Of All the Strange Birds, This One Is the Strangest (Part Two)

The Stoned Cowboy brought his family in last week. I was working a split shift where I was covering lunch and dinner. Since I was working the split shift, the other lunch girl had gone home and the other dinner girl hadn't gotten there yet. I was alone.

When the Stoned Cowboy's red van pulled in I groaned, but I immediately shoved my escalating annoyance away when I saw the doors swing open, when I saw a woman step down from the van, when I saw a child tumble out of the back.

"Stoned Cowboy, Stoned Cowboy, Stoned Cowboy!" I hissed into the kitchen. "And he's brought his family!"

The Stoned Cowboy pushed into the restaurant and stopped dead when he saw me standing behind the counter. "You!" he exclaimed. I froze. "I want you as my waitress!" he said.

"Well," I said, "you're lucky. I'm the only one here. Looks like you're stuck with me."

He turned to his wife. "This," he said, gesturing to me, "is Jessica." He nodded at his wife for my benefit. "This is my wife," he said. "Remember how I was telling you she was away? Well, she's back now."

I nodded and smiled brightly, even though the Stoned Cowboy had never told me his wife was away. I reached for some menus.

The Stoned Cowboy, his wife, and his son filed back to the rear of the restaurant and seated themselves at a booth. The Stoned Cowboy waved away the menu when I tried to set it in front of him. "You know what I want," he said.

A reuben. He wanted a reuben. It would be his fourth of the week, and those are just the ones I witnessed during my shifts. Reubens are wonderful sandwiches--one of my favorites, actually, delicious, gooey, tangy things that always hit the spot--but I wasn't exactly sure if it was a good idea for one person to eat that many reubens in a week's time. I could see all the Stoned Cowboy's veins flooding with Thousand Island dressing, his heart being tangled in sauerkraut.

Well, he wasn't the only one who wanted a reuben. His wife did too. "He can't stop talking about them!" she said.

The son didn't want a reuben. He wanted a Buffalo Chicken Wrap, without tomatoes.

I took down the information and went back to the kitchen. The Boy From Work was manning the grill again because the lunch shift cook was busy making pies in the back. I handed him the order. "Enjoy," I said.

When I took out their drinks, the Stoned Cowboy introduced me to his son. "Peter?" he said. "Peter, this is Jessica."

Peter stared at me. He looked about as excited as if it had just been announced he was going to have three teeth ripped from his head without Novocaine. He was a cute kid, really. He didn't look like either of his parents. He wasn't straggly and gangly like his father, nor was he plain but normal-looking like his mother. He had a wide face, but it was striking. He seemed like the type of kid who would grow up to be attractive. He had pretty, clear eyes, good skin, moppy hair. He was emitting an attitude of casual boredom, like he was thinking about being bored but it was just too much work, so he was only going to be half-bored.

"Say hello, Peter," the Stoned Cowboy said.

"Hi," Peter said.

"Hey, listen," the Stoned Cowboy said. "Tell me how you spell your name, okay?"

"Mine?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "How do you spell Jessica?"

I spelled it for him. He whipped open his cell phone and started pressing buttons. "There," he said. "J-E-S-S-I-C-A. You're in."

I was in? He would've had to hold me down and torture me with spiders and snakes and other foul slithery/crawly things for me to give up my phone number, so I wasn't exactly sure what he was up to.

"Well," he started, "this is for whenever I need to call here. I'll just call you! I'll call Jessica and order a reuben."

I walked back to the kitchen then. I needed to get away. I needed to be with reasonable people. People who were not at all eighteen different shades of strange.

"I think maybe I'll run away with the Stoned Cowboy," I told the BFW. "He's a big fan of mine. He wants me to wait on him all the time, and he just programmed my name into the phone so every time he needs to call here to get a reuben, he'll just scroll down to my name." I paused, raised my eyebrows. "Who does that? Seriously."

The BFW flipped the reuben and looked not at all concerned about my possible running away with the Stoned Cowboy. He did, however, tell me the man was nuts.

