Feast

I dreamed of a table where beautiful people were eating. The were flawless with unlined faces and delicate fingers. They wore silks and garments embroidered with gold and silver. As they ate they ignored one another, noticing only the food they ate. The food were every kind, every animal and vegetable cooked and uncooked in every way I can remember.

8 random things

4:    Sometimes I'm not sure if I'm breaking commandments 

 "I married  to a guy who was currently using a fake ID to avoid arrest.," she said.  "He picked 'Jonesmith.'  He thought using two common last names would be extra generic. Even though he made it up and it wasn't his legal name, it became my legal name once I strapped on the ball and chain."

"You're still married?" I said.

"Yes, but it doesn't stop me from dating," she said. "My husband's doing consecutive life sentences for manslaughter but he doesn't believe in divorce--he's very Catholic.  I tell myself that he has to have something, and that thing is me. My only option is adultery."

"Is it adultery if we're just having dinner?'

"It is if you're Catholic."

8 random things

3:  Incessancy is the mother of reinvention

Lately I dream, in exacting detail, my waking hours.  It's pedestrian HD.  It's led to surreal moments where I make random choices to have better dreams.  Yesterday I hula hooped with strangers at Target.  I can't hula hoop. I have the hip action, but not the grace. I can't manage a stationary gyrate and end up tottering around with the circling of the hoop. It's like a drunken square dance.  I went to a hot sauce tasting and traded salsa shot with a tiny woman apparently lined with asbestos. She charted off the Scoville scale and scorched me under the table. I got a free t-shirt, but my stomach continues to threaten reprisals.    

8 Random Things

2:  Chances of winning 146,107,962 to 1

“We’re not breaking up,” I said. “There was never a together. This is only our second date. We’re only agreeing to continue being strangers.”

“I felt there was much more there between us. Or there would’ve been.  But I think if we stayed together, I’d be settling.”

“Unlike my stomach.”  

We had met in a bookstore.  I was mining the used bin for Steinbeck.  She was reading Ayn Rand, but I still asked her out.  It turned out she wasn’t reading Ayn Rand anyway, she was writing a paper.

“I check the used book stores by the University,” she said.  “Students underline pages and make notes in the margin.  You would be surprised.”

“It’s academic dumpster diving,” I said.  “You’re like a raccoon. And that has to be like Wikipedia anyway-- college is full of idiots with highlighters.”

 “I think I’m ingenious.”

“You win. There’s not enough of that thinking in world.”

Our second date was a lunch.  The steaks were acceptable for matinee prices.  We have arrived before the noon rush, securing a corner booth because I don't like eating at the table islands, vulnerable to cutthroat waitress traffic.  There a special wrongness to being dumped at lunch. It’s like being a band pulled from headlining the main stage and shuffled to a second stage tent sponsored by the Rotary club,  or  like being a character killed off screen.  I prefer center stage rejection—crowded restaurants in prime time.  I like my heartbreak with thought and planning, please trample with care.

“At least you told me before we ordered,” I said.

“We can still finish this date. But I don’t want to settle,” she said. “You would be a door prize and I want the lottery.”

The waiter arrived and I stood up to leave.

“I am the lottery,” I said.

“Where are you going? I drove.”

“A dramatic exit is worth the walk,” I said. 

It wasn’t.  It was too much time calculating my own odds.   

8 Random Things

 1: I never manage a dull breakfast

 I was sitting in a diner waiting out the morning traffic. The diner is built like a stainless steel cigar box with 24 hour neon piping. I can't eat the food any more, but the hot chocolate isn't from powder and the people watching offers a wide slice of the city. Five minutes into my feeble stab at a  crossword puzzle, someone joins me at my booth.

She was small woman with a large purse. I looked at her and then around the diner. The booths are half empty. The diner does a brisk morning trade, but most are to-go orders. I  can enjoy the sense of people without
the linger of crowd.

I start to ask the woman if she'd like her own booth, but she starts talking. She's dressed in lawyer casual. Her hair is beautiful, the kind of management that requires salon appointments months in advance. I would think she was attractive if she would stop talking. She doesn't. I wait. She talks until the waitress arrives and then she orders. By then I've missed my window.

I return to my crossword puzzle. Minutes pass and then I hear her stop talking. It's quiet. I look up and she's looking at me.  And now I notice she's wearing no wire or earphone and realize she's been talking to me.  I've become used to the cell phone mental ward, strangers jabbering to people only they can hear.  I nod my head  and the dam breaks. She continues the sudden conversation  until her breakfast arrive, a massive stack of waffles. I set my crossword aside now.  My jealousy for waffles climbs in the backseat to watch her eat. This is like watching a snake swallow a watermelon.

The conversation never slows as the food disappears. I'm waiting for her to pause. Actually I'm waiting for her to choke, inhale a syrup soaked bite of waffle. She's like a ventriloquist casting herself.  She finishes every bite and then sighs. She stops talking again and the quiet is loud. Then she starts crying. I offer her a napkin.

"Waffles always make me cry too," I say. It's the first thing I've said to her. She smiles, pulls the napkin apart, and then continues to share me the last seven years of her life.