versailles is only five or six exits away. it's an oasis of cuban food, although i wouldn't know, because i always get the same thing: the 1/2 garlic chicken, which comes with a mountain of sliced onions, black beans, rice and syrupy fried plaintains.

it's the perfect date meal, i told erlina, because it makes a mockery of being close: kiss me, darling, with your garlic, onion breath. make me laugh, and i will erupt in a gassy cloud. what's that scent you're wearing? the aroma of courtship. if by the end of the night you are not driven mad by the way i smell, let's go out again.

i went there once with a boy whose name escapes me. i wanna say rick, but i know it wasn't that. he looked like a paul, maybe, or a richard, but that wasn't it, either. i just remember he was blond and had a receding hairline. i met him through our friend, anne.

he tried to get me to read pynchon and had even bought me a used copy of a book during a trip to san francisco, but he'd forgotten it at home that night. but i never saw him again -- was it my bad breath? -- and i never got the book.

which reminds me, i still haven't read any pynchon.