Party of Four (Human Pursuits 9/7/22)
On a Saturday night in Scottsdale Arizona: Part Three
SCOTTSDALE, AZ – The urgency of our situation came crashing down like a final curtain. Diego Pops would only hold our table for a few minutes. We needed to drink. Fast. Leah and I caught eyes and I nodded towards her Vodka soda. “I can help you with that,” I offered. The words barely left my tongue when Kevin and Shomas thrust their pints below my nose. “That’d be great,” said Kevin. I laughed and told them the offer was only for Leah but drank the lion’s share anyways, starting with her vodka soda before downing Kevin’s pint, and then my own. The vodka and beer combined to form a vicious and evil brew in my stomach. I might have lost it completely if not for Shomas, who decided to finish his own pint, which he sipped casually as we left the table.
He was still holding the glass as we descended down the stairs towards the bar’s ground floor. Instead of exiting back out through the main cavern, we moved in the opposite direction, down a long hallway, towards the bar’s back door. The narrow space was dirty and dim, with overhead lighting the colour of oxidized blood, which made it seem considerably more sinister than the rest of Rockbar. Kevin pushed the door open with his hand and we turned down the alley, where the night was still dry and cloudless. Before us, a parking structure sat empty and quiet; a hollow colossus with concrete bones and illuminated fluorescent veins that bled light ever so faintly out onto the surrounding area. Kevin was leading at a solid clip when he turned back and saw Shomas still carrying his pint. “Oh my god, you stole that?” he said. His young beau flashed a trademark smile. “It’s a souvenir,” he replied. He let forth a full, rich laugh which bounced off the alley’s and back at us so that it seemed there was several Shomas’ lingering in the shadows. Then, he necked the beer and threw the glass into a nearby dumpster. It shattered like a starter’s pistol, and sent us fleeing down the alley, our heavy drunken feet propelling us back from where we had first come, towards the traffic of the highway and the fevered call of Diego Pops’ high-end fast-casual Mexican dining.
We arrived, minutes later, slightly sweaty and out of breath. The hostess greeted us and guided us past the waiting area, into the warm belly of the restaurant. We were seated at a low four top table. Though the moment had already faded into the inky night, our hurried round of Rockbar beverginos was just starting to take hold, giving the room (and its inhabitants) a blurry sheen that seemed to get thicker and more pronounced with each passing second.
After a few dazed moments, our twenty-something server approached the table and asked if there was anything we’d like to drink. Kevin and Shomas ordered first, having been to the restaurant once already during their working holiday. Shomas ordered a frozen strawberry margarita, Kevin a Prickly Pear one. Leah followed suit with a watermelon mint margarita. I was already worried about the few American dollars we had, so I kept it simple and ordered beer. All around us were young college kids, some of them Black and latino, but many more of them white. They seemed to me like day old kittens, fresh out of the womb, maybe 21-years-old, their eyes barely open to the world, unaware of everything they didn’t know, but still knowing enough to celebrate the simple pleasure of a Saturday night.
As we waited for the drinks to be dropped off at our table, Kevin sherpa’d us through the menu, which we opened using a QR code on our phones. “You have to try the grilled street corn,” he said “It is the moment.” I looked down at the small rectangular image on my smashed iPhone 7 Plus. A white hand held a grilled husk of American corn, covered in cotija cheese, and Flamin’ Hot Cheeto dust. Later I realized that, unlike other eateries, Diego Pops allows customers to comment on specific menu items. “They still got it! :D killing the game💯, take no prisoners💪🏽, slap my knee and call me Sally type of good 👅 !” wrote one guy named Ryan. In the moment, though, Kevin’s recommendation was enough. The corn sounded pretty good, as did the Sonoran Hot Dog: a bacon-wrapped all-beef glizzy with pinto beans, grilled onion, avocado cream, cotija and a brioche bun. When the waitress returned with our drinks, I ordered both, as did Kevin. We cheers’d and took a sip. The already blurry room got a little fuzzier and I had a hard time concentrating. My ears scanned the conversations surrounding our table like a radio dial awash in static. It had been more than twelve hours since we left Vancouver and the speed of our travels was starting to catch up to me. I couldn’t remember the last time I took a shit. I was also starving.
Thankfully, the food arrived quicker than expected and we started eating. Without speaking or even signalling to each other, Leah and I began to nurse our drinks, while Kevin and Shomas finished theirs and ordered another round. As promised, the grilled street corn was indeed a moment, the savouriness of the cotija and the Cheetos perfectly complimenting sweetness of the niblets. I cleared the cob, my fingers coated in a thick dust of lime juice and hot cheese powder, before turning to the Sonoran hot dog, which I devoured in a few bites. Leah looked up from her burrito and laughed. “Where’d it go?” she asked. I smiled and took a sip of beer. Across the table, Kevin had pulled out his phone and was having a conversation on FaceTime. He turned the screen to face the table and told us to “Say hi!” From inside the small black rectangle, Alex and Kate’s smiling faces beamed across the restaurant, bathing the four top in blue digital light. “Hooooooo barbish,” I said with a wave, unsure whether they could even see or hear me. Kevin turned the phone back towards himself and kept speaking. All around us conversations reverberated off the dining room walls, the shards of their sentences piercing my brain, resulting in a sort of aphasia that made it difficult to understand what anyone had said. Instead, I sat quietly and focused on my food.
My plate was empty when the call ended a few minutes later. Kevin and Shomas were still enjoying their second round and so we sat and digested. Just then, a young, dark haired man approached from a nearby table. “Hey guys,” he said loudly “Sorry to interrupt but is there any chance you could help sing Happy Birthday to my fiancee?” Quick glances shot around the table. “Sure, of course,” said Kevin, hand clasped around his frozen marg. The answer was barely past his lips as the man and his dinner party burst into song. We joined in, and so did other tables, until we became one large blurry choir singing the exultations of a complete and total stranger. As the drunken harmonies hit their crescendo Kevin looked at Leah and I from across his empty plate which, like my fingers, was covered in Cheeto dust and crumbs of cojita cheese. He spoke.
“Ya’ll wanna see some good drag tonight?”
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