Later, after I had brought their meals to them, and after I had given them enough time to savor and check things out, I went back out to the table and asked how the food was. The Stoned Cowboy gave me a sad look.

"I'm not mad, okay?" he said. "Alright? I'm not mad, but this beef is a little bit tougher than it usually is. The beef is usually so tender. I tell everyone how tender it is. I tell the guys at the bank and the gas station that you have the tenderest beef, the best reubens. But this one is just a little bit tough, okay?"

I apologized the best I could, and he nodded along with my words.

"You should tell them that," he insisted. "Tell the cooks that the beef is just a little bit tougher than it usually is."

I said I would, I certainly would tell them that.

"I'm not mad, though," he said. "And definitely not at you. You can't control it. Just tell the cooks, okay?"

I said I would, I certainly would. Then I went back into the kitchen and poured myself a Pepsi. If this was the beginning of my day, I was going to need a few billion shots of caffeine.

A few days later, I arrived at work only to be cornered by one of the cooks. "You will never guess what happened the other day," she said.

"What?" I asked.

"The phone was ringing and no one was able to grab it, so I did," she said. "The guy on the other end said, 'Is this Jessica?'"

"Oh no," I said. Apparently the Stoned Cowboy thought I was always there, that I was a fixture at the diner, that I had a mattress in the back, that I rolled out in the morning, took a shower, donned my black pants and white shirt, and came out to waitress around the time he was getting a hankering for a reuben.

"I told him it wasn't. He wanted to know if you were there. I said you weren't."

"He ordered a reuben?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said. "He ordered a to-go reuben, and I made it for him immediately. He didn't show up for, like, an hour and a half."

So we stood there wondering what kind of world the Stoned Cowboy lived in, what kind of job he held. We figured it probably wasn't one that was interested in strict timetables, in sharp businessmen, in concrete goals. I could see the Stoned Cowboy living on a commune somewhere with his children--he and his wife have several more, together and from previous marriages--and I could see him tending crops, sitting in the middle of a field with a hoe across his knee, a cigarette in his mouth, old Tom Petty pouring from his headphones. I could see him putting a hand on his stomach, realizing it was time for lunch. I could see his mouth watering for a tender cut of beef between slices of grilled rye. I could see him picking up his phone and calling the diner, hearing a girl answer, and I could see him saying, "Hey, Jessica. It's me. I need a couple reubens for the road. Is the beef tender today?"

The Best News

Today I got the best news, the official word: I am going to be the newest full-time hire at a small community college in Maine. The next few weeks are going to be a flurry of packing, apartment-hunting, and furniture-buying.

But right now I have to pack my car and get on the road. There's a wedding in West Virginia, and I'm fixin' to park myself by the open bar and celebrate with all sorts of grad school friends.

Of All the Strange Birds, This One Is the Strangest (Part One)

I've waited on some strange people during my various stints as a waitress, but I have never met anyone like the man who came into the restaurant during my Friday double shift.

The man loitered near the front door. He looked confused, like maybe he was waiting for someone. He took a couple steps toward the pie case, bent, assessed the pie. Then he leaned over and started talking to another of the waitresses. It almost looked like he was trying to be sly about smelling her.

"Do you guys have reubens?" he asked.

"Yes, we sure do," the waitress said.

"Yeah," the guy said, "I know. I had one yesterday when I came in with my wife and kids."

The waitress looked confused. I widened my eyes at her.

"Well, you've had our reubens then," she said. "Did you enjoy?"

He said he did. He said he enjoyed them so much that he came in for another today. Then he sauntered off toward a booth. He walked with a sway, a sway that said I am not entirely sober right now.

"He's all yours," the waitress told me, and she passed me a menu.

The man was dressed in tattered jeans, boots, a worn plaid shirt, and a cowboy hat that was decorated with a crown of fresh flowers. His hair--ringlets tinged with gray--fell down past his shoulders and looked suspiciously like it hadn't been washed in several days.

"You can just put the order for the reuben in," he told me.

"Okay," I said. "And what can I get you to drink?"

"Water," he said. "I'm a water-man." Then he sang a little song about being a water man. Water, water, water-man.

