Mop Buckets & Pachyderms…
The Pike. Downtown Long Beach. A patchwork of grime, history, and shadows cast by flickering gas lamps. Locked in a ritual of the night shift at World Famous Bert Grimm’s, the oldest parlor in America. Since 1927, this shop has been a sanctuary for tradition, tucked beneath the Sovereign Building—a relic of another time. I’d just finished scrubbing the bathroom, a dark pit with the soul of an abandoned gas station and the chill of a prison cell. The glow of apartment lights trickle in through the high window, casting faint bars of light on cold concrete walls. I fill the mop bucket and push it through the Sovereign’s guts, squeaking wheels and rattling echoes bouncing off the cracked cement walls.
The shop is spotless now, “or as much as an old pirate ship can be”, but the night’s work isn’t done. Outside, the haze clings to empty parking lots, stretching to the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Beyond the asphalt, the Queen Mary looms in the fog like a ghost ship, eternal and unyielding. The freeway spills out here, fading into a tunnel that feeds a side street winding through town. This street is a time capsule, lined with weathered buildings and old-street lamps that stain the mist gold. I’m standing at the shop’s threshold, dumping the yellow bucket into the gutter and filling the veins beneath the city with more stories. The fog starts to thicken… and then they appear.
Out of the black maw of the tunnel, a line of elephants emerge. First one, then another, and another, about twenty in all, marching single file, trunks wrapped around tails like a chain of living memories. The trainer appears halfway through the herd. Slowly he follows, all along knowing who’s really in control. The fog swallows the city’s noise, leaving only the soft pad of massive feet and the surreal rhythm of an impossible parade. Mop in hand, a witness to something both ancient and fleeting, where the real and the unreal collide.
“Hey, asshole, what are you looking at?”
The voice cuts through the quiet. Papa steps out from the doorway. I glance back at him, still speechless, and point toward the parade of elephants. He lets out a raspy chuckle, flicks his cigarette into the river of brown mop water.
“Circus,” he says. “They walk ’em from the train station to the convention center every time they’re in town.” Turning back to head inside. “Finish up.”
still processing the scene as Rick’s shadow disappears behind the door. The elephants vanish into the fog leaving the streets empty again. I grab the mop and head back inside, the surreal fading into the mundane.