The middle-aged hostess wears a bright yellow jacket in the cool Hungarian afternoon and a bewitching smile.
She invites me to sit for a traditional Hungarian meal, goulash if it pleases me, but I’ve just finished a late afternoon snack.
She slips me a ten-percent discount card, smiles, and says, “Later then.”
I think about that smile, and, indeed, I do return later.
The hostess in the bright yellow jacket sees me, smiles, and says, “I recognize you.”
I let her seat me in a cozy outdoor chair near a flamed heater.
Of all the colours of chairs, she suggests to my pleasure that I take the yellow chair.
There are Canadians, a couple from Toronto at the next table, but they are just leaving and stop to finish a conversation with three men from Detroit.
They have been discussing health care.
I sit in my cozy seat for ten minutes, looking around the outdoor cafe, watching pedestrians walk by.
I’m warm in the increasingly chilly evening.
The rays from streetlights create deep shadows in the niches of nearby buildings.
After seventeen minutes, I still have not been served.
No one has even provided a menu.
Ignored or forgotten, maybe not enough staff, it could be any reason really, but it also doesn’t matter.
I decide to leave, work my way through the outdoor tables, walk past the middle-aged hostess with the bright yellow jacket and the bewitching smile who is busy explaining something on the menu to a curious couple, and wander down the street to eat at the Rebel burger joint, where I’m greeted by a young woman with a smile, not a bewitching smile, however – one can’t have everything – and am served immediately.
