My hair didn’t look the best. I’d been trying to grow it out but made the mistake of going into a cheap salon (“Great Clips”) before a job interview to hack a few inches off the back and now it had this really bad bob effect. And with the receding hairline I looked like the actor who played Loki in one of the Thor films. Too much forehead, not enough hair.

With no friends nearby and my family gone and just these pets and plants I found myself at a loss for what to do. I needed latex gloves to handle the mole traps (so as to not leave my scent on them) and had a coupon for a free pint of ice cream and thought I could walk to the store to extend a task into an event.

There was the Asian woman running again, who gave me a nice tight wave each time we met. I could hear her little footsteps approaching from behind—clip-clop, clip-clop—and then she passed. Up close she reminded me of a Vietnamese guy I once worked with in Philadelphia, named Han. They had the same soft features and nice skin. Han was slight of build but big in spirit; he was my assistant at a coffee shop and the two of us worked the opening shift, putting the pastries out and brewing the coffee. Han had a no-nonsense way about him. Once he shared his personal morning routine with me: he’d wake at 3:30, smoke a Lucky, walk the dogs, beat off, then shower for work.

Han drove a late 60s Volvo sports car, robin’s egg blue, with cream leather interior, bucket seats, clean lines and chrome throughout. He knew all the words to Tom Waits songs and drank bourbon. His favorite kind had a mini jockey on the bottle that looked like a game piece from Monopoly. The last time I saw him we’d gone to a bar in that car in downtown Philly but when we returned to the street we couldn’t remember where we parked. Then we realized the car had been stolen. It was a crappy way to say goodbye.

I had a boss then named Mike I’d met in Pittsburgh, who promoted me to open more coffee shops for this new chain, a Starbucks knock-off that was trying to beat Starbucks in the more tertiary markets of Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Kansas City.

In the days before DEI or woke, Mike called Han Han Solo and thought that was funny, and purposefully mispronounced Han’s last name as Nugent (like Ted Nugent, the idiot musician). Han just rolled his eyes and smirked.

Mike often wore a tie and trousers which was definitely not the look of the coffee shop I’d first joined before it got acquired by this Starbucks knock-off.

Mike was a full-on operator from the hotel and hospitality business who’d cut his teeth working long shifts in restaurants and bars. He was a clean freak too, would carry a pocket flashlight and get down on his chest to examine the undersides of equipment. A carrier of clipboards and checklists, standards bearer.

Mike had some quirks beginning with the growth on one of his ear lobes I never could pin down but looked like a nipple, which he tugged at and was definitely aware of himself.

He also had chronic halitosis which I could forgive except for the fact that he talked a lot and got really close to you as he did.

Mike taught me how to be a good manager though, and values. When the chain lost funding and they offered Mike his boss’s job, Mike declined and confided in me, he said I should consider jumping ship too. That’s when I joined Starbucks.

Before then Mike let me know he was a recovering alcoholic and shared some of the underlying reasons that in hindsight no one should share with a subordinate, but maybe he didn’t have anyone else to tell.

He’d been sober for a good number of years until that day I picked him up at the airport and he obviously wasn’t. He was lit up like a Christmas tree on rum and Cokes and wanted to go out, so we did: to my favorite north Philly jazz bar Ortlieb’s, where sadly he got sloppy and then teary and strange, and I just felt bad for him and didn’t know what to do.

After I joined Starbucks he messaged me once asking if I could help him land a job but one where he wouldn’t have to show his driver’s license because he didn’t have one anymore, they’d taken it. And I didn’t know exactly how I’d vouch for Mike or do that, and we lost touch.

At the four-way intersection I stood waiting for the light to change, feeling virtuous for walking to the store, wondered what all these people in their cars would think of me or if they’d even notice me standing there, wondered what the people who worked for me would say about me or how they’d describe my manners, if they were still alive or ever gave it any thought.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir