The Sand Hill Review http://www.sandhillreview.org 2009
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Friday
Night, Occidental The town is
split in two, like Verona. The Union Hotel takes the stately route, wooden sign
against the clapboards. Negri's
chooses neon, proclaims itself the original Italian family restaurant. Tonight it is drawing
the twenty-somethings. Juliet steps
out of a convertible in a tailored white jacket, Mercutio
flies by on a skateboard. Juliet's girlfriends peel out of a van, drinks in their hands, hot
pants, sprayed blue hair. Romeo stands
hopeful at the door of the restaurant, Renaissance
blond rivulets brushing his shoulders, ill-fitting shirt over stove-pipe pants. As the
old folks we are out
for a stroll, watching monster pickups racing up and down the parking lots. Our only
recourse— hugging the sidewalk, jammed with kids. In the
morning at Harold's we ask the waitress what had been happening the night before. The
eighties, she said, Negri's had thrown an eighties party. Stumped, our
minds spun aimlessly, no particular memory of this decade, or what it looked like. Thus the
version we saw, we said to ourselves, was probably just as authentic as the
one we evidently lived. We wished
Juliet awake from her slumbers, and Romeo alive, too.
A town
unlike Sharon
Olson |
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