05/04

It is Fool Moon night, and to get to the restaurant I must walk through the market       

square where children marshalling for the big street parade

play beneath the steep tin roof by lanternlight, dressed for the sleet and the wind 

baying against the clutter of the stalls cloaked in burlap until Saturday, 

balloons taped to sticks in their hands.

I catch eyes with one of the fathers.

he has a daughter whose long butterscotch hair spools out from a pom-pom beanie, curtaining her neck as if her parka had a coyote fur ruff

and a papier-mâché moonfish

glowing brighter than the eagles,

armadillos, dinosaurs, unicorns and octopi held by other parents,

glowing brighter still at the eyes.

what could be more beautiful than to see the old grow young again

amidst fantastical beacons draped in fog?

The restaurant is a house – the dining room once a parlour. Nobody is in the dining room except the maître d’. At my entrance she turns down the volume of the Thai soap opera, gets up to procure me a water jug and a specials menu. While she is gone, I notice that her place at the empty banquet table is covered with white jasmine rice, some of the grains still whole, some mashed into the clear plastic tablecloth, and that the large bowl filled, oddly, with nothing but water and sliced banana seems untouched.

I have nearly finished eating when the maître d’ asks me about the festival – she has seen it every year for many years from the front window of the restaurant, but

still does not know what it means. I tell her, the name is Fool Moon, but beyond this I am not sure. In Thai she calls down a corridor to somebody, presumably in the kitchen. A white man appears in the archway. The maître d’ continues to speak in Thai to the white man, pointing out the window toward the crowd and the scores of lanterns, aglow, lolling in the air like buoys on a choppy sea. He answers, okay, removes his apron, and walks out the door. He will find out, you will see, says the maître d’. And I watch the white man cross the road and disappear - despite the beacons - in the fog.