Talks like Columbo

Working at the Elson’s gift shop on the Fontainebleau Hilton shopping arcade. It’s quite a slow Saturday afternoon in a hot, humid day, hundreds of customers come and go elsewhere. I stop to catch a glimpse at the store or stagger through the door, startled by senseless sensor beep. The radio is on, WRLN, Folk and Acoustic Music is on the air, Jambalaya (On The Bayou) lingers in the air.

A short, middle-aged man comes in, wearing a navy blue jogging suit. He looks like Peter Falk. We exchange greetings. He sounds like Peter Falk. In fact, he sounds like Columbo. I stay where I am, management policy says I should follow customers around but I keep reading a book, sitting by the cash register.

The man in the jogging suit looks around the Murano pieces and the obscenely overpriced wooden pelican and talks to me.

“How’s Mr. Elson doing? You know I went to high school with him, in Atlanta. Back then I used to live in Atlanta, you know..”

He keeps talking for about 20 minutes. Always sounding like Columbo, or like Peter Falk in a John Cassavetes movie reading from a Columbo side.

Vinnia, the regional manager got furious when she found out I didn't take a picture of him and didn’t even ask him for an autograph either.

© Eytán Lasca-Szalit, December 2017