(part 3 here)

Lela’s American Cafe, Part 4

by David S. McWilliams

So yeah, that’s pretty much the end of this story. I burned Lela’s bar down. Her buddy picked us up in his van, and I didn’t see the Russians again. This back-alley doctor fixed me up okay, and a few days later I was on a plane to La Guardia. I had to borrow money from Lela for the ticket—my editor paid her back by wire.

They got my pictures published, and Putin was pissed. Gave the Russians a big black eye in the international community, which lasted for all of about three hours before the world gave a collective yawn and went back to browsing celebrity nudes. At least I got paid, I guess.

I lost track of Lela for a while. She came back to the States a few weeks after I did. Last I heard she was working in some dive bar in Philly. Not that I cared, right? Because I didn’t.

–

Well, I tried not to. It’s not every day that a chick will pull you from a burning building after you sleep with one of her waitresses. Especially if you’re the one who set her bar on fire and destroyed her precious, irreplaceable, (likely fake) autographed picture of Humphrey Bogart. A woman like that makes an impression on you that’s hard to shake off.

It’s not that I liked her. I mean, I do. What’s not to like about Lela? She’s a better person than I’ll ever be. But it wasn’t that.

I just couldn’t stop thinking about her. I felt a bit responsible for her situation, and . . . well, I felt like I wanted to help her out. I wanted to make her life better, since I was the one who made it worse.

It felt suspiciously like personal growth, and I didn’t like it. So I called Lela up.

See, those Ferguson pics paid pretty well. Like, really well. And, you know, I could just go spend it all on hookers and blow, but I’m getting too old for that shit. Bad for the heart, you know?

I had this pile of cash and I was looking for somewhere to spend it. So I called up Lela to see if she was trying to open up a new place.

It turned out that yeah, she was, and she’d been pulling doubles at a trashy cocktail bar to save up the cash. It’s one of those places where the waitresses dress like animals and they have “shot girls.” Like an idiot, the first thing out of my mouth was, “Aren’t you getting a bit old for that?”

And so she called me a bastard and hung up. I called her back about a dozen times over the next half hour and finally she picked up again. Before I could fuck it up any more I just came out and told her, “Look, I want to invest in your new bar.”

She laughed at me and hung up again. I gave up calling and just went to the bar where she was working that night. She saw me right away.

“What the hell do you want, asshole?” she said. She was bartending, at least, not serving. She looked great. I felt like shit.

“Hey, take this check,” I told her. “I don’t care what you use it for, but if you want help with the new place, let me know.”

“Why?” she asked, suspicious.

“Because I want to be a part of it.” I told her. “I burned down your old place, and I want to help you build the new one.”

She didn’t say anything. I could tell that she didn’t believe me.

“Look, I’m feeling responsible for what might be the first time in my life. Don’t spoil it.” I pushed the check at her again.

She took it and examine the check. I saw her mask her surprise at the amount. “Why do you keep fucking with me, Francis?” she asked. “This bounces, right?”

“I’m not fucking with you,” I told her. “You pulled me out of a burning building.”

“That you set on fire,” she said.

“Well, yeah,” I said. I got up to leave.

“Where are you going?” she asked me.

“I’m gonna split before I say anything else stupid,” I told her. “Call me when you know what you want to do.”

I almost got out of the door before she caught me. “Hey,” she said, “you speak Greek?”

“No,” I said.

“Wanna learn?” she asked me.

–

So yeah, that’s happening. It didn’t happen right away, but when the check cleared Lela was willing to talk with me some more. We went to one of those all-night diners after she finished work and filled a few notebooks with ideas.

Now we’re partners—we have business cards and everything. “Lela’s American Cafe, Mykonos, Greece.” She’s there already picking out a building; I fly out on Tuesday.

I’m excited; Greece is a great place to shoot. And . . . well, I’ll be there with her. With Lela. That’s pretty cool. I think this time I’m not going to sleep with any of the staff.

Well, maybe one of them. If I’m lucky.

You know what she said to me that morning in the diner? After we filled up the third notebook, and the sun was coming up? She said, “Francis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

It was corny, sure. But for once in my life, I was okay with it.

(part 2 here)

Lela’s American Cafe, Part 3

by David S. McWilliams

 

We heard it all the way back in the kitchen. There was a huge crash, and then lots of yelling. “Stay here,” she told me again, and then ran out before I could stop her. Crap, I thought to myself, this woman’s going to go get herself killed.

The cooks were already booking it out the back and I should’ve been too, but dammit—my film was out there. I limped over to the kitchen door and tried to see what was going down.

