Con (H)air
The time I almost met Nicholas Cage
Awhile back I was working at a local bar. It was in Las Vegas but a far cry from the strip and all the places you’d likely see a celebrity. The location was a stone throw from million dollar houses but it also had Section 8 housing behind so the clientele on any given night was a crap shoot. My buddy and I were just starting our shift, gearing up for a busy happy hour when a couple walked in. He was a slim man, kind of awkward, not particularly tall. I remember surveying him as I greeted them, walking the length of the bar as I judged him from afar. He looked familiar, almost like a celebrity, but in the most obvious fashion. In the land of hipsters, everyone has a fedora and a beard.
I walked up to my friend and said under my breath “Look at this Nicholas Cage-looking mother fucker.” My buddy snickered.
I grabbed my burrito and began to make my way to a table opposite the bar. I sat down, still watching him and his girl, a young thin Asian woman, most likely not over 25. I snicker and chuckle, shaking my head as I tear into my lunch, thinking to myself how cheap this guy looks. He was wearing a sport coat, oversized, clearly not tailored. A fedora on his head camouflaged his unkempt hair. It was pulled down to the edge of his large dark glasses, the lenses so shaded you couldn’t make out anything underneath. He had a thin beard grown long and scraggly, almost black as if he’d colored it in with Just for Men in the parking lot. His brown hair jutted out the bottom of his fedora, thin and sparse, and I can distinctly remember the rows of fresh hair plugs showing through the strands. Although he did have a quality about him that seemed familiar, I immediately took him for an impersonator.
The other bartender comes up to me and whispers “Hey, I think that’s Nicholas Cage!”
I surveil again and immediately dismiss the idea. The sloppy dye job, the ill fitting clothes, the ungroomed hairline. There was no way. But after everything, it was the glasses for me. Every junkie piece of shit begging for a dollar comes in with glasses on. I mean, who is going to wear sunglasses indoors at night time, right?
Another one of my buddies sitting next to him begins to get suspicious so he gets up and starts pacing the bar, walking back and forth behind him, studying him, all very obviously. All of a sudden he and the other bartender converge on my table, convinced that is, in fact, the real Nicholas Cage. So I study him again. I squint. I turn my head sideways. I think to myself what would Nicholas Cage look like right now if he was in the downslope of his career, went too hard on the blow, and hung out at shitty local dives in the greater Las Vegas area.
I’m up now. Out of my seat and taking a large loop around the perimeter of the bar. I come up from the other side and peek at him through the bottles like a jungle cat surveying a kill. I see his drink is almost empty, and I head over.
“Would you like another, sir?” I say in my best fake bartender voice.
He puts a hand up to indicate no, but I persist. “A water then?”
He uses his hand to indicate he’d like the check, as if air signing something. This is the moment, all or nothing, so I just stand there staring, acting as if I have no idea what he wants. I want to hear him say it.
“We’ll take the check,” he says and pulls out a credit card. The voice is spot on but then again, I knew a midget that could do a mean Christopher Walken. I had to be sure.
“Oh, no problem. Can I see your ID please?” I say, but inside I’m doing cartwheels, all along thinking I’ve got him now.
He throws his license, Nevada issued, onto the bar. I pick both cards up and walk over to the cash register. While I could’ve just as easily checked his ID on the bar, I’m over at the point of sale, pretending to verify that the license is real, while the other employees crowd around me for a look.
It says Nicholas Cage.
We take five more seconds oogling the ID and making stupid noises, star struck beyond comprehension, before I compose myself and charge him for his TWELVE Maker’s Mark, neat. I present the bill. He scribbles wildly before they’re up and out the door. I grab the check presenter, clutching it to my chest like a child that doesn’t want to let go of their favorite toy. With them now gone, we’re all running around wildly, shrieking about how Nicholas Cage was just sitting there. Even the guests sitting directly to his left and right had no idea what is going on. We spend the next ten minutes regaling each other about every moment; what I said, what he said, what someone else did. It was reminiscent of two teenage girls recounting the stories of their first kiss.
I walk over to the register, presenter in hand, knowing that this would be the last time I opened it and saw Nicholas Cage’s name inside. I didn’t want to open it but I couldn’t stand to wait, like it was Christmas morning or something. The others crowded around, peering over my shoulder, grumbling amongst themselves as I slowly pulled the two sides of the presenter apart. Hand written by the man who escaped Alcatraz with Sean Connery, who made out with Angelina Jolie, who traded faces with John Travolta, and who saved the world from an entire plane of the most notorious criminals on earth. There, right above the scribble of his signature, was a $10 tip.