IT damned well has to be the best margarita you can get in Maine, which isn’t saying much, but it’s the best I’ve had anywhere. The ripe, rounded fruit flavor that most margaritas lack is three dimensional, not two. That’s hardly a satisfying explanation. Good margaritas taste like the perfect balance of tequila, citrus, salt, . . ., but this margarita, THIS margarita tastes like it was freshly squeezed from the fruit of the golden margarita tree. Just perfect.
AND from my perch on a stool in front of the window, large and lined with bottles of hot sauce, I can pass judgment on those who pass by, all the while hoping to see something hot, something sweet, something mischievous enough for the evening.
A MAN with shoulder-length dyed black Prince Valiant hair stops for a moment to read the menu. He is too pale and pink for black hair, but he doesn’t know it. His cut and color look more like a wig than the real thing, and they shock with his fuschia wife-beater, which he must have dyed himself, as who in their right mind would sell fuschia wife-beaters. He looks unjustifiedly confident and necessarily ignorant.
THE couple he is with, and they are clearly a couple even though they are not acting like a couple, tolerate him. Rather, the man tolerates him, likely because this rosy misfit once dated the woman, was her neighbor, or they had a class together at Uni. They all act interested in him, but their performances aren’t engaging at all, not to the outsider, nor to the casual observer. He acts engaged though, perhaps hoping that the appearance of engagement will keep them acting interested. It is there act, anyway, that validates him. As long as they look interested in him, he means something to them. He means something to someone, someone other than his mother, who might not love him anyway. She might. She might not. I supposed his own awkwardness had to be inherited or learned, and if she never learned to socialize, then perhaps he is the apple and she is the tree.
BUT he doesn’t know that the couple is acting. He only knows this of himself. He his hopeful, too.
The man doesn’t know that “pink” is acting. He only knows this of himself, and he thinks he, more handsome, more normal, more mainstream, that he has his girlfriend fooled, that she will love him for liking her friends, that she will see his willingness to put up with “pink” as a sign of how he’s ready to love her forever.
SHE doesn’t know that “pink” is acting. She’s used to getting this much attention, feigned or otherwise. She doesn’t think that she is acting, either. She knows her man is acting, though, and she knows that he thinks she doesn’t know. She’ll tell him later that she loves him for pretending to like her friends, and this confession will make her seem smarter and more in control in the relationship.
BUT everyone will get what they want, except me. I never get what I want.
THE sun, the warmth, soothes, while I wait and wonder what to do, knowing that this is a luxury, and by this, I mean waiting and wondering what to do. Most days, it’s damned clear what and how much I have to do, but not today. I mean, I need to make a phone call, and I need to make dinner for friends, but otherwise, I could just sit here in the sun.
THE chrysanthemums look like they could use a drink, but time melts away, and I don’t move, and it rained two nights ago, anyway, so they should be fine. Maybe I should go for lunch, but where? I have food here. I’m not hungry, I’m just bored. Maybe I shouldn’t have had beer and shrimp cocktail for breakfast.
A woman in a a lime green dress stops outside Gringos and looks at me. I don’t look away, neither does she. She neither smiles, nor scowls. For just that moment, we’re in the same place. What an unusual moment—no fear, no want, no anger, no joy, no, no nothing, we just stand together in that place and time. Then she walks away.
A CROW caws overhead, and a red squirrel runs his little hands along the frame of the screen like a classical pianist playing scales hoping to find a gap through which it can crawl. When I shift to see it better, it darts across the stone walk into the bushes and chirps once, to warn, I presume, but whom, I know not.
MAYBE the chrysanthemums were beaten down by the rain, and that’s why they droop.
There is a limit to just how much of this lazing around I can stand—not my own lazing around, mind you, but the lazing around of the college kids who aren’t working at all, or who aren’t working right now, and have nothing better to do than to stand in the street and make everyone drive around them. They all look so damned innocent, like the world is theirs, but not because they took it, or made it theirs, but because it’s been given to them and is their birthright.
AND then a tourist walks by, and another, then a mother with her two girls, one of whom is ready to be plucked like a fat grape, peeled, then eaten with a slurp. Then the streets are empty, but not for long.
LUNCH is served, with a margarita.