Boris was back, and he wasn’t alone. A half-dozen big Russian thugs were laying about indiscriminately with their fists, beating the shit out of anyone they could get a hold of. I guessed I was wrong about them holding off until later.

Tourists and locals were running around like crazy trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I saw Boris himself in back, keeping a lookout for me. Forget that, I thought, I was staying in the kitchen.

Which worked for a while, until Boris realized that I wasn’t on the floor. He yelled to one of his guys, and the thug started heading right for the kitchen. Oh shit, right?

I thought about running for it out that back, but Boris would’ve been smart enough to cover that before trying to flush me out. There wasn’t any time to hide, and nowhere good enough to fool them. So I did what any rat does when the cat traps it in the corner—I got ready to fight.

Luckily kitchens are full of nasty shit that’s good for hurting people.

I limped around the prep tables and grabbed the first thing that came to hand. It was a big pan of oil that they’d been frying something in. The thug bursts in through the door right as I get a good grip on it, so I turned around and flung the oil right in his face.

He didn’t like it, I can tell you that much. But I’d miscalculated how much oil was in the pan, and it was way too heavy for me to control. Broken hand, right? So I ended up dumping a couple of liters of cooking oil right onto a big open flame on the range.

Oops.

The oil went up fast. There was a big fireball that knocked me on my ass, and all of sudden the whole kitchen was on fire. Oh-double-shit, right? Luckily the Russian dude was blind and at least a little bit on fire, so I shoved him out of the way and busted through the door.

The bar was in total chaos. A bunch of big longshoremen had decided not to take the Russians’ shit and were giving Boris’s thugs a run for their money. Somebody was down on the floor with a knife in them. There was no sign of Lela. I started heading for the piano because it was high time to grab my film and get the hell out (especially with all of that smoke pouring out of the kitchen).

“You! Stop!” I heard someone yell. It was Boris. He tackled me from behind and we ended up on the floor. I struggled for a bit, but I was in pretty bad shape and about all I could do at that point was bleed on his suit. He pinned me. “The film! Give me the film!” he said.

“Alright, alright!” I told him. “It’s in the pack!” He let me slip out of the backpack straps and I gave it to him, hoping he wouldn’t think to look inside. No luck; he checked it without letting me go. It was empty, of course. He threw it away.

“Where’s the film, fucker?!? Fucker!” he screamed in my face before hitting me. When my vision came back he had a gun out, and I was looking right down the barrel.

“Where?!? Where?!?” he screamed again. I tried to spit on him and ended up just drooling all over my own chin. Something moved outside of my field of vision.

Boris looked up just in time to get pepper sprayed full in the face.

You ever seen someone get pepper sprayed? It’s not exactly a precision weapon; that shit gets everywhere. Of all the shitty stuff that happened to me that night, that was the worst. My eyes, my mouth, my nose, my lungs, man—that stuff burns.

It was Lela. She nailed him good, and got me in the process. I don’t think she was really taking any pains to avoid me, but whatever. I’ll take it. I heard a gunshot; something punched me in the side. Boris had pulled the trigger in shock, but he was reeling and the shot just grazed me. He rolled off me, and Lela kicked him over onto his back before emptying the rest of the can right up his damn nose. Dude was a wreck by the time she was done with him.

I was still coughing and mostly blind by the time she got to me. “You alright?” she asked.

“Motherfucker shot me!” I said.

She glanced at it. “You’ll be alright.” She helped me up.

There was a big bang, and a huge fireball erupted from the kitchen doors. Thick black smoke was filling the club.

“Shit!” said Lela.

“Kitchen’s on fire,” I told her as another wall of flame surged out through the doorway.

“No shit, Francis! What the hell did you do?” yelled Lela over the roar of the flames.

“Wasn’t me,” I lied.

“Fuck—Fuck!” she said.

But I wasn’t paying attention; I needed to get my damn film out of that piano ASAP. I pulled myself from table to table over to the piano, and knocked open the top. I knew the film was in there somewhere, but goddamn it I couldn’t see a thing. I was half blind with pepper spray, tears pouring out of my eyes, coughing uncontrollably because of the smoke, bleeding from a fresh gunshot wound, holding onto the edge of the piano with a broken hand while jamming the good one down into the strings and hammers. It must’ve fallen down, because I couldn’t find it. Sharp things kept cutting my fingers.

“Lela!” I yelled. “Lela! Help!”

I looked over. It was starting to get bad in the bar; even the Russians had bailed. Boris was gone. Lela had one of those puny little baby fire extinguishers and was staring over at the flames.

