“You wanna go see Mo?” he asked me while talking on the phone. “What? Mo?
\n Sure!” I hadn’t seen Mo in forever, ever since he moved up to Detroit.
\n “You know Mo, right?” Dick asked when he got off the phone. Did I know him?
\n I would have become his 11th wife, had I agreed. “Well, don’t mention that.
\n He’s married now,” Dick laughed.<\/p>\n
I’d coached Moteb (the Saudi Arabian otherwise known as H-T on the boards) on
\nhistory in return for breadsticks purchased from the snack shop until he left
\nto get married and transfer to another college. Before that I’d had several
\nmidnight chat sessions with him on the Neutral Zone.<\/p>\n
Driving down in Dick’s new car he got for $200, we peered through the foggy
\nwindshield and belted out the lyrics to tunes playing on the radio. Every so
\noften, he’d hit the horn, which was in perfect tune with certain songs. We
\nwalked into the Clarion Hotel and spotted them. Sting and his other were
\nseated at a table with Mo and his diminuative wife wrapped in a traditional
\nArab head scarf. Mo has always been big, but he’s gotten bigger since I’ve
\nseen him last. His wife could understand English, and evidently speak it,
\nbut instead she told jokes in Ababic and had Mo translate them.<\/p>\n
Deciding to head to Darryl’s, we piled into Mo’s rental (this huge sedan he
\nsomehow talked his way into renting for $26 a day). It was parked out in
\nfront of the hotel. “See this red line?” asked Sting, “It means fire. Only
\nfire trucks can park here.” “It’s not my car. This is a rental,” responded
\nMo. “Have you ever driven with a Saudi?” Sting tried to prepare us. I had,
\nonce. He offered to take me over to my car parked in the far lot at UM.
\n There was a tape of voices howling in Arabic playing when he cranked up his
\nAmiga. This time, the radio was set to the alternative station. “Hey, we
\nwere just listening to that,” Dick and I exclaimed as Mo turned it off.<\/p>\n
He pulled east onto Airport, performed a Uie, and weaved in and out of the
\nlanes into the left hand turn lane on Airport, coming THIS CLOSE to a truck’s
\nbumper. “Crap!” came Sting’s voice from the back. “Hey, we had PLENTY of
\nroom,” I observed from the front seat. “Yeah,” agreed Mo, “Jonah knows what
\nshe’s talking about. You obviously know how to drive. Besides, it’s a
\nrental,” as we came THIS CLOSE to another car turning into the parking lot.
\n “Plenty of room,” I repeated.<\/p>\n
Inside, a waitress said it would be a 20 minute wait for a non smoking table.
\n We opted for first available instead and went to sit down at the lounge.
\n The discussion turned to how Mo has this innate ability to get people to
\ngive him stuff for free. A girl came over to take our drink orders while she
\nhanded out cocktail napkins. “These are my friends from Bulgaria,” Mo said
\nto her, “Seriously!” “Okay,” she muttered. “And so you need to give them
\nsomething complementary since they’re visiting from overseas.” I don’t think
\nshe caught that but just took our orders. Sting’s other ordered a virgin
\nstrawberry daquiri, so I pointed to her and nodded that I’d have the same
\nwhen it came my turn.<\/p>\n
As she returned to the bar, the buzzer they’d given to Mo went off. We
\ntromped back upstairs and followed the seater to a very cramped booth. They
\nagreed to push another couple of tables together while we waited. A waiter
\ncame up to spread out cocktail napkins before we told him that we weren’t
\nREALLY sitting there, just waiting till they got us a better table. He
\npicked up the napkins and left. As we returned back downstairs, we wondered
\nif the lady with our drink orders would ever be able to find us.<\/p>\n
For the third time, someone came up and asked what we wanted to drink. “Uh,
\nI think this girl was getting stuff for us,” Sting conjectured. The waiter
\nasked what she looked like. “Red shirt,” said Mo, “and glasses!” “Blonde
\nhair,” I added. He went off to search for her, then came back a bit later
\nwith all the drinks except for the daquiris. “And who had coke?” he asked.
