Bang a Gong

Monday night we had a great dinner at a favorite eatery. This was my first official birthday dinner, seeing as how the restaurant had sent me a card for a free entrée, and my sweetie paid the rest.

It was kind of a wild scene in its way. They had our table reserved on the patio, but I’d made the reservation for too early, and the sun was blazing hot until it finally set. At one point I saw the chef come charging out of the joint in civilian clothes, followed closely by her husband, the manager. Both were waving their arms in classic “What the hell do you expect me to do about it?” fashion and soon disappeared out of sight in the direction of the parking lot. (I was facing the pedestrian walkway beyond and could easily see all this.) About five minutes later, the manager came walking back with narrowed eyes. “Uh-oh,” I said to my wife, “the cook just walked out!” But when I described how she was dressed — blouse, skirt, dress shoes, purse — she lowered her voice, bending closer, and said:

“She’s mad because she told him she had a prior commitment and he forgot!”

Nonetheless, we did get our dinners and had a fabulous time. They must have a spare cook or two hidden away somewhere. It was an amazing evening for people-watching, too, as there are tourists all over the place.

Most Americans dress for vacations like they would for cleaning the garage, but not all of them. There was a muscle-bound guy in a black T-shirt walking with his hand on wife’s ass like she was naked while their three adolescent kids walked along behind them. A gaggle of skinny Asian girls in hoodies and flip-flops went by twice. A bearded man about my age in dirty denims shuffled slowly, almost staggering, toward the restaurant entrance: he was carrying what I guessed were his only possessions in a white plastic garbage bag, and I supposed he was thinking of asking for food. At the last moment he turned away and kept going, but I swear I could see him lift his nose and sniff the air. Soon afterward a big, gallumphing galoot of a fellow came briskly past, snapping his fingers and bouncing like a happy Labrador, an amiable living caricature of a testosterone- and burger-fueled senior high school football player with his T-shirt, shorts, and hat on sideways. I’m not a parent, but I must have been picking up on something like that in the air, or maybe it has to do with being older, because all I could think of was how much it would cost to feed him.

Virtually every couple who walked by were holding hands. That’s something I see here a lot. On the way out, we did, too, and my wife put her arm around my back like she hasn’t done in years, it seems, and her hand drifted down to my ass. I don’t think she was even conscious of doing that, being from Iowa, but when we got home, I reminded her.

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