August 4
This is difficult. About as difficult as it gets, really.
Silvia is leaving!
I am not making that up! My princess, the object of my first crush since high school, reports to swing shift next week.
I am not taking this well. First, a very pretty cocktail waitress named Julia left, well before this diary started. Then I had to scramble through Regina leaving and now I must endure this.
Thank goodness Maria isn’t going anywhere, though I think her days off are changing, and Silvia’s younger, pretty and charming sister Angelica will be more or less be taking her place so there will still be plenty of pretty reasons to visit PBX, but still.
482 was the best ever. Daryl, who should probably be given a government pension or something, said yes, of course, there was prime rib, but it isn’t hot, so why don’t I just throw it on the grill for you?
This man is a saint. In the blink of an eye, I went from cold prime rib to a first-class rib eye complete with two sunny side up…Any hotel coffee shop in town would have been proud to have trotted it out as a special.
Jo(s)e and I were both late for 482. There was a very minor traffic accident on South Drive near the Strip, right before 0100, when Guy goes 482. It involved a really foxy cocktail waitress named Leila and a garbage truck, and the only damage was to the side mirror on Leila’s Expedition.
As usual, though, Guy mobilized like it was a four-car pileup, putting Jo(s)e to work and even calling me in from the garage for traffic control while he utilized his two biggest talents, taking command of the routine and schmoozing. In no time flat, we had two lanes closed and traffic moving and Guy was buzzing around coordinating communications between Leila and the evil garbage man and Guy is such a world-class schmoozer he was the garbage man’s best friend within 30 seconds.
Guy is one hell of an officer and could have handled this himself as a matter of course, but he was in his element here and neither Jo(s)e nor I had the heart to suggest he could leave it to us and go 482 so we waited it out.
August 5
James had a funny line in PBX tonight. He is recently unengaged but is dating again and is running into the age-old problem of cancellations.
“Who doesn’t know what they’re doing 48 hours from now?” he whined. “I do. Why make me shower and put on nice clothes if I’m just going to stay home and watch tee vee, which is what I’d be doing anyway, except I smell nice and look better.”
Also funny tonight was an incident on level five of the garage. This is where some dealers park and about 0420 I’m up there along with two female Asian dealers, a Chinese dealer named Eva, and another whose name I don’t know but who I suspect is Japanese. Jo(s)e comes up and joins me and they’re still there and I go patrol three and four and return to five and they’re still there. I drive past them and wave; they’re speaking that universal Asian chick language and at 0530 they’re still there. I pull up next to them.
“Uh, look, girls, why don’t you just go to the EDR and get some coffee?”
They look at me, and, Eva, in that wonderfully attractive, universally feminine way women have, put her hand to her mouth and started giggling.
“What are you two talking about that’s so important?” I asked.
They look at each other and both giggle.
“Husbands,” they said.
I waved a hand, the universal ‘say no more’ gesture, laughed and drove off.