Late. My shoes clacked on the blue stone sidewalk as I ran. Perspiration broke out like a teenage rash on my upper lip. February in Charleston: does one call in sick to work to goof off at the beach, or choose to be semi-responsible with a meandering route to a rendezvous lunch of multiple courses with a hot boyfriend?
Even the latter didn’t add vitality to my step that Fat Tuesday. My favorite restaurant - barely a room with eight tables, no discernible kitchen and a sprawling courtyard – was shuttering. Several years of caprese paninis oozing with fragrant olive oil replayed like decadent pornography before my eyes, flashing me with a message: when will you ever see the likes of ME splayed in front of you again?
A windowed door opened, and my hot boyfriend stuck his sandy head into the sunshine. My staccato footfalls made him turn, a startled glare bouncing through the sound of heels on stone.
Oh. Um.
Confusion flooded his features for a beat, followed by brushstrokes of appreciative relief. I was going to walk around the block. Um. I thought you weren’t coming.
Late I huffed. You know me by now.
Yes. Kissing me in the open door of Our Place, he interlaced his fingers in mine. A solitary table was set for two in a familiar spot. My table, the place I was sitting the first time I spied my hot boyfriend and said hi. A smattering of champagne flutes and some silverware flashed on its glossy top.
We’re celebrating the closing of our favorite restaurant with champagne? I was confused, fractured really, wallowing in misery over life without another caprese panini in our little place. A festive soiree seemed indecent, even on a day where indecency tinges everything.
A cork popped behind me, and Drazen, the owner, filled our airspace with his towering frame, his hand grasping a blue bottle.
A blue bottle of deja vu.
Paris. November 2003. A wine shop in the Seventh.
Me: I want some cider to take home. We can’t find tasty hard cider anywhere at home.
MTM: Great. It’s cheap. (To clerk.) We’ll take that one and……….that one. Merci. Oh, and what’s that blue box down on the bottom shelf?
Clerk: Champagne, Monsieur. Pommery POP.
Me: Haha. We have to buy it. The name is funny.
MTM: Well, that IS a reason to buy French champagne……..
New Year’s Eve 2003.
Me: Are we going to toast with that French bubbly?
MTM: Nah. I’ve got this other stuff on ice. Veuve Clicquot. Will that be acceptable to your tender palate?
MTM’s birthday, mid-January 2004.
Me: I want to clink glasses with that French stuff for your birthday. Where IS it??
MTM: Oh, I’ve got a special wine here. Remember? We had this on our first date? It’s already cold and everything.
Valentine’s Day 2004.
Me: Can we take that blue bottle to dinner with us? Maybe they don’t charge a monstrous corkage fee…..
MTM: They do. I checked. We’ll just have something there.
Mardi Gras 2004. A blue bottle of deja vu. The restaurant where we met. Fractured beams of sunlight streaming through the bubbles as they tumbled from the blue and fizzed in the flute……
MTM: I always wanted to POP the question with this blue bottle. Andra, will you marry me?
Just reading that title makes me want to hurl. But, my parents first lived in 
