Note: The name -rt B-ll will not appear in this post..
This afternoon, Mr. Rilch and I were in a diner, around 4 pm. There were few people in there, and we were the only ones under 60. We chose a booth from which we could see the TV. That turned out to be one of those fateful decisions.
Shortly after we’d ordered, a loud running commentary began. The source was a man, hereinafter known as Simon*, seated at the counter, near the register, and us. I hadn’t seen him come in, but Mr. Rilch, who was facing the door, said he’d started yammering the minute he’d sat down.
Partly because I wasn’t interested, and partly because he didn’t enunciate very well, I didn’t know what Simon was on about at first. He seemed to be chatting to himself, but so loudly the entire dining room could hear. When he went to singing, I thought, “Well, that’s annoying…but he’s not really doing anything wrong.”
Ha.
Very abruptly, he started in on some kind of doomsday talk. I heard stuff like “target” and “wasteland” and “nobody knows”. I imagine it was Afghanistan-related, but paranoiacs will always find some hook on which to hang their predictions.
I could see that Mr. Rilch was starting to pay more attention to Simon than to his sandwich, gauging his level of threat.
Cassie, the waitress, asked Simon politely but firmly to keep it down.
“I’m trying to help these people.”
“Yeah, but you’re bothering them.”
“Pissing them off,” Mr. Rilch said, but Simon apparently didn’t hear.
Simon continued his discourse, and Cassie told him he’d have to either quiet down or leave. His already aggressive tone kicked up a notch as he began threatening her.
Mr. Rilch raised his voice to say, “Hey buddy, pipe down.”
Simon jumped down from his stool to approach our booth. Mr. Rilch stood up to face him. Now, those of you who have met him know that Mr. Rilch is a Big Guy[sup]TM[/sup]. He and Simon were eye to eye. Same height, both with large frames, but Mr. Rilch is well-muscled—not fat!—while Simon had a big ol’ watermelon gut.
I don’t remember much of the dialogue, as I was struggling to get out of the booth and away from the conflict, but I remember Simon saying “Don’t you touch me”, though Mr. Rilch was standing firm, not even making threatening gestures, and “I’ll kill you, you fat cracker!”
Cassie and the other waitress wedged themselves between the two**. I don’t know what happened then because I ducked behind the counter and made my way to the banquet room where three people were standing and staring.
“He’s mentally ill,” I said, though no one had asked. “He has to be: he went from happy to this so fast.”
Back to the dining room. Simon must have claimed some kind of messianic properties, because when he said “this fat faggot” in reference to Mr. Rilch, Mr. Rilch replied, “That’s not very godlike!” I also remember “You’re lucky you HAVE a wife!” Mr. Rilch had said, “My wife and I came here for a pleasant meal…”
One of the retirees got between them, again; Mr. Rilch backed down physically but not in spirit, while Simon kept yelling and cursing.
Cassie put Simon’s food in a box and told him to get out, he didn’t have to pay***, get out, get out! She pushed him a couple times as he made his slow progress out the door, which brought on more “Don’t you touch me”, but since he outweighed her by at least 75 pounds, she was hardly a threat to him.
He did a 180, coming back claiming he’d forgotten his hat and no one was going to stop him. I took off for the banquet room again. But he really had left his hat, and left after retrieving it.
Somewhere in this, I was in the booth opposite Mr. Rilch, quietly saying, “Sweetie, I have never been more proud of you. Not even when you got on T-3. Not even when you got in the union.”
He didn’t lose his temper. If I haven’t made that clear, I am now. Any fool can throw a punch. He didn’t; he didn’t even curse. What he did was give Simon a new focus for his hostility: someone Simon must have known he couldn’t intimidate or beat down.
Then the cops showed up. Two cars, in fact, but no officers came inside. They must have gotten a statement from someone, but I don’t know who. I asked them if they wanted a statement from Mr. Rilch, but they said no, and headed off in pursuit of Simon.
That’s what one of the retirees told me they were doing, anyway. I borrowed a cigarette from her, and she told me that Simon was a patient at the nearby mental hospital. They’d had problems with him, and with others, but rarely this bad. The owner had asked the hospital administrators, more than once, to cooperate in keeping their residents out of his establishement, but they would do little more than shrug. This may change.
We paid, giving Cassie an enormous tip, and left.
I am proud of Mr. Rilch. He was the only customer with the advantage of size, youth and gender. I would have been disappointed in him if he’d sat there and let someone else be harassed.
I wanted to intervene. So did the woman who gave me the cigarette. The old gentleman did intervene, but only after he saw Mr. Rilch was on it. Not cowardice on his part, just that he wasn’t a match for Simon on his own. Had I been on my own, I meekly admit that I would have done nothing. Not because I would have been afraid—I never was—but because I would have assumed that the intervention of a young white female would only have made things worse.
One of Mr. Rilch’s favorite films is Runaway Train. He performed a monologue from it in the acting class in which we met. “You do what’jou gotta do…and I’ll do what I gotta do. And what happens…happens.”
*Simon was a film circa 1980, starring Alan Arkin. He plays a psycholgist who submits to some kind of government experiment, which causes him to stagger around ranting things like “And who’s responsible for the Hawaiian music in the elevatahs?” in a tremulous Brooklyn accent.
**Mr. Rilch says he “felt bad” for the waitresses, putting themselves in danger like that. I can understand, though. If it had come to blows, there would probably have been property damage. Or perhaps Mr. Rilch would have been arrested, for allegedly targeting this poor afflicted SOB. Lot of hassle with cops and courts, which we don’t need.
***Again, I can understand how she wouldn’t want him to drag out the payment process…but I love how someone can make a scene and get free food. In light of that, I really hope the owner can get the mental hospital to cooperate. I thought mental patients couldn’t go out unescorted, anyway. 