Day Three

We’re taking a break here in the Pacific Northwest. It’s been fun. This morning—yesterday morning by the time you’ll be reading this—I woke up at 5:30 and went to the gym. The gym was one of those unattended key-card places where you punch in a code at the door. I lifted weights alone for 90 whole minutes. I wish they would franchise to bigger cities. If they do, I’m in, although who the fuck would want to run a business on the honor system in New York? It can’t be done.

After the gym, we went to breakfast. I had a scrambled egg plate with Italian sausage, smoked mozzarella, and a side of bacon. This fucking thing was the balls. I think the waitress was a meth addict, although I didn’t get a good look at her teeth. She was fast. I asked for hot sauce and she brought me a lazy Susan full.

Then we had meetings in a coffee place where all the girls had dreadlocks, and people were sitting at tables with laptops—Apples—having meetings about where to hang pictures. I’m pretty sure they had meetings within the meetings about where to apply pieces of tape that told people what the pictures were. They decided to offset the tape so it straddled an imaginary line going downward from the right edge of each frame. It took them several hours to figure this out. Things got pretty animated at one point. The coffee was excellent. The owner was from Brooklyn, but he’s been here for years. I’m sure he’s used to girls with dreadlocks and laptop-mandatory meetings about picture-hanging.

A guy came in dressed like a WWII bomber pilot, down to the cloth hat. He wasn’t in the Navy. A lady had a hammer sitting on her table. I didn’t turn my back on either of these people.

We went to another gym because one of the guys I’m here with wasn’t sure if he wanted to use the key card place. We asked the girl at the counter what the daily rate was. She said it was $10.60, but $16.90 “if you know someone.” This made no sense, so I told her I know a lot of people, but that I’d rather pay the lower rate. She told me she meant the lower rate applied if I know someone who works at the gym.

I said, “Oh!” I think she believed me.