It's a big city. It's big in your eyes, and that's what matters. There are other cities that are big for your feet. You have drive to get to the nearest useful place in those cities. Here, everything is compact. You have to look no farther than your where you can leap to to see something that stays with you. Even in empty streets, something draws your attention, if you care to look. But most often, it's the people, their faces, their expressions, their gestures, that draw your attention.
And that's why our actor is here. He is standing in the middle of some sidewalk in some neighborhood. He sees a man standing behind another customer of the hot dog stand he is waiting on. He knows what he wants; he's a regular. Grabbing something quick before his next meeting. Or so what our actor sees in his mind. This man doesn't even notice that he's being observed. No one does unless you catch their eyes. People in the city are aware of the eyes; they don't seem to be aware of each others' physical presence, but they are always watching out for a gaze even if they might be too shy to return the gaze until it's gone. The man in front of the busy man takes the pretzel, not a hotdog, from the fast moving vendor whose livelihood depends a lot on this hour of the day when people start lining up to get his cheap eats. He is also a character, another character in the play that's unraveling before our actor. The vendor is in his late forties, of some mixed origin, Caribbean, a bit Indian, a bit African, but why Caribbean? It's in our actor's imagination. You might see something else, but for now, we think the vendor is some immigrant from the Caribbeans whose parents emigrated there at some point from various poor places in the world, maybe one did so by coercion.
The first man gets his hotdog and he leaves, and the busy man, taking a break from his reviewing his iPhone, tells the immigrant of many origins, without looking at him, that he wanted a jumbo hotdog with everything on it and a can of rootbeer.
The actor's attention moves away from the man. That was just a prelude he saw. The main act has just started when a woman wearing a purple business shirt and designer jeans joins the line. She does so very casually, not seemingly busy at all. She is very stylish in her haircut, makeup, and of course, her shoes, but all very simple, nothing gaudy, nothing screaming out so that everything complements the beauty of her natural existence: her face, her hair, her skin, the shape of her body.
Our actor notices all this and tells his client what he sees. Then they walk up to her in the most casual manner, as if they hadn't noticed her, and join the line. His client keeps quiet, holding a newspaper but not reading it. Nowadays, people don't read the newspaper while standing. So nothing out of the ordinary. The woman looks at the actor, who is standing closest to her, but with enough space to not cause alarm, and smiles at him. He reads a slight bit of timidity and evaluates his next move accordingly. He smiles too, a smile so natural you can never guess that it was calculated, not by the workings of the brain but by experience, which he is sharing with his client who pays him a fortune for the service.
"You work down there for American Airlines?" the actor asks. His client listens attentively without looking like he's eavesdropping. They are standing in front of a huge window, and although it's not a mirror, the client can see enough from the reflection to see how his consultant behaves.
She blushes, but not too much because, in a way, and he knew this, she was expecting him to say something. The way he casually looked at her as they walked over. She didn't know that the two were together or had been waiting there before. She caught his eyes just as they joined the line. She shakes her head and says, "No, I don't. What makes you say that?"
Her tone isn't defensive, a sign that the door remains open for conversation. "Oh, because you remind me of these ladies that work at the airline counter who manage to remain so calm and friendly even when a hundred customers are screaming after learning their flight's been delayed for hours." He says this with so much warmth and confidence that it always made his client feel strange.
"What would you like?" asks the Caribbean-American. Her attention is diverted, but our actor isn't fazed. He accesses the situation, and after she orders, he says, "So not American Airlines down the street."
"No. Good guess. Really? I look calm?" she asks, curious and a little bit on guard.
He shrugs with a smile that relaxes her a little. Enough that she asks him, "What about you?"
"Take a guess."
"Well. I have no idea."
"Take one guess. The worst that can happen is you're a little off," he says, full of enthusiasm, his eyes very attentive. This is a play. This is a play whose reflection can be seen in the huge, dark window before them. There's no drama in this play. It's only a play where people's emotions are portrayed in a fake situation for the sake of the amusement of an observer. Have you ever done this? Just sit there or stand there and look at what people are doing. Some places better than others. Some places' people are more dramatic than others. In Europe people love doing the so-called "People Watching." Here, no one is watching; everyone is busy. But the client is watching. He is not watching a play, but a demonstration on how to pick up girls. His consultant, so far, is doing well, and with a lot of luck, as the client has been told as a major factor besides what he could teach him.
"I will take a hotdog with sauerkraut and mustard," says the actor, when his turn comes up. He notices that the lady hasn't walked away. He has been quite successful. His smile, ever slightly dynamic, is disarming. He is wearing a tight, long sleeve shirt, cream color, fits his body well, but also describes the personality he has very well too: very modern, sociable but not talkative, attentive but not creepy. He isn't always looking at her, but when he does, he looks with a smile. Everything that comes to him so naturally now but are things meticulously analyzed and placed in his curriculum for men who want to be as successful as he is. He wasn't always this successful, but one day, as he had related to this client, "One day I just decided that for the next three weeks I will ask five girls for their phone numbers. The point isn't to get the numbers, though I am sure if I did, I would call. Or not. But the point is to train my ego, to tell it to stop being so big and macho, because the ego gets in the way of a lot of things, makes us cowards, makes us have unrealistic expectations, makes us angry and childish."
"And what happened? Did you go on dates?"
"Sure, very few. I remember more the angry looks of 'Get the fuck away from me, creep!' But that was in the beginning and I learned how to be more confident and that's how you stop being a creep."
"So? What's your guess?" he asks while his client makes his order behind them.
"All right," she finally gives him a big smile as radiant as the sun above them, "You're not an executive, that's for sure, unless today is casual Wednesday for you. So you're.... Cashier for the Korean grocery around the corner?"
They both laughed. The act is over. The curtain is closing and the next act will start soon. It wasn't always so successful, but the clients learn at least as much from the actor's failures as the comparatively fewer successes. And the next day, on a different corner, this client will try something. He won't do exactly what the actor has done, but he will try to bring out the natural manliness in him that the actor is trying to get out there, the kind of manliness that attracts women. The client is impressed. He is hopeful and also ashamed at the same time. One day he would be able to get girls like that. He will line them up in his memory like trophies in some over achiever's living room. His ego is dying for that collection.