“Lela!” I yelled again. I saw her look over at me, and then I saw her look back to the bar. Her precious photograph of Bogart was hanging there, just below the smokeline, right where the wallpaper was turning black. I saw her hesitate.

“Lela! This is a little more important, dammit!” I yelled.

She swore and said something I couldn’t hear over the fire, then threw the whole fire extinguisher right into the inferno and ran over to me. She yanked off the bottom panel of the piano. The film canisters were right there where they’d fallen down by the pedal mechanism. She grabbed them with one hand and grabbed me by the other.

I looked back. The picture of Bogart had disappeared in the smoke. We were the last two out of the bar before the ceiling fell in.

(part 4 here)

(part 1 here)

Lela’s American Cafe, Part 2

by David S. McWilliams

You didn’t get bullied as a kid, did you? No, I didn’t think so. You had “conflict resolution meetings,” and “communication skills.” Your mom drove you to soccer practice in a minivan and had a talk with the other boy’s parents when he made you cry at Billy’s sleepover, right? I’m not saying that to be mean, I’m just trying to show you how different it was for you.

I wasn’t just bullied; I was the whipping boy at my school. Doesn’t surprise you much, does it? Big mouth, small muscles, it happens. By middle school it was habit for some people. Go to class. Eat lunch. Beat the shit out of Francis. Didn’t bother me as much as—well—

Yeah.

Anyway. I got beat up a lot.

And I was only good at one thing in school: photography. So when I graduated I said fuck all this, I’m leaving it behind. I’m going to escape school and go make art.

But you know what I found? The world is just middle school all over again, except the bullies have guns and the law’s on their side.

This is pretty much the only way I can fight back, with the camera. Georgia might as well have been 7^th grade again, for all I cared.

–

So I went to Georgia and watched the Russians show off their big dicks for a few months. I got some good shots of people on both sides doing some despicable shit. Now that Syria and ISIS are going down, we’re getting desensitized to this sort of thing, but in 2008 it was a big deal. It was going to make Putin look real bad, and nobody else had the balls to get it.

I had mostly good luck, right until the very end. I made a stupid mistake, and I had to get the hell out of there. A friend of mine snuck me out of the country in his vegetable truck, and I caught a flight from Tel Aviv to Boston via Casablanca.

Only problem was that the Russians followed me from the airport in Tel Aviv. They were even on my damn flight, so I figured I’d skip out in Casablanca and disappear.

It totally didn’t work. I got into a taxi at the airport and two blocks later some dude slides in next to me at a stoplight. He spoke good English, with a Russian accent, and was in a sharp black suit. He offered me $10,000 in cash for my backpack and all the film in it.

“Boris,” I told him, “I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about.”

He rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to say something. That’s when I hit him.

See, when you grow up with bullies, you learn a lot. First of all, always hit first. If you can’t beat them, at least get the first shot in and then try to get away. Sometimes surprise is all you’ve got. Use it.

I hit him as hard as I could, which in the back of the taxi wasn’t very hard. It surprised the shit out of him, though, and so I jammed the door open and bailed out of the taxi right there in the middle of the street.

It looks so easy in the movies, right? Jumping out of a moving vehicle? Well, it’s not. It hurts like hell and you will fuck yourself up. I sprained my ankle, scraped half of the skin off of my arm, and found out later that I broke one of the bones in my hand. Don’t try it at home, kids.

But it got me away from Boris for a second. I hailed another cab from the median and told him to take me to the first spot I could think of: Lela’s bar.

I don’t know why I thought of her then. I guess I figured I could lose myself in the tourists, or at least gain a minute to think about another plan. The Russians probably weren’t going to try anything fishy with so many bystanders around. They’d bide their time and wait for the crowd to thin out.

At the very least, I figured Lela would have a phone.

I gave the cabbie the last of my cash and limped into Lela’s on my sprained ankle. It wasn’t as busy as last time, but there were a good mix of locals and tourists inside. Lela wasn’t around, so I grabbed a table and ordered a drink. The waitress gave me a weird look and brought me some extra napkins to clean myself off with. I tried not to bleed on the furniture.

There were probably only a couple minutes until the Russians caught up with me, so I started looking for a spot to hide the film. Maybe I could convince Lela to hold on to them and mail them back in a few weeks when the heat died down. It was about a dozen canisters, all duct-taped together, and goddamn it if I wasn’t sitting right next to the old piano. The top opened up, and so I stood up and slid them in. Just like the movie.

That’s when somebody grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around. “You son of a bitch!” they said, and slapped me full in the face. Hard.

Yeah, it was Lela.

