Category: Guests
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Return to the Front Lines
“What color are these tablecloths?” Um, beige? “No, the actual color. You know, like “Sandy Pebble” or some other real name of a color. I need to tell my sister’s decorator the color so she can get her carpet in this exact shade. It’s just what she’s been looking for!” Well, um…. “Maybe you could…
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Bliss
Her hair curled in frizzy clumps as it flew away in the soggy tropical air. His pale face glistened with a combination of sweat and grease as he struggled not to notice how stifling the soggy tropical air felt on his Minnesota skin. Her glasses slipped down her nose. He pushed damp bangs off his…
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Act 24, Scene 6
On the night when the bar fight broke out, on the same day when an older regular customer had gotten popped for a DUI, and when, before that, a co-worker had quite suddenly walked out, leaving me to either face another 7,000 doubles or try yet again to plug the holes in the dam with…
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Backing Up Bob
A friend who is the GM of a high-end, perennially busy and very popular restaurant, once confided to me how he secretly worries that one day he will open for dinner service and not one guest will walk through the door. “You’re joking, right?” I teased him at the time. Please. “Not really,” he said.…
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My Brown-Eyed Girl
I don’t like having kids in my bar. Ever. My bar is not a family place, not by any stretch. On the rare evening when a child is in tow, I frown a little. Why would anyone bring a kid to a bar that doesn’t pretend to be anything but a bar? But on those…
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Where’s My Game???
This may come as a shock to some, but people have been known to move to the Keys to hide from their previous lives. They don rubber flip flops and wrinkled T-shirts and and grow long, gray ponytails or dispense with highlights and blow-dried styles, and then they assume the escape to paradise is complete.…
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Keys Karma and All Things Good
If I hadn’t wandered into a dive bar across the street from my Fort Lauderdale apartment a year ago, I wouldn’t know the very cool owner of that dive bar. I also would not have met the day-at-a-time boy who would break my heart a few months later. If my life in Fort Lauderdale had…
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While You Were Out
“We were all holding our breath for a week while you were out sick.” Oh, thank you, I think. “Because we were sure we’d all get the flu from you. But no one did! Good thing, too. Anyway, you feeling better?” Feeling the love, mostly. *** “Oh, you’re back, finally? Hope you’re feeling better. You…
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Maybe You Should Stay Home….
I woke up this past Saturday morning with itchy eyes and a stuffy nose. Allergies, of course. No more Claritin in the house, of course. My guy and I decided there was no better way to spend a rainy Saturday morning in paradise than to shop every aisle at CVS. I needed the allergy meds.…
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Get-Away Clothing
Most of my local clientele has gone away. Some for a month, others for a week or two. There’s a reason to bank money during season–mid-August through September looms large and quiet. But I wondered, when you live in a vacation paradise, where do you go on your own vacation? Palm trees and water and…