I was meeting a colleague for dinner at a restaurant I had never been to. As soon as I walked in, I hit the wall of sound. The street door opened into the bar area. Patrons sat at round tables on high chairs with low sacroiliac-smacking backs. There was music of some sort, cranked up, but I could not distinguish anything because the roar of voices overwhelmed it. I did what I always do in the presence of the wall of sound—my face winced, and the muscles of my neck and shoulders contracted, as if I could thereby shrink the portals of hearing. It actually works to some extent, though not nearly enough to silence the din. I moved quickly to the reservation desk, reckoning that the dining area would be quieter.
It was, some—though hazards remained. The first table I was taken to (I was first to arrive) was next to a party of six suits. They were well into their meal, cocktail or wine glasses stood at every place. The business bellow is only slightly less bad than the barroom shout, so I asked for another table. The maîtresse d’, knowing her business, showed me to the back of the room. An old couple, slightly befuddled—tourists who had missed some date with destiny—lay ahead of me. A banquette for three—more suits, but quieter, made shy not boisterous by strangeness—sat to one side. A large ugly pillar spoiled the view, but blocked the wall of sound. When my colleague came we would be able to eat our tiny tarted-up portions and drink our unfamiliar-for-a-reason wines in something like peace.
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