I saw Old Jim at Willow last night. In front of him at the apex of the Amen Corner was a brown Bud long-neck, a bucket with ice holding two more as reinforcement, and a triangle of a flat, foil-wrapped object.

“Is it that pizza you were talking about last night?”

He nodded. “Yep. It has the magic ingredient in the dough. The pinch of baking powder.”

“I would never have thought about it. Is that why Joe’s Café in Northampton, Mass, gets it right and I have gotten it wrong all these years?”

“You bet. They have been dishing out excellent pies on Market Street since 1938. This is my version with pepperoni and hamburger.”

“I am looking forward to tasting it,” I said. “And I will stop at Joes the next time I am up there. I only get my tattoos at Lucky’s on Main Street. The next one is going to be the letters D-N-R across my sternum. I don’t want to wind up in the health care system.”

I picked up the wedge and slid it into my backpack next to the pistol and the iPad, hoping the toppings would not leak out and gum up either one. Then we made a point of not talking about what is, or is not, happening downtown.

Jim’s phone went off when we were dancing around one of the topics of the day- we had managed not to talk about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act right up until the moment that his dumb-phone went off on the bar. He nodded as he talked, and I heard him say “Free, white and 21,” and clicked off.

“Was that your lovely bride?” I asked.

“No, her sister.”

“OMG,” I said. “Did she move into the place in your building?”

“Just about. She has to learn to not call and ask about coming.”

“I am sure she just wanted to make sure that there was someone here, and that she wouldn’t be sitting by herself getting hit on at the bar.” I took a sip of Happy Hour White, a modest but satisfying Australian Sauvignon Blanc that Tex the bartender produced with a flourish. “Wonder why that never happens to us?”

“Because the only place 60+ year old guys get hit on is in the fiction section of the Public Library,” said Tex with a grin. Then he launched into a recitation of his weekend trip to New York, and the marvels of the Big City. He drove, of all things, and it worked out, though he left the car parked at the first place he could find. “The ticket was worth it,” he said. “And the women in that town are stunning.”

Co-owner and Executive Chef Tracy O’Grady came in from the patio and worked the crowd for a while. Tracy is one of my heroes for what she does in managing the Willow’s many affairs. She was in a pensive mood about the impact of the shut-down on business.

“No one can plan anything, and the holiday season is already screwed. No one is going to make plans to go out and celebrate if they don’t know if they are going to be working.”

“That applies to retail, too,” said Jim.

“The Recession comes to Arlington,” I said. “Some would say it is about time.”

Tracy looked at me askance. “You are not in the restaurant business. I always had impeccable credit before I opened this place. Never missed a bill of any kind. After we opened in 2006 I thought we were going to make it pretty well. Then the melt-down in 2008 and my credit was destroyed. I was behind on every bill, and I mortgaged the house to keep the place afloat and nearly lost that.”

“Holy cow,” I said, abashed. “I had no idea. You represent everything these idiots are supposed to care about: small business, providing decent jobs for thirty or forty people, and they are crushing you. Maybe you could establish a special membership for the regulars and we could chip in?”

“You are out of work, too, Vic. How would that work?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they will start another war,” I said hopefully.

Smart Pat, Chanteuse Mary’s sister, arrived in mid-anecdote and ordered a glass of the red. She does something exotic involved with legal interpretations of something complex.

“I can’t have too much,” she said, “since I have to drive back for Silver Spring for the last time tonight.” Jim tried to get her to commit to staying with them for the night to avoid the late commute traffic, but she was adamant that she needed to get back to the Free State for the final preparations for the move the next day.

“I had to come down today to get my car re-registered in Virginia,” she said. “It took four hours. I have no idea why the system works the way it does.” Chanteuse Mary arrived, still in her work clothes and opted for a glass of red, like her sister. I marveled at the family resemblance in the two women.

I ribbed Pat about Maryland, imaging a requirement to have a visa to travel between the states, and the antics of the legislature in Annapolis. “And then it looks like we are going to elect that corrupt jerk Terry McAuliffe to start doing the same thing here.”

(Mr. Terry McAuliffe.)

“You are not going to vote for that troglodyte idiot Cuccinelli, are you? He wants to put women in burkhas.”

(Mr. Ken Cuccinelli)

“I don’t know what the alternative might be. McAuliffe is a carpet-bagging DNC bag-man. Idiot or moron, I guess. I normally vote for the ones out of power on the theory that they can do less damage.”

Jim and Pat both frowned. It all depends on what your definition of the least damage is, I guess. I determined that politics of any kind had gotten so toxic that it was smarter to just avoid the whole topic in polite society. “I wonder why there is no real choice anymore.”

“Oh, there is choice, all right,” growled Jim. “It is just so breathtakingly stark.”

“I have been thinking about starting my own party,” I said. “The Opt Out Party. We would just not participate in stupid things. No health care exchanges, no carbon dioxide cap and trade, that sort of stuff.”

“You may as well include elections in that,” said Mary. “And if you do that, you essentially opt out of society.”

I was thinking of a witty retort, like “Who IS John Galt,” or another glass of wine, when a lovely woman approached from the end of the bar and said, “Hi, Vic!”

I blinked in amazement. It was Kathleen, from the Phone Company. We worked in the same office down on New York Avenue in the District a few years ago. “OMG, You look fantastic, Kathleen!” and I made the introductions around the Amen Corner. Before I got to Jim, Kathleen stuck out her hand and said “Hi, Old Jim!”

Crap, I thought. This gets complex when we are living inside a story. It got more surreal as we caught up on the events of the last six years. Sure enough, our old office was in the process of melting down, again, and she had moved on.

Kathleen explained to her associate Leslie the curious intersection of reality and fantasy that was contained atop these few stools at an un-imaginary bar. I gathered that she actually thought the Willow might be a literary device of some sort, intended to convey something subtler than simple companionship and the sale of alcohol, which it emphatically is not.

It is actually a learning laboratory, since I learn something new every day. Today’s lesson was: Don’t talk about politics.

Too freaking crazy these days.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303