| "Do you love your father?" I could never see his teeth when he asked me that question. Was it the beard and neatly trimmed mustache that looked as if he'd had gray hairs deliberately positioned here and there for a wiser look, or was it that he didn't have teeth big enough to reach down below that know-it-all lip? But standing, waiting for a table during the lunchtime rush, I was still trying to figure out what Dr. Jack's question had to do with my problem. "Smoking or non?" "Non. Very non," I told the hostess. "Totally non. I carry a squirt gun and start fights." She gave me a queer look as she clutched the tall menus in her arms and turned to lead the way. The tight skirt made her hips sway as she ground her steps into the dull carpet. What a waste. I'm a woman, for Pete's sake. Who cares whether she has a behind that fills out her skirt while my pancake-flat ass was being led to a corner table? Very corner. Totally away from everybody. Great! Service will be just great here. "Is this okay?" she asked me, but her eyes had already fixed on somebody else across the room. She held out her hand just so. So, so. Like Vanna White turning letters when she did turn letters and not just press her magic finger. Boink! "No," I said. It took her a minute--well, actually four and a half seconds--to turn back. Then the light bulb flashed inside her head. "I'm sorry, did you say 'no'?" "Yes." Her eyes skirred my skinny body, as if she hadn't already checked out my baggy Kmart khaki pants and wrinkled T-shirt. My navy blue one. The one with Notre Dame and the funny looking little leprechaun with his fist poised high in the air. Mr. Fightin' Irish. But she looked anyway. Did I look like I liked tables where cobwebs probably formed easily and no waitress would pass by for minutes, and even if I got to order, something would be wrong, but I'd never be able to make it right because this was like a dream where nobody could hear you and everybody was really far away like in a desert? "Kassie! Kassie!" Hearing Delia call my name out loud in a nice restaurant distracted me from my expected verbal fray with the pert-butt hostess. "Kassie! Over here. I already have a booth." Miss Pert-butt glanced at Delia then looked back at me as if I could help her make sense of the connection of somebody looking so businesslike in a navy businesswomen's suit with white camisole underneath, and chestnut brown hair that flipped perfectly like Jennifer Aniston's. What was this normal person doing knowing me and wanting to share a table with me and bringing it to the public's attention? "Go figure." I shrugged. She wouldn't have understood the answer anyway. I might have used words that were too big. And I'm still not sure she was really even able to form that exact question. She was blonde. She might have been busy thinking about... nothing. Delia carried her disregard for what the other diners were thinking even further as she threw her welcoming arms around me and squeezed hard. "God, you look great!" I looked like shit warmed over, but Delia's warm grin revealed her perfect teeth. Of course, she'd had the braces. I didn't really want them anyway. Lou didn't want them either, and now it wouldn't do him any good even if he had gotten them. She pushed me down in the booth and kept beaming at me, and I felt as though I'd done something wicked and gotten away with it. "What?" I asked. "You just look so good." "You said that already." "I mean it!" She sat just like she used to when she was little with her arms spread wing-like, then bent at the elbow with her hands coming together and her fingers entwined in a dainty way. Somehow it seemed strange for her not to have "dang-de-lions" in her hands. With the way she used to bounce her chin on her fists, the yellow color would have reflected on her neck, and I could have told her that she liked butter, and she would have giggled. "I'm Tara, and I'm going to be your waitress." This new young woman had a tightly drawn ponytail and a mole just above her lip. She was thinly disguising a snarl behind some stupid smile, but I could see the twisted edge of her mouth. "Is that your real name, or do you just use 'Tara' for your day job?" I asked. She shifted the smile affably at Delia, but shot me an Eskimo icicle. Cold, very cold. "I beg your pardon?" she said. "Why?" "Why?" "Yeah, why beg my pardon? I don't usually give my pardon even to people who beg." I offered out my best Irish Blarney grin which meant there should have been a twinkle in my eye, but the joke was lost on her. The punch line had no sexual innuendo. Maybe I should have told her how I had tried to grow a dick once. |
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