Lisa and I went to lunch at the SkyBear Brewery & Pub in Loveland yesterday afternoon.
https://www.skybearbrewery.com
Where I had not one but two non-alcoholic tumblers of my True Blood Pale beer and a delicious vegetarian cheeseburger. I allowed Lisa a sip from my glass to confirm that I was not imagining that the brew tasted every bit as real as the real thing I last sipped in the last century, which Lisa was now quaffing across the table to wash down her ridiculously large portion of real meat Tacos. Elle est carnivore!
It was a beautiful day so we sat outside to enjoy our meals in the warm fall weather.
A lovely and fit couple of close to our vintage but far better preserved was sitting at another table close by. Turns out their names were Mike and Donna Davis. At another table on the out door patio, sat a young man in his mid thirties, wearing a dark ensemble baseball cap and t-shirt. He had pale skin, dark eyes and a neatly trimmed dark beard. He was working on his lap top and occassionally tuned into his white earpiece to engage in a phone conversation. Turns out his name was Jeremiah. He had an almost Vampiric look about him.
So, while Lisa and I dug into our meal I let my large Irish ears that function as a parabolic listening device cue in on the conversation struck up between the Davis’s and Jeremiah. It’s an old trick taught to me by Lou Myers, an older writer/cartoonist for the New Yorker –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Myers_(cartoonist) –
when we took some classes together at the New School in lower Manhattan in the late 70s. Eavesdropping in diners teaches you how to write authentic dialogue.
I have a lot of unexpected mentors in my life. Lou was a gem. First professional writer who told me I could write.
Anyway, I was intrigued by this young man’s encyclopedic knowledge of the real estate booms and lulls of Colorado, along with oddities like Colorado Glamping locations and the tiny home movement. But what really grabbed my attention was his history of certain areas throughout the state, including a story about Colfax Avenue in Denver – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colfax_Avenue. It seems the city leaders of yore had to move a cemetery in order to extend its path and, while moving all of the headstones, only shifted one out of every three bodies to their new location, leaving the other 2/3s of the originally interred to count the cars passing over them for eternity. Pothole poltergiests indeed.
Anyway, at some point, much to Lisa’s embarrassment, I exercised my New Yorker God Given right to obnoxiously intrude on any conversation I choose to and within a few moments we were all engaged in a lively chat about everything and nothing. Cursing up a storm like it was a Bronx Bodega. It was absolutely delightful.
Turns out Mike is recently retired from the telecom industry and Donna is a marathon runner, so Lisa and she hit it off immediately. The Davis’s have two beautiful young adult children, indeed, their daughter just got married a few weeks back. Mazel Tov! Donna admired Lisa’s ankle tattoo commemorating her 4 NYC Marathons. Donna has run marathons all over the country with the exception of NYC.
But it was the mysterious young man that stole the show.
Jeremiah, it turns out, is an arbitrageur who profits from market inefficiencies by simultaneously buying and selling comparable financial instruments in different markets to exploit price differences. He comes from a Coloradan family of four generations in real estate, so he oozes that narcotic confidence of generational success. But even without the provenance, the young man was fascinating. Brilliant. An old soul.
Of course during the boisterous conversations that followed, which spontaneously shifted between the attendees like the stairways in Hogwarts, I mentioned my professional history as a litigator and a writer – and was very pleased to see that both Donna and Jeremiah went online as we chatted to purchase TWA. Always be selling.
Finally, after a few hours had passed in moments, The Davis’s and Jeremiah made their excuses and the soiree broke up, but not before Lisa and Donna exhanged contact information. As I was leaving, Jeremiah asked me what, if anything, I planned to do with The Claire Saga, and when I mentioned my intent to bring it to the screen, he told me that one of his step-grandfathers worked in Hollywood in some production capacity and that, while it might not be his thing, I should reach out and tell him Jeremiah suggested I contact him.
Then Jeremiah took my phone and using some form of Quantum Magic tapped its tip to his own phone and I saw contact screens switch for a moment and then be absorbed into their new contact locations like rapidly melting ice.
But here’s where it gets Shakespearean.
When I got up this morning to follow up on that contact information I received yesterday, I could not only not locate Jeremiah’s contact information, but that of his Step-Grandad, whose name now escapes me, like a misummer’s night’s dream. I know I checked him out when I got home, and now even the IMDB search on Safari is missing.
I must wait for Lisa to wake up to confirm I didn’t imagine the entire event. The unexpected effect of fake beer and a full moon.
Stay tuned.
Well, today is Thursday, Friday’s handmaiden, and that means I need to get a lot of recycling out to the road before I start my morning routine.
You fine, five readers go wrap up whatever work projects you have been nurturing this week so that tomorrow’s Friday is free and clear for your weekend planning.
And no matter what else we all get up, let us make today a great one.
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