Breakfast with Cindy

My friend Cindy and I have a place that we really like for breakfast. It's a 2 hour round trip to get there, the hollandaise is that good. I'm not going to tell you the name of it because you will go there and the wait will be even longer.
Usually it's about an hour wait to get a table...actually we could probably have minimized the wait but we specified the patio.
The first time we went there we said just sit us wherever and we wound up with a lovely table triangulated by the kitchen, a table full of 8 screaming toddlers (maybe a lamaze class reunion?) and a woman with a devastating case of cankles which she tried to draw attention away from through the clever use of cleavage. It wasn't working. I couldn't take my eyes off the things. Seriously the woman should adopt a style of dress that involves boots, lots and lots of boots.
So this time we said we would wait for the patio...we got a nice table, shady, not near any cankles or babies...but it was right by the door. Which is not that big of a deal except that it was an automatic door so it was kind of like having breakfast right next to the front door of a supermarket. But I'm not complaining. I think that pretty soon we will have it narrowed down to one perfect table and we will have to wait an hour and a half for it...
While I was waiting in line to put our name on the list a guy sort of scooted past me said excuse me ....and then stood in front of me.
I paused for a second and then my "Oh Hell No!" response kicked in. I said "Um excuse me?" The guy turned around and I said "Please tell me you did not just..." and then I made a little circular motion with my finger to indicate his little swooping in front of me maneuver.
Yes I did make a quick little mental calculation that he was wearing trendy glasses and a nice sweater I imagine you could get at Banana Republic (and not the outlet either) and was slight of frame and therefore was highly unlikely to be able to kick my ass.
But in my defense just today a big black guy that I work with kept repeatedly saying he was going to punch me, to which I finally replied , "look either punch me in the fucking face, or shut up about it" So I'll shoot my mouth off whenever it's appropriate.
Anyway, the guy says, "Um, actually I'm just getting to the coffee pot."
He points and, whaddya know, there is a coffee pot right next to the nice young lady taking table reservations! I apologize to him and the nice young lady takes my reservation.
I go outside and Cindy is sitting on a bench and the Trendy Guy and his girlfriend are standing Right Next To her. super. The guy gives me a nod and we both smile. As I sit down Cindy gives me a quizzical look and I say loudly enough for the couple to hear, "oh that's the guy I tried to pick a fight with in there"
He says he says " Yeah we were going to totally fight but then we worked it out" I explained what happened and she gave me the look that says, "Michael, you're a dumbass"
So while we were waiting for our table Cindy and I did what we normally do in situations like this.
We start talking shit about people.
For example Cindy says to me "have you ever seen cankles on man?" and honest to God the mans ankles looked like a couple of monster burritos. They were the color of flour tortillas, and they went straight down into his sandals without any tapering whatsoever.
(What is with this place and the fucking cankles anyway?)
Then a guy walks up...and his hair was dyed....have you seen these guys that their hair is going grey so they have died their hair .....and you're not really clear what color it was supposed to be?
Blackish, brownish, reddish...no fucking idea what color you meant but that ain't it dude.
He's wearing....I don't even know how to properly describe the shirt...satiny,thin white and black lines in undulating repeating patterns meant to create a 3-d effect of movement and depth at the same time.
Over this he is wearing a herringbone jacket. The effect gives me an instant migraine. I make a sort of woozy face and say to Cindy, "I think I have vertigo".
She glances over my shoulder and says "What color is his hair?"
Then, we both catch sight of this woman at the same time.
She is 50 to 70 something. Hard to tell because she has clearly had extensive cosmetic surgery. I have seen these women on tv but never one in it's natural habitat. They look like an alien trying to pass as human.
As if some other life form has been watching our tv shows and has a skewed idea of what we like a woman to look like.
I can try to describe the various plastic surgery horrors. The elfin appearance from the face lift, the enormous, inappropriate boobs, the Michael Jackson nose...
Where do I start? You know what, I kind of buried the lead.
Her lips.
They looked like her face had crashed and deployed the airbags. They looked like somebody had sewn a couple of bicycle inner tubes on her face and then applied lipstick. They looked so rubbery and fake that you got the impression that even after she stopped talking they would keep moving all wubbly-jubbly for a few seconds.
Cindy supposed that when she ate, to get the food past her lips, it would appear kind of like a pelican throwing food up a little and then sort of gobbling it down into her throat...I have to say Cindy does a pretty damn good pelican.
We watched as family member after family member said goodbye and with looks of horror had the ginormous fish lips applied to their cheeks.
The absolute best was a guy in his 20's, looked like a grandson maybe. He tried to hug her without actually having Grandma's huge rack touch him. It was like he was trying to apply some sort of force field with his arms around her without touching her. He did that exaggerated ass-out hug thing. You had to feel for the kid. Here he is trying to have a nice family breakfast and he has to at the last minute do evasive manoeuvres to avoid Geriatric Triple-D's.

Before you think I'm being mean to the woman, I'm not the jerk here, ok?
You want to know who the asshole is? The plastic surgeon who didn't have the temerity to say "Hey, look, you're 5 foot 2 and you weigh 115 lbs. soaking wet...maybe Triple D is not the way to go?" Or the surgeon could have said, "I know you want fuller lips...but normally we inject only 1 to 3 cc's of collagen...7 cc's seems excessive." Or perhaps, "look I can only stretch the skin of your face so much before your ears meet in the back of your head and you look like an elf."
Or maybe the husband who kept paying for it and encouraging her?
Not me.

But fuck all that.
The Dutch apple pancake was phenomenal and the eggs benedict perfection. Cindy was charming and funny and beautiful. The weather was ideal and we sang "There's No-one Like You" by the Scorpions at the top of our lungs on the way home and it was a pretty damn good day.