Snides of March

Just got back from the bodega up the street, which, as it happens, is called "Jim's Grocery" or something else so generic that I still, after a year of patronage, cannot remember its official business name. It is not now, nor has it ever been, run by anyone who speaks Spanish. I just like the sound of the word bodega. Beats convenience store all hollow, and do not even get me started on mini mart or (shudder) kwik chek.

The store is owned and usually solely staffed by a guy who looks and sounds like he comes from the Middle East. He bought it from "Jim" a while back and has told me that he could not come up with a better name for the place, at least not one catchy enough that it would merit buying a new sign. He is so good-looking that I wonder, not for the first time, how "swarthy" ever became an epithet. He does not wear a turban. He favors tight T-shirts, the better to show off his oft-discussed commitment to the gym. The irony of a man who looks more hard-bodied than anyone from L.A., who sells me junk food and beer, who kills time waiting for my credit card to go through by preaching against the evils of these items, is one of the many reasons why I favor this store.

Tonight's tight T-shirt is black, with bright green lettering spelling out a team name, in a supremely cheesy brush-stroke font, running barre sinistre: Shamrocks. Guesses about the logo are left as an exercise for the reader.

Having apparently just had a set-to with the previous customer, he asks me somewhat nervously, "You're not Irish, are you?"

I am momentarily comforted that he can not tell from my moon face and rosy cheeks anything more specific about where my blood lies than I can about him. I say that this is indeed my ethnic origin, but since my family has been in this country for at least three generations, the only thing about it that makes any difference to me is how irritable I will become in two days.

He says, "Yeah, yeah! That girl before you? 100% Irish! Won't wear green, she tells me!"

I give him the short version of my unoriginal rant about Saint Paddy's Day being tied with New Year's Eve for tops in the contest for Amateur Hour and state that for the past four decades, I, too, have conscientiously shunned wearing green at this time of year.

He looks a little mystified, an emotion which I attribute to his new uncertainty about who is crazier, the Yanks or the Micks, but he goes on to tell me the story behind the acquisition of his T-shirt. He had no idea what it signified when he bought it years ago, just thought it looked nice, and wore it "many, many times" before someone told him about the shirt's implied message. This made him put it away for a while, he says, but tonight, he thought it would be the perfect thing to put on.

I accuse him of becoming part of the Hallmark-Industrial Complex that turns every holiday in the U.S. into an excuse for crass commercialism, and it's to the point where the exact date doesn't matter any more; the key is the closest weekend … well, no, not those exact words. I mostly tease him for trying to boost beer sales.

Like most people who get stuck in my vicinity, he does not really listen. (This does not perturb me unduly. As someone whose favorite trig function is tan(x) (and who has an incurable fondness for parenthetical asides), I am hardened to such snubbery.) Instead, he is shaking his head and looking into the middle distance. Apparently, he's getting more grief about the shirt than he could possibly have imagined when he got dressed for work.

Down the street from the store is an "Irish pub." I will note that it is across the street from one of those rent-to-own furniture stores and a peelingly painted bright pink theater that only shows adult movies and let you draw your own conclusions about the appropriateness of the scare quotes. Parked outside of it, in a haphazard manner, but generally pointed against traffic, are four cop cars and an ambulance. Their roof lights are psychedelic on our faces in the monitor attached to the security camera.

Welcome to America, I do not tell him.

Erin Go Bragh, I do say.

"How are you tonight?" he says to his next customer.