I nodded slowly, in case he was having trouble seeing me--because by this point it was clear that he was stoned out of his mind--and I started walking back to the kitchen.

"Wait!" he said. I turned. "What kind of soup do you have?"

We had creamy kielbasa soup (winner in the Most Creative Way to Get Rid of the Leftover Kielbasa Casserole Special from Yesterday category) and our standard French onion, so I told him so.

"Can I have the menu?" he asked. He plucked it out of my hand and spread it out in front of him. He traced his fingers over the words HOMEMADE SOUP. "Can I keep this for a bit?" he asked. He kept tracing the words. He wouldn't stop.

"Sure," I said. "And can I get you any soup?"

He nodded, but he didn't stop tracing the words.

"Which kind?" I asked. "The kielbasa?"

"Blecch," he said.

"The French onion then?"

"Alright," he said. He proceeded to whip out a cell phone with all the bells and whistles and started typing a text message. He would continue typing through dinner.

And aside from him being a bit off, a bit odd, and aside from him looking and acting like a stoned cowboy who wandered in from the 1960's, I could've let it go. I could've let it slide. I could've let all the slurping of the soup and the texting and the mumbling during the texting and the slurping of the sauerkraut and the wandering around the restaurant like it was his own kitchen and it was the middle of the night and he was seriously jonesing for a late snack--well, I could've let all that go, but he came in the next day. And he proceeded to be even weirder.

The next day when I arrived for my dinner shift, one of the other waitresses announced that the Boy From Work (see also: this, part one of this, and our official gang photo) said I should get to take the table that had just walked in. When I peered around the corner to see who it was, there was the stoned cowboy again, wandering around the restaurant like it wasn't going to creep out the other customers.

I sighed. "Gee, thanks, BFW," I said. BFW was standing behind the grill, as he was cooking until the night cook got there. BFW had the makings of a reuben already geared up and ready to go.

"This makes three days in a row that this cat has been here," I said, and then I walked out to the table.

The stoned cowboy was once again stoned. His arm and leg movements were loose and random. He was bopping his head to something, and when I got closer I could see he had headphones stuck in his ears.

I smiled when I got to his table. He smiled back.

"Hello again," I said. "What can I get for you today?"

He gestured to the headphones, like, Duh, I can't hear you. "Music," he said, by way of explanation. Finally, he tugged them out of his ears. "What?"

I asked him again what he wanted. He said he wanted everything he had yesterday, just the way it was, just exactly, except he wanted fries instead of chips and he didn't want soup. "You guys makes the best reubens," he said.

I marched back into the kitchen and tore the slip of paper from my pad. I leaned over to scribble the BFW a note. It said, Reuben w/ fries. XOXO, Jess. P.S. This guy is cuh-razy. Thanks.

Then I went to deliver his drink. When I'd asked him what he wanted to drink, I braced myself for the water-man song, but I didn't get it. He just sighed and shrugged and said, "Oh, a water, I guess," in a dejected kind of way.

When I set the water down in front of him, the stoned cowboy again had his headphones in. And he wasn't satisfied with me just dropping the drink and retreating.

"Hey," he said as I started to back away. "Here. Come here."

He had pulled the headphones out and was holding one up like a peace offering. He gestured toward my ear.

I didn't know what else to do--after all, how do you politely tell someone you don't want to put something that was in their ear in your ear for fear of waxy particles, etc.--so I bent down and tried to stay as far away from the earpiece as possible.

He jabbed it closer. I could hear a familiar song, something I hadn't heard in years.

"How about that?" he asked.

The song sounded like exactly the right song the stoned cowboy should be walking around listening to. If they were making a movie about his life, that song would've been piped in under the opening shot of him ambling down the street.

"I remember that song," I said. I couldn't exactly place it, but I knew it involved a Beatle somehow.

"Who is it?" the stoned cowboy quizzed.

I shrugged. "I can't remember," I said.

He looked disappointed. "It's the Traveling Wilburys," he said. "They're a super-group. Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, and George Harrison were all in it."

