Kristopher Jansma - The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards

A heavyset black woman croons Etta into a microphone; a guitar player with a beer gut sweats and strums; a little Latino gentleman squeaks along on the trumpet. The tiny crowd, aside from us, all appear to be over fifty; their accents are thick with Long Island and New Jersey. Once upon a time I’d have been counted as one of their numbers, but now they look admiringly at me in the close company of Julian and Evelyn.

“Four, please,” Evelyn instructs the hostess, who is also the only waitress for the room — a brunette ball of curls with a small, golden stud in her left nostril.

“Can’t you count?” Julian says. “We’re three. Every week, we’re three.”

“I’ve asked someone to come and meet us.”

As the waitress leads us to our table, Julian, ever change-averse, begins to complain. “Haven’t we spoken about inviting strangers to brunch? Haven’t we agreed that foreigners must be approved by a majority, not more than two days prior to brunch, so as to allow for proper background checks?”

By “background checks,” he means asking me to perform a Yahoo! search; Julian still types everything on his Remington, not even an electric.

Evelyn presses a slim, sturdy finger into my breastbone. “Well, every time I invite someone, you make him vote against it.”

She slides onto the deep purple, crushed-velvet banquette. High above her is a small opening on the sidewalk level, where light comes down over us, in between the steady passing of disembodied shoes.

I defend myself. “You don’t have to live with him when he doesn’t get his way. And I said that your friend Charity could come. And Rosalyn. And Gwyneth.” I sit across from her, and Julian next to me, as usual.

“Yes and, funny how, afterward you wind up taking them to the zoo or something and then I never hear from them again,” she says with an indecipherable smile.

“I feed them to the leopards,” I say, flashing an arched eyebrow.

She sighs and studies the menu, though we all know it by heart. There is very little about Jazz Brunch that we don’t know by heart. By heart, she knows that I will try to make her jealous by going off with her friends. By heart, I know that she brings only the ones she’s bored of, half hoping that I’ll fall for one of them, do myself some good, and put her behind me. By heart, she knows that she’ll call me within an hour of departing brunch and sulk for days if I don’t pick up. Charity, Rosalyn, and Gwyneth each hardly made it to the monkey house before figuring out that my heart was still nestled far away, by her heart. Gwyneth had left me by the exotic birds. Rosalyn hadn’t minded. She’d told me she thought we were “like so completely tragic for each other.” Or had that been Charity, actually? It’s always something like Charity.

“Coffee. Immediately,” Julian instructs our waitress urgently. Frightened, she does a sort of unconscious curtsy and is back with coffee in moments. Julian has his idiosyncrasies, to be sure, but he knows how to get good service.

The singer wraps up “Tell Mama” and we all pause to give brief applause. I feel Evelyn’s foot touching mine beneath the table, and I try to catch her eye, but it is always off somewhere else, by the door.

“Thank you, thank you. My name is Jo, just Jo, and I’m here with the talented—”

But as she moves to introduce her two band members, one of the older women in the room lets loose a guttural noise and a commotion brews. We turn to see what is going on and spot the swimmer Mitchell King, all phenomenal seven feet of him, descending the steps into the room. He passes several blushing senior citizens, then greets Evelyn with an eager kiss. He sits down across from an utterly bewildered Julian, rendered silent for perhaps the first time since we’d moved to New York.

“Mitchell King,” says Mitchell King. “Mighty pleased to meet you both.”

His buttery Southern voice sounds just as it does on ESPN. He extends a hand, larger than a dinner plate, and I have no choice but to shake it. I think I can feel my metacarpals shattering. Julian jumps to summon our waitress again, mostly to avoid shaking hands with this Goliath. “And a pitcher of mimosas, as soon as humanly possible.”

The room begins to settle, like the surface of a lake after a boulder has unexpectedly fallen into it. The jazz singer, Just Jo, takes her boys into “Something’s Got a Hold on Me,” and we are left to face the gigantic swimmer.

Fortunately, Julian is highly trained in the art of dismissive small talk. “So nice of you to join us, Mitchell. We were watching you on television just a half hour ago! How did you get here from the pool so quickly?”

“Actually, that was taped last night,” Mitchell explains rather earnestly. “At the World Aquatics Championships in Japan! I just flew back into town this morning. With all those time zones, I get confused myself sometimes! We crossed the International Date Line. Yesterday, for me, it was already today. How insane is that ?”

Julian stares, open mouthed, just a moment longer than he should.

“How did you and Evelyn meet?” I ask, figuring that I may as well take my turn.

“I went to see her play. My agent likes to take me out when I’m in town.”

“An agent ,” Julian mumbles venomously, but only I can hear him.

“Mitchell went out during intermission and bought me a bouquet of daisies, and then met me by the stage door with them,” Evelyn says, running her hands up and down his hairless forearm, so slowly that each of my own arm hairs feels a pang of jealousy. Evelyn was playing Irina in the hit Off Broadway revival of Three Sisters . I had attended fifteen of the performances, each time leaving a crimson florilegium of roses in her dressing room afterward.

Evelyn always says that when she thinks about me sitting there in the front row she becomes afraid of losing her character. She says it would simply be the end of her. So I never tell her which shows I am coming to, and I sit back beneath the dark underhang of the mezzanine with a set of Julian’s opera glasses and my heirloom roses, and I watch, and I wait.

She’d been impressed by daisies ? Seriously?

I fidget with the bluebells she lodged in my lapel. The daisy in her own hair still hangs there, perfectly. Even the laws of gravity must obey Evelyn.

Evelyn has, no doubt, given Mitchell the impression that Julian and I must be impressed, if their relations are to go any further — which is probably why he goes on ad nauseam about his book. It is to be about how athletics showcase the triumph of the human spirit, and the meaning of human perseverance, and sportsmanship and teamwork, and just as Julian and I are getting ready to hang ourselves by our skinny neckties, the waitress finally scurries back with a bucket of Champagne on ice and a pitcher of blood orange juice.

Julian is set to launch into his complex brunch order — which always involves wheat toast without crusts and the salmon eggs Benedict but without the Benedict — only Mitchell holds out a gargantuan hand before Julian can begin.

“Ladies first,” he says, gesturing to Evelyn.

Julian looks as if he might chew Mitchell’s chiseled face off. This is not the usual order of things. There is a pause. He downs his mimosa in a single gulp and sulks.

Evelyn orders “the Caesar salad with smoked trout. Fish cold , please,” and then Julian jumps right back in with his elaborate demands. Feeling shaky, I opt for the steak and eggs, “but bloody,” thinking I might up my iron intake. Mitchell orders a granola and yogurt to start, and then pecan pancakes, with a ham omelet, making sure this comes with greens and home fries, and then sides of chicken-apple sausage and cheddar biscuits.