The Leap of Faith
“Have you taken the Leap of Faith?” he asked in this accent. It was a good accent. It was the kind of accent you wanted to listen tell you a secret. The both of you standing against the wall of a half lit alley, not looking at each other, and him speaking out the side of his mouth.
“No, what’s that?” I asked.
Lena just smiled at me. She was having a ball.
He bent down, putting a hand up to shield his lips from anybody who might be watching.
“It’s the Russian way to drink absinthe. Just wait. I bring it.”
He disappeared into the restaurant. Faith and Flower, in downtown L.A., was a beautiful restaurant, with tall, tall ceilings and beautiful chandeliers and a wine room behind glass walls. All the bottles were lit up, glowing, radiating decadence, like each one had a wish inside.
We’d ordered well and we’d ordered diversely and we were taking about half of the pork chop, that still looked like a full regular pork chop, home with us. They’d put our bottle of Nebbiolo in a decanter that looked exactly like the bong my neighbor in college used. People keep saying fine dining is going away. The sit down restaurant and the white linen is going away. I don’t think so. People will always want to feel better than they did before they walked in a place. It’s the illusion. It’s the dream you don’t have to go to sleep to experience. We couldn’t eat like this every night. It’s what a weekend of work could buy me. But tonight, we could shoulder up next a millionaire and look over and stick out our tongues. And what the fuck were they gonna do about it?
Lena wasn’t the biggest fan of the desserts but tonight she was being a real team player. She was happy if I was happy. I don’t always need dessert, but if I’m going for it, I love the sweet stuff. I said I was done more than a few times, laying down my fork, only to look around the place and get caught up all over again, my hand picking up the fork again subconsciously, and before I knew it here came another bite.
The man returned to the table with his hands full and a look of achievement written on his face and I knew something exciting was in store.
“You come here for the experience. This is something to remember. Then you tell people, and then they come here. And so, it passes on. This is why it’s special here. Here, watch. Here comes the flame.”
He was a handsome man. I wished I worked with him. I’d love to watch him schmooze a table. Maybe steal a few of his lines. You can always use more lines. He rolled a snifter over a rocks glass, coating the glass evenly with the absinthe. He lit a long match from the candle that was already on our table and inserted it into the snifter. A blue flame licked out like a scorpion tail. It looked like magic. He raised the glass with steady hand, and the blue flame poured down into the rocks glass miraculously. Like a gift from Mother Nature. He capped the snifter on a white linen cloth and brought it close to my face, like he held a butterfly under a cup.
“Take the straw and suck when I tell you. Inhale the vapors. Then drink from the glass. This is the effect.”
I sucked in steady, maybe a little too hard. I didn’t cough, because this wasn’t college and this wasn’t a gravity bong, but I choked on the low, a second long enough for Lena to catch it and laugh at my expense. I eased it down into my lungs and when I was ready, took a healthy sip from the drink. The aroma, the depth of flavor, the pure sensation of something taken from history, from a land you may or may not ever travel to, all these things were in my head. I always loved a good story.
I remembered the first time I’d drank absinthe in Germany. And that’s all I remembered: was drinking it. Everything else was black with brief moments of stabbing light. This was a much more pleasant experience. Who’d have thunk it. To be honest, I feel like I’d get along just fine with a Russian. From Russia with love, baby.
