I am struck by how familiar this place is. I was here once, years ago, when it was a different restaurant. Fragments of memories rush back to me as I gingerly lay down my pint glass on the cast iron table. Amused that while the rest of this cafe had been meticulously crafted to look as old as the city, it was only a few years old. Tables and chairs and counters were made of ancient oak, the walls adorned in old and faded wallpaper, and covered with framed British posters in equally aged frames. In fact the newest looking thing, this table, was the only holdover from the restaurant it once was.
Surrounded by friends, new and old, talking about the tallest mountain in the world. Arguing really (should it be the farthest point from the equator, or measured from the base, where is the base anyways?). I remember this conversation. We've had it many times before. Times past when I had taken part too. In a van whose ceiling drooped. Ice cream melting onto our laps. We giggled as we spoke, not arguing at all. Almost playing off each other. I kept having to blow the hair out of my eyes every few minutes just to talk to them.
Boys walked past in shorts, riding skateboards, and girls strode uncertainly on high heels and billowy sun-dresses, trying to dress years beyond their age. I remember feeling a type of content I rarely ever feel, the kind where the windows of that van could have turned to white, and the world outside could have disappeared, and I would've been fine with it. Fond, but not in love.
A woman's voice slips through my thought's of the past, singing words I had not heard in awhile. Sounding tinny on the café's speakers in a corner away from us. I take another sip, and strain to make out the words, the voice. And suddenly I am plunged back to a memory of a dusty road years past, barrelling along as small shrubs whiz by. I can feel the sharp plastic against my right ear, the soft foam covering the headphone earbud lost two cities back. Her voice is here, electricity flowing from my lap and into my ears. My right arm, hanging out the window in the back seat, has browned considerably from a combination of pollution in the air, and too much sun. A herd of elephants stare as we pass by, long since desensitized to the plumes of diesel as they roll past. I remember feeling small, distant, both from those on the other side of the planet, and those in this very car sitting in front of me.
I am brought back to the present after feeling a dry itch inside my throat. I take another sip, staring through the side of the glass at the table across from us. Still my friends are arguing (we're talking about mountains on earth, I don't care how big they are on Mars). The table is familiar, and stands apart from the rest, not the same design or shape. Cast iron with a hole in the middle for an umbrella. Rusted over from years spent outdoors.
This place used to be a pizzeria, I remember. I remember a cool late summer night. We were searching for a place to eat. We were still new to a city we had lived in our whole lives. I remember I wiggled my left big toe in my shoe, probing the hole in the front I had discovered earlier in the day walking from the bus stop. We sat at one of the square cast iron tables, trying to make heads or tails of the menu
Things like pesto and gorgonzola and calabrese salami were so delightfully foreign and new. I remember how open the world still felt, that something so close could be so exotic and fresh.
I return again to the present as the server approaches our table. A break in the argument as dessert arrives (because nothing goes better with beer than cake voice oozing with sarcasm). As I bite into the red velvet cake, I cringe at the shock of sugar to my system that is still trying to make beer taste sweet.
I remember the first time I ever came to this place. In its current incarnation that is. It was early spring, and we had just arrived after failing to find food at a Shakespearean festival. I was surrounded by friends I had not seen in a long time (in hindsight, I haven't seen them since either). I was wearing dress pants, a notion I was still unfamiliar and uncomfortable with, as with the collared shirts. I remember sharing stories of nostalgia and childhood games with them all. How it used to be back when our worst worries were how long it was until recess. And all I could think was how they were all like people sent off to space for me. I had known them all well years ago. They had lived on only in my memories. They had lived there as children, Now, suddenly, they appeared before me again one day as adults, with fully formed opinions and tastes and culture that I couldn't even begin to understand. I remember feeling juvenile, that I had been left behind while everyone else had been off growing up.
A tap on the shoulder, and a slip of paper is placed before me (you ready to pay or are you hoping we'll cover you?). A friend asks if I am okay, I hadn't said anything all night.
I am fine, just tired, or so I say. I pay my share, say my goodbyes, and run across the street to my car, shielding my head from the rain. I sit heavily into the car. And I think. Of all the different people I once was, how if any one of these people had met me now with none of our past history, we would have nothing in common. People who had been so dear to me in a lifetime past were now strangers that felt obligated to keep in touch. I wondered what, in the future, we would talk about. If every year I will be a new stranger to even myself.
