The cable guy hasn’t even been here twenty minutes and already I know his life story

The cable guy hasn’t even been here twenty minutes and already I know his life story. This is something that I’ve grown used to, as it’s been happening more and more often over the past few years—these strangers and their stories, filling up the empty spaces in my mind so that sometimes it’s hard to tell where my memories start and someone else’s begin. My mother likes to say that it’s because I’m a ‘kind and empathetic person’. I prefer to believe that it’s because I have some kind of super power that causes people’s defenses to fall beneath my chilling gaze, making them speak only the truth. At great lengths. For freaking ever.

Whatever the reason is, at the moment, I kind of just want my cable hooked up.

I can see his skinny, freckled legs sticking out from the back of my entertainment system, seemingly almost hairless, one scarred with a crudely done tattoo of a half naked mermaid sitting on what looks like a lotus leaf. Or a lettuce leaf. It’s kind of hard to tell from this angle. His left foot kind of twitches every so often as he speaks, almost as if it is silently agreeing with whatever is being said by the disembodied voice that is echoing from the back of my television.

“I have two kids,” he tells me, “eight and twelve. Neither of them’re mine. They both belong to my ex wife who decided to marry her accountant and move to St. Lewis and leave the kids with me. I don’t mind, really, I love them like they’re my own.” His head pops out from the other side of the entertainment system. He’s only maybe three years older than my 23, with a dash of red hair and freckles that make him look even younger. I feel a twinge of sympathy for him, but can’t help by smile back when he gives me a grin, “You got any kids?”

I shake my head in the negative, giving him what I’ve come to think of as my ‘geisha smile’, and he returns to his work, continuing his tale of unfaithful lovers and dramatic happenings that would make the writers of The Young and the Restless jealous.

The geisha smile was a gesture that I hadn’t realized I had been making until my second year or so bartending. That was when I realized that I, as a female bartender at a moderately upscale restaurant, was the American equivalent to the Japanese conversation artists. My customers were mostly middle aged businessmen escaping from the reality of their jobs or, more often than not, their wives. They would ask for me over my male counterparts, not because of any kind of expertise or phenomenal drink making ability, but because I was able to provide them with something that they were missing in their nine to five lives of stocks, bonds, and board meetings: fantasy. I was whomever and whatever they needed me to be. I was a charming seductress, full of winks and innuendo, I was the nurturing mother, cooing over broken hearts and bruised egos, I was the girl next door, wide eyes and innocent, I was one of the guys, talking sport statistics and spouting dirty jokes. And, within all of these personas, all of these masks that I put on and took off several times nightly, the common thread was the geisha smile, the smile that I rewarded them with for coming to see me, for escaping to my world.

The perfect geisha smile is this:

Step 1: Look directly into his eyes. This eye contact is important. This fantasy we’ve created is personal—it’s he and I’s alone. There is no one else in on our little joke.

Step 2: Smile just the slightest bit--just the gentlest curving of the lips, the softest crinkling of the eye. It’s a gesture that’s not quite shy, but also not too bold. A little hesitant, but still completely honest.

Step 3: Glance downward, as if thinking of something miles away, never allowing the small grin to fade.

Step 4: Reinstate eye contact, and smile fully, but only with the lips, never showing any teeth. There is no one in the room but he and I. This is the game we are playing, and this is the world we have created. He is the only man in the world to me, and that fulfills what he needs at that moment. That is his reward.

Night after night these men would return to my bar and we’d play our games. I’d pour their martinis, refill their wine, listen to their stories, and give them my geisha smile. And, at the end of the night, they would return home, a little red faced, but with a sparkle in their eyes and a bounce in their steps that didn’t exist when they walked in. I liked to think that they walked in the doors of their homes, surprised their wives by dancing with them in the kitchen to the music playing in their heads, dipping them low and kissing them slowly and fondly, before carrying them to the bedroom where they would make love for the rest of the night, reenergized and renewed by the youth and confidence that I had instilled within them.

My job was to help them appreciate themselves and what they had, and that’s what the geisha smile did—it made them feel alive.

The cable guy finally emerges from behind the television and leans against my coffee table, fiddling with the remote. He turns to me, grinning excitedly. It makes me wonder if this is his first jobsite.

“Hold onto something. This is gonna be wicked,” he states.

I can’t help but laugh at his enthusiasm, and dramatically clutch the arms of the recliner I’ve curled myself onto.

I feel like there should be a drum roll as he points the remote at the television.

“Voila!” he exclaims, pressing the bright green Power button.

The screen of the television instantly comes to life, but instead of the bright colours and sounds of all-in-one digital cable, we’re greeted by the snowy fuzz and white noise of static.

I have to stifle a laugh as he frowns and slaps the remote against his palm a few times, as if somehow a misaligned battery is interfering with the signal. He turns back towards me, frowning apologetically, his face turning a little red. He rubs the back of his neck, “Yeah…um...”

I shrug, “Guess there really is nothing ever on tv.” I flash him the geisha smile. He laughs, visibly relaxing, his confidence returning.

“Back behind the tv for me, I guess,” he states, stretching, “Maybe there’s a wire or something I misconnected.” He crawls back behind the entertainment center, his skinny, tattooed legs sticking back out the side. His voice floats back to me, telling me his stories, of how he did a tour in Iraq before marrying his now ex wife, of his kids’ Christmas pageant, of how he’s saving to go back to school. I file his stories away in my head, wondering how many will end up permanent memories, but not really minding the noise. Whether he feels comfortable telling me his dreams because of some innate empathetic nature I may or may not have, or because of my fantastical super power, I don’t know. It really doesn’t matter, though.

I have all day.