The Buffet Line

Alvy Shugar elbowed his way next to Harry at the buffet line and stabbed at a potato knish.

"So what's my cousin the famous actor doing now?" he asked.

Harry cringed and regretted going to the bar mitzvah. The family affair; a place to get grilled, a gathering of inquisitors.

"How ya doing? What ya doing? Where ya going?"

Questions, questions, questions.

"I'm in between things," Harry answered while counting the knish flakes pasted to Alvy's face. Harry instinctively bobbed his head to the right, narrowly avoiding a volley of errant knish shrapnel spewing from Alvy's mouth. Harried inquiring minds like to eat and talk in unison.

"So you're doin' nothin' now," Alvy snorted while wiping the sweat off his upper lip with the sleeve of his cashmere jacket.

"Well...no..." The snappy answer to the obnoxious comment, nowhere to be found.

Again.

"Then come work for me, Harry boy. The best salesman are actors. Selling is a show."

"Well...ummm...what're..."

A job? A job? Could be a good follow-up to dropping out of school. A job? Money. A job? Time to prick up your ears.

"In-house sales, Harry. You may not be the next William Shatner, but you've got something going...What I don't know. But you're family and most important, I need someone I can trust with the cash...At least more than I can trust a goy."

"But I don't know anything about sales.

Alvy speared another knish from the buffet and stuffed it into his mouth. "Feh! Tastes like sawdust." He winced and spat out the masticated knish into a napkin. A man in desperate need of a carbonated beverage. "Diet Coke, Diet Coke. Pass the Diet Coke!" he cried.

Alvy leaned over the table, grabbed a bottle of Diet Coke and poured himself a fizzy glass, chugging it down in one impressive swig.

Burp!

"Excuse me."

Not really.

Gasp for air.

"What's there to know, Harry? You'll be selling belts. Strips of leather to hold up your pants. You're not selling shoes, with tongues and heels and soles and sizes, a crazy business, I don't know how they make money. But belts! Belts are simple, belts are beautiful - the ultimate fashion accessory. And to imagine that my Shugar Belt Incorporated is the largest belt manufacturer in the country."

"..."

Still intimidated by cousin Alvy. Admire him, despise him.

"Harry, I'll pay you twenty-five hundred a month plus fff...three per cent commission. Not bad for an unemployed actor, eh? Whaddaya say, Sir Laurence Olivier?"

"Let me think about it."

"What's there to think? Thinking is for shtummers. What's there to think? You can read Shakespeare to your mother all day, or you can have a golden opportunity with Canada's belt king?"

"..."

"Too good to be true, I know. Call me on Monday. Your mother has my direct office line."

"..." Again. Yet perversely drawn towards the belted vulgarian.

Why? I don't know. But Harry could already smell adventure among the tanned hides of leather. Whatever happened, it would be well worth the story.

Alvy grabbed a used napkin from the buffet table, then wiped more sweat off his forehead before it dripped on the platter of egg rolls.


"So you said twenty-five hundred a month and three per cent commission?"

"You heard what I said...Except for February, twenty-three hundred, it's a short month. Now stop talking already and pass the egg rolls."

Alvy slapped Harry on the back and moved on to the next plate of hors d'oeuvres.

"Pigs-in-blankets," Alvy grunted while elbowing a tubby aunty standing guard by the platter.