To Carol!

It’s Christmas at Mizuna and the coat hallway smells so so good, lined with heavy wool and furs thick with perfume and champagne and vaguely cigarettes, and Carol is making her entrance in silk and jewels

Carol! 

Carol who says hello to every cook on the line and addresses each by name, Carol who compliments our host on his suit and his manners, Carol who slips the valet a twenty for his son, Carol who eats big sloppy burgers and drinks big fat cabernets. 

Carol!

I can hear her laughing from the hallway, and I can hear the whole room liven up. It feels like the champagne glasses toast themselves: To Carol! She is head-to-toe white, white hair, white silk dress, white shoes, pearls and diamonds and a white full length fox fur coat. 

Carol!
I hug her softness and her beauty and the coat tickles my nose and as I back away and reach for her shoulders, she says, Don’t take it, honey, I’ll just throw it on the back of my chair. 

Carol eats every course; she enjoys every course; she devours every course, and the diners around her revel in their own food just a little more by the mere presence of her delight. She’s laughing at a silly joke, and then she’s telling a dirty joke, and she raises her arms just as Steve is pouring wine from the decanter, and he steps back, the deep dark Barolo streaming onto her white fur coat, spreading like oil on snow and it’s unstoppable in it’s slow motion ruddiness, and I swear the entire dining room stops mid-bite, mid-sentence, mid-breath, and she breaks the moment

Oh honey, it’s just fur. That fox was wearing it for years and he never needed to wash it! And she is laughing, and before the night is through she has complimented ten more people and finished her dessert and tipped a whole big bunch, and I never did hear if that stain came out.

To Carol!