Great subjects

                                   DELLI-VISION

 

Two white baseball caps duel with each other as the husband and wife chew lunch. Their jaws grind slowly. They do not speak. A busboy, who I imagine speaks little or no English, swipes off the booth next to them.

 

Two booths away two bald men face each other. The heavy set one wears a blue and yellow plaid cotton shirt and the other a black washed- out knit. They jabber constantly, one starting before the other stops. Their coffee gets cold, their toast dries. A snap of his fingers and the washed-out shirt guy attracts the waitress and complains about the coffee. I get sore, lose interest in them and change my position.

 

Oh, how I love this early time at the delly. My observations, my environment, are more tasty than the lox.

 

A gargantuan  busboy with a navy blue/red/white baseball cap ambles past me, sees me writing, and walks back where he had come from, loads a tray of dirty dishes and carries it to the kitchen.

 

An elderly man with only snow white fringe on his head is partially hidden by a post, but I see his long, skinny legs, his feet in black flip flops, protruding from the post. They make me see him as a beautiful deer, its tan pelt torn, lying shot under a tree.

 

More customers, more fodder for me, come in.

 

The first to form a wait line happens to have on a heavy, clumsy neck brace. Holding a brown cane, he limps to the men's room. When he returns, the hostess has held a small table on the aisle for him and seats him immediately. Not only is he disabled, he is alone and I feel sorry for him, quickly turn away.

 

The kitchen door, constantly blocked my view of one whole area but this time I caught a momentary sight of a tanned, slender man, maybe about 50, very curly hair that is too curly, too long for his stature. On the table in front of him he has spread the entire morning paper, leaving no room for his lunch. What he does is lifts his plate with one hand, uses his fork with the other, takes a bite or a sip, puts it down and reads another column. Once I saw him my eyes glued on to his prowess and I knew that if I tried it, my eggs would instantly be in my lap.

 

A family of four is seated. Either they had been to or were going again to the beach. Mother, teen daughter and son, showed a lot of sun-burned skin, while the father, an unsigned up member of the baseball cap brigade, only nodded an occasional yes or no to whatever was said to him.

 

This piece de resistance I must tell you about and then I will go. A very fat lady, dark long hair, black dress, somehow sat down when I wasn't looking. There was a man with her but hard to see. She was in my view–just about all of her. Her shoes had been slipped off, one leg propped up on the bench and the other splayed wide apart on the floor. When I say I saw all of her, I did.

 

Her arrival, my leaving were perfectly timed. I'd had enough to eat, enough writing and definitely too much of her.