"Oh," I said. "Cool. I like that song." I wasn't sure what to do then. He was looking at me so expectantly, like he was waiting for me to say something brilliant, something profound. I had nothing to say, so I just smiled and left.

Later, as I was delivering an order of food to another table, I had to walk past the stoned cowboy. I had my arms filled with chicken fingers and beef on wecks, but that didn't stop the stoned cowboy from trying to get my attention.

"HEY!" he said. He had his headphones in, so he was shouting. The customers looked alarmed. "HEY, my flowers died!" He held up his cowboy hat so I could see that the fresh flowers he had at one point stuck in the brim were now wilted and limp.

I stopped. I was balancing several plates. I was clearly in a hurry to get to another table. Yet this man thought it was completely fine, normal, and acceptable to kick up a conversation about his hat flowers when I had steaming food in my hands.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"I need new ones," he said. "You think so, right? I need new ones?"

I nodded. "Yes, I do. Fresh flowers are very pretty."

"Okay," he said, then nodded. I was dismissed.

The afternoon was filled with more exchanges like that--mostly he wanted to talk about the tenderness of the beef and how he was going around town telling everyone that the diner had really tender beef, and he was even telling complete strangers about the tenderness--and then he was gone. He got back into his red minivan--yes, the stoned cowboy pilots a red minivan--and left the diner to go about his business, his strange, strange business of tooling around town and looking for fresh flowers for the brim of his hat.

He would be back for more in a few days. And he would bring his family...

On the Road

Tomorrow morning, bright and early, this is where I am headed:



Maine, Maine, Maine. There is a college there, a job interview, a search committee.

And here I go.

You Can Imagine The Eye Rolling That Went on Back in the Kitchen

Sometimes people who come into restaurants are pretty strange. Sometimes they don't quite think about what they are saying or doing (see also: part 1). Sometimes they drive you crazy. Sometimes they drive you to drink. Sometimes they make you wonder how anyone is passing elementary school these days.

Earlier this week I had a family that made me wonder that. It was the mother who concerned me most.

They sat themselves. I brought menus. I took down drink orders. I filled the drink orders. I asked what they'd like to eat.

"A hamburger with fries," the one boy said.

The mother pointed to the smaller boy. "And he'll have a cheeseburger with onion rings," she said. "I'll have the BLT."

I took down all the information, collected the menus, and returned to the kitchen to hang my order. A few minutes later, after the order had been cooked, I stacked the plates on my arms and delivered it. As I was setting the plates down in front of the three of them, the mother's face grew concerned.

"What's that?" she asked. She pointed to the onion rings on her son's plate. They were sitting in a neat pile next to the cheeseburger.

"Onion rings," I said. I wondered what the deal was. I wondered just who on earth couldn't identify a junk food staple like onion rings when they were placed in front of them.

"We didn't order onion rings," she said.

Even though I can occasionally get something about an order incorrect, I knew this was not one of those times. I'd written down everything they'd said just as they'd said it.

"You said your son wanted a cheeseburger with onion rings," I said.

She blinked at me. She looked confused. She pursed her lips and then her face lit up in the way faces have when something has dawned upon them. "Ohhhh," she said. "No!" She laughed, like I was silly, like I was just a big goofy girl who didn't know anything. "Onion rings! Onion rings! I wanted some rings of onion on his burger."

I stared at her. "You mean you wanted a slice of onion on his burger?" I asked.

"Yeah!" she said brightly. "Some onion rings on his burger!"

Bar Fight: Revisited

One of the cooks I liked has been fired. It's his own fault, I suppose. He was a bit of a drinker. He was quite a bit of a drinker. I sat with him in a bar one night and watched him drink down at least ten drinks in the span of forty-five minutes. He drank so much he couldn't get up in the morning, couldn't function, couldn't get to work on time.

The last time we were out he bought us shots and told us about what a tough guy he used to be, how he used to get in so much trouble when he drank. He told us about this one time he got into a fight and put a guy through a window.

"The first real bar fight I saw was actually in this town," I told him, "and a guy went through a window in that fight, too. It happened up the road. One of the guys crashed through the carpet store's front window."

