Who's making that noise if I'm up here all alone?

[Nicole Marie]

Dinner at Piperade. At the next table over sat the former director of the San Francisco Opera. Only my dad recognized him. Halfway through dinner, Da (former) Mayor came in for a sip at the bar. In his trademark hat.

Everyone recognized him.I finally learned a little bit more about Bud — longtime friend of my parents, former pitcher for my dad's team, former firefighter, and current filer of the family tax returns. Son of French abattoir men on his father's side, the Southern Pyrénées on his mother's side, grew up trilingual in a house that played host to dozens of San Francisco's French émigrés for Sunday suppers every week. Came home after school to his grandmother boiling whole calves' heads — eyes, teeth, tongues, and all — in pots on the stove. “Good soup tonight!” I was always scared of Bud as a little girl because he was a little loud, more than a little jokey, and smelled like cigarettes, but you know, we both love beignets more than should be legal, and ate them with reckless abandon tonight.I dressed up for dinner in my dress and heels and shaved legs and eyeliner and everything. Which means that I spent a lot of the night hoping and imagining that somebody — at least one person in the entire restaurant — looked, and noticed, and thought that I was maybe a little bit pretty.Sigh.