That time and space between indicating your meal preference and having it placed so delicately before you, sacred.

We absorb the built environment - the permanent and temporary fixtures. The guests - the transitory faces both in anticipation, and indifference or defeat.

We accept mediocre food experiences, one after another, and somehow we still come to anticipate that “out of body” experience as we seat ourselves at a new table.

I ordered a meal that day, in anticipation.
It was alas, merely the cappuccino, the ecru umbrella I sat beneath and the book I read that I remembered.