Sunday Brunch

9:00am and I haven't showered yet. The wheelchair that is my personal crutch when I feel lazy or my back hurts jolts back and forth as the metro train intermittently stops while we proceed on the "safe" side of the Red Line. Woodley Park, Dupont, Farragut North, Metro Center, and Gallery Place/Chinatown. We shoot the shit about the weekend's foggy misadventures. Twenty minutes before, wallowing in a cluttered apartment, we had made the command decision that a Sunday brunch was in order to start the day.

Our stop looks like all the other stops on the metro, stone gray and lifeless. Don't get me wrong, the designers had attempted to spruce it up with the obligatory 1970s / 80s neon pop-art sign. But it still feels like a bomb shelter, or maybe that's just my headache. Getting off the elevator the American Portraiture Museum looks back at me disapprovingly. She wants to know why I haven't done anything cultured lately. She wants to know if I still care. I glare back knowing that people would look at me funny if I gave a building the finger. We start off for our destination. Locked. Sumofabitch. I even knock in case someone inside will take pity on us and maybe let us in an hour before opening. No dice, we go to Starbucks to wait until it opens.

He is worried about the election. White people won't vote for a black guy. Angry white people will mobilize on radio shows and Fox News. Even angrier white people will print out pamphlets and hold rallies. Perhaps. Perhaps enough whites will look at issues and not pigmentation. I'm reading about how JFK really had faulty information informing his decisions for 13 days in 1962. I'm thinking that other presidents have also had faulty information. I'm thinking that some presidents make the right decisions with the information they have. I'm thinking that other presidents make wrong ones. I'm thinking of my decisions with that facts I've been given.

The sweet spicy aftertaste of chai stuck in the back of my throat as we sauntered into the mahogany foyer of our destination. On the walls were oil impressions of men hunting foxes, men sculling, men playing golf. The wood and brass bar reminded me of a F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. No vodka gimlets today. But maybe a stock crash tomorrow. More oil impressions line the walls. This time it is a fishing village somewhere in New England. It looks cold there.

Seated, we replenish our parched bodies with ice cold water. From the menu I agonize over the choice to be made. Fried chicken and waffles are filling but today I'm in the mood for something different. Eggs Chesapeake. When it comes out I am given two healthy portions of poached egg served atop smoked chicken, spinach, and an English muffin. Oh yes, and drenched in hollandaise sauce. As I bite in the eggs are poached to perfection but all I taste is the hollandaise. Creamy but overpowering. On the side coffee cake calls to me. Yep, crumbly sugary goodness. The brown sugar is slightly melted from keeping it warm on the counter which makes the breadcrumbs slightly sweet gooey morsels. Not bad for a Sunday morning.