Meet Chuck: a sixty-or-so year old sweetheart, a retired chemist with puppy-dog hazel eyes, the occasional mucus glob caked in their cracks
What he wants: the usual: a sweet tater, salad with thousand isle, warmed loaf of Portuguese bread, glass of water with a slice of lemon
What he actually wants: someone who will listen.
Footnotes: get ready for this week’s stories of old travels, re-runs of grown kids’ work endeavors, and that one time he visited Chicago for some chemistry conference…
The spice: a lesson on removing professional masks of insincerity, or over-sincerity, as fake as the hanging plants in this place. a lesson on meeting mid-way to realize our chapters are not palimpsests, but offerings to the Book of the Universe, forever in composition.