The cook looked at me. I looked at him.

"Oh my God," I said. "Was that you?"

"I was the guy who put the other guy through the window," the cook said. He squinted at me, trying to see if he could imagine me being there, if he could somehow remember where I was standing. "You were really there? You really saw that?"

I told him yes, I was absolutely there. I was with Josh and one of his friends, and we were just coming back from a night of visiting as many of the small-town bars as we could. We stopped at that last bar--where the fight happened--on a whim, because Josh had a cousin who lived above the bar and he wanted to stand on the street and yell up to her. We were doing that when the action started.

I told the cook that not only was I there and not only did I watch him fight the loud mouth who was asking for it, I also went home and wrote about it.

"You wrote about it?" he asked.

I did. I went home and wrote a long blog about it. I wrote:

I am secretly thrilled. I've never seen anyone go through a window. It's
interesting to watch. Especially when Riverside, who is trying to salvage his
dignity, rises up from the ground and brushes off glass. Riverside's head, which
is bald, is now stained with small red rivers of blood that are trickling
everywhere. Into his eyes and mouth. Onto his shirt and pants.

"I'm okay," he says.

The cook couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. It seemed impossible that he and I had been sharing that air, with its crisp smell of blood and adrenaline, on the same corner in the same town over a year ago, when I wasn't even living in the state. Who knew that much later on I'd be standing in a cramped kitchen with him, listening to him explain that, earlier, he'd peed blood or that he was trying to find a date for a wedding he had to go to and did I know anybody who would want to go if he promised to not drink too much and get rowdy?

I didn't know anybody, and I don't know if I'll ever see the cook again. But I do know I'll miss him and the way that he was the only cook who warmed the dinner rolls for the customers, the way he assembled a seriously delicious almond cheesecake, the way he didn't mind so much pouring shot after shot after shot at the bar.

There have been things this summer that feel strange and a little like fate--like the universe is having a good laugh at how things fall into place and how we all relate to each other, how we are all running in circles that are smaller than we think, circles that are bound to intersect and overlap and get all tangled up together. This was one of them. One of many.

Decreased Whining Ahead

Yesterday the phone rang and, quite unexpectedly, the person on the other line was a woman--a writing program director--who wanted to give me a job. We were discussing the job, the teaching, the possibilities, when the director suddenly asked if I was married.

"You sound married," she said.

I wondered what part of my voice sounded married. What was it that somehow identified me as a girl who'd snagged herself a man? Was there a certain satisfaction in my voice, some kind of confident timbre, something settled and pointed?

"I'm not married," I said. "Not even close."

"Well," she said, "you sure sound like it."

I could have told her that maybe what she was hearing in my voice was along those lines, just not as drastic. I could have told her that for the first time in years I have a boyfriend, and that it was just recently settled that that's what we are--boyfriend and girlfriend--and I am still sort of surprised by it. It feels unnatural. It feels foreign. But maybe that's what she heard in my voice--some sort of half-surprised Hey, a boy likes me.

All of a sudden there's a quiet kindness in my life. It makes me feel foolish for wasting all those years and all that energy running after the Wily Republican, begging him to love me, love me, love me. It's a bit disconcerting to feel how simple a relationship with a boy can really be. I'd forgotten it's not supposed to be a fight every single day, that you're not supposed to wake up bristling and ready to take whatever small cruel thing--intended or not--that a boy sends your way.

It's also disconcerting to suddenly not be the single girl, that one friend who's always hopelessly bumbling through single life, who's always complaining that she doesn't have a man, that she can't find a man, that she'll never find a man, that she'll probably die sad and alone, save for the pack of cats she's named after famous literary figures.

I've been that girl for so long that not being her is going to take a little getting used to. I'll have to find new things to whine about. I'll have to find new ways to fill my time, now that I won't be busy being bitter or angry or frustrated at boys from my past.

