"Yesterday's Mashed Potatoes"
“Yesterday’s Mashed Potatoes”
Although the thought had often passed through Arlene Henry’s mind before, this time she was convinced that Rocky had gone flat-out nuts. Symptoms of his dementia had broken out on every table, right next to each mesh-covered glass candle-holder. The unattractive devices looked like timers for chess matches or buzzers from a particularly tacky television game show. “What the hell are those?”
“Oh, those little alarm clocks? They're for Speed Dating Night.” In his continuous quest to bring in customers to Rocky’s Lounge as well as to coax a few more dollars out of their discretionary income, Rocky had tried, with various degrees of success --Trivia Nights, Battles of the Bands, Dartboard Tournaments, and preposterously-- since the demographics of his clientele typically skewed toward the AARP crowd-- a Wet T-Shirt Night. Arlene couldn't really blame Rocky for trying to make a buck, given the vagaries of the current economy, but it’s never easy. As Mama Rose says in Gypsy, “Ya gotta have a gimmick.”
“Didn't you see my signs? I put ‘em up all over the place.” Rocky showed her a sample. “SENIORS! Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places? Come to the RIGHT Place –Rocky’s! Senior Speed Dating Night! Friday, April 4. Music by the Lovely Arlene. No Cover .” Right away, Arlene knew it wouldn't work. First of all, the word “Senior” as in “Senior Citizen” was a real turn-off. Although most people would never reject a discount, they weigh the added savings against a reluctance to admit that their chronological ages were precipitously climbing toward that proverbial hill. That goes for males, as well as females; additionally, men had more wiggle-room in which to choose prospective partners. Given the choice, many an older guy would prefer a younger chick, whereas “mature” women, with the considerably smaller number of viable candidates, often find they have to take whom they can get.
No matter one’s gender or age, a person really loathes admitting that he or she “needs help” in the romance department, whether it comes from the Personal Ads in the Classified section, an Internet dating service, or the dreadful “blind date” set up by well-meaning friends and relatives who don't know enough to mind their own business. Such match-making methods all smack of desperation, not the most desirable acreage for planting the seeds of Love.
Arlene failed to see how Rocky’s latest scheme would bear fruit, but she kept her misgivings to herself. A gig is a gig, after all, despite the fact that she had to tell the guys in her combo that Rocky could only “afford” a solo act now.
Even without a rhythm section that night, every one of her numbers was counterpointed with a recurrent “ding” or a “buzz” coming from the tables, at which the ladies would stay seated while the prospective swains would hop from table to table like bees promiscuously sampling the pollen of various and sundry blossoms. A proscribed time limit dictated that each encounter would be necessarily “brief.” And within such limits, the gentleman was expected to make up his mind whether the damsel at Table Nine was the girl of his dreams or a superannuated gold digger. The lady likewise had to make an instantaneous decision as to whether the guy across from her would either sweep her off her therapeutically-shod feet or take her for every cent of her fixed income. Ah, Love, your magic spell is everywhere.
Avoiding the pool, Arlene plunged right into to her medley, played pianissimo so as not to drown out any couple’s all-important tête-à-tête. Rodgers and Hart’s wistful “My Romance”
Wide awake (Ding!)
My most fantastic dreams come true
segueing into Jerome Kern’s “A Fine Romance” with delightfully sardonic lyrics by the great Dorothy Fields:
We should be like a couple of hot tomatoes –
( Bzzt!)
But you're as cold as yesterday’s mashed potatoes. . .
These spuds look as if they'd been burped into the Tupperware long ago, Arlene thought. Not that she was some farm-fresh pullet herself. She remembered from years previously a high-profile news weekly that proclaimed as incontrovertible fact that once an unmarried American woman hit the magic age of 30, her odds against finding a husband were greater than being struck by lightning. At the time Arlene read the article, she had moved beyond electrocution by thunderstorm to getting hit by a safe falling from an office window. Now? Perhaps being swallowed by a crocodile.
Not to say chances hadn't come, and some of them she had been glad to see go-- when she herself did the leaving, as from the two or three who had somehow forgotten to mention their actual and current marital status. Then there were others with irreconcilable differences. There was the One With Bizarre Tastes, which she had discovered the first time she visited him at his apartment and went to hang up her coat. One glance at the contents of his closet and the coat was back on and she was out of there more quickly than you could say “de Sade.”
The last decade featured the One Who Bored Her To Tears. Initially they had enjoyed their mutual fascination with Major League Baseball; their lively discussions about George Brett’s pine tar, Joe Carter’s World Series winning walk-off home run soon changed up into the minutiae of the position of the pitcher’s fingers for various types of delivery, the intricacies of compiling obscure stats, finally convincing Arlene that the neurotic sports nut had to go, else she'd have to do No-Doz for the rest of her life.
Long before, there had been the One Who Got Away, He-Who-Must-Not-Be Named. “My romance,” a “fine romance,” indeed. Arlene looked out at the sparse “crowd” and didn't envy the widows and widowers, or more likely these days, the so-called “walking wounded” of divorce, whose broken hearts were motivated by that most insidious of emotions, hope, in that these “late bloomers” would finally harvest a blossoming love. Arlene’s cynical streak also tried to convince her that some of the men were looking for not so much someone to “share” their golden years but the comfort of a nurse. And the women, earnestly and altruistically seeking not so much to be cared for but to care, all while knowing that they would in most cases eventually outlive the hoped-for object of their nurturing. But to be honest, who is loath to accept a hug and a kiss now and then, or a Sunday ride through the countryside with someone else doing the driving?
That same evening, in a different establishment far off in the scenic Adirondacks, a barkeep hustled to keep up with demands of customers, the late-season skiers overlapping with the early- season trout fishermen, thanks to the fortuitous “location, location, location” of the Tamarack Inn. As he pulled one of many draft beers, somebody hit the jukebox to play a Frank Sinatra tune, a song that Lenny hadn't heard since a gal sang it live the previous New Year’s Eve. Whatshername, the one who played the piano and sang those old, old songs – - Eileen? Doreen? Something like that. If he hadn't been so busy, just out of curiosity, Lenny would've gone into the back and look her up in the files. Give her a call or somethin’. He recalled that she said she lived way the hell downstate, and with the high price of gas these days. . . Eh. He'd see. . .
Meanwhile, back at Rocky’s Arlene was wrapping up her medley
Might as well play bridge (Ding!) with my old maid aunt
I haven't got a chance, this is a fine romance
(Bzzt!) The sound came from the table closest to the piano. “Ooh!” The lady sitting there giggled like a girl. “Time’s up.”
