MONTECITO MURMURS, PIATTI CROCKPOT: 86'd (A Fond Flashback)
The Underbelly of America's Most Expensive ZIP Code
Brainy Bill texts me: Where are you? It’s getting thick.
So I hurry over to Piatti (Montecito, upper village) and he’s right: Thicker than pea soup on a foggy morn in San Fran.
It starts with Chamucos, Mexican for boogeyman, an extract of blue agave so virulent, when you wish upon a star your demons come true—and ends with bar patrons and staff on their hands and knees (looking for some gal’s earring but surreal nonetheless).
In between, a lot of things are said—in some cases, acted out.
Kleppy has a problem with a guy sitting at the far end of the bar and wants me to do something about it.
Like what, blog him to death?
The Bargster doesn’t have a problem with anyone. In his nautical shirt, V-neck sweater, khaki trousers and Sperry Topsiders he looks like Teddy Kennedy stepping off a sailboat in Hyannisport, women clamoring around him like cats meowing to nepeta cataria.
I sit between two cliques, sliding my chair back and forth across the terracotta floor to participate in twin theatricals that amalgamate and escalate into comedy, drama and emotional trauma.
Kleppy’d, Bargstered, Travis and Tracy’d, Rudy and Helene’d, Kathy and Miranda’d. (It’s Bargster who later claims full Miranda rights—with everyone choosing to remain silent.)
Queen Barb banters about flying writs and Rhino Jim threatens me with one. “Let’s compromise,” I offer. “We’ll commission Van Stein to paint a writ flying across a full moon.”
A bristling Bob the Bounty Hunter blusters in, none too pleased with me—something I’d blogged about my designer dog, Reilly Ace of Spies, savoring his scent during coffee morning outside Pierre Lafond.
“I meant your cologne,” I lie. “Reilly is a very sophisticated canine with discriminating taste. What did you think I meant?”
But Colonel Bob has more than just me to contend with when Kleppy confronts him and quips, “Still on Randy Quaid’s trail?”
“Go away, fat boy,” the Colonel counters.
“How do you get into your home,” Kleppy sniggers, “with a key or a remote?”—a dig at the Colonel’s digs over a garage.
“You’re a good reason for birth control,” snaps Bounty Bob.
“What-what.” Cleppy quacks like a duck and waddles to the bar, Bargster’s errand boy for more vodka and chardonnay.
The Colonel is accompanied by an arms dealer (self-procliamed) who tries to interest the local gals in his bazooka while the actor Christopher Lloyd, party-of-one by the fireplace, watches warily lest someone attempt to say hey.
Meantime, Brainy Bill frets that the internet will eventually rule mankind.
“How does that work?” I ask.
“Out of computer connectivity comes sentience.”
“Senti…what?”
“A spark that makes it self aware, conscious.”
“As in artificial intelligence?”
Brainy Bill nods. “Exactly.”
“Yeah-right. I’m still waiting for genuine intelligence to appear on this planet.”
But it certainly spark-plugged my brain, resulting in a novella.
A couple nights later, Miranda drinks one Chamuchos too many.
Can pizza fly?
It can. And did.
“Miranda would be good at Fiesta,” Bob the Bounty Hunter wryly observes.
“You kidding?” I reply. “Miranda is a fiesta.”
Then Miranda ventures into the ladies room and passes out. Bar staff and patrons are mustered to carry her out, drive her home. And Sarah the manager blows a gasket: “Eighty-sixed!” she decrees.
And that’s the end of Miranda.
Another evening soon after, Bounty Bob grabs my arm as I brush by to settle a tab. “Where’s the Bargster been?” he asks.
“Eighty-sixed,” I say, without hesitation. (I had eighty-six on the brain. First Piker got 86’d for helping himself to food left over by other diners, then Miranda, maybe Kleppy for stealing all the toothpicks—and I’d just finished reading Dan Fante’s novel, 86’d.)
“Really?” he says.
“Yup.”
He one-eye’s me. “Why?”
“Got into a scuffle at the bar. Over a woman, I think.” (That’s always believable.)
I depart for dinner elsewhere. When I return 90 minutes later I’d forgotten my flippant fictional utterance.
The gang, however, is in uproar.
Apparently, Bargster had wandered in after a four-night absence (maybe a blackout) and Colonel Bob confronted him, bellowing, “You can’t come in here!”
“Why not?” asked a puzzled Bargster.
“You’re eighty-sixed.”
“Me?” Bargster thumbed himself.
“Yeah, you—outta here!”
Kleppy was sitting down the bar, trying to pinpoint Joline’s whereabouts on his Blackberry. “Bargster’s not eighty-sixed,” he perked up. “Piker and Miranda are eighty-sixed.”
“They’re all eighty-sixed,” Colonel Bob snapped back at Kleppy. “And you should be too.”
“Who says Bargster’s eighty-sixed?” asked Kleppy
“Eringer.”
“Eringer’s not in charge here.”
They deferred to Chris the bar manager, who already had enough on his plate with Dennis Miller stooled at the bar.
Chris, however, knew nothing about Bargster being eighty-sixed and deferred to Sarah, the eighty-sixer.
Fed up by all this chatter, Colonel Bob did what he’d been threatening to do for months: He bought a cheap ticket on the red-eye to West Palm Beach, the other coast’s expensive ZIP code.
***
Next night Brainy Bill says, “I think I’ve got Harold and Maude on me now.” (Harold and Maude are names we’d given a pair of spooks posing as lovers who were spying on me.)
“How’s that?”
“They’ve shown up at tables next to mine at four different restaurants over the past few days, honing in on my conversations.”
I grin knowingly. “Remember when I was here with my lawyer the other night and you came in soon after, sat with us after we’d finished our business?”
“Uh-huh.”
“They probably decided that you are Mister Big.”
“Mister Big?”
“The brains behind everything.”
“Oh, no.” Brainy Bill does not like being the brains behind concoctions conceived by my lawyer and me. “Harold is tall and lean, right?”
“About six-one.”
“With dyed black hair and bangs.”
“Pushed slightly to the side?”
“That’s him.”
“Garlic breath?”
“Yes. And Maude, shorter, stocky.”
“About five-seven?”
“Yes.”
“Curry?”
“Yes!”
“Yup, they’re on you.” I shrug. “Fun, no?”
“No. Where are they now?”
“Well, we’re both in here. So that means they’re both out there.” I point through the picture window to a small park concealed by shrubs. “Be careful where you go after you leave here tonight…”.
My cell phone whistles. It's Bob the Bounty Hunter calling from a bar in West Palm Beach.
“There’s someone here selling hedge funds who calls himself Baron Giovanni of Monaco,” says Colonel Bob. “Have you heard of him?”
“That’s a negative,” I reply. “There’s only one baron I know in Monaco. He laughs like Muttley and does flatulence, not hedge funds.”
“No Giovanni?”
“Monaco’s last royal Giovanni was murdered by his brother, Lucien, 505 years ago. Which makes your hedge fund salesman, if genuine, a vampire. And I wouldn’t actually disregard that notion because the Principality of Monaco has more bloodsuckers per capita than Transylvania.”
“You know what this means for Giovanni,” says Colonel Bob.
“Eighty-six?”