42 Dreams of Arizona Bay

I catch, out of the corner of my eye, a man darting in and out of his booth. He adjusts a frame, but I can’t see what it is. Then, he sees people leave their table across the aisle, and immediately shuttles all his stuff over there. I can’t see what he’s doing. I don’t want to stare too much. Frame. Several plates of food.

My imagination is set on fire.

It’s a few days before Christmas at the Chinese buffet. Perhaps he always came here with his dead wife, and is honoring her memory. Perhaps he’s meeting some people and hopes they will notice him.

My imagination really likes the idea of a missing wife, of a man dining alone. I wonder whether to go and talk to him, because I am shy and tend to stay to myself. But if he is all alone, wouldn’t he enjoy at least talking to a couple of people?

I watch him as he darts up occasionally to fetch more cookies to add to his plate. He occasionally takes the frame down, puts it back up, moves it around. I can really only see the edge of his table though, and infer some of his movements. I see a calculator and a pile of food.

Is this the table he always eats at? Is this the table that he and his wife always sat at?

He gets up again, and goes to the bathroom. Quick, I hiss to Heather. Get up and look and see what’s in the frame on his table.

She gets up, takes a casual circuit through the dining room, and reports back.

“I don’t know. Something about excellence. Shh. I’ll tell you later.”

The man is older. Gray, almost white hair standing up a little crazily with a part down the middle. He’s wearing a dark striped shirt and a tie that is striped diagonally in different colors than come nowhere near matching.

Perhaps he has noticed me trying not to stare even as I do. Where else am I supposed to look?

He gets up and crouches at our table, and in a harsh whisper says, “I just want to say (pause), Merry Christmas to you ladies.”

I get a big whiff of old man cologne. Heather later says she smelled BO. It is here I notice the tie and shirt, and wonder if perhaps it’s just some fraternal order tie I don’t know about. I go back to the theory that he’s meeting a group of people, hence several plates out like a party offering, even though it’s a buffet.

After we finish eating, I decide to leave the dining room in the wrong way, so I can stop and talk to the old man. I’d been struggling with myself, because I don’t normally walk up to strangers. There’s that societal expectation to mind your own business. I really want to see if he’s lonely, but the opportunity to invite him to eat with us has passed, and I didn’t really want to share our table anyway. I am not feeling that social, but perhaps talking to him will brighten his day.

“So, why are you here, all by yourself?” I ask rather stupidly. I’ve eaten at this place by myself before. But his constant air of anticipation, of restlessness, still leads me to think that he’s waiting for something. And maybe he was just waiting for us to talk to him.

“I’m here, same as you, eating,” he says. “Next question,” rather abruptly. I wonder, for a moment, if I’ve been dismissed.

I don’t remember what my next question was, or if I even had one, but my memory of the rest of our conversation is craziness.

He says he’s a novelist, that he plans to be not just the best novelist in this state, this country, but even the world. He tells us his name, so we’ll know when he’s famous. We’ll just leave his name at Michael for now.

He waves the plastic-covered sign in my face. I can’t read it. The general impression is hard to read, making no sense, craziness. My attention just won’t focus on it, but there’s a big rainbow excellence in block letters in the middle. Heather says it said something at the end that it was typed in two minutes without any mistakes, but I was too dazed by the manicness to notice.

At this point, I suspect I’ve made a mistake and really just want to go, but I’m not able to end conversations like this well.

“The novel is about a woman twice as rich as Paris Hilton,” he says. “She has $900 million dollars.”

“Wow,” I say stupidly.

“It’s called the Millionairess.”

“Nice.”

“You two are more beautiful than Paris Hilton,” he tells us.

While this is a lovely compliment, even coming from an old man, it is the biggest lie I have ever heard. But perhaps he meant it. Perhaps he sees something I don’t see in myself. Perhaps beauty to him equates intelligence. In that regard, I certainly am a hundred times more beautiful than Paris Hilton. In fact, I think this is going to be my new mantra. More beautiful than Paris Hilton. If I say it enough times, maybe I’ll belie — nah.

The conversation changes abruptly to his speeding. He considers speed limits to be suggestions (I secretly used to agree with this, until my insurance, too many tickets, and fear of the law convinced me otherwise) and asked why should you drive 65 on a highway when you can drive 120?

And why should you drive down a major artery in Fresno, Blackstone Avenue, at the speed limit, he asks? I was driving 90 miles an hour and the police caught me, he says.

Now he walks everywhere, because his car is impounded and he’s waiting for his case to be heard, six months later. Heather and I later conjecture that might be the source of the BO. He does a lot of walking.

I kinda laugh and agree with him that speeding is OK unless you get caught, which is why I don’t speed much any more. Not that I have EVER driven that fast. The thought of driving 90 has more or less always paralyzed me, and doing it on an avenue in town with stoplights and traffic would scare the crap out of me. I’m afraid of the law and dying, thank you very much.

He also has a stack of business cards out, but they look of different makes and I don’t know if we’re supposed to take one. In the end, I just ignore them. I note the piles of cookies and uneaten food. Buffets normally frown on you taking more than you can eat. Maybe, because he has a long way to walk, he will eat it all eventually.

He also says something about St. Michael, and then, alarmingly, starts unbuttoning his striped shirt a little. I am too dazed to move. He detaches a pin and shoves it closer to me, so I can see it’s supposed to be an angel.

“And what angel is that? Michael. St. Michael,” he says, not really wanting an answer. The pin is thrust under my face for so long I wonder if I’m supposed to take it or at least to examine it more closely, but I do not.

Eventually, it seems we are dismissed again, with another next question, and I tell him Merry Christmas, and that I hope he gets his car back.

But you know what, I hope he doesn’t.