You see, there’s a minor detail that I left out earlier, but it’s important here. Lela had this other bartender working for her—this Scandinavian chick named Inga—and she was smoking hot. 10 out of 10. Like, Lela’s a cute girl, but this Inga chick was just out of control. Legs like ballistic missiles. Curves bad enough to give you whiplash. And tits . . . Jesus. Those tits. Look, I’m a photographer, not a poet, so just take my word for it. Those fucking tits. Jesus.

Inga had the personality of a box of rocks, too, but fuck—who cares? The first night we were there (the night that Lela and I slept together) she had the night off, but when we came back the second night she was working. I didn’t see Lela anywhere, so hey—fair game, right? I busted out the hand grenade story again, and turns out it works just as well on the dumb ones as the smart ones.

Maybe . . . look, I didn’t know that Lela was in back. I didn’t know that she overheard me tell this Inga chick the same story that I told her the night before. Maybe I would’ve been a little more sensitive if I’d know she could hear. That’s fair.

But she didn’t take it well. And as I found out a few months later, it wasn’t something she was just going to get over. Nope, she turned me around and smacked me with the strength that only months of pent-up hatred can inspire.

What Lela didn’t know (and I hadn’t figured out yet) was that there was a big gash in my scalp right at my hairline from taking a tumble on the pavement. So when Lela smacked me, she sent this big spray of blood all over the table and both of us.

Lela was horrified. “Francis—Francis, what the fuck?” she said.

“Ow,” I said.

So I told her the whole story. There’s something liberating about a woman smacking you, you know. You both know where you stand. There’s no reason to bullshit her; you can say whatever you want. I told her everything.

“So these pictures,” she asked me, “they’re a big deal?”

“A big fucking deal,” I told her. “A humanitarian disaster. The human rights issue of the decade. You can practically see ‘UN sanction’ written in the bottom corner of each frame.”

“Hmph.” She looked at me for a while. I just shut up and let her think. Lela loves to the do the right thing, and this is what I was counting on. Finally she replied. “Alright. Come on.”

I followed her into the kitchen. She pointed me to an empty stool and went to get a wet napkin to clean off my face. I was about to thank her until she touched my face. You ever used vodka to clean an open wound? Jesus, it hurt. She probably enjoyed it, and I can’t say I completely blame her. I did manage not to scream, which was good.

“Now stay here,” she told me, “and I’ll see what I can do for you.” That sounded like a great plan to me; my ankle was really hurting. I pushed my stool back and tried to stay out of everyone’s way.

An hour later, she came back. She was arguing on her cell phone in alternating Arabic, French, and English, which I’ll admit impressed me. It’s no joke to cuss somebody out in three languages. She covered the receiver.

“You’ll sneak out the back with a friend of mine. I’ll hold onto the film for now and mail it to you. What’s the address?”

I was just writing it down when somebody kicked down the front door.

(part 3 here)

(I’m starting a Friday story series, but don’t have a catchy, alliterationable name for it yet.)

Lela’s American Cafe, Part 1

by David S. McWilliams

Let’s get one thing straight from the beginning: I didn’t mean to burn down Lela’s bar. It was an honest mistake, and you can’t hold a guy responsible for something he didn’t mean to do, right?

Lela didn’t see it that way, of course. But nobody got hurt too bad except for me, so I really don’t see what the big deal is.

I even got her a picture of Bogart and Bergman for her new place. It wasn’t autographed like the old one, sure, but it’s also not like Humphrey Bogart is doing a whole lot of signings these days. I put my own name on the back instead, and left her room to add her own. Just like Bogart and Bergman, right? It was a thoughtful gesture, or at least I thought so.

She disagreed. Strongly. Geez, and she wants to lecture me about civility.

Anyway. Maybe this would all make more sense if I backed up a bit.

–

My name’s Francis, and I’m a damn good photographer. You read the Times? You know that photo of the guy in Ferguson with the molotov cocktail? Yeah, that was me. The Libyan rebels with the homemade catapult? The ISIS executions? The big spread of the bulldozers in Zucotti Park a few years ago? All me.

I specialize in riots, war crimes, beheadings, drone strikes blowing up weddings, civilians getting gassed—all that happy stuff. Sometimes it gets tricky; the powers that be don’t exactly go around handing out press passes when they’re about to break international law, you know? Usually I fly in somewhere nearby, hoof it or hitchhike over the border, and work incognito.

Using a digital camera would make that a lot easier because I wouldn’t have to lug around a bunch of film . . . but it just doesn’t feel the same. Call me backward or stubborn, I don’t care. I just like the feel of the old stuff better.

And I never would’ve met Lela if I was using digital. This was back in—when was Georgia, again?—2008, right.

