blonde dinner

i keep repeating 'look at the lights, what a night on the town' over and over, in my best kool keith impression. at first it elicits giggles from her but eventually she hits my arm in that 'god, shut up' type of way that i secretly like. we sit in silence and i merge onto periferico, heading north towards polanco.

the valet looks like a mexican version of my old college roommate but just as suave and confident. the same waves in the side of the hair, the same smile that shows only the top row of teeth but not in an awkward way. my spanish is still tricky when people speak fast, so i don't catch what he says to me as i hand him the keys. it's something something rubia. rubia is blonde. she's blonde. ok i get it, whatever. i'm starving, who gives a fuck?

we're sitting eating chips and salsa under the gaze of the towering hotels along reforma. they're a barrier of sorts between the stout villas and parisian side streets of the neighborhood and the vastness of unknown poverty and working class tenements that seems to stretch all the way to the damn guatemala border. just look at all those lights stretching south, south, south.

so now in that sort of neon blue that comes just before the inky darkness fully descends, the hotel nikko is standing there above our street, impossibly high up, not very spectacularly lit--none of the buildings here are--just sort of reaffirming its presence alongside its brothers and sisters the W, Intercontinental, Sheraton... fuck what a snooty, touristy street.

we joke about that a lot, that the only reason we drive to this neighborhood is because this restaurant is one of the few places to get a good basket of chips and salsa. can you believe that? all of mexico city and you have to single one place out for good chips and salsa. and it's a 45 minute drive when traffic is good.

we're talking, sitting out on the sidewalk tables, enjoying the night air. it's a bit cool, sweater weather, and there's a scent in the air that along with the darkened little puffs of cloud high above signal a rain coming soon. the tables around us are mostly locals, rich Spaniard looking mexicans in their late 20s and early 30s, all crisply dressed, all smoking, both sexes speaking urgently into mobile phones. i signal the waiter and we get our fifth round of negro modelo.

it's an alright wednesday night.

the valet brings the car around and i give him 40 pesos tip. he seems like a nice kid, i don't think he was saying anything slick earlier. he seems grateful but in a good way, not in the overly exuberant way that some waiters and such exhibit, which is somewhat embarrassing. it was a weird thing at first here, the issues of tipping and giving to the panhandlers. but i remember what my dad said when we sat at this same restaurant one night years back; "as long as i can buy a four dollar beer, fuck it."

i guess that's just how i'll go as well.

we start back towards the freeway but i cut a right down tennyson; i want to see if this house is still on the market. it's a beauty, fits right in with the other houses and apartment blocks on the shady, darkened street. art deco style, a curved glass front room and a white-painted stone balcony on the 2nd floor with rounded metal railings like the deck of some old cruise ship. we pull up to it and i cut the headlights and we just sit for a minute. on the radio some new english rock band is playing, i get them all confused these days.

"i wonder why no one's bought it," i say. she doesn't respond. i look over and she's laying back in her seat, hand over her forehead. alcohol really messes her up. more than two drinks and she's wasted.

"maybe someone got murdered in it," she finally replies. i consider this, as the breeze picks up and the leaves above start swaying in front of the orange streetlight.

"i don't think i could live in a house where someone got murdered." i turn the headlights back on and we coast down to the stoplight. she mumbles something about going home.

"how fucked up would that be, to scour the newspapers for murders," i say, turning slowly on the green signal. "and then later to inform the new tenants about what happened in their homes?"

but she's asleep by now. so i think about it to myself, driving along avenida horacio, under the vast darkened sky about to split at the seams with rain. it's cool and breezy.