You Can Get Anything You Want ...

Alice's Restaurant

You Can Get Anything You Want ...

Now that my knee is cooperating again, I'm back to walking outside every day. I do this loopy sort of pattern out across the city. I used to run it, but the thugs now know I don't carry enough cash with me to make it worth their while chasing me. So, now, I walk in peace, at a casual stroll. Sometimes, I even wave to a familiar crack head or two sliding home from an all-night party in the big city.

I live in a very cosmopolitan neighbourhood. All kinds of folks live here, some rich, some poor, some black, some white, some brown, some waffle-coned ... well, you get the drift. Some people ask me why I didn't retire out in the country, somewhere by a trout pond where I could kick back and catch fat ol' fish all day. I thought about that as an option, but I actually like the energy of a city. I like the jitter-jive of a Saturday night and all that. If I want quiet, I can stay at home. I live in a gated community and 25 floors above ground. I'm not expecting too much crisis there for a good time to come.

At the farthest point on my walking route, there is one of those classic Mom and Pop restaurants. I always stop for a bit of a break there. I order a cup of coffee and a glass of water. The coffee is hot, black and strong, and the water is cool, cloudy and a little metallic tasting. I don't mind. I spend most of my time there schmoozing with Mom.

No one knows where Pop is. At first, I suspected he was always sleeping upstairs or somewhere in the back making pies for the dinner service, but I must be wrong. One day, I heard some truck driver say that he'd heard Pop was dead under mysterious circumstances. I don't really believe that because, whenever I ask Mom about Pop, she just says the same thing over and over again. "Out,' she'll say with a kind of small spit on the "t" at the end of the word. So I'm pretty sure Pop is somewhere, even if he's Pop #2 or Pop #3. After all, it's a Mom AND Pop restaurant, and there's no sign in the front window that says "Pop Wanted: Inquire Within."

Mom is first generation Portuguese. She likes me a little too much. How do I know? Well, every time I walk into the restaurant, she barks something in Portuguese and the waves part so that she can get behind the counter to serve me. Then she hovers by me as I drink my coffee and water. Some days, she'll say something, which I won't always understand, and some days, I'll say something that she surely doesn't understand. Some days she will simply stand there smiling and preening her short dark hair while trying not to whistle out of her left nostril. Those days, I smile back, of course. After all, it only seems polite.

Then, yesterday and out of nowhere, she asked me to come back for dinner.

"Big meat," she said with a heavy, allspice accent. "Big meat, potatoes, and corn. You like corn? Creamed corn?"

I was at a loss for words. I really don't like corn, creamed or otherwise. I mean what kind of food comes out the same way it goes in?

"I can't," I blurted without letting the response simmer long enough to sort of bubble into a stew of reasons. All I got was, "I can't, because ..."

And there I was ... lost. Nothing followed the "because."

"Naw, you come," she insisted. "You come have dinner with me on Saturday."

Now, you see, you see the problem there. It's that little phrase "with me" that means so much. Is she expecting this to be a date of some sort? Maybe Pop really did die of mysterious causes, like from eating a bad piece of "big meat," for example. Am I on the short list for becoming the next Pop after all?

I don't want to become a Pop again.