Just Throw My Body In The River

• 16 Dollar Saturday
• Flat Tire On Bike

Elle Fanning wanders my puzzle

It is early Sunday morning.

I have returned from a 16 dollar Saturday night, starting at 12:15 AM, and running until 2 AM on the dot, when I noticed that time after having run out of ambition, and having gotten a funny vibe from a couple young guys who had been looking in the trash at Lafitt’s before coming to hover around me.

Change For A Hundred

I may have blown a large tip by looking suspiciously at a young lady who had asked me if I had change for a hundred.

There were certainly places in the area that would break a hundred and it seemed odd that at that point of the night she wouldn't have broken one yet or had just made a purchase that rounded out to the nearest hundred exactly.

“I want to give you something, but all I have is a hundred...” she had said. She looked perhaps Brazilian.

She was soon joined by a couple young men, and something was exchanged between them.

During this brief stretch of time when I thought she might have been asking them if they had change for a hundred, my playing level dropped way off, as I struggled to find a song to play and failed at the ones that I started.

That was another exercise in being “disinterested” as a busker.

It was like the gold ring that you can never reach because the harder you try the more it slips away; it starts to come to you as soon as you give up on it, but eludes you when it comes close enough that you try to snatch it.

That was what it was like playing for a couple that was arguing over maybe whether they should throw me a hundred dollar tip, since that was the smallest bill they had, or not.

The harder I tried to play music worth a hundred bucks the more it slipped away. Maybe they almost changed their minds after I had all but given up on them and went back to playing whatever.

Soon, an Uber whisked her and a couple young guys away, and I went back to making the 16 bucks.

I have gotten an all day bus pass, and have the next 23 hours to maybe play some tonight and then get over to Wal-Mart for a tube for the bike.

Somewhere in there, I need to compose the letter to Howard Westra, telling him about the concerns of his roommates over the fact that he doesn't have any kind of burial insurance and that Berta and Ken would have to put him in a pauper's grave should he die. This seems to bother them, even though Ken said about himself: "Just throw my body in the river, I don't care..."