10/24/2010

Down all the days, '10

“Are you even listening to what I’m saying?,” Dee’s friend asks from across the table and if I take a step back down through these last couple of years it will just feel like some old routine that’s been rehearsed indefinitely with nothing good ever having coming out of it. Dee’s friend owns this jazzy alternative bar near my place and Dee often goes there for a nightcap and some conversation and sometimes I’ll tag along like Sal Paradise to his Dean Moriarty, more interested on their vodkas with pineapple than anything else, really.

It’s a Tuesday evening and we are having pizza and wine at this restaurant we’re quite partial to, coincidently enough just across the street from our old College campus: It used to be a derelict Colonial-style house back then, since remodeled.

It takes me a few seconds to connect, though, and once Dee’s friend’s question finally registers I find myself looking up at her from my glass and in the back of my head I’m frantically diving in for any last words that made the cut before I zoned out entirely: “You were talking about the sliding metal door with a view to the kitchen...”
“I was,” she says with eyes locked against mine.
“Right,” I nod in response, deadpan as hell, as I pour myself more wine.
“Is he always like this?” she asks Dee to her left.
“He’s amoral, that’s what we all like about him,” says Dee. “Plus he’s kind of polite too.”

She frowns upon hearing Dee’s words then looks back at me, puzzled, and I have a brain-dead half-smile on my face for no special reason whatsoever.
“Yeah, I’m kind of polite too,” I echo Dee’s words out aloud but I’ve already drifted off to somewhere else entirely.