I'm just going to stay in, order Chinese, boring, get over my cold, but my best and most understanding and things in common friend I have up the wine bar finally gets back to my text, another crazy night, short staffed, just too much.  So I hop a bus, walk a few blocks, and in up the stairs...    I help him clean up, bussing a few tables of leftover glassware...

We end up going down to Clyde's.  J. had a friend who worked there for a stint, and the Irish looking barman, a big guy with a blond red beard was buds with the guy.  "Ted built the wine bar," J. says.  A quiet compliment.  A glass of Sangiovese...  A steak frites, sub salad...

I sleep the next day, and sleep more, barely getting up till finally at four.


Reasons for a writer to be religious, Christian:

Feeling like Jonah.  Being ill.  Feeling sad.  Feeling ostracized.  Knowing that one has been a decent person, kindly, in his dealings with other people.

Within the gospel, the Christian story, the writer, a reject, has room, room to play with.  Hamlet is as Christian as anyone.  Polonius is a Pharisee, which additionally complicates his relationship with Polonius' children, Ophelia, Laertes...  He turns to words.  Excessive words, some might say.

The only way to redeem himself from his life as a bum writer and whatever job he maintains...


So, at the start of his shift, the beginning of a new week, Sunday dinner, heading into Restaurant Week, the bar set, mineral water chilled, fruit cut, olives out, dinner specials on hand, he fills the water pitchers.  Four stainless, two plastic, taller, ice from the bin first, then running the tap of the small bar sink til it runs cold, less lead, filling each of them.  The start of another shift, that’s all, after talking to his mom over the phone as he walked to work in four in the afternoon sunlight, a warm day.

Digesting the staff meal of fried tilapia, he digested with a taste of coffee standing over the cutting board on the stove.  The front door opened, then the click of the door knob opening as the unseen party filed into the main dining room downstairs.  No foot steps nor loud voices coming up.  A regular woman passed as he cut the foil of a Cotes Du Rhône, assessing the butter situation...  she says hello.  Good to see you.  She has rose glasses, he notices, as she passes by the bar again, returning from the powder room. Those are cool.  The optometrist, she explains, I’m light sensitive.

He sorts some wine glasses, beginning to feel normal again, back at work.  A couple, seemingly unfamiliar, wander in up the stairs.  He finds their reservation, explains it’s for downstairs, a two against the wall.  You’re welcome up here, but down...  more lively...  gestures a quick tour, the restrooms are up here...  They go off down the stairs, coats still on, thank you, and he’s alone again, sorts through the stacks of black woven plastic bread baskets with folded linen napkins.  Some have butter, small stains, wine droplets, some a worn feel.  He’ll put them through the wash, fold new napkins...

And then the first couple was sat upstairs, and he remembered he knew how to do this, easy as pie, once you went through all that, the emotions, the set-up physical and mental.  Yes, the woman said, they had been outside, in the garden, for much of the day.  Oh.  Yes, planting bulbs...  oh my father, he did too.

He’d been about to watch a new piece, putting together the seven minute flight of the plane that had been brought down...  imagine that... on his iPhone after looking up the new pinot noir on the Vivino wine app, but now, finally, let's get to it.  Nice people.  Good crowd.