christmas in hollywood
I’m really looking forward to a week’s worth of snow and proper winter. I think a week will do, and I’ll be ready to come back to the land of beaches and palm trees after. The weirdness of listening to “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” - and feeling that this is somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary, appropriately festive - while walking down a sun-drenched, 78 degree street complete with shirtless muscle guys is beyond my power of description.
I was sitting on my patio yesterday reading the dreadful Chuck Palahniuk novel “Diary” and trying to make myself go to work when I heard the splashing.
So I turned around to discern the source, and I saw the building handyman. He’s not the building supervisor, but is, as far as I can tell, in a cute-old-people way, is her boyfriend. They both always look at me rather suspiciously when we pass in the halls. I think they’re both Romanian, although I wouldn’t want to be quoted on that. I am after all a person who has been unable in the past to distinguish between spoken French and spoken Spanish, and on at least one occasion, unable to tell the difference between Italian and English, which, although you might not realize, is in fact my native language.
“Damn,” I thought, “this will teach me to go outside.” Normally when people water the plants on the patio, I’m in bed, and can pull the covers over my head and wish for it to be over.
“You water the plants!” the Romanian man barked, with a friendly wink. I wasn’t sure what this meant. I mulled it over for a second. “Yes!” I agreed, and continued reading, trying to give the appearance of being good natured but focused on my book. “No, you water the plants?” he repeated, more urgently this time. Clearly, I wasn’t going to get away so easily. I pondered the options. Either:
1. This man, who had come onto my patio and interrupted my reading to water some plants (that I didn’t put there and couldn’t care less about) was ordering me to stop reading and come garden with him; or
2. The man was implying that the plants, which are a bit brown, are poorly taken care of, and this is somehow my fault. In other words, he was calling me a dirty plant killer.
I wasn’t thrilled with either of these options. “Yes!” I agreed more vehemently, and continued reading, wishing he would just get off my patio and let the plants die in peace (and how did they get here, come to think of it?).
He repeated himself again, and I put my book down and got up, moving towards the hose, resigned to the fact that his agenda had become mine, and it would be easier to water a few plants than to keep repeating the same thing to each other all afternoon. He didn’t look as though he wanted to give me the hose. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” I confessed. I hate having to tell people that.
“Comprende?” he replied, mysteriously. I have no idea why. Having failed communicating in English, the quasi-Romanian was attempting to speak Spanish. “No comprende,” He answered himself and nodded. As he screwed in the hose on the other side of the patio to water some more plants, I went back to my book, nodding as he insisted “you water the plants!?” every thirty seconds or so.
