Peter Cherches

Trois petits dessèrts

 

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Lost Remote

 

I misplaced the remote, and there was no on/off switch on the thing itself, so until I found the remote I couldn’t turn it off. It had a very long-life battery. It could go on for days, if not weeks, without stopping. That would drive me crazy. It’s meant for occasional use only. It’s not supposed to be used for more than a half hour at a time. Not days. Certainly not weeks. I had to find that remote. It was making that noise, that noise that tells you it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing. When it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing, that noise is comforting, but to hear that sound when all you want is to turn the damn thing off? That’s pure torture. It’s funny how a sound could be so comforting in one context but so annoying in another, but that’s just the way it is. From innocuous, even mildly pleasant, the sound, without ever changing, became grating, infuriating. Where the hell was that remote? Had it fallen behind a piece of furniture? Is it beneath the pile of mail on the kitchen table that I’d been meaning to go through? I had to turn the apartment upside down. I wished I could literally do that, turn the apartment upside down. Then maybe the remote would fall out of wherever it had gone and rise to the top, now the bottom, but you can’t literally turn an apartment upside down, it’s a figure of speech. So I had to figuratively turn the apartment upside down. I went through all the drawers, closets, cupboards, taking everything out, going over the place with a figurative fine-tooth comb. Nowhere. I’m always misplacing my Roku remote too, but the base unit has a button that sends out a signal that makes the remote beep, so I always find it, sometimes in another room, sometimes wrapped up in the sheets if I’d been watching something in bed. But this particular thing didn’t have anything like that. I was on my own. Sometimes I’ve left remotes near something of a similar black color, so I don’t notice the individual items, just a black mass. Maybe black mass isn’t the best term. It was driving me crazy. It’s a small apartment. There are just so many places it can be. I’m always misplacing remotes. I always find them, eventually, that was a comfort, but I’ve never had to search this long. I’ve been known to absent-mindedly put remotes in the unlikeliest places, like the fridge, or a jacket pocket. I once found my LG TV’s “Magic Remote” in the vegetable crisper of my refrigerator. There was no remote in my refrigerator this time, but as long as I was in the kitchen I snacked on a couple of taralli Pugliese with fennel seeds. I love those little ring-shaped Italian savory crackers made from the simple combo of flour, white wine, and extra-virgin olive oil, often with fennel seeds, black pepper, or rosemary added. I checked the freezer too, but had enough will power to resist the Talenti Sicilian pistachio gelato. I went through all my pockets. I found lots of singles and one five-dollar bill, tissues, obsolete shopping lists, takeout menus, and flyers from spiritualists, but no remote. The thing was still going strong, doing its thing, making that noise, that once-comforting, now annoying noise.

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Maybe I can order a replacement. I looked online. I checked the manufacturer’s website. There were no accessory remotes listed for sale. I checked Amazon. Same thing. No remote, not even a cheap knockoff from an Asian nation that is not yet an economic miracle. So unless I could find the original remote, I was stuck. That’s really bad design, I thought, no way to turn it off at the source, and a non-removable battery.

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I suppose I could destroy the thing. That would shut it up. But it wasn’t cheap. It would be a shame to destroy it just because I couldn’t find the remote.

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But what were my other options? I could keep looking for the remote, but it felt like a dead end by this point.

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I went to the tool chest and got a hammer. I approached the infernal machine, wielding the hammer, ready to bash it into an obsolescence I hadn’t planned on. I started attacking the thing, hammering away. It fought back. It kept lunging at me, bruising me. I was becoming winded. I lashed out wildly with the hammer, to no avail. It was taunting me. It had the upper hand. I was getting beaten up and it didn’t feel a thing. I lost my footing. It knocked me to the floor. And from the floor I saw something under the bed. Could it be? I stretched my right arm and was able to push the thing toward me. I had found it. The remote! I pressed the off button. Nothing happened. The thing kept making that noise. I pressed the speed down button. No effect. Speed up, no effect. I pressed quiet mode. No luck, the thing was still making that noise. I pressed reset to factory defaults. Nothing. The damn thing was laughing at me. Figuratively, of course.

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I got my bearings and tried more hammering. That only emboldened the thing. It was aggressively battering me, with something akin to the Bobo Brazil coco butt. And as soon as I thought about the coco butt, I got an ear worm for Little Anthony and the Imperials’ “Shimmy, Shimmy, Ko-Ko-Bop.” That’s all I need now, I thought, shimmy, shimmy, ko-ko-bop, shimmy, shimmy, bop. I was no match for my appliance. At least with a hammer.

