After a cortisol/cancer producing week at the factory, the weekend was slow and lovely. I have difficulty remembering a more pleasant few days away from the factory. My body feels wasted from stress and abuse, but my spirit feels fine. There was weather and music and the loveliness of the house and books, and there were friends and strangers and three days of lassitude without exercise of any kind. Who knows how these things work. Sometimes they do.
Sunday was a simple continuation of Saturday. I met my friend for brunch at one of the new hot restaurants in my own home town (the N.Y. Times just listed the city as one of the top places to visit, but most of the article was about restaurants in our little neighboring hamlet), a place that began with a prix fixe menu that has gotten rave reviews. It is a small place with a few tables and a bar which, of course, is where my buddy and I chose to sit. It is a fabulous interior, rich with paintings and brass and dark woods and they are interested in hanging one of my pictures which I normally would eschew but the place really is lovely, so. . . . I had already decided that the gym was out of the question for yet another day, and so I ordered one of the expensive mimosas. We tried chatting with the barman, but he was an awkward fellow, an uncomfortable mess of uneasy body movements and a strained smiles. "There's just a gene out of place somewhere," said my buddy. Something bad had happened to him somewhere along the line. And as lovely as the place was, the food was strained, too, reaching and falling short, I thought. I felt heavy with truffle oil and pork belly when I finished my scrambled egg omelet. Still, I thought, I want to hang one of my pictures in there.
We took the short walk up to the Boulevard. I wanted to spy on the chairs that I have ordered, the darker version of the chairs that are in my house now. "As soon as they bring them," my buddy said, "you are going to want the other ones." "Yes, you are probably right," I said. "That's the way things seem to happen."
My ex-wife had opened up a shop just off the Boulevard, across from a cool new bookstore, and I wanted to walk down and look in. "Go ahead," said my buddy. "I'll give you fifty dollars if she is in there. She's never been there any time I've gone in." He told me there was a gorgeous blonde who worked there. I wanted to see for myself. You can write the rest, of course. As soon as I walked to the door, I was eye to eye with my ex. Shit, goddamned, motherfucker--I was wearing a shirt and flip-flops that I had when we were married oh-so-many years ago. I wasn't prepared. She looked good, of course, for the shop is a women's clothing store, and she was made up for the part. Her silhouette, as I've said before, is one that always attracts me and her personality had changed little. We chatted for a bit and I caught up on her family, especially her grandmother who I always loved and who is doing well at 93 now. And after a few minutes, I said goodbye and we returned to the street.
"Fuck you. . . where's my fifty dollars asshole?"
"Bad luck. I swear, she's never been there before. You were good, though. You seemed comfortable and confident."
"Did I already say fuck you?"
My diet, having changed since I got sick, has not had much fat in it, and I was feeling heavy and in need of purging. "Let's go to the little cafe up the street that serves the smoothies," I said. "I need one of those green drinks."
The cafe is owned by a young string bean of a hipster with tats and a beautiful hippy girlfriend who grew up in Hawaii. He always has great motorcycles in front of the outdoor seating and is super-duper friendly. We sat at a table and ordered and his girl came over and giggled and chatted and the greens with ginger seemed to be setting my gyroscope right again. "This is on me guys," the owner said. "I've had a good week." We protested of course as we rarely buy anything from him, but we'd gone with beautiful women before and perhaps seemed cooler than we are, I don't know. And then my buddy was eating a bacon pancake with the owner's wife that her stoned neighbor had made for them. My friend, who has a lot of money and business interests and who is an inventor and has had much to do with trademarks and patents asked if they had copyrighted the name of their business which was a good name. They hadn't and he told them what they needed to do and needed to do badly as they were about to franchise the business, and then suddenly there were mimosas with good champagne (he brought it out to show us) and my buddy asked if the owner knew the woman walking her dog across the street saying she was beautiful, and then the owner was crossing the street and pointing back to his place and coming back with a wink and a grin with the woman and her friend, sitting them at the table next to us. Boy, he was slick, and there they sat with mimosas, too, and my buddy struck up a conversation about their dogs. They were from South America, one from Columbia and the other from Venezuela, and both were nice and easy to chat with, and I could tell my buddy was having a good time. But the afternoon was getting late now and I had some things that I needed to do and I said I would have to go. This was the time for my friend to close the deal, but he didn't close the deal but stood up with me saying it was nice to meet them. We left a big bill on the table for the owner in spite of his objections. He and his wife are surely importing drugs or illegal contraband, but they are certainly the kind of people you want to know. And then we were around the corner and I was chiding my pal. "I should have gotten her number or given her mine," he said ruefully. "You couldn't close the deal. I have no idea how to do it. I can't even open the negotiation and have never closed a deal in my life. Maybe you should go back and give her your card and tell her she is beautiful or something." He just looked at the ground in front of him. Neither of us had any idea how that part went.
After dinner with my mother, I came home to have a whiskey. I had no impulse to turn on the television and little to read. I put on some music and sat and drank and thought un-bored and comfortable. In a little bit, I pursued the books on my iPad and found that I could get interested in the Cheever short story collection again, and so music and Cheever and whiskey transported me to the evening's end.
This morning I read about the Golden Globe Awards in the Times. They lambasted them as boring and far too socio-political, and I was glad I had not had any interest in them. But two movies I saw at the little art theater down the road with a girl I liked won awards and a third one, too. It all seemed so long ago, so last year, and the little buzz from the weekend was still hanging on. I'm sure it is the music and the prettiness of my home right now and I'm sure that this week will knock all of that out of me, too, but the weekend has become part of the DNA of memory. It was not about what happened but about how it felt, all tone and mood and atmosphere. I have bathed in it and am cleansed.
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