Kiki does everything with class. A small ballroom with a vaulted ceiling, a decorative waterfall along the back wall, waiters in bow ties with trays of crudites, wines both red and white; these are the things I expect when Kiki holds a party. Her engagement did not disappoint. Men, many of them stately, wore suits. Women, who we can say were dignified, wore cocktail dresses. Kiki looked wonderful, every bit in her element. Raphael (her fiancee) trailed along behind with an indulgent smile. The DJ (who we will refer to as "a crooner") had a great manner and an excellent voice. His name is Michael Roselli and I, in all seriousness, recommend him to anyone holding an event in this area. We had tiramisu, we had spiced lamb, we had a good time. To give you an idea of what this evening was about let me say that I actually liked the champagne.
I also saw a few people I'd met before, like Kiki's parents, her friend Dave and her friend Renee (pronounced, by me and Ogre and no one else, "Ri'-ni"), who has grown surprisingly (if only slightly) attractive over the years. I also met Bob. Bob is a real-life version of Gil, from the Simpsons. Bob has been through a series of jobs in the past few years, including stints in realty, car sales and (most recently) custom door sales. Bob's wife was stern and disapproving, his voice warbled, the creases in the skin of his face flowed in waves. Bob was desperate for approval, any approval at all, even from a pony-tailed man half his age, and for my part I was so tremendously amused to meet a walking bit of fiction that I just couldn't turn away.
As amusing as Bob was, however, the highlight of the evening was Kiki's brother, Sanjeev. San (the Man) speaks in short, controlled bursts, he punches every word home and he responds to jokes, yours or his own, with a short, staccato bark of laughter. San is a verbal assault given flesh. San is exactly the sort of person that I usually want to rip the tongue out of with lobster tongs. He's in pharmaceutical sales, which should basically put him only slightly higher than the mudwort on the scale of evolutionary progression. However, as it happens, San is an immensely nice guy and I'm tremendously fond of him. Have been for years. He's just one of those poor unfortunates whose demeanor fits into a certain bad stereotype but whose actual personality is the direct opposite of that stereotype.
He also has pink eye. This is interesting, in that you don't usually hear about adults getting pink eye. But San says that "I must have been in the gymnasium, doing a work out, and put my hand on some machine or weight that someone else had touched, and there you have it." Yes, he really did say "gymnasium." So San spent the evening in an already dimly lit room wearing sunglasses, a fact he apologized for with each new person he saw. San has a promotion interview on Monday. One hopes he'll be able to crawl out of the primordial ooze and make it a little further up the evolutionary ladder. He's confident that his confidence in the face of pink eye will be the key to his success. "I'll put the sunglasses on the table," he told me, "and I'll tell them that I have conjuntivitis, and if they'd be more comfortable, I can wear the sunglasses. For their benefit." That's the kind of guy he is.