After parking my car, I hustled through the early morning cold and into The Wooden Spoon. Glenn and Steve were already seated at a table in the back. I made my way through the queue of people waiting to be seated and sat down. The waitress came and took my coffee order and headed back to the kitchen.
“How long has it been?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Steve said. “I think we got here about ten, fifteen minutes ago.”
“That sounds about right,” Glenn said.
“No, I mean, how long has it been since the last time we got together for breakfast like this?”
“Oh,” said Glenn. “Three years, something along those lines.”
“No wonder I’m so hungry,” Steve said.
“Glenn, I’ve always thought of you as the raisonneur in the particular farce in which we find ourselves as players,” I said. “Our Yoda, our Master Po, the Egon Spengler to our Peter Venkman and Ray Stantz.”
Steve sipped his coffee. “I call dibs on Venkman,” he said. He put down his coffee and opened his menu.
“Of course,” I said. “I’m so Dan Ackroyd and you’re sort of Bill Murray, I guess.” I turned back to Glenn. “Anyway, my point is that you’re the smart one.”
“I’m Kelly Garrett,” said Steve without looking up from his menu.
“Kelly Garrett?” Glenn asked in a tone that was covered in a thin veneer of incredulity. “I’d say you were more Kris Munroe.”
“What?” I asked. “What are you talking about? Who’s Kelly Garrett?”
“You said Glenn was the smart one,” Steve continued. “That was Sabrina Duncan. Kate Jackson. I feel I’m more the sleek, sophisticated jet-setter who would be comfortable sipping cocktails at a party on the aft deck of the crime lord’s yacht, later slipping away unnoticed and cracking the safe in the master bedroom below decks. Totally Kelly Garrett.”
“I still say Kris Munroe,” said Glenn.
I considered this information. That Glenn and Steve had been fans of the 70s TV series about three crime fighting babes and John Forsythe’s disembodied voice was something I hadn’t known before.
“Okay, I might have to take that ‘smart one’ comment back,” I said. “Charlie’s Angels? Really?”
“We were young and impressionable,” Steve said.
“Not mention in college, stoned and with no girlfriends,” Glenn added.
“We had experimental facial hair,” Steve noted. “More importantly, what was your point?”
“What?” I responded, still shaken by this Charlie’s Angels revelation.
The waitress came and took our orders. Steve had blueberry pancakes with a side of bacon, Glenn had a veggie omelet and I ordered the Irish Benedict and substituted the fruit cup for the home fries. Mortality cannot be defeated but it may be delayed by substituting the fruit cup for the home fries. Or so I hope.
“You called Glenn our Yoda, our Master Po, the Egon Spengler to our Peter Venkman and Ray Stantz. Where were you going with that?” Steve asked.
“Life is not a farce,” Glenn noted before I could answer.
“It feels like a farce,” I said. “It’s full of plot twists and seemingly random events, completely incomprehensible to the participants and it almost always ends with a chase scene.”
“A compelling argument,” Glenn replied, “but I think life isn’t something we can easily define by simile unless that simile is that life is like everything. All at once.”
“I think that’s a cop out,” Steve said. “You’ve got to pick something. A baseball game or a ship on the ocean or a mountain railroad.”
“That seems completely arbitrary,” Glenn said.
Steve shrugged. “Such is life.”
“Life is like a completely arbitrary simile?” I asked.
“Perhaps life is like breakfast,” Steve said.
Glenn sipped his coffee and considered it. I did the same. Breakfast. The bitter jolt of hot, black coffee; the salty, savory taste of hash; the rich, buttery tang of hollandaise over perfect, poached eggs. Choices. Do you want your English muffin toasted or grilled? Would you like the special? As good as it is, it does have to end, and yet it seems to promise so much more. Lunch. And dinner. With dessert. I’m glad I substituted the fruit cup for the home fries.
“Who’s the smart one now?” Steve asked.
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