I won't be the only one adjusting, of course. My friends--mainly Katy--will have to find new reasons to mock me. Now they won't be able to do 10 minute routines on the woeful state of my love life, on my choices in men, on how I am attracted to the suckiest guys of all time. Instead, they'll have to adjust their comedy routines to include the stupid things I did in grad school, any of the awful poetry I've tried to write over my lifetime, and how freakish I looked during middle school.

It's going to take some getting used to, especially for me, especially because I am very used to being single, to being the one who has adapted to stumbling alone through long stretches of life. But this newness--everything about it--is nice, and I'll take it. I'll definitely take it.

Strange Inspiration

Stories are strange, the way they come about. I've been inspired to write stories based on people I love, on diseases I've heard about, on scars, on titles that came first.

Just recently I had to put aside a story I've been fighting with for months--I've rewritten the opening pages at least five times--because something new came up. Something better. And this something better came from a strange, strange place.

A part of it came from a piece of graffiti I see every time I drive home from Buffalo. It's the word seven and a picture of a heart. Seven love. I don't know why I love the sound of that phrase so much, but I do.

But it's more than the phrase that gets me. There's something else going on at that certain stretch of highway. A little ways down the road from the exit sign that has been spray painted with seven love is a plastic flamingo--you know, the lawn decoration type. Well, it used to be a flamingo, singular, but now there is a growing flamingo family. The first one sat up there--high on the banking, nestled next to a tree--for months. It made me wonder if the person responsible for seven love was responsible for the flamingo, too, and all the other flamingos that came next. About a month after the first arrived, another lawn decoration surfaced on the hill. And then another. I'm sure it's only a matter of time until a fourth surfaces, expands the family.

But just who does that? Just who takes the time and makes the effort to sneak up the hill on the side of a highway to plant plastic flamingos there? What kind of motivation prompts that action? Thinking about these questions got me thinking about other questions: was anyone going to ever get rid of the graffiti, of the flamingo family? Whose job was that? Who was responsible for driving up and down the roads of western New York, taking stock of the things that weren't supposed to be there? I figured it was someone in the Department of Transportation, probably the same type of guy who was responsible for getting rid of the dead animals that get kicked to the side of the road.

I had all of that in my head for a few weeks, and then one night I was watching Dirty Jobs, because there's nothing I like more than Mike Rowe getting suckered into artificially inseminating horses or catching river snakes or rounding up ostriches or collecting owl poop. And on this particular night, there was Mike, standing on the side of the road with a big shovel, ready to heft a mangled deer into the back of a DOT pickup truck. After Mike and the DOT guy filled the truck with as many dead things they could find, they took those carcasses to a big mulch yard, where they buried them under tall hills of sawdust. They would break down under the sawdust. They would become mulch. They would become part of some unsuspecting gardener's daily routine.

And that was enough for me. It felt like divine intervention that I'd seen that particular segment, that I now knew a little bit more about that job and about the type of person who held it, and I wanted to write it. I wanted to write about a guy whose job it was to make things a little more beautiful, who had to clean up the things that reminded people things weren't always beautiful--graffiti, dead animals--and I wanted to have him taunted, tortured by whoever was being so insistent about leaving strange messages on the local exit signs. I wanted him to obsess over it while he was picking up dead deer, dead possums, dead raccoons, dead foxes. I wanted him to try to figure it out, try to imagine who would do such a thing. Really, I wanted him to do what I was doing every day I drove past those things. And I wanted him to figure it out, to get some answers. Because I know I never will.

Best Conversation of the Day

Katy: Matt's standing on a chair in the kitchen and reaching for some wine. He's completely naked.

Me: Sounds like the two of you have a good night ahead of you.

Katy: (pausing, giggling) I'm on the phone with you, and I'm touching my husband's wiener.

Reasons to Love Buffalo

Shortly after I moved back to New York, I was on the phone having a conversation with the Wily Republican. I was whining, actually. I was saying I missed Minnesota, everything about it, even those awful soybean processing plants that hung the smell of millions and millions of those starchy pods in the early morning air.

The WR took about as much of the whining as he possibly could before interrupting me. "Hang on a second," he said. "When you were here in Minnesota, you were always talking about how much you missed New York. Weren't you always wanting to move back?"

