A Dinner

On a Friday night I found myself at La Petit Pomplemouse in a part of Beverly Hills which remains unfamiliar to me, even to this day. A woman who looked about my age talked at me from across the table. I could not remember her name; it was either Lindsey or Linda. But she had been speaking of her roommate for some time, and I was certain that her roommate was called Joanne.

Catching the waiter approach our table from the corner of my eye, I ceased poking the slightly undercooked filet mignon in anticipation of his brief intrusion to inquire about the quality of our meal. The waiter reached us and waited for Lindsey to finish her thought. He inevitably inquired and I told him the filet was very good.

Lindsey innocently pondered her response. “The food is absolutely marvelous, the swordfish is exquisite!” The waiter looked gleeful, and I knew he expected a handsome tip.

“Would you like some more wine,” and I watched the waiter pour Lindsey another glass. I looked at mine which was full save a few sips, and decided that it was best to finish the glass and perhaps another before I resumed eating. So I drank.

Lindsey talked about Joanne and her penchant for designing dresses made with hemp and her yoga instructor who is some famous guru in Los Angeles.

“And she’s wonderfully fit!”

“That’s incredible!” I managed with strained enthusiasm, even though I am quite sure that she had mentioned something about yoga and jute twenty some minutes ago. Another glass of wine confirmed that her voice was bit too nasal and gave me a slight headache that the next glass would ease. Needing a distraction from her voice while I finished the next glass, I watched her hands.

She gesticulated zealously as she spoke, even in the midst of cutting her fish into pieces the size of salt grains. Her hands wove about as a conductor and I watched them hypnotically. In my outrageous boredom, my imagination replaced her with Slatkin in front of the National Symphony in the glorious finale of the Shostakovich Fifth. She conducted with astounding vigor while the brass blew her hair out of its shapely form, baton in one hand, a glass of pinot-noir in the other. The audience stood and applauded with comparable intensity and she swallowed her wine and threw the empty glass into the crowd. The hall echoed with pleas for encore and she turned back to her orchestra...

“So do you think I should?” My eyes shot into focus and I lifted them from her hands, which now rested on the table in front of her half-eaten swordfish, to the beckoning expression upon her face, paused in time.

“You should if you want” A lifetime of losing focus in situations such as these had given me a ready well of ambiguous, universal answers that people like Linda find sufficient. “It’s really up to you”.

“Because Joanne thinks I should try South Beach again, but mother had an outstanding plastic surgeon that did her wonders. I actually think his office is in this neighborhood and I hear he’s a magician…” I decided that it was possible for me to resume my personal amusement, so Lindsey became a French pantomime with a rolled up magazine, swatting at a large fruit fly, in an invisible box.

----

She wanted dessert and I wanted to put myself out of misery, so when the overly joyous waiter brought her the black forest chocolate cake, he brought me two fingers of Scotch to wash down the evening. As Linda gawked at her cake, my eyes drifted several inches south of her face and rested upon the outline of her peaking bosom; I knew the glass before me held my official resignation from the rest of the night, so I lifted it to my lips.

“Excuse me,” My descent was temporarily thwarted by an English man in a tan blazer resting on arched shoulders; he wore it like a cape. “I’m so sorry to have intruded upon your dinner, but I had been sitting at this table earlier tonight and seem to have misplaced my keys. I was wondering if you had seen them.” I found his accent offensive but Lindsey looked up at him with attentive eyes, devouring his air of urbane arrogance, as if it were more satisfying the chocolate cake before her.

I saw his eyes drift to the same place mine had been a moment before, and this gave me a sudden involuntary epiphany: perhaps women are correct and perhaps all men are the same. But I turned my mind sharply back to the pompous muppet before me, reminding myself of how he interrupted my hedonistic binge. I studied him, sure to find other things which I found abhorrent about him.

“No, I don’t seem to see anything.” Linda looked around with more interest than warranted. “I do hope you find them though.” She smiled while her eyes fell upon him with a slightly seductive glint. He looked from a mile above her and their gaze met in a fleeting moment of tension; I hated him a little bit more.

“I must have left them at the bar. Thanks, though. Have a lovely night.” He pivoted with grace and walked over to the bar where he retrieved his keys and tipped the bartender with a bill received with professional eagerness. Lindsey started talking about her fascination with the British and I felt a sudden change of heart and asked for the check without any intention of leaving a tip.

Aaron Ellis

Twenty minutes remained before he wanted to be there and perhaps three kilometers of narrow dirt alleys and dimly lit road lay between him and his destination. He walked straight, with a light quick gait. His face looked forward, but his eyes darted about. A small parcel nodded gently as he walked, hanging from his left index finger.

Evening had come and gone and a still night slipped into the town. Strays barked and howled, devouring leftovers of supper which had been thrown on the streets. Echoes of inaudible high pitched words, cast in an oriental tongue broke the still night on occasion, ping-ponging down empty alley walls. He once passed a local, out for an evening stroll, who looked at him for only a moment - it seemed like a quick look of curiosity - before he returned his thoughts and glance to the silence of the night. Aaron, as he was called where once he lived, continued to walk; the route programmed into his step. He took no detour and never once changed his pace, pausing once, and only once, to kneel and fix the bow on the lace of his right shoe, a worn in (and almost out) pair of off-white cloth Vans.