The Russians were really cranking up the propaganda machine and it was pretty clear that Georgia was on Putin’s shit list. I figured that the Russians were going to do some shady stuff, and my editor agreed. By late spring I was on the plane, but I couldn’t exactly land in Russia with an American passport and a bunch of camera equipment without picking up a tail. The plan was to fly through Morocco, land in Istanbul, rent a car, and drive as close as I could before walking the rest of the way in.

Cheap plane tickets are cheap plane tickets, though, and I got held up in Casablanca for a few days. There wasn’t much to do, and the war hadn’t started yet, so I did the only thing I could do: I crashed at a backpackers’ hostel and went out with a bunch of Australians to get hammered.

People always go all gooey when I tell them I was in “Casablanca.” They think it’s like the movie, all romantic. Let me straighten that out for you right now: it’s not. Casablanca’s a dump. A hot, sweaty, smelly, 8-million-strong, piece-of-shit dump. There’s a big mosque, a bunch of shipping containers, and a pathetic little strip of resorts on the beach that are usually empty. Going on vacation? Skip it. Trust me.

The thing is, people fall for the hype. No one had fallen for the hype worse than Lela.

Lela’s an American, like me, but she’s a romantic. She loves those old black and white movies, so a few years after school when she had the money saved up she moved out to Morocco and opened a bar. Can you guess what she named it?

“Rick’s American Cafe.” Not even shitting you.

She set it up just like the movie; she even bought a piano. I heard someone play it once. It sounded like a bunch of hammers in a canvas sack getting dragged behind a pickup truck. Thank god she didn’t hire a pianist.

It’s not the sort of place I usually check out when I’m working—I avoid tourist traps like the plague. But a bunch of the Aussies at the hostel wanted to go, and I tagged along out of some sort of morbid curiosity. A drink, is a drink, is a drink, right?

It turned out to be a pretty cool bar, actually. Good drinks, and pretty cheap. Nice ambiance. Good lighting. I would’ve shot in it, if I’d had the film to spare. Lela took some design classes when she was at Wells, I think.

So we proceeded to start getting shitty. Before long this chick came over. She was cute enough—probably a 6 or 7, I thought—and so we started talking. It turned out she was the owner, her name was Lela, and she was from the States. She got us a round on the house when she found out I was an American, so we kept chatting.

Lela asked me what I thought of the place, and I gave her my honest opinion: I thought it was pretty nice. Good lighting. She asked me if I’d seen the movie, and I said of course. She dragged me over to the bar and pointed to this tiny faded print of Humphrey Bogart in a frame over the taps. There was a signature in the corner; she said it was his.

Privately, I doubt that it was real, but hey—I wasn’t going to rain on her parade. Besides, I’d gotten a better look at her over by the bar, and was thinking that Lela was a solid 7. Maybe 10 pounds too heavy to be an 8. She has these great sleeve tattoos down each arm, and a real cute face. Shorter than I usually go for, but I kinda wanted to fuck her.

I was horny, and bored. Sue me.

So we kept talking about the movie, and I start talking about the cinematography (because let’s face it, there’s some great work in there even if the story is corny as hell). Lela asked me if I was a photographer. I played all modest and hinted at a little bit of my war work. She bit, hard, impressed with how much I “risked my life” to “make the world a better place.” Sure, sure, whatever. I pulled out my old standby story about the little boy and his mom in Iraq; by the time I got to the part with the grenade she was actually crying a little. You could practically hear her panties hit the floor.

–

Let’s get another thing straight before we go any further.

Yes, the thing with the kid in Iraq really happened. I did actually grab a live grenade with my bare hands and chuck it away from a little boy. What, am I going to let a kid get blown up by a grenade? I’m not a monster.

But before you go all teary-eyed on me, think for a minute about how grenades work. If I was close enough to pick it up and throw it, what do you think was going to happen to me when it went off? Forget the kid; I generally try and avoid getting myself blown up whenever possible.

True, maybe I took a few steps towards the kid when that grenade bounced over the wall instead of diving away. And maybe I happened to put my body in-between it and the kid. I won’t deny it.

But his mom said I practically jumped on the thing while pushing him to safety. She said I was a hero. My memory of the whole event is a little fuzzy, but I don’t really believe her. Nobody’s that stupid.

You’d never believe how many times that hand grenade has gotten me laid . . . and Lela bought it hook and sinker. After a little more small talk, we went upstairs and did it. I treated her real well, too, don’t worry about that. I always do, or at least try to.

I’m not just tooting my own horn here—this is relevant later. But we’ll get to that.

(part 2 here)