WIP

The runny yolk from the poached egg slid down her chin, an ocher slaver that she immediately blotted with her napkin, her cheeks reddening. He knew Miranda was thinking she shouldn’t have ordered the Eggs Benedict but that she couldn’t resist the ring quinoa english muffins had to it. He gave his own blood orange mimosa a dour look and wondered what exactly made blood orange mimosas worth two dollars more? Thank God they were bottomless at this price! His own half eaten fried egg sandwich grew cold on the plate, the manchego cheese and romesco sauce oozing into a glutinous orange pool beside the croissant, the small mound of radicchio, escarole and frisee wilting under the viscous weight of a syrupy balsamic. The food was as tragically hip as the patrons at Albion.

It seemed tight black jeans and black, thick-framed glasses were the obligatory attire to Sunday brunch these days - monochromatic, androgynous automatons only distinguished from one another by their sardonic t-shirts. Normal People Scare Me or Sorry, I’m Not Listening. The homogeneity made the dining room feel like the floor of a cloning factory. They were a simulacrum of individuality construed by the masses. He took another pulpy swallow of the mimosa and realized he wouldn’t, no, more accurately, couldn’t get drunk, the cloying sweetness of the juice and low alcohol of the prosecco conspiring to make it impossible. He’d only agreed to try the mimosa because of Miranda’s cajoling, her promise that he had never tasted anything SO extraordinary. But it was just a mimosa, albeit the color of garish lipstick. What did Miranda know anyway? She didn't drink, she hadn't had a drink in three years. She’d be a lot more fun if we were both plastered, or at least if I was... Briefly he contemplated ordering a Bloody Mary but changed his mind when he considered the arcane ingredients their mix would likely include - probably heirloom blue tomato juice with a jicama stick. Instead he sighed, finished the dregs of his fourth mimosa and sought the attention of their server.

Even the decor was absurdly trendy, the wall of rotary telephones behind a bank of avocado booths, the garish carved Buddha head door leading to the storage room and the reclaimed maple bowling alley floors. He supposed the open kitchen was meant to reinforce that this was artisanal experience akin to potting or glassblowing; the cook an artist, the plates a canvas, the food the oils and if you didn’t like it you were a philistine with an unsophisticated palate and a blind eye for presentation. There was a small, partially enclosed dining room with tin can lids adorning the entire back wall, but instead of art he thought of trash. Intended to be eclectic the restaurant felt instead like an enormous non sequitur, each space schizophrenically different than the others. The restaurant was decidedly close to being a theme-park - cutting edge or the edge of the cliff?

The loud crash of plates tossed into a bus tub startled him and he refocused on Miranda, she stared at him curiously. Years ago he couldn’t have ignored her, she had been the most beautiful woman he’d ever met - skilled, perhaps even divine, hands had painstakingly sculpted every curve, every angle of her face. Knowledge, not time, had diminished her beauty.