The Green Turtle

“They say creative destruction is a process by which capitalism selectively destroys things,” I said to the enormous green turtle, who was standing in front of the new building across North Glebe Road and gesturing to the oncoming traffic.
“What?” said the turtle, voice muffled by the green fabric of the costume. I moved a little closer.

“Like the bar. I am going in there for the first time. How long have you been open?” The Green Turtle is a sports bar that opened on the ground floor of the new building across the street from where I work, and I was sitting looking at mounds of papers on my little circular coffee table when my co-workers marched by at the stroke of five and announced they were headed for the new bar across the street.

I said I would join them, and began shutting down the office system, which has now become a model of cyber-security, a network so impervious to intrusion that the employees can’t log on. I walked across at mid-block, which I realized at the half-way point was a near sure way to commit suicide in the rush-hour dimness of deep January.

“You know, things prosper and things fail. Like Kodak shutting down after 131 years, and you guys just starting out a new restaurant.”

“I am just a bartender,” said the turtle, adjusting its head. “I get to come inside in a while.”

“It is cold,” I said. “I am glad I am not working the pavement. Where are people supposed to park?”

“Under the building, I guess,” said the muffled voice.

“Are you a girl turtle?” I asked.

“No, I am a cold woman,” said the voice, and raised two green hands to lift the headpiece up. I got a glimpse of tawny blonde hair and bright blue eyes.

“Cold hands, warm heart,” I said as the turtle-head dropped down.

“You don’t know the half of it,” she said, turning her head slightly so her human eyes could see out the black mesh that covered the apertures of the turtle’s frozen face.
“See you inside,” I said, and the turtle gave me a little wave.

The restaurant is one of those starkly antiseptic places with plenty of little wooden tables and staff in black Green Turtle t-shirts standing in clusters, no customers to serve. The bar is around the back, and has an assortment of those narrow tables with fixed benches filled with some twenty-something early adopters. There were a few stools in front of the bar, not enough, I thought, hard wood ones, and a woman was munching chicken wings from her perch on one of them.

My co-workers were playing a video card game that accepted dollar bills but gave nothing back.

I ordered a pedestrian white wine, kicking myself when I discovered that a modest pour cost $7.50, when apparently the happy hour well drinks were only $2.00.
I drank it as the sound bounced off the hard surface of the walls and dozens of flat-screen televisions played either a soccer game or ESPN’s sports center.

The stool was hard, the sound was irritating, and the bar featured colorful beer-taps that made it difficult to see the bartenders. Amanda was one, and the woman with the chicken wings worked for the Smithsonian and could not wait to retire.
“Me too,” I said. “But it doesn’t seem to be in the cards.”

She might have wanted to talk, but I did not want to switch drinks to the loss-leader hard stuff, and decided to walk over to Willow. I put on my coat and hoisted my leather satchel on my shoulder as I bade farewell to my co-workers.

It was full dark when I got back on the street and traffic was heavy. The Turtle was gone, and I hoped she was warm.

I contemplated crossing at mid-block, but it might have been fatal. I walked up to the crosswalk at Fairfax Drive and dodged the commuters who were waiting for the light with their cars across the wide white bands of paint where the pedestrians were supposed to walk.

The breeze was chilly and I shrugged my scarf up around my neck as I trudged along. Willow beckoned two blocks up, a warm orange glow emanating from the window.

I tugged the door open and saw Old Jim at his usual spot.

“I was just about to leave,” he said. “No one here tonight.”

I looked up the bar, which was mostly full. Jerry the Attorney was attacking a salmon kebob, and he was flanked by a pert brunette with an enormous diamond on her ring-finger. “Still a pretty good crowd, even if it isn’t our crowd.”

I took off my coat and hung the satchel on one of the hooks under the bar where the women stash their purses. The chair was comfortable, I realized, with just enough padding to welcome my butt. Liz-S was behind the bar, and Jasper was working and not hanging out on the civilian side of the heavy dark wood. A glass of $5 happy hour white appeared, and I realized how warm and comfortable Tracy O’Grady’s place is.

“I stopped at that new sports bar on the way over,” I said, a little embarrassed at my infidelity. Jim snorted.

“What did you think?” he growled. “I never met a bar I couldn’t like on some level.”
‘Too new, too young, too loud, and not right,” I said. I sipped the wine with satisfaction. “It is sort of like the Three Bears porridge. Cute turtle, though.”

“Don’t care for them, myself,” he said and took a pull on his Bud long-neck. We bantered with Jerry about legal crap he was doing and discovered the woman with the huge rock was from Omena, Michigan, a hamlet north of Traverse City on the Leelanau Peninsula. She was astonished that anyone in Washington had heard of the place, and a woman on the other side of Jim looked up suddenly from her hand-held device and informed us that she had just been stood up by text for an internet date.

“Did you hear about Kodak declaring bankruptcy?” asked Jim, after we talked Michigan geography with the outstretched palms of our hands, and commiserated about the lack of civility in on-line romance.

“Yeah, the world turned upside down. My Uncle used to work for them. He did some work on the very first digital cameras, the technology they invented but wound up eating their lunch.”

“Did you get a picture of the turtle?” he asked.

I took another satisfying sip of wine, happy to be in the place I was supposed to be. “No, I didn’t. I imagine that would have been a Kodak moment.”

Jim scowled. “Get ‘em while you can,” he said.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com