"BYE MIKEY!" is yelled by several of the cooks and waitresses as I stumble towards the door marked "Exit Only" which is how I came in.
"WAIT! WAIT! WAIT!" Chris yells. "I have to tell you something."
He stops cooking, finds an empty space on the counter and leans into me.
"I was reading Runner's World the other day," he whispers in my ear, "and there was an article that says if you expose your testacles to the sun your body produces 250 times more testosterone."
Standing up straight, I just stare at him.
"I know right?" he continues. "What is sad is as soon as I read it, I immediately thought of you."
I laughed as he returned to the grill, cracking eggs, flipping sausage, and creating masterpieces.
"Who knew?" I thought as I walked around the line formed on the sidewalk to get to my bicycle, "that I produce so much testosterone naturally?"Climbing on my bicycle, I turn the corner and immediately run into Julia Pearce who is on her bicycle. We stop in the middle of the road and greet each other.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
Pulling her ear buds away, she takes the cigar from her mouth. "Worshipping the sun," she says prayerfully.
I want to tell her how nice her tan is but she keeps talking.
"What is wrong with your mind? I look forward to reading your stuff every day but God the stuff that goes on in your head."
"I am pretty eclectic," I shrug.
"Give me a kiss," she demands leaning forward and I do before she puts the cigar back in her mouth.
She peddles down 15th Street towards the ocean and I head towards home before Winston, the little gay dog, can wake Sarah up.
Julia and I go way back. I was her first babysitter on the island. Standing in the old Desoto Shipwreck Lounge years ago, she was lusting after Mallory on the dance floor.
"Here hold this," she said handing me her baby as she rushed out to dance with him.
They went on to marry, the baby grew up to be a minister and I wonder if any of it would have taken place had I not been standing next to her that day.
We went on to work together for a while. Julia is a nurse and ran a program in one of the buildings I operated. One day I walked into a meeting she was holding with her staff and she kicked me out of my own building.
She was pretty witty about it.
"Get out!" is I remember her saying.
These days, she goes to Africa and Washington D.C. a lot. Kings come to visit her and she goes to Presidential Inaugurations. She frequents Marlin Monroe's on Sundays and takes great care to fix Mallory's hair before he goes out in public.
She's hard to not love.
As my friend Jane Fishman once said, "On an island everybody is either running to, or running from, something."
Julia was running from something when she got here.
But she's been running to something since she arrived.
