Friday Night
The server uselessly walks us through the new menu.Then I order the cheeseburger with the thick-cut bacon on top. My wife orders the chicken tacos. We both have Coke and talk about the DEFACS kids she tutors.
Later we join the middle-aged men browsing the history section of Barnes and Noble. A blond sporty mother with a smoker’s voice helps a younger girl find a book. The young teen girls peruse the Manga books. Young teen guys with hair in their eyes watch them. In the cafe a 13-year-old’s Victoria’s Secret purchase hangs in a striped bag on one hooked finger. I look at her to see what she’ll do when she sees me looking at her. She looks at me. She’s 13. It’s strange. Too adult for a girl her age. I show my wife. “Turn around,” I tell her. “Are you sure I should?” she asks. She turns around.
We order the plain cheesecake and two ice waters. The man behind the counter serves our order slowly, deliberately and with an Eastern European accent of a sort.
It’s date night. The kids are at home.
My wife reads People. I’m reading the Atlantic about a guy named Manelli and his Blue Oasis in Switzerland. It’s a death resort for suicide tourists. Over the past year he’s helped a thousand people kill themselves. A table nearby reminds us Easter’s April 4 and that we could buy an easter-y book if we wanted to celebrate. “Izzie’s coming back to Grey’s Anatomy,” my wife tells me.
"Can I buy this magazine?" I ask.
We get up. Walk into the night empty-handed fearing the day we become the people we've seen. Fearing we already are those people. Fearing what Mizelli's patients feared, not living whatever life they had left with the dignity their consciences required.