Inside the Actor's Studio

Sack news is piling up. But we're still trying to finish up the Cuba file.

***

The lobby bar at our resort was an interesting place.

It was a modern, elegant room with a high ceiling. One side was opened directly to an expanse of white sand and then the turquoise water of the Caribbean Sea. When it was windy, large translucent screens came down from the ceiling to protect patrons from the elements. This gave the place a very exotic feel. At night, it also made for some curious shadows.

The lobby bar was open twenty-four hours a day. It was almost always a beehive of activity. Even at eight in the morning, it could be hard to find a seat.

***

On most mornings, I stopped by the lobby bar after breakfast to have an espresso. The regular "American coffee" served at the breakfast buffet was a vile substance. It tasted like liquified cardboard might, if there was such a thing.

The lobby bar served espresso and cappuccino, in addition to alcohol. This made it a popular place for the coffee drinker in the morning and after dinner.

During the early morning hours, it was also a popular place for folks who probably drink too much alcohol.

***

I met Oscar in the lobby bar every time I went there in the morning. We didn't plan to meet. It just worked out that way.

Even though it was before nine o'clock in the morning, Oscar would always be drinking beer. I'm not saying that he takes too much of the drink, of course. I'm just saying that he likes to get his money's worth when he takes an all-inclusive vacation.

***

Oscar and I would spend an hour or so watching people come and go from the lobby bar.

Our favourite fellow customer was a deeply-tanned gentleman who appeared to be in his early fifties. He wore a pair of sunglasses which we never saw him remove. Oscar told me the man was from the Czech Republic. I'm not sure how Oscar knew this, but I think it might be true.

The Czech man had a shock of white, wavy hair. He also wore a very neat, white goatee. The goatee was trimmed with great precision. The deep tan seemed to enhance the whiteness of the hair on his head and face. It certainly made for a striking contrast.

Oscar said the man looked like a cross between Colonel Sanders and Kenny Rogers.

The man always sat by himself in the lobby bar. On most mornings, he would sit at a table absently sipping cappuccino. On a few occasions, he did the same with a glass of rum punch. He always used his left hand to hold his drink. There were two large gold rings on this hand.

He didn't have any rings on his other hand. But there was still something notable about it. The man was missing his pointing finger.

Oscar says he always feels vaguely uneasy when he sees someone who has lost a finger.

***

On several mornings, the Czech man wore a crisp linen suit and a shirt opened at the neck. The suit was a vanilla colour, but the shirt was white. On his head was a white fedora with a thick black band. A neatly folded handkerchief sat smartly in his breast pocket.

On his feet was a pair of expensive leather sandals.

Oscar said the man looked like he came "straight from Central Casting." I think he could be right about that.

***

On one lazy morning, the Czech man wore a blue velour track suit and a pair of white loafers. Instead of a fedora, a blue beret sat snugly on his noggin. And, of course, he wore his sunglasses.

This was the same morning when Oscar and I agreed the Czech man was most dapper fellow either of us had seen for some time.

***

Dapper, according to Wiktionary, means neat, trim or stylishly dressed.

Oscar says nobody aspires to be dapper anymore. He says it has gone completely out of style. He also thinks this is a good thing.

"Besides," he exclaimed, "no one has time to be dapper these days, anyway."

I told him I really hadn't given the matter much thought.

***

Oscar says he's never been a big fan of the dapper look.

If he ever starts to dress in a dapper fashion, he said it would be a sign that he has gone completely crazy. If this were to happen, Oscar says I should punch him very hard in the face, so he can come to his senses.

I told him I would be happy to help.

***

It was interesting to see both Czechs and Slovaks at the Cuban resort.

Oscar says the formation of the two countries and the dissolution of Czechoslovakia had to be one of the smoothest political separations ever. With so much bloodshed in countless world hot spots, he said the Czechs and Slovaks were like a couple who had a "good" divorce.

According to Wikipedia, it was actually a "Velvet Divorce."

Oscar thinks the Czechs and Slovaks should be in charge of sorting out some of the world's conflicts because of this. He said the Czechs and Slovaks would investigate each conflict and then come up with a resolution that would be binding for all of the relevant combatants.

"Whatever the Czechs and Slovaks say goes." he said emphatically.

This is the kind of thing people talk about when they drink beer before nine o'clock in the morning.

***

An English couple of indeterminate age were also regulars at the lobby bar. They looked like they were in their forties, but they could've easily been a pair of worn out thirty-year-olds, too.

It was really hard to tell.

***

The English man was very big and beefy. He also had a very severe-looking brush cut. This made it easy to see the multitude of scars on the back of his skull.

His face might be best described as muscular in appearance. Oscar disagreed with this. He said the man's face resembled a bag of potatoes.

I'm sticking with muscular.

***

Oscar said if Central Casting received a request for an English soccer hooligan, it would not take long to fill the order.

"This guy," he said, jerking his thumb discreetly behind him, "would easily score the gig."

Oscar was probably right about this. The guy wore a different version of an England soccer jersey every day. He even had a chipped front tooth.

***

After his first day in the sun, the Englishman acquired a furiously-red sun burn. Oscar said this made the man's face look like an angry bag of potatoes.

I thought it just made his face look red and muscular.

***

The Englishman's wife had long, straight and lifeless hair. She was deeply-tanned, but in a way that left her skin wrinkled and drawn. This seemed to give her a permanent look of dull amazement.

It would be a grave omission if one did not, at this point, mention her breasts. Simply put, they were very large and gravity-defying. They were so clearly enhanced by surgical means that Oscar said he was surprised he couldn't see a price tag dangling from them.

***

The English couple began their day at the lobby bar by sitting together in a wordless stupor. Each of them sat slumped in a chair nursing a glass of beer.

Oscar says "drink nursing" is a lost art. I have no idea about this.

There were only brief moments where we saw the couple interact with each other. The rest of their time was spent staring into the distance. Occasionally, the man would take a draw of beer from his glass. He would lick his lips after each drink. Then he would grimace and continue gaping. Most of the time he looked like he was trying to think of something to get angry about. Just when it looked like he might think of something, he seemed to lose his train of thought. Then he would have a quizzical look on his face for a while.

***

Oscar said it's possible the couple were hired by the resort to provide live, unannounced performance art for patrons of the lobby bar.

I think he could be right about that.

***

Another lobby bar regular was a trim, but nondescript middle-aged man.

Oscar said he thought the guy was a Canadian, but I didn't hear him speak at all, so it was hard to tell. He always sat alone drinking cappuccino and smoking a cigar. Every now and then, he took a pen from his breast pocket and wrote in a notebook that lay on the table.

When he was finished, he would put the pen back in his breast pocket until he decided to write again.

***

Oscar said the man was probably a professional writer. This could be true.

He figured the guy was probably making notes about Colonel Kenny Rogers, the English soccer hooligan and his withered, but well-endowed wife.

He could be right about that, too.

But something tells me the guy could have been writing about the two knobbly-kneed, sunburnt hosers from Canada, too.

One wore a Panama hat and drank beer before nine in the morning. The other wore a ball cap with the insignia of the Toronto Maple Leafs and drank more espresso than he probably should.

And even though the Colonel and the English couple had their interesting qualities, the writer was probably more intrigued by the pair of Canadians. Undoubtedly, he would have noticed the dazed, bewildered look of two cul-de-sac dwellers.

The two men, the writer likely concluded, probably arrived at the lobby bar straight from Central Casting.

***