Silhouettes: Restaurant Take-away

2020.05.21, by Julia Verne and Tolly

[Julia Verne] When we had the new car smog tested the other day, we dropped by an open restaurant/bar, serving take-away. None of the upper middle class customers going in were wearing masks.

[Tolly] Some sketches: A middle-aged man with an expensive watch, wearing a white shirt celebrating 20 years of some luxury brand, speaking loudly on the phone with some acquaintance about some horribly mangled boy from his childhood. It was a bicycling accident, down a hill on the way to school. The same tone of voice one uses when recounting some horrible accident one hears of on the news. These [are the] injuries! And this is how it happened… Obviously [the injured boy] wasn’t a friend of his.

A man in his late twenties to early thirties, watching a dog for someone else in the restaurant. Backwards baseball cap, expensive black and orange flashy jersey, red basketball shorts, hairy legs. Sunglasses. Dull face not clean-shaven. Carelessly and listlessly pacing and pulling along a young, small black dog on a lead. Now that dog was so curious, but the man wouldn’t let the poor thing sniff anything, not even the big magnolia tree outside the restaurant. (He was interested in me, too.)

His owner was a sporty but not particularly athletic young woman in periwinkle-coloured casual athletic attire, and sunglasses. The dog was much happier as soon as she came out, prancing in his steps and looking up at her attentively with great affection. He didn’t even care that she was holding food.