Writing Prompt: Albert taps a cigarette from his pack
A tall black man with a French accent and short braids, great smile,
knowing gait. Exactly what the stuffy, if delicious, restaurant needed.
True, a restaurant, unless constructed from food, can't be delicious.
And true "restaurant" seems a cheap word, almost common, which is what
this place was anything but.
The fabric gathered into a cathedral at the center, drape upon
drape, fold upon fold. I think it actually made her a little bit
nauseous, the cloistered decor, the polite monied client dinners and old
school gray haired set.
Next to us an Asian man in his mid-30s, no doubt a millionaire, or
man behind the next big start up, slurped his wine pretentiously. He
seemed nice enough, even when talking into his ear piece in this
sanctified establishment, located in San Francisco since the late 50s.
But god, the slurping. I mean, how much aeration does one guy need? Did
the wine taste good? Check. Did he know what it tasted like after the
first two sips? Check. So knock it off with the noises from hell.
It
made for funny silent lip mimes from me to my date, "oh my god! I can't
take the slurping." Try to read that out of someone's mouth from who
breath and sound barely escape. I made up for it, of course, by spilling
the chocolate sauce and asking loud naive questions about the food. I
can only fake it so long, and being quiet and straight backed, proper,
is really not my thing, never has been.
Our waiter was a woman. White, wavy brown hair pulled back into a
ponytail. She wasn't portly, but neither was she thin. I wanted to like
her but:
a) she had no sense of humor
b) she seemed like someone I would have met in college
Later a gay waiter in his 40s walked by, winked and mouthed "happy
birthday" to me. This made me happy. Why? Because they always like the
queers in those places, especially the unlikely butch/femme couple like
us.
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