“How are you doing today?” I asked Charlie, when he arrived.
“Don’t ask,” he replied. “It’s been one of those days so far and it’s barely lunchtime. There’s no telling how bad it can get before the day is over.”
We had met up at Bella Italia Restaurant for our weekly meeting. This is the meeting where we solve the world’s problems and bitch about everything.
“Hello, Mr. Charles,” Ali said. “The usual? Two beers and a glass of ice?”
“Thank you, sir,” Charlie said, when he brought his beer. “The world already looks a little better. If I have six of these I’ll be like that song where it says, “I think to myself, what a wonderful world.”
As Ali left, the waitress came by with a plate of lasagna. Charlie and I were sitting at floor level and she took the lasagna to an older gringo tourist sitting near us on the deck level.
“Miss,” the man said to the waitress. “Can you turn the music down? I like to pray before I eat and the music is very distracting.”
“Oh, you don’t need to pray here,” the waitress said. “Ali is a very good cook.”
When she turned the music down we could clearly hear the prayers of the gentleman.
“Thank you God, for this wonderful food. Earlier in my life I was often hungry and you took the hunger away. I thank you for that.”
He paused.
“You gave me childhood and took it away. You gave me youth and you took that away. You gave me health and you saw fit to take that away, too. Then you gave me a wife. That was thirty-four years ago.”
He paused again.
“God, I’m just reminding you about the wife. Amen.”
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