As fate would have it, actress Chloe Sevigny was sitting at the table directly beside us.
Subtly, like a panther at night, I went back to the patio, had a look around, came back to the bar, stretched a few times, and then discreetly took a photograph of Sevigny as she ate lunch.
This is what happened after I returned to my seat and sat down:
Chloe Sevigny: I know what you did.
Me: Sorry?
Chloe Sevigny: I know what you did.
Me: Last summer?
Chloe Sevigny: (Dripping with sarcasm) Oh, you’re so clever! You should write for Hollywood! Look, I know that you just took a picture of me without permission. I saw you, asshole.
Me: Lady, I don’t even have a clue who you are.
Chloe Sevigny: Don’t give me that bullshit, you know damn well who I am!
Me: Are you a homely 16 year-old boy dressed up like he’s in some metal hair band for Halloween?
Rachelle: (Urgent whispering) Pickle, just apologize and the shut-up so we can move on, okay?
Me: (To Rachelle) I didn’t do anything wrong! I just went to the patio to see if they had better looking servers out there! I’m not apologizing for that!
Chloe Sevigny: (To Rachelle) I feel sorry for you. Your life must be a real challenge.
Rachelle: Oh, I know, it is, it is. He did the same thing when we saw some actress from Law & Order at the airport. He said he was taking photographs of the luggage for a gallery show, but of course…
Me: It wasn’t some actress, damn it, it was Angie Harmon!
Rachelle: And then her football player husband came over and asked what was going on, and my husband’s nose began to bleed!
Chloe Sevigny: (As if this was the most hilarious thing she has ever heard in her life, Sevingy does a spit-take the way you would expect from a bad, over-rated actress.)
Me: It was the dry air from the plane trip.
Rachelle: We were getting on a flight, not off.
Me: No we weren’t.
Chloe Sevigny: (To her friend) I think it’s time for us to leave.
Me: You know what? A real fashion icon would want her photo taken, she’s be flattered, and you know what else? Hilary Swank carried you in Boys Don’t Cry, she carried you! Your careers have really gone in different directions since then, haven’t they?
01 Jan 1999 — FILM ‘BOYS DON’T CRY’ DIRECTED BY KIMBERLY PEIRCE — Image by © CORBIS SYGMA
Chloe Sevingy: (Gives me the finger, drops a bunch of cash on the table and leaves without finishing her meal)
( I have saved Chloe Sevigny’s unfinished burger and am in the process of selling a photograph of it to the fetish site, Unfinished Celebrity Burgers. However, I will be putting the real leftover, which is in a ziplock bag in my fridge, on Ebay, but am happy to take offers from anybody reading now. )
]]>Making the desserts is a beautiful, young woman wearing black leotards. She has a long frizz of hair, part of which is pinched into a bun at the top of her head, the rest loosely knotted by a bandana that looks like she might have been wearing around her neck two years ago when she worked as a camp counselor. She looks shy and not entirely sure of herself yet, but her job is to make things small and beautiful, to suggest a foreign accent through the softness and distance in her eyes.
The waitress is wearing black leotards, too, only she’s sporting denim shorts over top of them. She whirls out of darkness and puts a plate in front of me, her eyes moving through me to some point in the future– another table she has to tend to, the party she’s going to in an hour, the cat she always feeds on her way home…
Robotically, amidst the almost industrial din of downtown cool, she recites the memorized details of my amuse-bouche, as if a guide speaking through a megaphone to faraway tourists on a hot, double-decker bus excursion.
Men with beards drink artisanal beer at the bar.
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