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3) The Travails of Traveling With Young Adults…
The Sinaloa Cartel Meets the Gideons
The young female host of Portofino Italian restaurant gave me the once over and informed us that I needed long pants. I explained that even though they only reached my knees, these were long pants, I just had very strange legs with low knees and long ankles. She didn’t get it. She smiled and asked if we’d be okay eating on the patio. We said we preferred it. After a short wait, we were seated at our table beside a sea of the other shorts and sandals wearing clientele. The riffraff. My kind of people.
This was just what we needed. She had a virgin drink, I had a glass of the free house red. A selection of freshly baked breads, oil and vinegar for dipping. We split a gorgeous caprese salad. We had all night with nowhere else to be and an all-inclusive menu that we could sample our way through. We made eye contact and without saying a word, shook our heads and laughed, thinking how bizarre the last several hours had been.
A gentle wind blew. About forty feet away, above a table of two couples from France, a family of four raccoons skirted back and forth across a beam high above them. I know the couples were from France because there were many bottles of wine on their table and because when they spoke it was very nasal. And because they spoke French. God…