Man in the Mirror

Harry looked into his deep brown eyes in the mirror and squinted.

"I'm fucking done, Alvy, done." Harry pulled out his gun his sock drawer, aimed it point blank at his reflection in the mirror and then pulled the trigger.

Click.

Harry hadn't bought any ammo for the gun, nor did he intend to, he just loved handling it. The power to change the world by squeezing a stupid little trigger, nothing more than a metal part. On it's own as innocuous as a key, as part of a gun, a history-changer. Harry squinted again, slipping into his Clint Eastwood persona. To be cool like Clint; it could happen. In his refuge in the mirror, in his own little place.

"Go ahead, Alvy, make my day."

Click.

"What'd you say Alvy, what'd you say boy?"

"..."

"Louder, boy. I didn't hear you."

Click.

"I wanna hear you squeal like a piggy." Harry contemplated that line for a few seconds and then retracted it. Too Deliverance, too sick, too gay. That was the great thing about talking to a mirror. You could say anything, anything at all.

And tomorrow would Fuck-you Alvy Day. Go out in a blaze of glory.

Well...

As with so many experiences in life, reality kicks in and it is far less dramatic than imagined. Like no grand exit from Alvy. No squinting, no gun, no click. In any case, Harry way too buck bucking chicken to even take the gun out of his apartment. It was there for clicking in the mirror.

Click, click.

Quit day never materialized, because the Shugar Belt Building burnt down. And Alvy didn't do it. This time. At least not intentionally.

"Harry, if I had a gun right now, I'd shoot myself," Alvy confessed.

In this deli by the back-river, in this honky tonk neighborhood of garish signs and sex shops?

Harry was tempted to tell Alvy to wait in the booth while he drove back home to fetch his piece. At the same time he was both flattered and stunned that Alvy was actually confiding in him.

Alvy likes me, he really likes me.

"My business is finished, Two hundred and fifty four people -- if you count my wife, Frema, who's really just on the payroll -- out of work. All because after work I took a dump and lit a match to kill the stench."

Not mentioned about that fateful a dump: It happened in the bathroom behind the area where they painted the high-margin yielding artisan belts. That cancerous, toxic corner of the factory, leaking and reeking of spray paint and chemicals was time-bomb waiting to be set off.

"You left the can without stamping out the match?"

"...I left the can without stamping out the..." Alvy muttered.

Alvy leaned across the table, grabbed Harry and hugged him for dear life. "I'm fucking ruined Harry, it's all over..." Embarrassed by this surprising spontaneous show of emotion, Alvy released Harry from his grip as if he was hugging toxic waste. "Well, almost."

Without understanding his visceral reaction to Alvy's confession, Harry's heart went out to the Belt King. It really did. But he also felt contaminated from the hug.

"Rebuild," Harry advised. He had to say something relatively uplifting.

"East to say. I was already overextended  from my retail venture. I had to cut most of my expenses, including insurance. I'm only covered for half a mil. The building alone is worth double that. And I'm not even talking machinery."

Alvy looked deep within Harry's big brown eyes and said, "I'm sixty-two, I don't know if I have the strength to start all over..."

Then something clicked and Alvy snapped his fingers.

"Then again, I'm not ready to roll over and croak. And I'm far from being destitute. I've been socking away cash from undeclared sales for years...Rebuild? Yes, we'll rebuild, Harry!"

"We'll?"

"You got it, Harry. I was gonna open a division for you anyways. I always saw you as partner material."

And I always saw you as an asshole, Harry did not say. Still, as much as he knew that any deal with Alvy would inevitably be a bad one for him, Harry felt himself getting sucked in to the black-hole of the Belt King. There was something magical about repulsive businessmen like Alvy. How else could one explain the success of vacuum-haired vulgarians like Donald Trump?

"Partner material?"

"Yeah Harry, you work hard, have talent and wouldn't screw me. And you're, family...not that that means anything. I don't speak to most of my family and if I could get away with it, I'd murder Frema's family one by one...with a fucking axe." Alvy cleared his throat and wiped the sweat off his brow with his grease-stained napkin. He threw it down on his empty plate and pouted.

Alvy snapped his finger at the waitress, who immediately approached the table.

"Where's my pickle? I ordered the smoked meat platter, but there wasn't a pickle."

"Yes sir, there was a pickle spear next to the cole slaw."

Alvy grabbed the menu and scanned it.

