Mojo's Grave

I don't know how many people I've met in my life. I've never tried to count. The number has to be in the tens of thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands since I worked 20 years in nightclubs and have circumnavigated the globe over twenty times. Some people I have forgotten. Some I've forgotten their names. Some I remember very little.

Others exist only as one story surrounded by shards of memories.

Mojo had been the doorman at the Berlin after-hours club. 1980 Broadway and Houston. Up four steep flights of stairs. Mojo was big, black, and a little mean to women. I warned him to calm down. He glared threateningly without a move. My temper was legendary back then. I hadn't seen him years, but I ran into him about two years ago.

Mojo greeted me as if I had risen from the grave. He was smiling. All that meanness was gone.

"I've been working as a chef." Mojo weighed near 300. He had gained some poundage. Heavy people like working in restaurants.

"Where?" I like eating.

"Out in the Hamptons." Mojo shrugged as if it wasn't his first choice. "Tough living out there without a car, but I live close to the restaurant. About a ten minute walk. Even quicker if I cut through a graveyard."

"Nothing scary about a graveyard?" I wouldn't walk through one at night.

"That's what I thought too, but a month ago I was drunk and decided to take the short cut. There was no moon, but I could see the lights of my house, so I knew where I was going. Problem was that I didn't know where I was and i fell into an open grave. Knocked the wind out of me."

"How you get out?"

"Get out? Man my size ain't getting out of no grave. I tried jumping, but it was a waste of breath, so I sat down and waited for someone to come along. I had cigarettes and it wasn't a cold night. I might have even fell asleep, except I heard someone coming. He was drunk. I was about to call out for help, when he fell into the grave. A white frat boy. He gets to his feet right away and starts trying to jump out of the grave."

"Not easy." Six feet is six feet.

"Not at all, but he could climb on me to get out, so I coughed and said, "You can't get out of here that way."

"And what he say?" I was laughing hard now.

"Say? The white boy squawked and practically flew out of the grave like I was Satan." Mojo laughed at the recollection of this moment. "Man, his eyes were bigger than dinner plates. The police come down to the cemetery in about 10 minutes. Nothing gets those lazy fucks working faster than a black devil in the grave. They were nice enough to help me out. Took three of them."

"No more short-cuts?"

"None at all."

Mojo and I bid each other 'health' and went our separate ways. Each happier for his tale from the grave.