NINTH / SUNDAY The tables are pushed too close together. There’s not enough seats. We’re on top of each other and spilling out of the booth, a sizable hazard for the waitress trying to get down the aisle with a tray full of food for a table full of assholes. The crush of people on Sunday mornings is standard and busy and colorful and loud. Parky’s showing Rich the ridiculous Terminator EW pics on his iPhone 6. A total piece of shit, I tell him, before the table dissolves into how much Apple’s been sucking up the game lately. Mark gets defensive, goes on his rampage about how Samsung’s so much fucking better, and we tell him to shut the fuck up and join the club already. Annie’s recounting her story last night about how some guy tried to pick her up by telling her he’s a BIG DEAL, wait for it, on Twitter. We laugh some more at her and then at me and then at how shitty Mark’s phone is. The walls are red and yellow. Somewhere a plate smashes. We talk about people we hate. I tell her it’s too fucking bright and my head’s swimming in the booze still soaking through me. She sticks her oversized shades on my face and crawls on my lap, holds her hands up to my head like blinders on a horse, and tells me she’s pioneering public lap dancing. I make a joke, she’s quick with the comeback, and three seats down Beau starts singing Def Leppard. And now they’re all singing Def Leppard, egging her on. With her hands on my face and a round of hollers and OOOHHs she tells me it’s okay, her stepdaddy owns the place. Sean says damn your West Coast girls, so I laugh. I can laugh. I get smashed in when he leans over to high five Inez on the other side of us. This is what I want. I’m looking at her now and I remember her telling me we used to be unhappy kids because we didn’t know how to be any happier. But we’re okay now. We’re okay. And this is what I fucking want. This is where I matter. And when the days get shitty and I get tired again like I have to, like life does, I’ll come back here to these five seconds and the other seconds like it and remember everything is more than enough.  |