“Pick up ten. Vite, vite.” Chef Claude was already tired of this waiter tonight. “If the sauce breaks before it gets to your table, you’ll be wearing it. Do you understand?”

“Oui, Chef.”

Upon hearing this, Chef’s ears burned. “Speaking French doesn’t make you a garçon, remember that.” Chef Claude was in a particular mood this evening.

“Americans.” The acidic words flowed effortlessly off his tongue. “Life is so easy for you, until you actually have to work.”

The air outside my car registers a scorching 91 degrees. Nevertheless, there is a team of performers and street vendors standing at the intersection of Via Espana and the little street with no name that is a short cut to Calle Samuel Lewis. It is 12:00 noon, and they are all trying to make a buck. 

Waves of heat rise from the asphalt as the three lanes of this short block fill with the exhaust of about thirty cars, dump trucks, and motorcycles, many without mufflers. Diesel smoke billows into the air, carpeting cars and people with a fine layer of black soot that dulls clothes.

My sister and I wanted to have a ghostly experience around Halloween last year and we visited a supposedly haunted Civil War prison named Fort Delaware. To begin our adventure, we had to take a ferry across the mouth of the river and past the marsh in order to get to Pea Patch Island. I noticed our tour guide had on rubber boots. I hate getting my feet wet.

Taking my steps gingerly, I crossed the gangplank onto a dirt and tile walkway where the tread in my sneakers filled with squishy soil until we hit the well-kept lawn. Lovely, I thought to myself as I dragged my shoes across the grass to wipe off some of the mud.

I didn’t know what to expect tonight, but I was pretty sure my feet would be cold and wet.

When I left the safety of my childhood home at twenty-five, I wasn’t sure that I would be any better off than I had been before. It was a gamble. I was rolling the dice that accepting my old boss Stanley Gordon’s offer to stay in his ‘remodeled’ studio in Four Corners while I made another attempt to finish my bachelor’s degree would result in success at last. He was sort of fatherly and felt I needed to be in a more stimulating environment.

It was the same day Flight 70 crashed into the 14th Street Bridge, January 13, 1982. I was driving from Lewes in a nasty sleet storm and was too afraid to put on my brakes, so I skated my way to the first turn off that read Silver Spring and made a right turn at the first light. That’s when I learned Maryland has hills. Sussex County is flat. That’s one of the many reasons it’s so great for farming. 

Great now I’m skiing, downhill skiing. I was looking for the only commercial lot with lawn care signage.