1. Last night Graeme and I both dreamt of rural areas as points of destination – in both our dreams, he was taking me to one, pine trees so full all they could do was sway in the overcast. The difference happened with waking. Graeme woke with the melody of Cohen’s Suzanne on his lips, and I woke hating that my toothpaste was red.
2. Friday night - Graeme and I are at Brasserie l'école to celebrate our first year together – hurray, the low-lit romance of French wine. It’s somewhere between the lamb shank and the Crème Brulee that we hear an Amazon of a woman in high-waist jeans shriek, “You bet I can’t do this! You bet money – 500 dollars that I can’t do this!” as she comes tearing full-tilt down the long hardwood aisle of white tablecloths. She races past us, reaches the finish line at the end of the aisle and dives knee-first into a Mick Jagger electric slide on the hard floor. My eye are frozen, I’m waiting for her to get up, thinking this woman must be close to forty, has probably popped her kneecaps and is clearly smashed to a point where embarrassing yourself really is the only operable option. As I’m holding my breath, she (I kid not) leaps up, twirls to face what I guess has now turned into her audience, stretches her arms out towards us all, throws her head back and shrieks, “See!! Woo! They bet me MONEY! EVERYONE, THEY BET ME MONEY THAT I COULDN’T DO THE ELECTRIC SLIDE!” and saunters, saunters back to her table like Katherine from Taming of the Shrew being auctioned off for some charitable function.
Thought that was the end of her production. A fifteen minute stint and she goes through the exact same routine, shrieking and all, again. It was, without a doubt, one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen happen - an all-too-vivid look into leftfield trailer park. Let’s file this under Weird Things That “Happen” in Caro’s Life. Needless to say, she, and her entourage, were asked to leave by a couple of very shocked, and perhaps slightly too accommodating waiters. A cab was called.
I go outside to have a cigarette after the meal and she’s out there with her group and she says to me, “Hey, sweetie! Looking good! Nice gams!” as she drops her smoke in a puddle. “Hey I think I have another ciggie!” She says.
Sweetie? Gams? Ciggie?? I somehow managed to get through that and keep my meal down. A miracle, if I ever experienced one.