6.18.01

Maybe I should just tell you about eating at Lumiere. This restaurant Mary loved when she ate there newly married. She raved and raved and we called her international and roaming on my cell phone just to find out where it was and she said it was across the Lion's Gate Bridge so we bailed on that idea deciding to eat sushi instead, except sushi was closed. But in the neighborhood was another restaurant called Lumiere and we thought it funny to see another restaurant by the same name and laughed that maybe Mary's sense of direction was all screwed up, so we went in just to see and we were right about Mary. We asked for a table and got one. We were squeezed in, they said. Lucky us. Until we opened the menu to four tasting menus, the cheapest at $70 (Canadian) per person. Well it was fate that losing and finding and squeezing so we splurged. What the hell, there is always more money to be made. The first course comes and it's the size of a one-inch cube. The next course is one egg roll sliced in two, the next a handful of roots in cheese sauce. At first you're thinking you're getting ripped off because the courses are so tiny. What you don't realize is that the doses are carefully timed and unstoppable. Once you're committed there's no way to stop short and no way to vary. They've got you nailed to a chair with 30 other people and they're going to spoon feed you each until, one by one, you pop or bail or go mad. The last one eating gets the check. By the fourth or fifth course we'd talked about everything. Conversation was feeding itself on unsavory topics, entertaining to our dining neighbors surely. And when that ran out we fed off our companions for entertainment. Two hours had past since we sat down. Two hours and the same people that were there when we arrived still sat, waiting, as we were, twenty minutes between courses and five minutes to scarf 'em down. We watched them begin to breakdown. Saw a woman resting her head on the table. Our neighbor spilled a glass of wine. Some had books—they'd been here before. Then a man in the back of the room, in a booth—the only booth in the restaurant—tilted his plate to his tongue and began licking top to bottom in long canine strokes. She said, "That man back there is licking his plate." I turned. The man's companion nudged him in embarrassment. She said, sinisterly, "Plate licker." And we fell into madness. Loud and possessive paroxysms. We became untouchable. Our waiter stopped talking to us, but didn't bring the food any more quickly. We thought if we ate faster we could speed it up, but no. Just the continued laughing, the cold shoulder, and the food kept coming, mechanically and masterfully timed. The place began to clear out. Only a few diners left, swollen and sprawled over their tables. One woman grabbed the candle from an adjacent and abandoned table and joined it with the candle on her own table to make a little fire for roasting her fingers. We chanted "Plate Licker" at irregular intervals to amuse ourselves. So it went for another hour. Finally, the last plate of chocolates brought with it the check. I packed the chocolates in a Hello Kitty Kleenex and made for the door. On the way out, I passed the Plate Licker and his date. They'd fallen where they sat. Both with their feet up on the excess cushioning of the booth, leaning in on each other for support, sleeping. The cheese course staled before them. Eleven fifteen and making for the border. Law fodder all the way home.

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