February 22, 1987
Maris's birthday was tonight. What a disaster. To begin with, I only realized it was her birthday because I happened to glance at her driver's license about a month back. I should have known from the mere fact that she didn't tell me about it that she was sensitive about her age. Thirty-four this year; I just didn't expect that she would have such a strong reaction. If she were turning thirty, or forty, it would be more understandable... At any rate, I was undeniably asinine, but I certainly paid for it.
I began by bringing her to Emilio's - the newest and most exclusive restaurant in Seattle. But alas, Maris could find nothing on the menu which was low-cal enough for her tastes. She's gained three-quarters of a pound in the last month, as she has informed me anxiously at least eight times - I really ought to have known that bringing her out to dinner wasn't the best idea. The chef became offended when she asked for the bouillabaisse provencale sans lobster and eel and - well, pretty much everything, leaving flavored broth. In an effort to smooth things over, I had the waiter bring us the standard dish, and picked everything out for Maris. At that point she didn't want to look at the leavings (to tell the truth, neither did I), so I wrapped them in several napkins. Later in the meal I knocked a wine glass over onto Maris' side of the table, and hastily grabbed at the first napkin which came to hand - of course, one of the ones with the slimy, dripping pieces of eel and lobster and leeks and all the rest in them. I unfolded it so quickly and pushed it toward the mess in such haste that all the contents went spilling into Maris' lap, all over her Versace dress. She burst into tears and ran to the ladies' room. I attempted to follow her, but of course I couldn't go into the ladies' room itself, and was reduced to calling through the door to her. She wouldn't respond, and I'm not sure whether the majority of the patrons believe me to be a pervert or a lunatic, but six of one...
When she came back her lipstick was redder than ever, and I knew I was in trouble. The waiters chose that inauspicious moment to bring out the birthday cake I had ordered - a magnificent tiered raspberry mousse cake, decorated with white chocolate rosettes and dusted with imported Dutch cocoa. By way of adding comic levity, I had found a little cartoony-looking man to place on the top, holding a sign which said "You're 34!" Maris actually screamed. Not only did she fling her drink at me, she threw the entire glass directly into my face, so that I have several nasty cuts at the moment - one on my forehead, one on my cheek, and a particularly noisome one starting on my bottom lip and trailing down my chin. She then leaped up, shoved her chair into the table so hard that it caught me in the chest and knocked the wind out of me, and sailed out the door. (I don't just mean that as a figure of speech, either. Moving that fast, her coat caught the wind stirred up by the overhead fan, and I could swear that she flew the last twelve feet.) I was left with the entirety of the restaurant staring at me, including the senator and a man who Dad assures me, from the special edition of the society page which came out that night just hours after the incident, is a player on the Seahawks. The senator would be bad enough, but for a talented athlete to witness such a scene happening to me brings me right back to my high school days - I was dangling naked from a flagpole all over again. I thought I was getting past that; in reality I've just gotten away from it for the most part.
But it's not as if that matters a straw compared to the fact that I have surely doomed my relationship with Maris. The central aspect of my life for the past nine months, all gone in the blink of a wine-stung eye. I don't know how to approach this at all. I must try to win her back, but how am I to do that? Perhaps I'll think better in the morning, when my eyes don't smart quite as much. That sounds as if I'm holding back tears, but I really think it's just the wine. Well, I should try to look on the bright side. It could have been worse. After all, since the incident occurred after the main course, it was her dessert Muscat that she threw at me, which does, after all, have relatively low acidity. To think that if it had happened fifteen minutes earlier I'd have gotten a faceful of Chateauneuf-du-Pape - imagine what a terrible attack that would have been!