The Birthday Crown Placement Was Intentional

March seventh. Simone turned thirty-one last month, Valentine's Day, which she will tell you is a curse and a gift depending on whether the restaurant has prix-fixe menus, but we did our actual celebrating a few weeks later when we could get a table somewhere that wasn't charging an extra forty dollars for the occasion.

We went to this neighborhood place we'd walked past a hundred times and neither of us had been inside. Small tables, candles in little glass holders, exposed brick, the kind of menu where everything sounds extremely reasonable until you notice the portions are also extremely reasonable. We ordered too many small plates immediately and then spent twenty minutes pretending we hadn't. Simone got a glass of something she described as 'a decision' and I got whatever the bartender said was good, which was also a decision.

At some point, I'm not fully reconstructing the sequence of events here, the volume at our table had climbed past a certain threshold and the manager came over to check in. He was very polite about it. Very. Then he came over again, which I think most people would consider a warning but which I am choosing to remember as two separate moments of genuine table service. Simone thinks this is revisionist history.

the exact moment we got a second visit from the manager

The paper crown was from the little basket by the host stand, the kind of place that just has those, no explanation, no occasion required. I placed it on Simone's head toward the end of the night when the dishes were cleared and the candle had burned down to a stub. She left it on. That is the detail I want on the record. She absolutely left it on.

Simone's birthday crown. I placed it. I stand by the angle.