"There," he pointed to on the menu. "It says that the smoked platter comes with a pickle, not a pickle spear...What's a pickle spear anyways? A delicatessen weapon? Pickle spear."

The waitress inhaled deeply while brainstorming ways to get even.

"Sir, I can get you a pickle."

"Yeah, that would great. No spears or swords. Just a dill pickle..." Alvy winked at Harry, then turned to the waitress. "Make that two, sweetie."

"Yes, sir," she said walking towards the kitchen while figuring out how to get away with spitting on the pickle order.

"You see that Harry, I know how to get what I want."

"..." And look like an asshole in the process, Harry thought.

"That's the key to business, bubbeleh, you gotta push. Push, push, push."

"..." Alvy was right about that, but who wants to push when crusing along is so much easier? Harry cleared his throat. Time to thwart this putsch.

"Here's the thing, Alvy. It's time for me to move on anyways, I never intended to sell belts all my life--"

The waitress brought Alvy his spit-glazed pickles. He pointed to one with his fork and looked at Harry.

"Pickle?"

Harry shook his head. No pickle please.

Alvy speared a glistening warty pickle with his fork. An arc of pickle juice squirted out hitting a chubby titty bullseye and staining his shirt.

"Fuuuuuck, fuuuuuck, fuuuuuck!" Alvy cried while wiping up the briny juice from his yellow silk Hugo Boss shirt. "This shirt cost me a hundred and eighty-five bucks plus tax!"

The waitress stood in the corner monitoring the situation. She smiled and let out a smug sigh of satisfaction . Chock up another notch on her bedpost of revenge.

"Y'thing I dream of belts?" Alvy asked while chomping with a full mouth. More pickle juice dribbled down his chin. Alvy shut his eyes, swallowed and took a deep breath. "I fucken eat too fast. My mother's always told me that." He cleared his phlegmy throat. "You think I grew up wishing to make belts for fucksakes? I mean what's a belt? You're not gonna win any Nobel prizes for making straps of leather that hold up your pants."

" ?"

"No! I wanted to be an architect. The emesse, my hand to God."

" !"

"Wanted I said, but couldn't. I don't have the head for it. I have a brain like a crocodile. He thinks, eat or not eat. I think, make money or...finagle. So I can't be an architect, I have to go with a realistic choice, my Plan B, to be a businessman. The point is Harry, for most of us, life is about the Plan B's. Your Plan A to be an actor, never made it out of the starting gate. You choked, I know the story. But that's history, now you gotta go for a Plan B, which in your case should be, B is for belts."

"Thanks Alvy, but I'm going there to be a TV writer--"

Alvy picked up a pickle and pointed it at Harry. "You and 16,000 others."

Harry clenched his fist. "Thanks for the encouragement."

"I wish you well, Harry. I really do. But you still need to eat," Alvy said and then bit off three inches of pickle.

"I've saved up enough money to keep me going for a year."

"Great, and then what? A year flies," Alvy said with his mouth full.

Harry rubbed his forehead and closed his eyes. "I'll worry about that when it happens."

Alvy pointed his fork at Harry. "I'd worry now. Have a Plan B."

"I can wait on tables till I make it."

"If you make it. Here's what I'm thinking, Harry." Alvy picked at the bread crumbs left on his plate and rolled them into a doughy booger-sized morsel. "I've sold a bit in states already and know I can do well there. I know some Koreans there who could produce for me until I get back on my feet again up here. Eventually I could open up my own plant there where there's lots of cheap labour. To get started I could I open up a showroom in the fashion mart there and you could run it...And still do your writing. If you make it in the boob tube, you're free to go. Just get me a replacement..."

"..."

"I'll pay you seventy-five grand plus two per cent commission..." Alvy offered while patting the bulging wallet in his pocket.

"..."

"One per cent for the majors."

"I dunno..." Harry instinctively grabbed for his pecker like a little boy.

"You can live it up a bit, LA's no place for schleppers with no money. You're gonna need a car, money to go out...I'll throw in a car in the deal." Alvy wiped off his sweaty brow, crumpled up the napkin and threw it on the table.

Harry understood the practical side to the offer. And there was a lot of downtime in writing and he'd probably have to kick around for a while before...if anything ever got going. And there was money and a car. He released his tight grip on his pecker.

"A car. A real car." Harry wanted to make sure he heard it right.

"Nothing fancy, maybe a good used one."

"..."

"Nu?"

"Fuck the Plan B. I'm going for the A-list."

Alvy sat there speechless.