Regular
There at the corner table I’m the last special, catfish on a bed of dirty rice. She sets it down and walks away from me, a little smile for the regular, a little wave from the kitchen. I’m on 45th between the bridged, overarching freeway and the packed squalor of the university’s avenue of bars, cheap boutiques and Indian food stalls. The pink, art deco neon of the Guild theatre smears against the window. Alterna-house music thumms and jangles from the speaker over the fresh pots of Vita.
She seats a couple next to me, an older pair who drink martinis while pouring over a map of highway 1 down to California. Occasionally they blurt out something about the merits of Mendicino as compared to Monterrey or the fastest way off the coast to Shasta. Across the aisle, two young women discuss two young men. An office worker sits at the three-seater bar in a skirt that doesn’t suit her and a face long from the day.
Last night’s fog had lifted by morning, and around me everyone is talking about the rain. Were we in Ohio, it would be a dirge for the end of summer or a lament for a lost weekend that I would be hearing. But this is Seattle. The mood is celebratory. Phrases like “was supposed to come two days ago and didn’t” and “I thought it would never get here” float through the restaurant. We all know, with a collective sigh of comfort and familiarity, that things are again how they are. It’s October and it’s raining.
After four non-contiguous years in the city, I’m finally getting it. It’s not that people endure the weather to remain here. It’s that the weather is being here. Seattle people, as often as they complain about the wet, adore every aspect of it. Ask any long-term resident what they think of the “bad” weather and they’ll just smile politely and shrug. There is no separating the North Country from the earth or the sky, unless your landscape is concrete, data ports, and glass. And really, there are many other places for you if that’s the case.
As the rain falls outside the window across the shallow sidewalks and butt gutters, I watch it as I have watched it before, tumbling over sleepy Wallingford in various states of slumber. This slowed procession of seasons breezes through wind chimes and the slush of traffic in droplets and in long grey lines. The rain takes hundreds of particular forms, each with its own weight, flavor, temperature and smell. It’s womblike, dark, wet, and earthy. It slides down one side of the mountains, sweeps through the valley, and careens off the other range in such a way that you can almost sense it drop, run, and lift.
It’s why I’m here, why many of us are here. This is a life that is chosen and chosen again. It’s probably why I love it so much.
This perception turns into a conversation with the waitress, another brief connection in a long string of restaurant industry workers. This one might last a few weeks or a few years. Her name is probably something “normal” sounding with an odd spelling, like Kathee or Corin, or maybe it’s something exotic like Singa or Renata, or maybe it’s down-home like Jennifer or Doreen. I’ve staked this place out now, become cozy with the tables, begun to recognize music styles, kept a mental record of appetizers I’ve been given (never the same twice). I’m on the verge of becoming a true regular again.
As the door to the outside inhales and exhales with the push and pull of soon-to-be-mittened hands on the knob, I realize that I’m about to write the second blog entry in recent weeks about restaurants. I seem to be back in my old life, frequenting favored spots with hardly a word, arriving and vanishing, attaching to the woodwork, watching and listening. This is a part of me that although I can’t say I like or dislike, is a natural, part of the interconnected whole of me.
It’s October and it’s raining.
It makes me tip higher than I would normally because of a renewed sense of home. I walk out and down the fall-laden Seattle backstreets as the lamplights flicker out in my passing. I turn towards the place where my filthy assistants await the meat-flavored tins of ash and organs.
Throughout the winter, I’ll probably take coffee here and wrap myself around Chodron or Stephenson, Hancock or Goldberg. Or maybe I’ll read comics and drink cola mixes on a Sunday morning. Whatever the case, I’ll be here every week, at least once. I never need a menu. Always the special for me, the special and water, hell drink for afters.
Table for one, and it’s great to see you again too.
