Читать книгу Arcade - Drew Nellins Smith - Страница 9

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THE BUILDING WAS A CATALOG OF POTENTIAL PARTNERS, all moving in circles and lines and figure eights, from booth to booth, hallway to store to hallway. I was part of the catalog too. I looked at them and determined whether or not they were what I had in mind, and they looked at me and saw if I was what they had in mind, or whether I was close enough.

As a kid, everyone at my school was immensely impressed by a nearby restaurant renowned for employing an unusual gimmick for summoning wait staff. It involved utilizing a miniature flagpole with which all the tables were equipped. In order to capture the attention of your server, instead of waving your arms or crying waiter! across a crowded room, you sent a starched and scaled-down Mexican flag to full mast. It was my impression, even at that age, that the wait staff at the Mexican food restaurant suffered abnormal and excessive visits to their various tables, given that the control was so pleasurable and clear-cut.

Sometimes, like the waitresses called to refill half-full bowls of salsa, you ended up with people you wouldn’t normally have considered, just because they had flown a flag, and you didn’t have anything more pressing to do at the moment.