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.