The Mobile Office
Mr. Singh, his manager told me, was not hiring at this time. Yet an hour later, I jumped off my bike to answer the phone and made out a thick Indian accent over the whirring traffic of Silverlake Boulevard.
“I’ve taken a look at your resume. I would like to speak with you.”
The next morning, the same voice greeted me when I showed up a few minutes late to our appointed meeting at TantraZ, where I’d hoped to find work as a waiter.
“I am not there anymore. I am at my apartment building. I am in the parking lot sitting in my convertible. You cannot miss me.”
Sure enough, Mr. Singh’s navy blue turban and horn-rimmed glasses could be seen from a ways down the driveway, cutting a smart profile above the car body. ”Help me back in,” he said, and so I did, standing behind his spotless Dodge and guiding him into the corner space of a wide car-port.
“Come inside,” he said, clearing off the front seat. ”You went to Columbia University? An expensive school. I also went to school in New York, a cheap one. Baruch College, in the 1970s…”
Soon enough, Mr. Singh came to the point of our conversation: “I need somebody who can sell a lot of wine, and make a lot of money. I called you back because I think you are someone who can learn to be a sommelier.”
Of course I can! I know plenty about wines under $10 a bottle. And as Mr. Singh said, “It’s not rocket science.”
Mr. Singh continued, tapping his hand on the steering wheel and gazing obliquely over his glasses: ”In one month, I am opening a new part of the restaurant. I am applying to the city to make a hookah bar. New patio, new everything. It has been totally redone inside—they like newness around here.” As he spoke, I felt my passion slipping, and I strived to strike that determined, earnest posture of listening so vital to job interview success.
“And also,” he said, “I ran for congress last year.” He ran as a Republican, and became the only one to ever obtain 60,000 votes in his district. ”I work very hard. I work very very hard, but we are up against a vave,” he said, referring—it dawned on me a few seconds later—to the wave of Democratic victories in last year’s elections. Mr. Singh said he needed someone to sell wine and work on the campaign—“someone who can be multi-faceted.”
Given his party affiliation, I suspected our political differences would be great, and so I laid out my beliefs before him: universal healthcare and higher education, the legalization of drugs, the end of corporate welfare.
Mr. Singh was unimpressed: “I don’t think you are on the left,” he said, “I think you are a centrist. You are not framing yourself properly.” His own politics seemed thoroughly entrepreneurial: “I will have a job for everybody. I want everyone to make a lot of money.” He supports lower taxes and a small government. He also supports prop 8.
Mr. Singh claimed he feared gay marriage would lead to population decline, but it seemed more a matter of politics than anything else. “I know that gay marriage will be legal one day…It is a phony issue…only, the harder they push, the longer it will take.”
Our conversation was interrupted by the return of one of Mr. Singh’s tenants, who responded indulgently to a hard line of inquiry about her trip to the grocery store. “I have been here nearly two hours; it doesn’t take that long to get groceries.”
“Ohhh, I went shopping. Would you like to see?”
Mr. Singh oohed and ahhed as the young woman pulled a neon dress from a paper bag—“Oh I like that one. It’s a very nice color.”
She laughed and flirted and ‘Mr. Singh’ed, and sashayed upstairs.
The two of us got back to business in the convertible. I’d love to sell wine, I told him, but I could never work in support of prop 8.
“That is not a problem. You shouldn’t have to compromise your principles for me, and I shouldn’t compromise mine for you.”
“Then we’ll be in touch?” I asked.
“We’ll be in touch.”