I told him no way, there were very few times I ever wanted to pack up my things and hightail it out of Minnesota, and even on days that I did feel that way, I could squelch the urge by drinking a bottle of champagne and eating brownie batter straight from the bowl. I loved Minnesota, I told the WR. There were just days when the people in it--in my grad program, for instance--drove me crazy and that's when I wanted out. The WR understood this, of course, since he was often taking me to lunch or dinner or making me margaritas in the mid-afternoon just so I could tell him stories of who was pissing me off and how.

I told the Wily Republican the biggest thing I missed about western New York, besides my friends and family, was the food. Sure, Minneapolis and St. Paul had good food, had lovely restaurants and the like, but the rest of the state was sometimes lacking in cuisine. The good people of Minnesota were fond of tater tots, fried everything, and ketchup. One of my favorite stories from Katy's brief waitressing stint at Buffalo Wild Wings--a chain establishment that pretends to sell authentic wings (don't get me started on how any place that makes you pay for a cup of bleu cheese to go with your wings cannot claim to be authentic)--was how one afternoon she waited on an old couple who ordered a plate of wings to split. When Katy asked them how they'd like them done--you know, what sauce they wanted them tossed in--the couple looked up at her with big, blinking eyes and told her they wanted them plain because they were just going to dunk them in ketchup.

I almost fell out of my chair when I heard that.

In grad school, I craved Buffalo food like nobody's business.

"But I don't understand," people would say. "Isn't it pretty much the same? I mean, we have Buffalo wings here."

First, I told the people there was more to Buffalo cuisine than the wing (beef on weck, sponge candy, Loganberry, and any Polish staple that can be bought at the Broadway Market). Second, I told people that it made me nervous any time I ordered wings in the Midwest. I don't like having to order something as "Buffalo-style." In the Midwest, you can get your wings either mild, medium, hot, or Buffalo. What, oh what, I asked the native Midwesterners, was "Buffalo" in that context?

"You know," they said, sounding vague, sounding as if they themselves weren't exactly sure, "sort of spicy."

I tried to tell them that in Buffalo, you didn't get your wings "Buffalo." You got them mild, medium, hot, or suicidal. Or, if you were at a particularly saucy place, you might get the choice to have your wings done on the grill and dipped in creative sauces like hot garlic or sesame habanero. And you absolutely did not send the bleu cheese back for ranch dressing or--worse--ketchup.

But that won't happen today. And I won't pine for good wings or bleu cheese or any other fine western New York delicacies, because today is the day of all days, the blessed event, the crown jewel of the summer season: Taste of Buffalo.

Today I will buy $30 worth of tickets and proceed to eat my way through the booths that are set up in downtown Buffalo until I have eaten so much I want to throw up. Then I will rest, refresh myself with a wine slushee, and I will soldier on and eat until I want to throw up again.

It's tradition. It's one of my favorite things. It's right up there on the list of What Makes Buffalo Pretty Fantastic, ranking high, along with sunsets over Lake Erie, lots of snow days in the winter, and, of course, the Buffalo Sabres (and, specifically, my future husband).

In a few short hours, I am going to be the fullest, happiest, most satisfied girl in the history of girls. Bring it on.

I Like to Meddle

On Monday morning my brother showed up unannounced at the house. He's been doing that a lot lately, which doesn't make me all that happy because there have been several times where he's almost caught me pantsless, shirtless, or any sort of half-naked. I can't even imagine what my brother would do if he ever saw me half-naked. Probably some variety of what I'd do if I ever saw him half-naked, and that would involve a blunt object and spooning my eyes out with it.

But on Monday my brother had made the trip out here for two very specific reasons. One involved an old van one of his friend's aunt's had used in her carpet-installation business, a van that she'd given to Adam's friend, a van that Adam and his friends were determined to dismantle and turn into a field car that would be able to transport them and large amounts of their friends back to the cabin.

The other reason involved him coming into the diner to eat so he could check out the waitress I am determined to set him up with.

I'd given her notice, and she came to work with her hair impeccably straight-ironed. She had on good jewelry. She was jittery and excited. She stood in the back and wiggled up and down with anticipation.

