“Welcome to Spencer’s!” he says, as another server fills our water glasses. Louis studies my face. “Sid?”
I smile as my stomach drops. “Hi, Louis. How are you?”
“It’s good to see you again.” He smiles and surveys the table. “And who do we have with us today? Did your family come from Chicago to escape all that snow and visit for winter break?” Louis walks over and places his hands on Leo’s shoulders. “What a handsome son you have!”
I want to climb up the tree beside our table and hide in the branches.
“Thank you!” Miriam says, thinking Louis is speaking to her.
Leo shoots me a relieved look just as Louis opens his mouth to say something else. Before he can, I blurt, “Wine! Let’s have a bottle of the Russian River Valley Sauvignon Blanc. To start! My treat!”
“Of course,” Louis says, catching on.
He hands us our menus. As Louis places a menu in my hands, he leans toward my ear and whispers, “Well done, Sid. Well done.”
The four of us chitchat about safe topics like the weather and the recent Super Bowl—You watch football?I mouth to Leo—until the wine comes.
The first glass goes down much too quickly.
“So, Sid,” Miriam begins in a polished voice, folding her napkin into a lovely diagonal and placing it in her lap. “We didn’t have much of a chance to get to know each other the first time we met. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Leo mentioned you were an attorney?”
“That’s right,” I say.
“Me, too!” Joseph says, sitting up in his chair. “We have that in common!”
Run with this, Sid.
“Actually, I still practice,” I say.
“You do?” Joseph asks. “I love that you’re still working.”
“It keeps me young,” I say. “Well, you know, relatively speaking.”
They chuckle politely.
I tell them about my work in Chicago and in the desert.
“And you have a family?” Miriam asks when I finish. “In Chicago?”
“I do,” I say. “An ex-wife, two children, four grandchildren and three greats.”
“How nice,” Miriam says. “Do you see them often?”
“As you know, it’s never enough.”
I wait for a smile, which doesn’t come. I forge on.
“But I fly back to see them as much as I can, and I FaceTime with them every few days.”
“But it’s not the same as seeing them in person, is it?” Miriam asks, reaching over to grab her son’s hand.
“Mom,” Leo says in a tender but warning tone.
“It’s not,” I say. I take a sip of wine and shift in my chair. I need to take the focus off me. “Tell me about you? What type of law did you practice, Joseph?”
He spends the next ten minutes telling me about his career as a corporate tax attorney and the firm he started and grew to over a hundred attorneys in Beverly Hills.
I like Joseph. He is sweet, unpretentious, and his stories are not braggadocious but filled with humility and pride.
