Joey has been waiting tables at Scoma's for thirty-one years, a decent seafood restaurant at Pier 47 in North Beach. He's cool and facile with a wine-key in hand, breathlessly explaining which fish are fresh today and what else comes on the plate. Joey is large, perhaps a 47 waistline and his lungs strain to fill. Maybe it's the white suitjacket strangling or the sharp Bogart bowtie. Though I wouldn't be qualified to say, I think he's a good man. I like him and I can appreciate his service, something I've struggled with since being a server. My self-consciousness sometimes rises to levels of mind-reading where I swear I can hear the waiter's thoughts, cursing our presence. But not Joey, he's calm and weathered, in no rush and half-asleep but still gentle about his ways.
We eat large and drink two bottles of chardonnay, washing down halibut, tuna and cioppino. The sourdough is fresh and good with an extra slab of butter. We look out on the harbour and silly Fisherman's Wharf skyline, the poor bastards over at Ghiradelli eating chocolate flavored wax and the bleach-white butchers stainless in garb selling farmed fish at the Cannery. Across the street a homeless man holds up a wall of limbs and leaves and crouches down by a garbage can; he's pretending to be a bush and pulls it off pretty well, scaring the shit out of tourists as they walk by.
We fill up and head out toward the street looking for a taxi. A junkshow bar pulls us in, up a flight of stairs to the sound of a blues-trio above. Warehouse style windows look out and we can see the helicopters hovering over downtown rush-hour, Coit Tower is looking particularly nice with the evening light glowing orange on its side. The musicians are bored professionals playing riffs without feeling, running down songs they've prolly played five hundred times. Cathleen and I sip a pint and amuse ourselves by watching the only dancer in the place, a surprisingly beautiful woman obviously alcohol lit gyrating in the corner enticing all the sorry male souls. Our company doubledate gets up for a song and dances at a friendly distance; they look pretty moving together, knowing each other's step so well.
Back on the street we hail and cab and race across town up that mother of a street hill overlooking Alcatraz, you know the touristy one with the streetcars, also the one I nearly burned my transmission out on trying to parallel park last year. Good times. Up over the hill. The girls are singing a classic rock song together in the back seat, the cabbie has the mic to his mouth most of the time speaking what sounds like Farsi in short emphatic sentences. I'm craning my neck out the window, rich pretty couples are strolling in rich pretty Nob Hill and our doubledate passes by in a bright yellow cab.
1 comment:
Cook up, as Qui-Gonn would say.
Post a Comment