Life at the Sentient Bean / Casino

Casino

The last time I saw Fang Fang Wu she was physically and verbally assaulting a slot machine. At four foot eleven you may think  the Fangster would be easy to trifle with. That would be a serious miscalculation. But ask any slot machine, or dealer, car or otherwise and they will turn pale at the mention of this little force of nature.  Once her cold black eyes caught you, caught you were. Well I had to try to wrestle her away from the machine, because management was moving in the forces to stop her from trying to rip the arm off of the one armed bandit, but she knew it was payday and she was there to collect.

At this point she had mounted the machine and seemed to be trying to hump a payoff out of the machine while gibbering in what she claimed was her native tongue. I could never confirm nor deny that fact. This gave security pause since the violence had turned into something the guests pay for as a floor show. Then those glinting black eyes turned to me. She just threw me a hundred dollar bill and screamed. “YOU PLAY THAT MACHINE NOW”, and pointed  to Cleopatra across the room. I found this strange because she had sold everything thing I had and we were living in my 1966 Pontiac Star Chief Executive. No reasoning with her now. She was a woman, and while in the grips of warfare with the slot machine Buddha of her desires, now  was not trifling time.

Instead I realized that enough was enough, and having some money for gas I decided  this would be my cue to move on. A hundred bucks was more cash than I had seen since the credit card crisis sunk  the major banks into the black hole of derivative divine divergence, or whatever excuse for dodging moral hazard they were using that day. Better put, you can’t get blood from a stone. We were all squatting by the side of the economic road rubbing rocks in our heads for entertainment since it was what we could afford now that no one could say the magic words “charge it.” Nobody was making anything, and nobody was getting paid to advise us what to do with our no longer liquid brokerage assets. We have been trickled upon and could no longer find anyone else to trickle on. Monetarily speaking we were fucked. White Lotus had become a reality, but not as anticipated in the nineteen fifties. As few things had.

But I should have known I was fucked when I first laid eyes on Fang Fang Wu. She was a driver for Golden Labrador Retrieval Waste and Recycle , and was thumping a dumpster into the hopper, humming Bang a Gong in the key of “O”, when she turned around and saw me smoking a cigarette at the back door of the “Sentient Bean”

She whistled through the gap in her front teeth and exclaimed in the unforgivable voice of hers,

 “Well slap my ass and call me Sally “

Life at the Sentient Bean / Police

Police

  I entered the sadly paint encrusted door at the Sentient Bean which gave up the throwback tinkle of a bell. I was determined to choke down my first cup of joe for the day. The Beard served it up adding the usual dose of existential insolence I had grown to expect from Jeemarie Bingalangbang. But as one of his hero’s would so clearly respond, “Such things cannot be sufficiently despised,” so I tossed him the spondulix, grunted, snatched the brew, and retreated to my favorite hovel of the premises. I think back in the fifties the Sentient Bean had been one of those Armenian restaurants. Booths built into the wall with an onion dome frame and a decidedly casbah motif of lattice work in extended base relief. You never knew what was on this side of the wall but fortunately on the other side of the lattice.I know I did not want to know.

  Outside an undercover police car went squealing down the street. I have to wonder why after the name calling of the nineteen sixties they would design and operate their siren in such a way as to sound like the squealing of a pig as they race down the street. I guess even the authorities have a sense of humor. Like the words they left out on the side of their marked car doors that say “To Serve and Protect”. The missing words are To Serve those that have And Protect them from those that haven’t. As I saw  them skitter down the street I was relieved that they didnt squeal to a stop in front of this establishment. I was much to distracted to spend an hour obfuscating with them down at the station while I waited for my mouthpiece to make an appearance.

It may seem like idle paranoia, but since the naught twelve election of the wrong rominee we were quickly sold the full loss of all but the most obvious civil liberties. Even those only went to the highest bidder. But that is freedoms under the bridge now, Still you had to be aware that you could end up being detained indefinitely if you posed even an imaginary risk to the wrong connected corporation

The Bean had the usual crowd resplendent with the the glowering beard behind the counter. Jeemarie was of the long time disenfranchised, but he had held on the the viable, albeit anemic cash flow of The Sentient Bean. Like it’s name it was aware of it self without having a clue why. But it had become a comfortable habit for years and I liked it.

I settled down to the problem of the moment that was all consuming my caffeine charged monkey brain.

  “Where are you Fang Fang Wu?”