Two rights and a left after tying his shoe, Aaron found himself at a heavy metal door, a few steps below the alleyway. A dirty sign with scribbled Japanese characters hung quietly above. He knocked. Four succinct taps rapped against the door and Aaron tapped his foot and moved his eyes from place to place, seeing everything but watching nothing. Footsteps from a man inside approached and the shutter slid open, revealing two squint eyes of a staunch Asian man. The eyes hid any surprise that may have arisen from seeing a character like Aaron at such a doorstep, knocking at such a time. A few words of serious Japanese were exchanged and Aaron then thrust his hand deep into the pockets of his narrow plaid pants, retrieving a crumpled piece of paper. His eyes drifted to the man at the door only for a second when the parchment left his hands. The shutter closed abruptly and after the sounds of chains moving and bolts retreating, the door swung open. The Japanese man led Aaron through a series of dark concrete hallways and down a flight of steps. A wooden door was thrust open before him and Aaron walked into a large basement room filled with noise and middle-aged Asian men exchanging notes of money. Each man in the room seemed to have a cigarette fastened securely to the corner of his mouth, the smell and smoke was thick in the air and Aaron coughed just a little bit when he walked towards a counter in the back of the room.

The rhythm of the room did not change with his appearance, but it was as if the atmosphere shifted to recognize the presence of an outsider. Thin and pale, youth still living within him, a loose purple shirt draped from Aaron’s shoulders and a black nylon sling held snug to his back; he carried himself like a vagabond cloud. When he walked his arms would swing loosely at his sides and when he stood they hung two or three inches too low. He stopped again in the middle of the room to kneel and fix the bow on his left shoe before he arrived at the counter in the back of the room.

The man at the counter looked up from his book and bills and asked a question to which Aaron responded by pulling out a wad of money and stringing together words of slow but sure Japanese. He kept rolling his balance from his toes to heels, rocking back and forth; with one hand he ruffled his brown hair and scratched his head. Two short braids, dyed red hung from above his right sideburns; the man at the counter glanced at these while handing Aaron his receipt, which he immediately thrust deep into his pocket. He turned and walked to another side of the room.

There was a small raised stage, a two foot square surface, in the center of the floor, surrounded by a large space in which most men stood, talked seriously, and smoked. People slowly started to gather around the stage, but Aaron knew he had five minutes at least before the match began, so he went to a far corner of the room to where a table sat accompanied by two chairs, one of which was occupied. The man in the chair was noticeably older than most of the others in the room, but still not too old. He may have been sixty, with a short gray beard and sunken eyes. Aaron came and sat across from him, placing the parcel upon the table, facing away from the man and digging into his backpack to retrieve a small notebook from his sling. Opening it he jotted a few things down, turning briefly to the older Japanese man to see if he had spelled something correctly. The man grunted with approval and looked at him with a dry stare.

The sound of a bell resounded from the center of the room and the stage was now surrounded by a thick crowd. Energy dissolved its way into the air, filling the room, resonating from the stage itself. Aaron thrust his things back into his sling and took out a pear which he began to smack away at. He stood, taking a few more bites, then throwing his pack over his shoulders and picking up his parcel he made his way to the center of the room. Slipping in and between the uncomfortable smell of smoke and sweat he arrived at one side of the stage, upon which he placed his parcel. Another harsh Asian man stood boastfully with his own parcel resting upon the stage directly across from Aaron, his eyes laughing at the stranger, feeling renewed confidence as he finished studying his feeble opponent. Both Aaron and the Asian, who stood across, unwrapped their parcels, revealing two wooden boxes, each with a small door. Aaron’s eye caught the sight of a moth fluttering its wings near a light which hung from the ceiling. The noise level raised a single notch and the crowd waited with palpable anticipation.

A bell rang and the crowd began to roar. The two men on the two sides of the stage pulled down the doors on each of their respective parcels and a cricket emerged from each, shuffling into the small stage, the scene weighing down on their chitinous shells. They advanced towards each other. Aaron glanced up at his opponent who felt his gaze, and if someone was looking very closely at the stranger, seemingly lost amidst the sea of Japanese, one might have caught the quickest of smiles.

Five minutes later a single cricket lay lifeless upon the stage while a ragingly insulted Japanese man fell to his knees and pounded his fists against the floor. Aaron was walking down the alley from which he came, parcel in hand, a sling full of money and a half eaten pear hung surprisingly lightly on his back. Aaron had not yet decided where he wanted to go as he turned left on to a street which he did not yet know; his eyes darted about and a thin smile came and left his face, lingering, perhaps, a bit longer than he had intended

.

Flying Thoughts

Whenever I fly I wonder if I am ready for death. I'm not quite sure why, perhaps it is when the prospect seems most real. Suspended in air as if by a thin wire, held up by two wings which seem so utterly minuscule against the vastness of the sky.

En route to Delhi from Kolkata the sky was crisp; clouds sometimes dotted, sometimes sheathed the space below. I looked north out my window, and after second-guessing my eyes for a few moments, I could discern the Himalayas in the distant horizon. Soon after i drew my hazy conclusion, it became unmistakable. There they stood, with streaks of snow and jagged rock, ages away yet impassive still. Only they had the majesty to tower above all life, to cast shadows upon clouds.

"I must apologise for the intrusion," I should say. "No man should have the audacity to consider himself above thee, superior to the power of nature."