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Part of: LiteratiB.A.T.: Jim, what's your favorite breakfast?
Um--favorite breafast...
Man, I so rarely do a "normal, real person" breakfast.
My "ususal" (on my way to work) is the White Hen special: Hazelnut coffee (gobs of cream and loads of sugar) and a banana nut muffin. Yeah, I know. Nutritious. It gets worse, though. If I'm running too late to stop at White Hen I'll do a work vending machine breakfast: Pop Tarts and
Pepsi.
COFFEE AND POLITICS
She sipped her Aged Sumatra, he held his Arabian Mocha Sanani almost against his chest, as if guarding it.
He was reading the last of the article in the Los Angeles Times.
"Cyber cafes, really. What the hell? At two in the morning? Don't these kids have parents?" He looked up from the paper, waited.
She pulled the coffee cup away from her mouth a bit, not too far, so the smell of it still rose to her nostrils as she shook her head. "Tattoos and nipple-piercings, that's what I blame it on."
"Goddamned liberals."
"Orange County, Sid."
"Oriental County, you mean."
"You said it, not me."
"Yes Em, but you thought it. You know you did."
Three young Vietnamese kids of uncertain gender skated past the sidewalk coffee shop, long, brightly-dyed hair trailing behind them--they were scrunched and bent in unnatural positions as they disappeared down the boulevard, darting in and out of traffic like blips on a video game.
Sidney and Emily Ward shook their heads at the same time.
"It's what immigration laws have brought us," Emily said.
"Invasion, not immigration. It's a bloody invasion."
The sun was fully up now on another fine L.A. morning. A perfect day if ever there was one (a notion which philosophers still debate).
Sidney pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket.
Emily grimaced. "Must you?"
"I'm having a smoke, Em, not molesting a child for Christ's sake."
"Never heard of secondhand smoke?"
He groaned. "Second hand bullshit. Can't believe everything you read, dear."
"Unless Rush Limbaugh writes it, right Sid? He never lies."
The lighter clicked, the flame arose, a mighty inhalation followed and Sid's defiant eyes flashed like a windshield catching the sun's glare.
Out came the smoke and only the slightest effort was made to direct it away from Emily.
She pressed back in her chair, snarled at the wisp of poison as it sailed by and regarded her husband as if he had just passed gas loudly in a fine restaurant with the mayor sitting across from them.
Sid smiled. "Rush never lies, and he's always right."
"My ass."
"Is a fine ass," he said. "Full without being gelatinous, aged to perfection, both aesthetically pleasing and user friendly. When you die of cancer from secondhand smoke I shall auction it on E-Bay. Probably make a fortune."
At this she giggled like a seventh grader and all animosity was forgotten.
"When I drove to the salon yesterday the Caddy's radio was tuned to NPR," Emily said. This was clearly an accusation, and she was enjoying its irony.
He nodded, blushed as if he'd been caught viewing porn, couldn't decide whether to take a sip of coffee or have another drag on his Camel. He decided to talk.
"I listen," he admitted. "But I don't subscribe."
"World of difference," she said, but smiled devilishly.
"You bet your sweet ass."
Yes, another perfect L.A. day.