|
There’s nothing quite like asking your mom if you can call her back, that you have a gangster who’s been calling all day on the other line and you’ve got to take his call. This was the scenario yesterday and my mom responded passively the way she might with any other friend. “OK, well tell him I say Hi or something.” The gangster called me again when I was in a meeting in Marbella. What is it with this gangster? I thought to myself and when I called him back afterwards, he wanted to know the name of the beer I was drinking last Saturday evening.
I gave my phone number to the gangster a few months back when he agreed to investigate into a robbery in which my friend had his Blackberry stolen. “Give me your number and I’ll call you when I hear something,” he said and I didn’t think twice. I tell people this and they think, I suppose, that I do business with gangsters on a regular basis. In truth, there have been several times when I have successfully recovered stolen merchandise because of what I like to call my gangster services department. Many friends, when they have something stolen in Casco Viejo, come to me for my connections.
“Mateo,” he said under the heavy thump of some waling subwoofer. “Mateo, can you hear me?”
I have enough trouble understanding a Panamanian lawyer in his office, much less a Panamanian gangster being drowned out by Reggaeton.
“I can’t hear you,” I responded. “Maybe you could step outside,” but what for. I rarely understand anything the second time around anyways.
A clearer voice finally emerged and he first said, “uh, what was it I was going to tell you?” then said something about a soltea, a word I had never heard before. “When can we see your soltea?” he was asking. “Are you with your soltea now?”
I asked him what was a soltea and he paused, then tried to explain the soltea as it related to my roof. “A soltea is above your roof. It is above your apartment and above your roof.”
“God?” I said.
There were some further attempts but eventually I suggested he just tell me in person. The phone had too much static. Soltea, I would eventually find out, means something like a terrace, and in my case, the plants on my soltea were dying. I needed to water them. Urgently.
Later on that day, the gangster called me again when I was in a meeting in Marbella. What is it with this gangster? I thought to myself and when I called him back afterwards, he wanted to know the name of the beer I was drinking last Saturday evening.
“It’s Hefeweizen,” I said. “He-fe-weizen. Hefeweizen.”
It’s funniest because I have him programmed in my phone; first name “Your,” last name “Gangster.” When he calls and I see the name pop up, I get this fuzzy feeling and that, Angelica says, is a little strange.
Trackback(0)
|
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/hide comment form
