Some Way to Live

Week done, I went for sushi, and even though I have said I would not go back to the old place, it was a nice evening and thinking of sitting on the veranda and drinking sake and watching the world was just too overwhelming.  Forget that I have quit drinking.  That resolution "had all too short a date."  Thursday night, I lost my mind and ate pizza and drank beer then Campari then whiskey and finished off a box of beautiful chocolate European wafers.

Walking from my car to the restaurant, I was behind a beautiful young couple who practically danced across the parking lot.  At least she did.  She wore the sheerest green mini-dress that was god's way of letting her walk naked with her clothes on.  I watched her from behind, tall, long-legged, tan. I wondered what she looked like from the front.  I already didn't care much for him who was tall and slender, too, with a regal stride, an awful thing in a boy.  I followed them all the way to the restaurant which had been their destination all along or, as I believed, I had willed them there.  But I lost sight of them when they entered the front door.  There were only two outside tables left, so I looked at the waitress and asked if I could take one and of course I could not needing to speak with the hostess for I am me and am allowed such things, and in mere seconds I had given her my order as others around me waited, menus in hand.  A group of children sat, sort of, at the table in front of me.  They were playing a game on an iPad, the new best babysitter. The two sets of parents were at another table.

My sake came right away to the obvious chagrin of a couple holding menus apparently for some time.  As I poured the first cup, the young couple followed the hostess outside.  They got the only table left, the one next to me.

The hostess is from Vietnam and she likes that I ask about her life.  She stayed and we chatted for some time, she asking yet again if I am going to Vietnam and me saying yes but not knowing when, she telling me how strange and beautiful it will be for me, urging me to go.  She is a beautiful woman, married with no children.  I ask her when as if I were a nagging mother, and she tells me as soon as. . . .  She works ten hours a day in her mother-in-law's dry cleaning business and must take care of the in-laws and her husband, cooking every meal and cleaning the house.  It is not right, she says, but it is the traditional way.  Just now, she said, it is prom season, so they are working overtime at the dry cleaners.  "Look at my eyes," she said.  "I look so tired."  Someone should love her more, I tell myself for the thousandth time thinking of how I've never had anyone cook or clean for me except for my mother when I was young.

When she leaves, I look over at the young couple sitting next to me.  I was right about the boy.  He is a sonofabitch, good looking with fuck-you horn-rimmed glasses.  She, on the other hand, is close to everything.  Not really, maybe, but she has a charm about her and pleasant looks and a vivacity that makes me want to join their conversation.  He just can't seem to hold up his end of it, unequal to her intellect in every way, and I want to give her things.  Yes, I think, I am a very loving and giving person this evening.  I chuckle to myself knowing what the evening holds in store.

The little girl, about nine, at the table in front of me, gives me the eye.  She's a little flirt, I think.  She does not look at all like any of the adults at the other table, with the thick dark hair and full lips of a gypsy.  Then I notice what she is doing.  She has an iPhone and is secretly taking pictures of me.  She probably works for the government, I think, or the corporation.  They have fallen to this, using young girls to spy on people.  It is perfect, of course.  She will catch me in some immoral thought.  It will be obvious from the picture.

My food arrives before the young couple have even gotten their menus.  A waitress comes to take the drink orders from the irritated couple who have been holding their menus so long.  They are the sort you would not notice but for their tight-lipped, squinty-eyed discontent.  They have suffered a lifetime of this surely.  They were never like the couple sitting to my right, carefree and entitled.  Somehow, I think, I must do something to provoke that boy.  He will say something smug and I will smash him.  The little girl takes another picture of me, I know, because a light shines from the back of the phone into my eyes. I look at the little devil, but she only stares at the iPhone with an impish grin.  The other kids pay no attention.

The beautiful girl in the wonderful green dress is smart.  Her conversation makes me nervous.

"And I told daddy, 'You can't hate Ghandi.' I mean, how can you hate Ghandi?"  I picture her father, an older version of the boy who sits with her, a giant of some horrendous industry.  When she talks, she laughs.  She has the brightest white teeth I've ever seen.  She calls him darling.  Jesus.  I will have to hit him, I think.  He is a soccer player of some sort.  He talks about it in boring detail.

"I scored a goal in that game," he says doltishly.

"Oh, really?"

"Yes," he says in an almost pleading tone, "you were there.  Remember?"

"I dont' think I was watching."

My love for her intensifies.  They are talking about one of his friends when she raises her chin and laughs out loud.

"Him?  His testicles are bigger than his brains, aren't they?  I mean, he's too aggressive."

I give up thinking about hitting the boy.  That would not be the way to win her.

I am finished eating and drinking as the other patrons begin to get their food.  I want to stay and watch and listen, but I am taking up a table and others are waiting.  Besides, I have to get on with my night.  I must get home and have some whiskey and re-watch the last few episodes from season one of "Mad Men."  The cat is waiting.