Table for Three

The hostess politely asks: " Table for one?" The tone of the question is one of those murky open-ended ones that permits a person caught in Spider Man's web of alienation to confirm if they are, in fact, alone. I looked to my right and left. An inept busboy carrying a plate of knives trips. As they fall all around me and pierce some people I answer her while biting into a granny smith apple, "Three."

I don't know why no one sees Dan and Gad. It's not like they're lost or imperceptible. Dan especially since he likes to wear a napkin as a mask. He thinks it's charming. She has a look of bewilderment - like the one my childhood psychologist gave me when I drew a murdered unicorn lying in a pool of blood - but seats us nonetheless as those on the ground struck by the knives are tended to by an infirmary of Samaritans. I am most grateful. "Thank you, Flo. And tell Mel to speed it up." We all laugh at the off-the-cuff reference.

A stare is coming right at me from a kind gent at the table next to me. "Who you looking at, brother? Yeah, you best be looking the other way." She returns with a menu. "Excuse me," I tell her. "We require three menus. Sharing will just waste time." With a stupid puzzled look she responds, "But...but you're alone." "No I am not, Alice! Bring me three menus!"

My tone softens with a dignified but unyielding, "Please." She returns with them, carefully places them on the table and leaves abruptly. Her perfume smells like the doctor who once examined me when I was a teenager. I imagine making insanely ardent love to her. Shake my bones, baby. Shortly thereafter she comes back to take our orders. Before I ordered I asked her what perfume she was wearing. She answered "Smoke."

I was not amused. I ignored her insult and rationally decided to speak for Dan and Gad who both went to the washroom at the same time. They, in their loving incoherence, always do that. It's a predictable joke they have. They think I don't know, but they fail to realize in their buffoonery that I engendered like a magnificent maestro their fabulously fleeting actuality. I'm a step ahead of them today. "Dan will have the roast stuffed pike with the skin on and Gad will have the oven-braised teal. Bring the beak on the side." Heh,ha. Dan always orders flummery. Gad prefers snipe.

I have always been treated, like tainted fluoride, as an outcast - always on the periphery of life. Society, that elusive word that means nothing to me, has deemed me unfit. I don't sleep. Sleep is a mere nuisance. I prefer the dark forbidden contours of the infinite but anticipated night. It thinks to be so omnipotent. It's not so tough. We all know the sun will rise, night! Be gone! The Angels are trying to convince me otherwise but I defy. The inkblot experts who practice psychology always wanted me to explain why I excessively love and distrust sleep but I didn't know why. They needed my quotes to put in their picture books. I'm nothing but a painting in their museum of nothingness. I know this. Just like how I know about Dan and Gad's little routine.

"Can we have some water, please?" I initiate a hollow conversation with my friends, bursting with inner self-combustion to see the look on their faces when the orders come in. A man drops a card on me. "Dr. Youp - Psychologist? Now that's the fifth this week!" Unfazed, we laugh, we argue, we cry.

It was a perfect lunch if not for that tin toy soldier staring at me. Oh, that gaze! The one my imaginary step-mother gave me! It's penetrating in its accusations! Its gaze was beginning to warp my sense of reality. Tick? What tick? Why do I have a sudden tick? Oh, tic on my arm. I asked the waitress to move the tin soldier who was by now drumming at a furious pace. In her marvelous and sensually boozled stare, she tells me she could not. I tried to make the best of the situation. I slice my cantaloupe, which I pronounce cantaloop. I don't know why. I just do. Dan and Gad tell me to let it go and ignore the toy soldier but I can't. It's just too much.

I get up and walk towards the tin solider singing the Songs of Roland. I was a virtuous vigilante descending upon an officer in all its uniformed glory. I hack it to bits with a mini- axe I carry in my inner pocket. Waiters, of all genders - and the inept busboy who had one ear - all gather like conniving conspirators in unison to make a call. Never do they remove their green, blue and brown eyes from me.

"Sir? Sir?" The clouds in my brain pass and after a couple of quick glances I spot Dan and Gad. She looks in their direction and says, "Sorry for the delay."

I get to my table. The service is good here. The food is not bad, either.