Perhaps fire. I got a match, lit a wad of paper, and threw it at the thing, which fell on the paper and smothered the fire, still making that annoying sound, the sound that told me that it was doing what it was supposed to be doing. I decided it was a lost cause.

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We’ve come to an understanding. I no longer try to stop it, and it no longer tries to hurt me. It’s still making that noise, not weeks later, months.

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I now spend most of my time on the sofa, listening to the sound that tells me the thing still has the power to go on for who knows how long, hoping for an epiphany.

 

I’m sad, I’m frustrated, I’m shell shocked, but I remain optimistic.

 

A New Suit

 

I wanted something to jazz up my look. I wanted people to say, “That guy rocks.” Something modern, but with a classical cut. Perhaps a suit in three or four different shades of blue. I went to my old tailor on Orchard Street. And I mean old. When I started seeing him back in the late ’70s, he seemed to already be in his late 60s. This was when there were still lots of Jewish tailors of a certain age on Orchard Street. Now the street is populated with hip bars and restaurants, no longer primarily the old Jewish businesses of all sorts run by old Jewish men in various stages of observance, businesses like tefillin checking joints and matzoh outlets, not to mention the more secular garment and bedding shops.

 

My tailor’s name is Moe. Moe Rabinowitz. He has a classic Lower East Side old-Jew accent, though I long ago discovered his dirty secret: One time, when he hadn’t noticed that I had entered the shop, I overheard him on the phone, and he was speaking perfectly unaccented American news-anchor English. When he got off the phone he said to me, “So, mine friend, vat is it I can do for you today?” I didn’t let on that I knew the truth. He clearly felt he needed to keep the charade up for the sake of his business, for his customers’ expectations.

This time, so many years later, I was surprised at how spry he was for someone who was certainly a centenarian, if not—what would one call it, a centodecanarian? “Vell, mine friend, I heffen’t seen you in a dog’s age at least.”

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“Well, you know,” I said, “business casual and all. But now that I’m retired I’d like to wear a suit again.” This desire of mine must have had some deep atavistic origin, perhaps my memory of all the retired old Jewish men in my old Brooklyn neighborhood who continued to wear suits and hats, even in the dog days of summer.

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“Any particular color?” Moe asked.

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“That’s the thing,” I said. “I would like a blue suit, but I would like it to have multiple shades of blue.”

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“This maybe we can do,” he said, “if you don’t mind plaid, that is.” I nodded. “Foist, let me check your inseam,” he said. He got out his tape measure and I spread my legs. He started at the top of my shoes and brought the measure up to my crotch. Then he surprised me by squeezing my balls. “Cough!” he said.

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“Cough?” I asked?

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“Yes,” Moe said, “I heff to check for a hoinia!”

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Why would a tailor have to check for a hernia? “Why do you have to check for a hernia?” I asked. “I just want a new suit.”

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“It’s mine Hippocratic oat!” he said.

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“Hippocratic oath? For a tailor?” I asked.

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“Oh, I just keep this shop for old times’ sake. Didn’t you know? I got mine M.D. beck in the Reagan era. So now I do a little general practice, a little urology, and a bisl tailoring for the old customers.”

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I coughed. “Poifect,” he said. Then he went in the back of the shop and returned a few minutes later with a really nice suit, plaid with multiple shades of blue, just what I was looking for. I tried it on and it was a perfect fit. “I’ll take it,” I said.

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“Mazel tov. You vant I should put it on a hanger or in a box.”

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“Oh, I’ll just wear it, if that’s all right. You can throw my old stuff out.”

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Now I was all set to start my retirement in style.

 

Caution

 

I decided to throw caution to the wind. My luck, it was an unusually calm day for this time of the year, so while I did throw caution, it landed squarely at my feet.

 

Perhaps I need to go to Plan B, I thought. So I started stomping the caution at my feet. Wildly. I was really getting into it. I was doing a veritable tarantella on the caution. Then I switched to the mashed potato. I was a dancing fool. People gathered around me. They thought it was a show, that I was busking. They started dropping dollars at my dancing feet, which I stomped along with the caution. But it was no show, it was life, my life. I did the Bristol stomp. The bony moronie. Surely caution didn’t stand a chance with a guy who knows “The Land of a Thousand Dances.” But when I started doing a Native American stomp dance, the crowd turned on me. 

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“Cultural appropriator,” someone screamed. It was followed by a chorus of boos. The dollars stopped coming. I got flummoxed, lost my footing, fell flat on my face.

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“Serves you right,” I heard someone yell as the crowd dispersed.

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