The Indian place that used to be

(If you haven't read what I posted earlier today, this won't make sense.)

  The Indian place that used to be at Division and Stepford 

I don’t pay Bob, because (so he says) he doesn’t have a license; but I buy his stupid frothy drinks. That way (so he says) I have something invested, and I’m more likely to follow through. And maybe I would be, if I thought he knew what he was doing.

The Gaza Bar & Grill

No one sits at the tables out front even in good weather,

because in our town you can't drink on the sidewalk.*

      But one of the exercises he gave me I keep at, when I remember, is around every so often to  find five positive things to say about whatever space I’m in. Like: I’m in the kitchen bathing my gluey eyelids with hot coffee; they’re opening, I look around, and through the amber haze I say: “It’s good to have a refrigerator and better to have hot water. It’s almost better still to have a chair at a table you can sit at with your coffee. The ceiling fan is off. And the radio: I can pretend NPR has lost its voice.”

     Now, on my way to meet Bob, I say: “Thank God I brought a jacket. And left my cell phone in another. Maybe I’ll be early enough I can get one drink up on him. My shoes match.”

The day I lost my foot and forearm and the skin was rolling off my torso like the sky off the heavens in Patmos John’s Revelation, I also lost my voice; but I didn’t know that, because there was no one to say anything to. I didn’t know I’d lost it until I got it back. That was after I’d found the foot and forearm and used the skin to glue them back in place. The phone rang, and when I answered I could talk.

     It was Tom Nashe, asking if we were still on for lunch.

We ate at the Indian place that closed not long after. That’s one thing I wanted to talk to Bob about. I thought he might remember the name – his wife is Indian. 

10.10.16

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 * Well, except to smoke.