summer

after all the customers have left; after Juan has vacuumed the floors; after the glasses are washed and polished and placed back into their racks; after the floor mats have been removed and the grit from our shoes is dumped into its resting place, the 10-foot-tall dumpster; after Abdallah has taken his 15th and final smoke break in the employee lounge; after the money has been counted and deposited; after we have pocketed our wares; then, finally, we drink. Hassan hands me a Johnnie Walker Red Label, no rocks, and I grimace to myself when he's not looking. They think I like Scotch and I don't have the heart -- or the desire -- to admit that it's not my favorite. So I drink it all, and we gaze silently out the giant windows that frame the back of the restaurant, its neon sign blinking endlessly, eternally into the night. To me it seems immense, this sign, but I know to the outside world it appears small, perhaps cheesy, the palm tree at the end ridiculous in inner-city Philadelphia. We are not in Paris; we are in the city of 1,000 murders, a city in which bums sit wearily on street grates, not merrily playing the lute. And yet here, in this room, here we are--a Mexican, two Moroccans, a Tunisian, a white-bred city boy, and me, whoever I am to them, a naive young girl most likely, but nevertheless I have been accepted into this demi-society and I feel proud tonight. "La Boheme" is playing on the CD player and Hassan is singing, his face turned toward me in a serenade. The song ends and he smiles, closing his eyes. Where is he now? In Marrakesh? Soviet Russia? I'm not sure, but I know where I am; I'm here, now, and nothing else matters. Outside the city's lights seem endless, and inside, the liquor tumbles down my throat, its warmth soothing like the warmth of this room, like the summer day's trapped heat rising from the streets.