Into the Smooth Embrace

Old friends pull me out into the smooth embrace of the French Quarter in the early evening.  Sun’s down, but only just.  I should be back in my hotel as I’ve been every other night this week, drinking coffee, sitting at a desk, on pillow, typing.  But old friends are worth it.  They will know where to go.  They will have picked out something cool, and evocative.  And soon, I’m at a bar that only sits seven or eight, ordering a Negroni from a guy with a bald top and a bushy beard, against my better judgment. 

Now we’re talking about books and the fate of Confucianism and laughing about things we’ve laughed about before and it’s all rather wonderful.   They suggest to have a burrito right here at the bar.  I wouldn’t have opted for such a thing but I’m sick of bad Shanghainese dinners and I order up a beef burrito with lots of peppers and lots of guac.   

They've just moved into a new place not far from here.  We walk passed Yongkong Road and Yongjia Road along Taiyuan Road, passed all the night time guards on lounge chairs in white tee-shirts, passed all the loud drunken revelers and off into an alleyway that leads to their apartment. 

The nighttime view into people’s homes is disconcerting. All these lives I never lived.  “That place looks very cool.” I imagine their life here from the view inside.  “Oh yes.  They have been working on it for years.” My friend’s home is also cool, and cramped and evocative.  There is a window fixture atop a door that  immediately remind me of  New England.  Haunted old houses.   Haunted old neighborhood.  Haunted embrace.