“Oh, Anthony!” she wailed, throwing a perfectly manicured hand around his neck. “It is so lovely to see you. It really is just so lovely.” I cringed; it was people like this who made the use of italic letters so incredibly necessary. It was a Friday night, and Willoughby’s Brewing Company was brimming over with teenaged pals, business partners, young couples in love or lust and many, many drunks with some cash to spend and dignity to do away with. The Holiday season was truly upon us; obnoxious Christmas music, obnoxious acquaintances, obnoxious lights and decorations, the works. I leaned against a large glass display case that featured distasteful shirts, sweaters, mugs, and the like for sale. Printed on these nauseating novelties were images such as eerie looking pumpkins that grinned at the words “Pumpkin Ale” which were printed on the objects in tacky, gooey looking fonts. My friend Kaity and I were waiting for our seat number to buzz and glow red, and gazed jealously at the two or threesomes that would pass us by happily as their seat numbers blinked flamboyantly against the relatively dark atmosphere of the restaurant.
“Seriously? Why do they get seated before us? That woman is wearing pink pants with rhinestones on them. Rhinestones, Christine. Rhinestones.” She repeated it as if she couldn’t believe someone would have the audacity to wear such an atrocious ensemble.
“Yeah” I agreed. They really were hideous pants. I directed my attention back to the lady with the perfect manicure and her new-found Anthony to distract myself from how hungry I was. She flashed her perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth at her Anthony as she clutched her designer purse with one hand and held her expensive fur coat tightly to her neatly, glitteringly accessorized bosom.
“So, you must tell me” she paused here for the slightest moment to take a small breath. Perhaps for dramatic effect; perhaps because it probably gets pretty tiring when your life is one long, predictable script. “How is Karen doing? And the girls?” she spoke as if Anthony, Karen, and “the girls” were the epicenter of her entire being. Her eyes darted eagerly around the bar stools and underneath the tables as if Anthony’s Karen and Anthony’s girls were hiding.
“Well,” Anthony began jovially, “Karen is freshening up in the bathroom and the girls are being taken care of by the baby sitter right now. But they are angels. Daddy’s little girls!” I couldn’t tell whether I began choking out of stifled laughter or suppressed gagging- probably a rough mixture of the two.
“We really should all get together sometime! Does Karen still have my number?” I gave a short prayer of thanks when Kaity and I were suddenly and finally ushered to our table. After we were led away from the woman with the perfect nails and teeth, her Anthony and his Karen I almost instantly forgot about the lot of them. This depressed me a little bit for some reason until I realized that they would forget about each other as well. They would forget about each other all over again the moment they took a step in opposite directions and if their paths ever happened to cross again they would unfurl the same script for the particular scenario, and it would go on like that forever. I sighed and shrugged the sad truth of the matter off my shoulders, and opened my menu.
“I think I’d like an appetizer.”
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