He didn’t recognize me.
My heart sank, because wherever I go I try to leave a clean plate and a good impression, like a westward-bound pioneer orphan. I searched his face for a spark, a shred, a kernel of memory. Nothing. It’s a little heartbreaking to be forgotten by a pimp.
Not my pimp. And how dare you. The Pimp. The Shrimp Pimp. Let me back up.
2 months earlier:
I had been cutting it close lately. Cocky? Nope. Flirting with danger? Wouldn’t know how. Traffic and poor time-management? Definitely.
There was a new truck on the trail, and it had made its presence known. You don’t just serve up drunken shrimp tacos, and Guinness battered fish and chips outside of St. Joseph ’s Hospital in Burbank
And so I played coy.
“Coy,” meaning “Running Late.”
I wanted a shrimp taco somethin awful, and I set about to make one happen for myself. I hotfooted it over to St. Joe’s to land one, and that’s when the nightmare started. The gilded crimson four-wheeled eatery sat in the semi-circular drive alone. Never a good sign. Means everyone else is done for the day, and it wouldn’t be too far behind. I constructed an implied parking space for myself 2 blocks away and raced (verrrrrrrrrry light jog or prance) around the corner and up to the Shrimp Pimp truck, ablaze with tantalizing iconography- sultry shots of alluring shrimp perched in martini glasses.
As I sped (walked quickly) around the back of the truck, towards the Order Here window, I spotted him. Spotted him closing down the side of the truck. Lowering whatever that thingy is called-deliberately, but with no personal malice. It happened in slow-motion in my mind, and I stood there panting from the dual emotional fallout of moving quickly and jaywalking.
But I was not prepared for the way the rest of this scene would play out.