\n We all looked around. “I had a sprite,” said Mo, “but you can leave that
\nhere. And could you bring us a pitcher of sprite? We’ll be drinking a lot.”
\n He reappeared with the sprite and the pitcher and then our daquiris. I
\nsucked on mine and mused to Dick, “I should have got a real one.” “Get one,”
\nhe said, “I’ll drink that one.” When the waiter came back, I asked him for a
\nreal strawberry daquiri. He asked for my ID.<\/p>\n
At one point, the waiter asked Sting if he still went to University of
\nMobile. “My name is Marty,” he said, “I just graduated.” Sting had
\ngraduated, Mo had transferred, and Dick and I still went. Sting’s other is a
\nSpring Hiller. When he left, I asked Dick, “What do you think his major
\nwas?” “Hmm? Business. Maybe nursing. But he looks like a business major.”
\n I asked Marty when he came back what his major was. “Business and finance.”
\n “Ha! You were right!” I exulted to Dick. Marty looked surprised but asked
\nus what we majored in. “Music,” answered Dick. “Political Science,” added
\nI.<\/p>\n
Mo picked up on the conversation, asking Marty where he was from and his
\nmajor. Then he asked, “You married?” “No.” “You’re single then? This is
\nJonah. (What’s your major?)” “Political Science,” I said. “Her major is
\npolitical science. She is single, and she’s gorgeous in this black dress…”
\n A few days before my 20th birthday, I went through a rebellious stage as a
\nresult of the realization that there were only a few days left of being a
\nteenager. One of those days, I went to class in goth\/stoner regailia,
\nwearing heavy eye makeup and “dressed” in a black t-shirt, black gloves,
\nblack stockings and shoes. I walked into the computer lab after English
\nclass to find Mo staring open mouthed. He mentions this “black dress” every
\ntime I’ve seen him since.<\/p>\n
A bit later, a pack of waiters laid seige to the table next to us singing
\nhappy birthday and presenting the victim with pie ala mode. Mo caught
\nMarty’s attention and gestured toward Sting and his other. Marty disappeared
\nagain to get some pie for the birthday girl. It is Sting’s other’s
\nbirthday… but not for another couple of weeks. The pie accompanied by the
\narmy of waiters arrived a few minutes later. Sting his other shoved the pie
\ninto the box with their partially consumed cake as soon as Marty left, and we
\nall watched the al amode melt alone on the plate. I mixed some sprite from
\nthe pitcher into the rest of Dick’s daquiri so Marty wouldn’t have brought
\nthe extra beverage in vain.<\/p>\n
Back in the car, Mo pulled out onto Airport with a semi truck blocking the
\nview of who was coming as Sting shouted “Oh crap!” from the backseat. It was
\njust down the road to the hotel. “Do you want to go somewhere else?” Mo
\nasked. “Sammy’s,” laughed Dick. “Sammy’s? is that a restaurant?” Mo passed
\nthe hotel and turned toward the strip joint. “It is NOT a restaurant,”
\ninsisted Sting, “Two words. Kenny Rogers. Roasters? Hooters?” Mo suddenly
\naccelerated past the intended target. He turned back onto Airport
\nannouncing, “I’m pulling in front of a red Mustang.”<\/p>\n
We made it back to the hotel safely anyway. Parking in a real parking spot
\nthis time, we got out next to a car phone lying on the ground. “You want a
\nphone?” asked Mo, “take it.” I picked it up to turn it into the front desk
\n(not the first time I’ve done that at that hotel) but handed it over to a
\ncouple of elderly rent-a-cops sitting on the tailgate of a nearby truck.<\/p>\n
Then exchanging goodbyes, we left and listened to the radio all the way home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“You wanna go see Mo?” he asked me while talking on the phone. “What? Mo? Sure!” I hadn’t seen Mo in forever, ever since he moved up to Detroit. “You know Mo, right?” Dick asked when he got off the phone. Did I know him? I would have become his 11th wife, had I agreed….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonclassified-nonsense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}