(Jon-Without with his parents, visiting from Upstate New York. Photo TLB).
I drove the P-71 Crown Vic Police Car to Willow at the usual time. There were a lot of Arlington Cops out, and I got eye contact twice and one wave, a professional courtesy, I assume, because they knew what I was driving and they recognize a plain-clothes Chief’s car when they see it.
There was a decent parking place on Utah Street around the corner. JPeter and Old Jim were at the Apex of the Amen Corner when I strolled in, trying on semi-retirement. It was Friday, second-to-last Fish Fry for the Lenten season, and those of us who are not quite observant are eager for the return of the Last Friday of the Month Buffalo Night, featuring the incomparable steamer-round of locally raised beef, hormone-free, grass-fed, humanely slaughtered slowly-cooked and thin-sliced and piled in heaping portions on Kate Jansen’s marvelous Kemmelweck rolls, sprinkled with fennel and sea-salt.
But the fish is good- broiled or deep-fried and beer-battered with some of the IPA’s out of the tap out front.
It was going to be a complex night, I was sure. The last Friday of the month always is- the usual generalized delight that the working week is over, coupled with the impending Easter holiday, and the prospect of people being able to give up their abstinence. I was studiously ignoring the bad news, foreign and domestic, and resolved not to talk about any of them. I handed a bottle of diet tonic over to Jasper behind the bar (I bring my own) so I could avoid the heavily sugared version and settled in. Jon-without an H had ensured that the occasion was on our Outlook Calendars, since his folks were going to be in town from their retirement digs in Plattsburg, New York.
In short order, Lovely Jamie and Heather Two appeared to my right, and then the Lovely Bea swept in with Jon’s folks as he parked the car. Jamie got a glass of the white and announced that she had given up Lent for Lent, and I told her I was inclined to agree with her. I took the opportunity to engage with Jon’s parents and discovered, not to my surprise, that they are as nice as Jon is. We got them one of the high-top tables so they could be adjacent to the Usual Suspects at the bar.
Jon’s dad had retired from the Strategic Air Command and stayed on at the location of his last duty station in upstate New York. We were just getting going on the matter of KC-135 tanker operations in Southeast Asia when Jon strolled in and introductions were made again, and I looked at my phone to see whether the Good Doctor was running late.
He was, but we had a reserved sign at the bar next to JPeter and he slid right in. To his left was bartender Sammy’s newest flame, a striking Moroccan woman who has been in America for only a few months and has quite dazzled Sammy, known as the Valentino or the mixology trade. I walked over to introduce myself, and she was shy and demure but very friendly, with warm dark eyes and raven hair.
The Good Doctor (TGD) knows all the regulars, and announced that he had completed a 13-month project and was gong back into full-time retirement. We sort of shared that with the rest of the bar, since we had to shout across the corner and around Old Jim and JPeter, but it was good. Jim decided to pull out a little early, maybe the noise and the general hub-bub, and TGD slid down to his seat and we did not have to shout quite so loud.
TGD had been a classmate at the Industrial College, survivor of the Nairobi Embassy bombing and former acting Administrator, of course he knew Roj when he came in, since he was the son of a former comptroller at USAID, or something, and grew up in Zaire, where TGD had been an Africa specialist for the Agency. Roj had some business he wanted to talk about, and apparently views me as some bizarre corporate mentor.
(Tinker Belle with Tinker Belle. Photo Socotra).
The highlight of the evening was the arrival of Tinker Belle, who was making a rare appearance from Annapolis. She was our all-time favorite bartender except for swan-necked Liz-With-an-S, and she took delight on being on the civilian side of the bar. It had been a year or more since we saw her. It was so good to see someone grow out of Food & Bev and into culinary, which she did while we watched her baby grow in her tummy.
Little Nola (as in “New Orleans, LA”) is doing well, and I shared a picture of my growing grandson in response. Kids are wonderful, if you don’t actually have to take care of them, I thought.
There is more, of course, since we stayed later than usual due to the number of people and collective story lines. Some of the information has to remain embargoed because, strictly speaking, most of it is none of our business. But everybody’s business is all laid out there to talk about, relationships, business travails, politics and world events.
There will be consequences to some of the news, I imagine, as there nearly always are.
TGD and I decided to have another drink and talk about Zaire and what the latest deranged fanatics are up to in that corner of the continent. Roj was chatting with Sammy’s girlfriend in Arabic. It was a typical night at Willow on the edge of Spring.
When I got back to Big Pink safely, I parked the Police Cruiser down in the well and shivered a bit in the rising wind. Spring is still a ways off, but the crowd at Willow is ready for it. And what a great crowd. I turned on the flatscreen to watch Michigan State take on Oklahoma, knowing I would never make it past the first half. No basketball game should have the tip-off at 2230. It is madness.
Shoot, I guess I am going to miss Arlington after all.
(Heather and Tinker Belle. They went clubbing and the rest of went home to bed- or basketball. Photo Socotra).
Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303