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.“Lovely view,” I said, to explain my sudden turn to the left as I looked out over a big, dark field of denuded cotton stalks.Once the tape recorder was back in place, I thought, all systems go, as Simon led me inside and the hostess took us to a table with a candle by a window.In short order, a young man dropped off a basket of bread and poured water in our glasses.“You’re quite the mystery,” I said, and sniffed the water.Chlorinated tap water.Never drink water that smells of chlorine, I thought, and pushed the glass away.“Please, tell me about yourself.”“I really like jazz.”Okay, technically a proper response, but not what I had in mind.Besides, I don’t know a thing about jazz.“Classical,” I said, not because it was true but because it sounded impressive.“Now what led you to come down South?”“I’m passionate about Mendelssohn.”Okay, I had to assume this was a side step about music and not a Southerner he was crazy about.“Uh-huh.Me too.” So, was Mendelssohn jazz or classical? Before this hole got dug deeper, I needed to introduce a new, nonmusical topic.“No one seems to want to wait on us.And I’m really hungry.”Simon rose gracefully from the table—gracefully, that is, for a man dressed in bright blue everything and with all those long appendages—and he said, “Permit me to find someone to take our order.”In his absence, I peeked at the rolls—ordinary white-bread things, definitely off the chart on the glycemic index.I pushed the bread basket away and once more poked down the tape recorder.Simon returned alone.“Someone will be right with us.”Chat chat chat, and the man would not answer a single helpful question, but at least we were no longer discussing jazz versus classical music.Finally, a blond waitress stood by our table.Sheila, her name tag said, and she was quickly all business.After she rattled off the nightly specials—all some kind of poor dead cow or pig and nothing exotic or illegal—I started hinting about unadvertised specials.Sheila stared at me, not at all taking the bait, no matter how wink-wink I was in my inquiry about something “really different, you know, exotic.” Suddenly I realized that even if she started rattling off monkey meat and panda filets, I couldn’t just turn the tape recorder on while everyone was looking at me—I mean, I couldn’t be grabbing my own bra and pushing the on button.So, I said “Excuse me” and crawled under the table, hit the on button, in case the waitress said something incriminating in the next few minutes, and I popped up again.“Slippery napkin,” I said.Simon was staring at me strangely.And this from a guy in a midlifecrisis car and wardrobe-coordinated eyewear.I ignored his look and went for two more rounds of coy games with the waitress, trying to get her to tell me the “real house specialties” till finally she snapped out something about other customers and stomped off.Okay, so I hadn’t accomplished anything so far beyond irritating the waitress, but the evening was still young.I popped under the table to turn off the tape recorder, as I didn’t want to run out of tape.“Really slippery napkin,” I said as Simon continued to give me that what-have-I-gotten-into look.“Do you want to go someplace else?” he asked, his voice the very voice of concern.Or of a man who wanted to get out of the public view before his date did something really strange.I wiggled around until I was sitting up straight and the recorder in my bra was only poking me a little bit, and I grinned like everything was fine and said, “Why, no.Let’s order.” As if that wasn’t what we’d already tried to do.Just then, an official-looking manager-type man came to the table.“Sheila tells me you wanted something…exotic.” He looked me up and down, and then glanced at Simon, who quickly assured him the house specialty—fried chicken—would be just fine for him.“Oops,” I said, and bobbed down under the table again, and pushed the on button on again, and popped back up.“You guys just have the slipperiest napkins, just won’t stay in my lap.” Grin, grin.“Here, try mine, it stays put,” Simon said, ever the gentleman, as he handed me his napkin.Okay, enough with the napkins, I thought, and launched my most mischievous smile at the manager man.“I’ve heard that for special people, you have some off-the-menu items that are just out of this world.Or out of this country anyway.”“We have some shrimp that’s imported from China.Everything else is quite local, I assure you, and quite fresh [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]