When my brother breezed into the diner with his friends in tow, the waitress turned and high-tailed it behind the two-way mirror so she could watch Adam and his friends seat themselves in the very last booth along the wall.

"Oh my God oh my God oh my God," she said. She was whipped into hysterics. "He is so hot, so hot, so hot!"

I made a face and went out with a stack of menus for my brother and his boys. My brother had chosen to sit on the side of the back booth that faced the wall. His entire view during dinner would be of the turquoise and hot pink wall that is decked out with pictures from the '50s.

"Hi boys," I said. I doled out the menus and then hit my brother on his fuzzy head. "Are you a moron?" I asked. "Don't you think you should be on the other side of the table, so she can see you and you can see her? Don't you want to get a look at her?"

His only look at her had occurred a few days earlier, when I'd sent a picture to his cell phone.

"Oh," my brother said, "yeah. I guess. Okay. Switch with me, Tim."

Tim switched. I took drink orders. I went back to the kitchen, where the waitress was leaning against the steel counter and looking like she'd gone into heat.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"Fine," she said, fanning herself.

I told her I had a plan, and it was brilliant. I'd take the drinks to the boys, get their order, hang it, and then she could help me bring it out. That's when we'd do the official introduction. I'd make her take his food--a beef on weck, just like I'd predicted--and then they could lock eyes and touch fingers and feel the sizzle of something good starting.

She said okay, okay, that was good, that was great, that was wonderful. She said she was really nervous, though. She didn't know if she could do it.

I told her she could, that she was a pro, that it was going to be fine.

Then I went back and told my brother the plan. "I'm making her bring your food out," I said. "Okay? So she's going to hand you yours, and then I'm going to do the introduction. How do you feel about that?"

My brother told me that was good, that was great, that was wonderful. He said he was pretty nervous, though. He thought he might act like an ass.

I told him that it was entirely possible that he might, but he should try to keep it under control.

"Don't tell her I'm nervous, okay?" he asked.

"No, I totally won't," I said. Then I went back into the kitchen and told her he was really nervous.

"That's so cute," she said. "You didn't tell him I was nervous, did you?"

"No way," I said, and it went on like that for another half an hour. I ran small messages between them, and then, finally, the food came up.

"I don't think I can do this!" the waitress said as she balanced Adam's beef on weck in her palm.

"You can," I said. "You can."

And she did. She followed me out, placed his beef in front of him without incident, and then stood there as I introduced her and they said hey, hi, how are you.

After she disappeared to tend to her own tables, I turned back to my brother and raised my eyebrows. "Huh? Huh?" I asked. "She's cute, right?"

He nodded enthusiastically. "She's really cute," he said. "I like her hair. It's amazing. And her smile is possibly the best smile I've ever seen. But don't tell her that."

And that was one thing I didn't immediately go back and tell her--mainly because I figured that's something he can hang onto, something he can use to impress her later on down the line.

So, I think it went well. More than well. Later that night, we all somehow ended up standing in my driveway and letting Adam swing open the doors to the ex-carpet-hauling van that was now outfitted with several folding chairs ("Eventually," my brother said, "we want to have a couch in here."). The cute waitress looked wary, but she climbed up and into the van, she let my brother drive us over the bumpy path that leads to the cabin. She let him show her the warm beer, the outhouse, the inside of the cabin. I was the one who pointed out the cabin's finer points: the stacks of porn (which have doubled since I was last there), the rustic antler decorations, the moldy bearskin rug.

Much later, after we'd been sitting around the fire for a good long time, my cell phone blinked. I had a text message. I opened it and found a message from the waitress, who was sitting two chairs down from me.

The message said, I want to bone your brother.

And when I looked up from my phone and at the waitress, she was staring intently into the fire's flames, trying not to laugh. And I had to get up and pour myself another peach vodka-ginger ale to keep myself from throwing up right then and there.

If Only I Were a Chemical Engineer and Could Make My Own

In the last four days, I have seen three separate sets of fireworks, and it's still not enough.