spectacular spectacular

At Cuchi Cuchi the girls all dress like courtesans and Lisa drinks something frothy and pink called a Moulin Rouge. Our waitress wears a bowler hat, an enormous glittering necklace the side of a breastplate; another wanders by in a corset and a long, lacy skirt. Corsets give me terrible hiccups and I suspect this is only one of many reasons I will never be glam.

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I hate Central Square, usually. I think it is an armpit populated by people who all desperately want to be living anywhere besides Central Square but are worried that admitting it will damage their dirty hipster cred. In the summer 0f 2007 I waged a six-week-long war against a homeless man who growled at me every time I tried to put my Netflix in the mailbox by the T stop on Mass Ave. Eventually I was defeated. The whole neighborhood stinks of pee and despair but inside the restaurant there is incense and a tambourine and I think, well, what have we here?

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We order brie and pork rolls and duck l’orange; we share. Meg swears by the stroganoff and she is right (stroganoff makes me think of my mom, though I have no concrete memory of her ever cooking it; she did, however, calmly prepare an enormous tray of Swedish meatballs during one of the more catastrophic meltdowns of my adolescence). For dessert there is a banana-French toast-ice cream-caramel extravaganza. The word extravaganza is actually in the name and they are correct. “Can I take your plates?” the waitress asks, when all that’s left are a couple of melty pools of whipped cream.

“Not yet,” Meg says.

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Across the street from the restaurant is a Tootsie Roll factory–seriously, there is a Tootsie Roll factory across the street from the restaurant–and outside the air smells like chocolate and peppermint. We stand around, chatting, easy. My heels click on the concrete.