30

Last night Olivia and I didn't go to bed until three in the morning. Since we're home all the time, our eating habits have changed. We keep different morning hours. She has to rise early for the distance learning via Zoom implemented by the BISD. I lie in bed until nine or ten. I take two preventive pills for medical conditions that require postponing breakfast for an hour. It can be as late as eleven before I prepare bacon and eggs, toast, coffee and fresh-squeezed orange juice, one of a variety of plates I imagine I'm ordering at a Paris café.

"Bonjour, monsieur. Que voulez-vous?"

"Bonjour, mon ami. Je veux une…"

Mick chats, watches movies and plays games all night long. Olivia and I wait for him to emerge from his bedroom around three before we eat lunch, which is a piece of meat, a vegetable and a salad. As a result of our delayed meals, there are many evenings that we don't have dinner. We'll snack on something with a glass of wine while watching television.

Last night was different. I was hungry. I told Olivia to call for a pizza. Nobody was open. I decided to take the car and find something; I didn't want to cook. Toscafino had opened its doors for the first time in weeks. Swank is back by local standards. In a T-shirt, shorts and sandals, I was hardly dressed for the occasion.

One of the beauties of Brownsville, which may account for my 45-year stay, is that nobody gives a shit. There is an endless stream of gossip and relationships come to sudden ends in the wake of affairs or venereal diseases, but from my many experiences I will argue that nobody gives a shit. I don't.

You treat people straight and they reciprocate in kind. Brownsville doesn't simmer with racism and most my acquaintances, and there are many, believe that when you are dead, you are dead. Catholicism is a tradition and everyone tolerates the Jehovah Witnesses and the Mormons, grateful that they have to keep their distance. They can continue to spread the word of God, but, goddammit, they better not be spreading COVID.

At Toscafino there was a couple at one table, four patrons at the bar and several people sitting outside. I took a seat at the end of the bar and ordered a pizza with everything. The waiter, wearing a mask like the rest of his fellow employees, said it would take 20 minutes. I asked him to bring me a plate of cheese that I ate as I consumed two glasses of a Cab. While waiting, I called Olivia.

"I'm at Toscafino having a great time. All the fresas are here in their low-cut blouses and short skirts."

"That's great," she replied as she flowed with the conversation.

"I've ordered a pizza and I'll be home shortly, but you need to do your part."

"My part?" she replied with a quizzical tone in her voice.

"Yes. Your part! You need to open one of the bottles of wine."

"Oh! Okay."

"See you in a bit."

Toscafino's pizzas cost more than the average pie, but they are large and delicious, eight significant slices, two sufficiently filling. I returned home. I put music on the laptop and we laughed and talked until the wee hours of the morning, another bottle fueling the fun. (For the record, we emptied a Bordeaux and a Malbec.)

In spite of the threat that Coronavirus represents, there has been a silver lining to that invisible cloud that hangs over us. We have learned to take life at a slower pace, relax and relish the down time. We waste so much energy chasing our tails that culminates in nothing. In the 18 years that Olivia and I have been together off-and-on, I don't remember a night like this. We have partied, but this was different. We were like old friends.