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A Weird Weeknight at Carmen's
By
Whimsical Doggo
Ethnic Food Night had been the tallest bodyguard’s idea. It added an element of adventure and exploration to their infrequent nights off. Their around-the-clock job of protecting a small boy in a high-rise, high-security condominium didn’t allow for much in the way of a social life in the oh-so-social milieu that was San Francisco, South of Market, or anywhere else in the city for that matter.
Tonight’s goal was on the southern edge of SoMa, a quaint and quirky Philippine restaurant, Carmen’s, teetering on pilings and overhanging the waters of China Basin’s south bank. It was a densely enough populated part of the district that the four bodyguards elected to walk the eight blocks down to Carmen’s. They needed a stretching of their legs, and rumor had it that all three parking places at the restaurant were perpetually taken, an assertion that proved to be accurate, so they were glad that they had walked when they rounded the corner of the lengthy and imposing bulk of the185 Berry Street building and caught their first glimpse of their destination.
Well before they saw Carmen’s they also heard it. Thundering music that was audible LONG before they crossed China Basin via the 4th Street Bridge, let alone approached the doorway, signaled that Carmen’s was open for business – of some kind, anyway.
The boxy, one-big-happy-room interior of the restaurant was brightly lit, and the throbbing music turned out not to be a twelve-piece rock band, but one muscular karaoke machine, cranked up to Level Eleven, with Ray Stevens’s warbling, country western version of “Misty” agitating all molecules, gas, liquid and solid, within a wide radius. Three middle-aged Filipino men were seated at the bar (which encompassed the kitchen) and taking turns at the microphone. Sign language was essentially in order unless the karaoke machine blew a circuit.
A woman materialized out of a tiny back room and gestured for them to be seated wherever they liked (there were no other customers in the dining area, which was not a good sign, but one of the rules of Ethnic Food Night was “No Backing Out”). They sat as far as they could from any loudspeakers (but this wasn’t easy since the speakers were numerous), and peered at the distant, smudgy menu handwritten on a markerboard mounted on the far wall. The menu was fairly simple: Six minor variations on the theme of “cheeseburger” plus adobo and lumpia (Items 5 and 8). The soft-voiced table server engaged in a pantomime which bore some vague relationship to the markerboard menu of predominantly cheeseburgers. The woman was evidently explaining some further details of the menu, but the subtleties were lost on them since the karaoke system was now serving intestine-penetrating doses of “You’re Gonna Make It After All,” (the theme music from the Mary Tyler Moore Show) as arranged and performed by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts.
A gallon plastic jug of lukewarm tap water plunked down on the table as the bodyguards gestured among themselves as to who was going to order what, since one of the other rules of Ethnic Food Night was “No Two Dishes Ordered May Be Identical,” and the numerous cheeseburger possibilities presented a near-insurmountable barrier to the observation of the rule.
They puppet-showed among themselves to some kind of consensus, semaphore-signaled to the soft-spoken woman, placed their order, and sat back, taking the place in.
There was, they discovered, yet another female figure to occupy their attention.
A display in the corner of the restaurant was a vertical diorama behind a glass pane, and the red bra, white panties, and blue garter belt-plus-stockings therein gave the impression that an invisible yet voluptuous (and rather patriotic) woman stood waiting for customers’ appetites to turn from cheeseburgers and lumpia to other possibilities. Evidently Carmen’s had found a way of adding some bolt-on profit to the revenues.
The karaoke yowled on: “Afternoon Delight,” remixed by Patty Smith but sung by a baritone whose rear end spilled over all sides of his long-suffering bar stool. Now here was a patron who could use some patriotic-themed control-top pantyhose!
The food landed like a squadron of polite, squishy meteors. The bodyguards could smell it even if they couldn’t hear it. It seemed palatable enough. And, since they couldn’t converse among themselves as they ate, they gave their surroundings further scrutiny.
The largest bodyguard gestured to something mounted on the wall nearest them. A collage of photos of some pasty-faced family celebrating an older man’s (Grandpa’s?) birthday stretched across four or five feet of the wall.
They saw that there was a kind of chronology to the montage of snapshots. It was in a nice glass-enclosed frame, as if it were a noble work of art or a record of a momentous historical event.
The snapshots were clearly of a birthday party. An older man, pale and smiling, was seated at the head of a table which seemed to include his siblings, his wife, and all of his progeny as well as their significant others. Three generations of happy siblings, children and their spouses, as well as grandchildren, all beaming at Grandpa.
And that's when the snapshots of the lingerie models joined the fun.
Grandpa was getting a family celebration the likes of which no one had ever celebrated in the bodyguards’ various families. A parade of gorgeous, 19-year-old Filipinas decked out in their own beautiful skin and a few wisps of frilly lace meant to heighten, not suppress, a general atmosphere of sexuality, circled the table.
And the whole family kept smiling right on through every last one of those snapshots. A delectable nubile cutie caressing Grandpa with a garter belt? What a hoot, Thelma! A model in thong underwear sitting on Grandpa's lap? Good stuff, eh, Clara?! Twins in red, white, and blue fondling Grandpa while their well-filled brassieres nuzzled and warmed his ears? Just what the doctor ordered, Lurline! The bodyguards had the vague impression that all the women were smiling because Grandpa had agreed to a bulk order of stars-and-stripes-themed underwear for the whole family. Hard to say.
The oldest of the three karaoke contenders was doing his dangdest to huff through the blustery lyrics of Dead at Birth’s 1992 classic: “50 Ways to Pimp Slap Yo’ Bitch.” The bodyguards plowed through their dinner while gazing stoically at the remarkable array of birthday party photographs.
The bodyguards decided to skip dessert and/or any lingerie catalogs that might be proffered. When they regained their hearing, they would discuss and re-discuss this night for some months to come. These people in San Francisco were crazy, man.
Copyright © 2007 Whimsical Doggo
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