. Hobood liked the idea, and Larry followed Hobgood’s old Toyota down Old Highway 101, across the San Luis Rey River bridge and into Oceanside’s newly spiffed-up downtown. All of the 1920s-built storefronts had been refurbished. The 1940s-planted palm trees (towering now) in place in the bare dirt squares cut into the sidewalks had been left alone. The two-car caravan found parking in a free public lot at the corner of Cleveland and Third Streets, one block west of the main drag—Old Highway 101. Hobgood steered in next to the dumpster. Larry parked next to him. The short stroll took them at sunset to Larry’s favorite watering hole, The mid-block Oceanic Brew Pub & Cafe.

Hobgood was understandably despondent—he’d just had his ass kicked by a sixty-year-old woman, and he’d lost his job, and his trailer. Larry witnessed the first event and knew that the last must have been connected to the first, and he suspected—from his talks with Hobgood over nightly beers—the lost trailer.

So he steered his friend to one of the wooden booths that lined the north wall of the brewpub, pondering what he might say to a guy who was standing on the edge of the losing side of life. He came up with: “How ’bout a Sea Lion Pale Ale, Hobsie? Good for the heart, mind and soul.”

Hobgood, his forearms on the table, his back hunched so that his chin could have touched the foam on top of the proposed ale, nodded his head to the offer.

Larry looked toward the ocean, toward the bar, where the waitress, Raphaela Diaz, cousin of news lady Angelina Diaz (mostly weather and traffic), was pouring pints. He waved his arm and caught the woman’s eye. He held up two fingers, then clapped his hands together in a pantomime of the flipper clapping of a trained seal. Rafaela gave him a smile and a thumbs up and filled his usual order for her unusual regular customer: One Sea Lion Pale Ale for Larry Lenihan, and one for his friend, as her cousin Angelina, scowling like a gargoyle, walked east on the pier, at a fast clip toward the shore, her cameraman Jeff trailing behind, moving at an easy stroll and grinning like a shithead, thinking about the pretty Angelina featured on the year-end blooper show, screaming and flailing at a pelican that had her arm, up to the elbow, clamped in his beak, as—up at the Oceanic Brew Pub—a drone delivered two Sea Lion Pale Ales to Larry and Hobgood, as news reporter Angelina Diaz marched through the pub’s front door.

Hobood and Larry watched this strikingly pretty dark-haired woman walk—like a person with a mission from God—to the bar, and they watched the lovely and voluptuous Raphaela greet her and pour her paint of stout, as the Oceanic’s upright piano—a player piano by the looks of it—began to play the Rodgers and Hart’s tune “I Wish I Were In Love Again,” capturing Hobgood and Larry’s thoughts perfectly.