The evening starts out, tiredly getting off the tarmac for a rosé wine tasting.  There are four 2016 Cotes de Provence rosé wines open, who knows why, one to push, another to compare it, and then one from up the road in Aix...  The early regular guy starts up a conversation with the guy at the end of the bar, in from out of town, who has opted for a Kronenbourg to start with.  Public policy history Ph.D guy talking with money guy early on about where the economy is headed.  Timber.  Chinese in Vancouver.  Robots.  Mobility of jobs training robots.  Training robots...  this is where the economy is headed as far as the money is concerned.  That and whatever the Chinese are up to, exporting inflation.  Pensions companies must pay out now the retiring work force of another era.  I can't really keep track of it all, sitting parties of walk-ins here and there, the woman who wants a quiet table, six young female med students in for the tasting without a reservation, two of them familiar.  They will end up ordering one cheese plate.  Another two for dinner in the corner, and then the reservation for the back room arrives, six young moms.


Later, as snow falls, the night comes to a close. It took a lot of energy to set it all up, and now, to put it all away, breaking it down, with the knowledge that tomorrow, a particular sort of very popular act will make Wednesday Jazz very full and hectic. So busy, so much running around my muscles are tightening up, and my legs, I can barely walk.  I'm tried my best to stay hydrated with electrolyte water, a can of low sodium V8, an order of pig's feet I snarf down while some guys talk of real estate over dessert and the last of their white Bordeaux.  I've brought in a sort of sandwich of gluten free bread, Safeway Deitz and Watson roast beef dressed with a little cayenne and slices of white onion, and I'm so hungry it doesn't matter.

Calves are beginning to clench up.  The late wet snow falling in big peaceful steady flakes on the quiet of the street and the brick sidewalks on the Dumbarton Oaks side.  I'd like to walk home, but I am hobbling.  I summon Uber pool.  Guy picks me up, in a small Chevrolet SUV, listening to jazz, then down to Georgetown.  A couple of young women getting out of a shift, Hispanic just like our own kitchen at the old Gaul.  Georgetown University is on Spring Break, so they got out a little early, they explain. They work at one of those places, &Pizza, a chain, one of those places getting ready for the robot, making these young ladies jobs superfluous.   The driver remembers when the &Pizza spot used to be the old restaurant of Georgetown legend, Au Pied Du Cochon, the din of its late night service having disappeared into its high ceiling long ago.  "Yeah, I grew up here, and I remember, my dad would wake up in the middle of the night, and come wake me up, 'son, you hungry, I''m hungry,' and we go down and eat, at like two in the morning.  Oysters Florentine, that's what I used to get."

You must be tired, I say to my companion in the back seat.  I worked tonight, I tell her, and I can barely walk now.  My feet hurt, she says, and we all nod.

I get in the door, aching all over, stiffening, cold, miserable, one more night to go, and this one, a big one.