Tonight I invite you
to dine at the restaurant
that is no longer there.

With a small nod of recognition,
invisible to all but the knowing,
with the slightest of smiles,
slender pink lips curling
beneath his brushed mustache,
the maitre d' will guide us
to our table as we glide
in his imperious wake.

"Maurice will be your server
this evening!" Or perhaps it will
be Carmen, or the petite Annabelle,
who always graced our dining
pleasure with the proper measure
of modest peasant charm.

Tonight I invite you
to dine at the restaurant
that is no longer there.

If you can recall
it was one of the most
fashionable places
of our time: the silver
glittering in the candlelight,
the tables cloaked with white
linen and adorned with bouquets
as fresh and fragrant as if
they had been picked and placed
only moments before our arrival,
the other diners glistening
with the fragile camaraderie
of flagrant youth.

Of course there will be music,
always in the background,
unobtrusive and refined,
melding with the natural music
of the room and layered atop it,
incidental to the hum of idle
exclamations, the clink
of crystal glasses raised
in toast and celebration,
the white noise murmur
of conversations both
pleasant and pretentious,
rising and falling in time.

Our dinners will arrive
in courses that will seem
as if they could never end.
The presentations will be
flawless and the tastes divine.

Tonight I invite you
to dine at the restaurant
that is no longer there.

Such a wondrous place
in its day if you recall,
yet like so many of its
contemporaries it has been
transformed to a dry cleaners
or a muffler shop or some
wretched emporium stocked
with bogus bargain buys.

Just like its patrons,
creatures of blatant needs
and transient significance,
who have also succumbed
to time and been changed
by the years passing by.

Tonight I invite you
to dine at the restaurant
that is no longer there.

Will eight be fine?
Shall we meet for a drink
in the oak-paneled bar
at half past seven?
Please try not to be too
fashionably late!

I can recommend the veal.
Though by all means,
order whatever you like.

Don't worry about your figure.
Of course there will be
no calories, no nutrition,
no need to argue over
who will insist on paying
and who will decline.

Of course you will not
be there and neither will I.

Appeared in Dark Roads

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