[continued from previous entry]
Max headed off to hang with friends, Tom and I pulled on cold-weather gear, slogged through snow and fading daylight to pick up food and entertainment.
A brief stop at an Indian restaurant to snag a take-out menu, the place not yet open for the day. Tom rapped at door and windows persistently, untiringly, wearing down the employees skulking around inside until one finally let us in to complete our mission.
Then a stop at a market for chow. Not, it turned out, your garden variety market -- an Iranian market, a sizeable one, the kind of grocery store that used to be considered large until the advent of mega-markets. A busy place, with an international array of customers, appearing like any other successful, well-maintained grocery store until one peered closely at the shelf stock, at which time brain and cultural gears had to be guided through a slight shift. Not your usual lower-48 fare, though enticing, tasty-looking. Especially the deli and meat counters, where we lingered, picking up a bunch of stuff. Where Tom exchanged friendly hellos with a 30ish Iranian woman working behind the deli counter, a woman he seemed to have a bit more than a passing acquaintance with -- a painter, with an easy manner, extremely attractive in a not-your-standard-western- world-cover-girl way. With sparkling eyes and a radiant smile. And apparently interested in him, an interest he was aware of, choosing not to investigate it too deeply.
He rounded up meat, the woman headed off to a different part of the store. I tracked her down and let her know she had a spectacular smile, taking her, apparently, completely by surprise. Her reaction: pleased, slightly embarrassed, the smile shining forth once more, at full wattage. Yowza!
I let her alone, found Tom. We ran the check-out gauntlet, paid up, headed out.
Back home, Tom slaved away at food prep., ignoring my offers to assist. Plates of good-looking chow accompanied us down into the basement for a dinner/DVD evening. The entertainment: Junebug, an American indie film that roped me in right from the start, maintaining its hold until the very end. A complex bugger -- low-key on the surface, interpersonal intensity swirling around beneath the seeming tranquility, the characters getting a heavy-duty emotional workout -- with a great cast, easily worth seeking out. (The food was good, too.)
Tom offered to drive me back to the hotel, when we finally wandered out to the car, the night had turned genuinely cold, the kind of cold that has a hard, bitter edge. Joyous minutes of Tom scraping snow and ice from windows while I jiggled about, trying to keep my feet from freezing to the street. And we were off, Tom picking up Max along the way, then heading downtown via a route I'd never traveled, along the St. Lawrence, the city ahead, its many lights shining in the night. Pretty.
Found myself back in my hotel room surprisingly quickly, the car ride turning out to be way faster than the afternoon's pokey bus ride had been.
End of day 3.
[to be continued]
España, te echo de menos.
rws 4:08 PM [+]
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