Useless Skills

In my dream, I am telling jokes in a comedy club.

“If I’m a chef, and I eat my own soup, am I a cannibal?”

The audience roars.

Then I tell jokes about my bunion, a broken garbage disposal and the time I got arrested for stalking my high school biology teacher. She was hot.

They love it! I’m killing it! Then I wake up.

Why can’t I ever dream about something that would be really helpful, like where the Ark of the Covenant is buried or what really happened to Amelia Earhart?

I seem to have a lot of skills like that: kind of useless. I’m left handed, which could be really great in baseball against most of the pitchers – righties –  but unfortunately, I bat right handed. The one time it would come in “handy” to be left handed, and my brain goes all ambidextrous on me.

After I wake from my debut stand-up career, I am thinking about my useless skills when my phone rings.

“Randy Carlson?”

“Depends. Who’s asking?”

“This is Captain Walters, San Francisco Police. We understand you speak Archi.”

“Yeah, sure,” I say. Another useless skill! I can speak eighteen languages, not that it ever does me any good. It’s like a stupid parlor trick. “I can, but you know, I can only conjugate the verbs a couple hundred times, not like the one million plus the Archis…”

“No problem. Listen, we have a hostage situation, and the hostage taker only speaks Archi.”

“Seriously? Wow, like only 1,000 people speak that. How the heck did you find me?”

“Not important. In two minutes, there’ll be a team at your door.  Go with them.”

And so I find myself hunched under an awning on Mason St., rain falling in typical San Francisco fashion, which is to say, the sky is spitting like a camel. Five floors up, an Archi gunman and his hostage, a hotel maid, have just been served tuna fish sandwiches and ice tea by a brave bellman who left them outside the door of room 501.

Captain Walters sizes me up.

“Listen kid, don’t try to be a hero. You just tell that Russian nut job up there exactly what I tell you to tell him, and you translate back for me exactly what he says. You got that?”

I nod. What does he think I’m gonna do? Offer myself in trade for the maid?

Walters hands me the phone.

“Hello, there,” I say in my best Archi. “My name is Randy. What’s yours?”

“What are you saying?” Walters stage whispers. Oh my god, this is going to be agonizing.

“I told him my name.”

Walters rolls his eyes.

The man, who is obviously eating a tuna sandwich which makes his Archi a bit sloppy, says,

“Sergei.”

“OK, Sergei.” I raise my eyebrows at Walters.

“Ask him what he wants in exchange for the girl.”

This seems like an abrupt segue to having just introduced myself to a guy eating a tuna fish sandwich and holding a gun on a motel maid. Fuck it, I think. I’m doing this my way.

“How’s the sandwich?”

“Not bad, for tinned fish on sourdough. I would have preferred fresh Pacific albacore on brioche, but you take what you can get sometimes.”

“What’s he want?” Walters says, not pretending to whisper any more.

“Says he wants some time to think about it.”

“Tell him he’s got ten minutes.”

“So, Sergei, what brings you to my fair city?”

“Freedom, sex with American girls, something other than vodka, vodka, vodka.”

“Are you getting any?”

“Sex? Yes, now and again. I am enjoying Sonoma wines, too. Napa wines? Not so much.”

Walters is pacing and I’m refusing to make eye contact with him.

“Well you know what they say. Sonoma makes wine. Napa makes auto parts.” I laugh at my own joke. Walters is turning red.

“Hey, I told you,” he says, grabbing me by the collar. “You tell me exactly what he is saying.”

“He says he wants sex and wine.”

Sergei is munching in my ear again. “So what is this you say about auto parts?”

“Oh, it’s a joke about a company called Napa that makes car parts and such. It’s just kind of a put down on Napa wines, like, they are just car parts, not anything special.”

“You are a funny guy! You have more jokes?”

“Well, sure, I do, but the cops down here are getting kinda nervous. They want me to ask you about letting the girl go. Seems like a good idea to me.”

“What is he saying? What are you saying?” Walters is now yelling at me like a carnival barker.

“I’m asking him to let the girl go. He’s thinking about it. For sex and wine.”

Walters talks into his shoulder. “Snipers in place?”

“What? You can’t shoot a guy for wanting sex and wine! Hell, I’d like sex and wine!”

A voice crackles out of Walters’ shoulder. “No way sir. They can’t get a shot. Drapes are pulled.”

A short, tidy man in a teal blue suit with a yellow striped tie appears at Walters’ elbow. He reads from a clip board.

“Captain, according to Wikipedia, Archi is an ergative-absolutive language with four noun classes and has a remarkable morphological system with huge paradigms and irregularities on all levels.”

“I don’t give a fuck!” Walters growls.

Sergei smacks his lips on the phone. “I just want a conversation with someone. I’m so tired of no one understanding me. I’ll let her go if you’ll just come up here, tell me some more jokes. I’m not going to shoot anyone. I just want a nice steak and a decent bottle of Sonoma Russian River Valley Zinfandel, some good conversation, then you can leave too.”

I consider this. “What if I ask them for two steaks, a couple of bottles?”

“That’s a fine idea, Randy.”

I get Walter’s eye, and give him the low-down: it’s me for the girl, plus two steaks and two bottles of Zin. Oh, and a Caesar salad. Walter stares at me like I’m the picture of Jesus on a cornchip.

So I spend a nice evening with the fellow from Archi, eating steak and telling jokes.

“If I’m a chef, and I eat my own soup, am I a cannibal?”

Sergei howls. Tears are coming down his cheeks. He likes the jokes about my bunion, the garbage disposal and my misadventures with my high school biology teacher.

At midnight, we reach an agreement. I open the door, a SWAT team rushes in, and Sergei holds out his hands for the cuffs. After he leaves, I finish the wine. Well, I am finishing the wine until Walters shows up, all smiles, trailing the little man in the teal suit.

“Carlson, that was masterful. Listen, Simpson here, our linguist, thinks we need a guy like you. Eighteen languages, right?”

I nod.

“How about it? Terrific pay. It’ll be just like today! You’re with me, on site, hostage negotiation. Beats the barista job.”

“How did you know about that?”

“Not important. What do you say?”

I swivel the glass of Zin between my palms.

“Well, Captain. I appreciate the offer. But I’ve, well, discovered my true calling.”

“Really? What, may I ask?”

“Comedy.”

“What kind of career is that? No job security, bad pay …”

“But I’m good at it,” I say, stuffing a bag of peanuts from the minibar into my pocket. “I think I’ve got potential.”