My New PA Friend Sam Does Not Fart
He was born and raised in the Bronx, is black, and does not fart. Not around me, anyway.
"Burritos? I want burritos. You can eat whatever you want but before we leave this island I need burritos."
"Burritos is cool with me, man, that's fine."
"No, really, we can stop anywhere you want and get food you like but I need to have a burrito. I could eat a burrito every day for every meal for the rest of my life and die happy. I need a burrito."
He laughed. "Cool. Burritos."
Once he figured out that you pronounce C-H-I-P-O-T-L-E as "chip-oat-lay," Sam knew exactly where to find one of their fine restaurants on our way to JFK. We stopped and I wrote down my simple vegetarian order on a scrap of paper. He even had the good sense to call my cell from inside and ask me what I wanted to drink.
I was reminded of how earlier in the day he held back as we loaded heavy equipment into the production office. He held back to keep the door open for me and when it was my turn to return the favor, I let it close in his face.
"Oh shit. I'm sorry."
"No problem," he said without any hint of frustration.
I am an idiot.
So, once he returned from Chipotle with two burritos, a water and an apple juice, we took off on our supersonic rocketship, actually a KIA minivan with one of the back seats taken out, and he asked me, "You ready for that burrito now?"
I was and said so. I ate the fucker one handed, navigating with the other hand through single lane one-way streets with cars parked on each side, the midtown tunnel, and JFK traffic. By the time I had popped the butt of the burrito in my mouth there was a coating of guacamole shellac on the steering wheel. I wiped my fingers off on the bag and held on to the steering wheel with oversized napkin mitts.
We were on the hunt for Building 77 at JFK airport. We had been charged with the task of... well, it wasn't exactly clear. We had to get customs to check out some cases that we had been given, but we were never told what the proper verb was or what we were to return with. The Production Manager had called me specifically, he said, because he needed someone willing and able to gatecrash the bureaucratic bullshit they expected to encounter at the airport and fight through to success.
"We can't send a regular PA on this job. We need someone with a brain on this." I asked for the rate. "One hundred dollars," he said.
They want more than a PA on a lousy PA rate.
"Okay," I said. "I'll do it." The fact is that I don't get out enough. I work for the kindest and most proactively educational man in show business, but when I don't get out and do jobs for other people I forget how everyone else gets treated at work and I get a little cranky about my job. Shitty jobs like this at bad rates are great reminders of how good I have it. After a round of humping oversized gear through hallways narrower than my shoulders while being scolded for scuffing up the walls while getting paid close to minimum wage, I return to the biggest little office in Manhattan with renewed vigor and appreciation.
We circle the airport twice before Sam insists on stopping for directions.
"That traffic lady," he says, and points to a uniformed and reflective-vested woman standing at a bus-stoppy-looking traffic island. We pull up alongside and asks her where building 77 is. The two of them engage in a fast-paced conversational waltz before she begins giving directions, and I feel as though I am witnessing something that white people are rarely privy to.
This is probably because I don't know any black people and I'm pretty short with people because I assume they don't want to talk to me and have better things to do.
I'm interrupted in my ponderings by the traffic lady. "You listenin', DRIVE-UH?"
I smile.
"I don't miss a trick," she says, and continues with her directions, which I listen to. Closely.
After getting what seem like pretty clear directions we circle around JFK airport another three or four times following different possible interpretations of the gospel of the traffic lady.
"I figure we get back at six. Six would be good. Earlier would be, I would be like yes, so I'm gonna shoot for six so I don't disappoint myself too bad."
"I don't know, Sam. Knowing this job... I don't know. You know? We'll, like, get back. And then? We think we're all done for the day and then they go 'Oh hey thanks just one last thing...'"
"We need you to drive to the Hamptons and pick up some golf balls. Titlest. And they've got to be purple."
Such a bizarre, nonsensical while simultaneously absolutely urgent demand was so totally this job in this business that I laughed so hard I almost drove into a highway divider.
"Sorry about that," I said.
"It's cool," he said. And he didn't even look shaken.
Eventually, we get to building 77.
What happens next is so totally boring and typical of bureaucracies that I won't even repeat it here. You can go read some Kafka or something. He does it better than me. The short version is that I talk to (no kidding) about 15 different people who tell me that they have no idea what I'm talking about and can't possibly help me but that maybe this other person who is kind of far away in a place that is hard to describe will be able to help me. Eventually we wind up at the Terminal 4 arrivals gate in a small, unmarked hallway in between the bathrooms and a counter that sells lottery tickets. A very large woman tells me that I'm in the wrong place but trades me a small yellow badge for my driver's license and tells me to go the wrong way through the arrivals gate and to tell anyone who stops me that I'm going to 'ships'. I get stopped and tell the secutiy guard that I'm going to ships.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"I don't know. I was told to tell you that."
"Do you have a chaperone?"
No one is within ten feet of me besides her. Clearly I don't.
"No," I say.
"You need a chaperone."
Over the course of the bureaucratic pinball game that the airport has played on me, I have learned that I am here at the airport to have the cases in the back of the minivan "registered." I tell the security guard that I am here to have customs "register" the cases and that I was told to say I was going to ships.
"You still need a chaperone!"
"Can you get me one?" I ask.
She groans and flags down an officer. From the time I've spent with Bill I've learned that the best plan for dealing with situations like this is to smile like an idiot and talk to everyone like they're doing you a huge favor.
"Thank you so much! Goodbye!"
The chaperone sleepwalks me to another desk. As he's walking away I say "Thank you so much! Goodbye!" again.
Finally, in this new office that I have arrived at via a chaperoned wrong-way trip through arrivals, everyone knows what I'm talking about.
"You can't register any of this equipment. You need to be the person flying to sign for this."
"Or agent!" I happily point out the exception on the form the gentleman is waving in front of me. I am still smiling like I'm trying to win Miss America.
Someone, unseen, yells from an office around the corner.
"Do you have power of attourney?"
"No!" I respond gleefully. I attempt to counterbalance the apathy and aggression with ever increasing amounts of gladness.
"Then you can't sign as an agent."
"I was hired by this man to get this equipment registered here by customs prior to his seven AM flight tomorrow morning. Is there nothing I can do to complete my assignment?"
Every officer in the customs office comes out to confirm my failure. There is absolutely positively nothing I can do to save myself from failure on this assignment.
And so, after six minivan laps around JFK airport, 15 brief and unhelpful conversations with JFK cogs, and four hours of wasted time, I bid farewell to the agents of the Department of Homeland Security who have gathered in the tiny unmarked hallway next to the lottery counter to seal my fate.
"Thank you all so much. Goodbye!"
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