At Café Azure
Late teenaged serving assistants who could be first trusted to simulate an uptight mathematical rigor without too much cologne on the lunch shift wore blue Oxford cloth shirts with dark blue armpits on the patio in the bright sun moving under umbrellas whenever they could. My sister got me in. In the cool white basement of what was once a house and was once Café Azure, there was a walk-in cooler room where we packed the softened butter into ramekins with large round flat butter patting blades that could only cut butter. These instruments had wooden handles that seemed to absorb all moisture. The air smelled like cold potato soup and cold cherry soup, two silver vats skirted and standing with ice water and ice in dull metal bowls. The cherries forty years later are turning from green to orange to dark red and some have blackened where beaked and bitten. The Magyar robins have eyes that are kohled with the white of their fledgling mottles and streaks; the doves have eyes rimmed with blue. One chamber was all quiche. A fledgling’s worm writhes on today’s anachronistic solar lamp spiked at the edge of the garden, living guts between its splayed feet. What do I do with this thing now? Does this require chopsticks or my soup spoon? The garden patio table. Many hours away, for we were far inland, practically in Ohio, on the other side of the mountains, almost, we heard the sun on the harbor waves project a movie of the waves on the dark blue sides of the boat anchored at whatever angle was perfect for images. There was some sort of superb fish. In the room where the quiches stood ready racked on rectangles, we pulled the fresh rolls out of the brown paper sack with long metal clackers. We kept counting.
The owner’s bowtie was that fussy. Nobody else obviously did mental calculations every time something in himself saw himself, except for everybody.