Fondling the Marshmallows and Coins

So I turned 56 last Friday. I secretly didn't want to let 55 go. I liked being as old as my birth year. It was a magically hard, awakening year, and as I welcomed 56, I juggled with the notion of getting older versus still feeling pretty young and prime. I bought a box of highlights and went at it. An hour later, on the day of my birth, I stood in the bathroom, blow drying my hair and smiling. Looking good. I looked good. Life looks good. Just gotta keep drinking the water.

Leila and I met and wickedly ate a McRib at McDonald's. Yes, we did. The hell with it. I threw french fries down my gullet like pigeons go for bread crumbs. Then we went to Loehmann's where my precious girl bought me not one, but two pairs of boots. When we first arrived at the Seventh Avenue store, I witnessed many women dashing in and once in the shoe section, fuggedaboutit. I was overwhelmed, but I love me some boots, so I waded in with the ladies. Leila helped me a lot once I became a sock stumbling mama, unearthed by the firm thighed girls of ankle boots and over the knee. 

Then we went to Spice Cove on the Lower East Side. When Leila asked me what I wanted to do on my birthday, I texted "eat Indian food and go for a coffee afterwards." As you can see I was lavished with more. I love Indian food and this is a place Leila and I love for its $9.95 satisfying portions, variety, and environment. As we entered Spice Cove, we noticed it was crowded. My heart sunk down with the barely digested McRib sandwich three hours earlier. Maybe we wouldn't be able to eat here? We saw the host and an open table at the same time. We pointed in gleeful direction at the table, but he raised his finger in a   no affirmation. "The couple over there are fighting. You don't want to be there," he said, frenzied.

Leila and I looked at each other. Excitement. We both assured him we'd be fine, so we squeezed in to the matchbox sized square of a spot in the already small restaurant. Loehmann bags and all, we sat a few inches from a pensive older couple, huddled over their appetizers, the woman mumbling and fussing at her husband. And, yes, they were fighting.

She pointed at our bags, and asked him if that bothered him since he was so upset that the other people at the table had left because of their bickering? She verbally bitch slapped him over any issue she could pull up from her angry I've been married to you for this many years hard drive.  "What are you going to do about your diabetes?" she hissed. "I'm going to leave you. I should just get up and leave now. I'm going to leave this marriage if you don't take care of yourself. It's too noisy in here. I think I will just leave. Why am I married to you?" And in fine argumentative form, he tried his best to keep up with his miserable wife, but she was laps ahead of him in agonizing discomfort.

Leila and I ate our meal spittingly fast, so hurried that we both expressed to the other our major digestive distress for a day or two afterwards. I imagined rice furiously clinging to the sides of my intestines, pissed at being subjected to such an unpleasant dining mockery.

But once the couple's food arrived and they began to eat, they calmed down. Were they just hungry? Once his wife was smiling again, saying how good was the food, he stared at her, grinning and said,  "You're sitting next to Buddha." Shocked, I think, was he at the realization that from all this chaos, bliss had been sitting beside his hornet's nest of a wife.  "I am?" she questioned, turning, and staring at what now showed a two foot high golden Buddha, six inches from her. She fingered the coins in the palms of Buddha. "Leave those alone,"  warned her husband playfully, and Leila swears she saw her take a few.

They paid their bill, and as they moved past us, our shopping bags wedded to our calves, the husband eyed us saying, "that's some shopping you two have done!" "It's her birthday!" Leila pealed, and the man blushed, realizing what horses' asses they had been on someone's birthday.

He turned to me and said, "22"?  "Eighteen!" said Leila and we laughed and were on our way to Max Brenner's  http://maxbrenner.com/ for chocolate, baby. We arrived and waited for Natalie to come and when she did, we ordered the Sampler which included fondue for two since Natalie wanted only a salad.

Leila and I roasted marshmallows over the flame from the black pot on our table and dipping the marshmallows into a milk chocolate fondue and then into our mouths, "Oh. My. God." was all that was permitted to come out.

The flame grew so tall that Natalie flagged a waiter. "Could you put this out?" she asked authoritatively, ignoring Leila's and my cries of protest. The waiter, a no nonsense young woman, looked at Natalie, reached for her water glass and in one motion poured water into the container and spizzt, it was out. Out. Natalie's face in time with Leila's and my realization that the girl had used Natalie's own drinking glass to annihilate the pot, threw us into laughter, our extended bellies heaving into the table.

Finally, full, sweet toothed and wasted, Leila and Natalie paid the bill, and we left, me hunched in saturation, as we made our way down 14th Street, them trying to hail a cab, one for the birthday girl and one for the givers of the party.

But it was Friday night, and a shift change, and nobody wanted to drive to Brooklyn so onto the F train I went with my bags of loot. Kissing Leila and Natalie good-bye, I sat on the train, a bloated pillow of belly, as deliciously decadent and unholy as a wild-eyed woman sitting next to Buddha with coins and rice in her hands.