Ragweed season.   The air is nice on Saturday, and I'm up early, so I go do yoga outside, down under the pines.  I could use some cardio too, in my workouts, so I walk to work, having fallen in August heat into the habit of taking the bus.   I get to work.  And then I start feeling it.  Too much time outdoors.  The immune system's reaction to the tiny invader...  the difficulty of clear thinking.

Saturday night, a large party.  My female teammates are bossing me around. Normal traffic on a Saturday night is hard enough for the barman and his hospitality, his duties of hearing out the normal faces' narratives.  The party, in the back, a fifteen top, birthday of a special regular customer, a vocal instructor, her husband, a professor at Georgetown having passed away several years back.  Am I supposed to wait on them?  My job to set things up at the bar, the wine chilled, the mineral water in the cooler, a St. Emilion Bordeaux, a Vacqueyras blanc.  Silverware laid out in back-up.  I'm relieved when I see my co-worker drawing up sheets of paper to relay the order, who's getting what, appetizer, entree, down to the kitchen.  I should be confident that it will go reasonably smooth, but for the necessary lugging of things that comes at this volume, fifteen plates showing up from downstairs all at once, as you juggle, then cleaning the table, then doing it again, again, then the cutting of the cake, but we are understaffed.  I've had staff dematerialize in the middle of such things, at certain points, just when something comes up.

The party arrives, one by one, a young couple, drinks to start with.  Where they supposed to be at the bar for this stage of their event?  There is already one guy at the first seat of the bar, a regular from way back, from Southwest Virginia originally, and then the regular British couple--he's a professor of military history, lovely people to chat with, his wit different enough from USA type--occupy the last two seats...  The party begins to order drinks, and fortunately, LM is perfectly on top of things.  I've got the citrus fruit ready to go and margaritas are ordered, followed by red Dubonnet, mineral water, wine...  Other tables, diners, arrive, and I will go over and suss them out, best I can.  The manager L comes upstairs needing a Sazerac for downstairs.  I look it up in the cocktail book, needing the reassurance of the recipe.

Off-kilter, by the time a familiar face from way back days of yore wine tasting, a translator, an Englishman comes up the stairs, and another couple at the bar.  A woman comes from the room, to the bar, to tell me that someone's something is too salty, could you tell our server, and the server is nowhere to be seen, so that means it falls upon me, after I look around, feeling stressed.  So I come 'round and delve toward the back of the room, and the gentleman who ordered the Dubonnet has found the lobster bisque too salty, could I get another one, as the table thinks his is saltier than the others.  "Sir, it's all from the same batch, no?  Would you like something else?"  He thinks for a moment.  Well, he'll have the Ahi Tuna hearts of palm pequillo pepper salad, but extra rare, like sushi, okay.  I'm over at the other table, selling a bottle of wine, when the busman approaches me, "he says it's too overcooked."  Jesus Christ, goddamn it, I mutter.  So I go back there, Sir, that's as rare as we can do it tonight.  Which he accepts.  The Englishman, who's moved to Peru now with his wife, teaches me a new word, in Spanish, "corrado!" and the busboy chuckles, as I repeat it.


Fast forward, the party has paid, the others are paying and leaving, and soon there's the empty table, coffee cups, a stray dessert plate or two, remaining glassware, there on the table top table cloth long table extending all the way back to the window.  Fine.  It will be therapeutic to go back and clear, and I hear, "goodnight, Ted," from LM, "goodnight," and the door closes.  I'm still irritated (as fuck), but now it's all simple again, and just work, the gods no longer mocking my attempts to retain order at the wine bar, with other worries in the background, and feeling a bit punk from that old ragweed pollen.

There's a new wine, a Kermit Lynch, a young vines high grape yield wine from Morgon, good on the rocks too, maybe just a tad past its prime, but still good for mortal ailments.  And of course, as I polish the glassware from the dishwasher's cycle, and clean the rubber bar mats, and the neoprene, the cocktail shakers, the fruit tray, checking my iPhone for signs of humanity, I see that Sinead O'Connor has appeared on the the Late Late Show, performing Rainy Night in Soho with a large band almost an orchestra, and I put it on the sound system, after Ella Fitzgerald Pandora station has served us for the night.  And Becky, my beautiful yogini friend, I see, has sent me pictures from the dance gig she has done for a Bat Mitzvah over in Arlington.  Which helps me, a kindly, generally gracious but by habit a person distracted by negative thoughts, a nervous type in need of meditations, prone to old thoughts, stay present, and in the present.

And after a glass I get out my guitar and, finding it already in perfect tune, play along to the music, via YouTube, a fresh voice singing an old song.