The Dimwit

Around noon at the Dollar Saver Supermarket Marcus Applebaum was sitting in the company lounge sipping tepid coffee, when Harry Wong eased down beside him. A pudgy, gnomelike man in his late seventies, Harry bagged groceries, ran down errant shopping carts in the market parking lot and shelved fresh produce. “With all the pretty young girls here at the store it’s a wonder you’re still not married,” as Harry quipped as he unwrapped a tuna fish sandwich alongside a bag of potato chips,

“Got no girlfriend, much less a loving spouse,” Marcus returned dourly. 

“And why’s that?” Harry cracked open the potato chips, which he scattered alongside the sandwich.

“Because I’m a dimwit. Do you know what a dimwit is?”

“Yes, of course.” Harry, who was just about to take his first bite, stared at a spot above Marcus’ left earlobe where the far walls converged. “By definition, a dimwit is an incompetent fool,  a stupid and thoroughly inept person.”

“Correctomundo!” Marcus shot back. “I’m twenty-eight years old, currently live in the basement of my parents’ home and haven’t dated in years. Worse yet, on my meager salary, I can't afford to buy a home and will eventually end up closeted away in some sleazy rooming house, eking out a bare-bones, hand-to-mouth existence.” 

The vitriolic diatribe, angst and self-loathing  were intended to set Harry Wong back on his oriental heels, but after only a brief pause, the elderly man with the wire-rimmed bifocals replied, “Change is never painful, only the resistance to change.”

“And now you’re talking in esoteric riddles.” Marcus stared across the table in mild consternation then began waving a palm back and forth in front of the Chinaman’s benevolent face.  “What’s the sound of one hand clapping?” 

Unphased by the histrionics, Harry sipped at his apple juice and raised an onion and chive potato chip to his lips. “Regarding your personal dilemma,” he picked up on the previous conversation, “sometimes a person looks in all the wrong places for the solution to a seemingly insolvable predicament.”

“And you know where a reasonable solution might lie?”

Harry’s features dissolved in an opaque smile. “I can think of one even as we speak.”

Marcus wasn't fooled by the metaphysical mumbo jumbo. Harry Wong knew diddleysquat about the train wreck that was his pathetic life. “And what might that be?” 

“Perhaps I’ll tell you,” Harry returned in a soft-spoken tone, “but not today.” 

* * * * *

The following afternoon, Marcus was working the twelve-items-or-less cash register with Harry bagging groceries as they rolled off the conveyor belt. A middle-aged woman wearing rhinestone-studded glasses and sporting an Etienne Aigner handbag blurted, “Excusssse me!” She waved a glossy set of manicured fingernails fitfully in the air. “Put my eggs in a separate bahhhhg.”  

“Yes, I certainly will,” Harry replied in a servile tone and nudged the plastic carton to one side.” When the woman was gone, he looked up, both hands flitting frenetically over his head with fingertips splayed. “Excussssse me,” he croaked in a high-pitched falsetto. “Put my priceless, heirloom  eggs in a separate bahhhhg, you sniveling turd of a Chinaman!”

“Yes, the testy bitch was a bit full of herself,” Marcus agreed.  

“Mind is everything. What we think, we become,” Harry replied, replacing bathos with a measured thoughtfulness. “At least that’s what the Buddha had to say about narcissistic women with ridiculously expensive tastes.” “The world’s a looking glass,” he expanded his monologue as a black woman with two young toddlers stepped into the queue and began laying her purchases on the checkout counter. “It gives back to every man a true reflection of his own thoughts. Rule your mind or it will rule you.”

 “What are your thoughts about Thomas Hardy?” Harry suddenly shifted the conversation elsewhere once the black woman had left the aisle.

“The Victorian novelist?”

“Who else?”

“Jude the Obscure, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd,” Marcus replied. “Hardy was  probably the best of all the nineteenth century English writers.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Harry returned, “having never read a single book you just mentioned.”

Marcus stared at the man incredulously. “Then why, in the name of God, would you-”

Without further elaboration, Harry spun about on his heels and hurried away. “Nothing ever makes any sense with this delusional Chinaman,” Harry mused as he watched Harry Wong disappear behind a display of Ragù Spaghetti sauce. “He talks a mystifying mix of esoterica and eschatological riddles bordering on flagrant silliness, and yet there’s a kernel of wisdom that I can’t quite quite wrap my brain around.” 

* * * * *

One day when they were relaxing in the staff lounge on coffee break, Harry went off on yet another of his mystical rants. “Sometimes it's better to be kind than right. You don’t need an intelligent mind that speaks, but a patient heart that listens.” “Happiness,” he pounded the table forcefully with a dramatic flourish, “will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have, because the past is gone, the future not yet here. There's only one moment for you to live, and that’s in the present moment.” “If you cannot find a good companion to walk with, walk alone, like an elephant roaming the jungle. It’s better to be alone than with those who hinder your progress, which is another way of saying work out your own salvation. Don’t depend on others.”

“Elephants I can live without,” Marcus observed. “All I need is a hot babe like Sheila Dumbrowski at the customer service counter.” Sheila Dumbrowski was a platinum blonde with a body like Marilyn Monroe and brain the size of a thistle seed.  

“Sheila’s got shit for brains and has slept with half the staff in upper management,” Harry observed in an uncharacteristic display of coarseness. “But what if there was such a creature, a hidden gem of a woman who was reasonably attractive, intelligent, witty, an admirer of nineteenth century literature and would make a wonderful wife.”

Marcus laughed rather darkly. “I’d skip the first date and ask her to marry me on the spot.”

“Good choice!” 

“I’d marry her in a heartbeat.” Marcus stared at the enigmatic Chinaman curiously. “So where is this endangered species?”

Harry glanced at the clock on the far wall. “Too late! Too late! Got to get back to work.” He collected the trash in front of his chair. “Tomorrow first thing in the morning I’ll show you where true happiness lies.”

* * * * *

Harry Wong never showed up for the early shift. Marcus asked the supervisor what happened. “Flat tire… rusty nail. Harry will be here in another hour or so, once the gas station repairs the leak.”

Sure enough the balding Chinaman resurfaced shortly before eleven o’clock, but Marcus had been reassigned to the outside loading dock to empty an eighteen-wheel container truck of fresh vegetables. In the late afternoon, Harry hunted him down in the bowels of the empty vehicle where he was signing off on the bill of lading. “The mind is everything. What you think you become,” he spoke with uncharacteristic gruffness. “Come with me.” Harry led the way back into the store and pulled up near the deli counter. “What exactly do you see?”

“I see Rhonda Flemming slicing a block of Gruyère Swiss Cheese.” Rhonda was a chubby, dark-haired girl with Coke bottle glasses and a painfully shy personality.

“You’re right about the girl but wrong about the cheese. The holes are too large for Gruyère. It’s probably Emmental, Appenzeller or one of the more exotic blends.”

“You brought me here to discuss the unique qualities of cheeses?”

Harry scowled and looked away. “At the company Christmas party last December Rhonda confided that she was a hardcore bookworm, who reads all the classics, especially the Victorian writers, Hardy in particular. She hasn't been dating lately because most of the guys she meets are either knuckle-dragging dolts, or lechers.” “The other day I went back and told her what you said about skipping the first date and asking the woman to marry you on the spot.”

Marcus’ mouth sagged open and he suddenly felt lightheaded, as though his brains were turning to mush. “You  mentioned me by name?”

“Certainly did. Why beat around the bush?”

“What’d she say?”

“Rhonda claims she’s not that emotionally desperate and wouldn’t accept an engagement ring much before the second or third date.”