We are driving to a restaurant. I am dressed up. She is dressed up. We are not talking, just driving. The radio is playing Don Williams’ song, “Amanda.”
“...Amanda, light of my life,
“Fate should have made you,
“A gentleman’s wife...”
Soon, we are in a swanky restaurant. All the servers wear black. The appetizers come on square plates, doused with sauces that have fancy names that I can’t pronounce. Everything here costs more than a summer cottage in Maui.
Napkins are spread upon our laps. My wife and I are not talking because we are nosy. At the table next to ours is an elderly man with a woman who looks about twenty-one.
The man kisses her. She giggles. When the old man’s waiter arrives, the man orders aged Scotch. His date orders expensive merlot.
Our waitress arrives. My wife orders sushi for an appetizer. I’m still looking.
When the sushi comes, it looks frightening. The lime green stuff that comes with it looks
like guacamole, but it is actually nuclear horseradish that will disfigure your sinuses for life.
My wife loves sushi because she is more cultured than I am. She has been to foreign countries, she knows the difference between good wine and Boone’s Farm, and she is sharp enough to win Wheel of Fortune.
Somehow, she married a guy who has never been anywhere or done anything. A kid who was once at a famous bar in New Orleans with his buddy, where the bartender offered him a free glass of thirty-seven-year-old Scotch. And this kid—who has always been a few clowns short of a circus—refused the Scotch and ordered Coors instead.
I’ll never forget it when my buddy said, “What were you thinking, you big hick? That Scotch probably costs two hundred bucks per glass.”
My only defense was that I was a fool. And God…