Bottomless Mimosas, Endless Brunch

We’ve heard mimosas are a curative; that’s why we toast to health. Sun floods bright as orange juice past the cafe awning and makes our glasses glow. We lift them to each other and drink, seven women, seven like seven days or seven veils, like seven seas or seven seals. We equal in number both virtues and sins. We gather together around a stone table. Seven like the continents. Seven like the wonders of the world.

When we arrived, we purred to the hostess for the best-looking boy server she could send. If we were the ones carrying the tray, as some of us have in the past, we would have hated such a demand. But because we’re women, we get away with it. We carry promise. We carry dollars. We are blond redheaded raven-haired brunettes. He won’t mind flirting back, and he will be paid for it. We need him. We whisper, “Twenty- five percent. At least. We guarantee it.”

The first sip is the bitterest, the one when we sense the most wine. The waiter’s mixed our pitcher pale with prosecco. We check his nametag to greet him—Brad. This one’s named Brad. He chats as he pours for us. He places his arms around the backs of chairs, the gesture alluding to an embrace. We move our bodies better now than when we were young. We’ve learned. Then, the pink blaze of our cheeks eclipsed our nervousness. Now we wink when we wish to order, we caress chests as servers walk by us, tug ties with the assurance of women who know what they want, and whom. We like Brad. He has dimples deep as trenches. The bitter drink turns sweet in aftertaste, transformation beginning in our mouths.

The second sip strips away our lines. Like our cells are drinking water, we say, rehydrating. The dead layers crack off and we brush ourselves with our napkins, blow dust off each other’s shoulders. We smile and the creases beside our mouths plump, stretch taut as the poached peaches that top our pancakes.

With the third sip, our hands smooth. The skin thickens over the veins that ran blue rivers across the backs of our hands, swallowing the blood back down. We ooh, then we stroke each other, wrists to fingertips, admiring. Our waiter thinks we’re silly, or he laughs because we make him nervous. We flip each other’s hands over, palm to back. The palm tells our futures; they’re written in the lines. Our backs tell our pasts—the nicks and scrapes, the days spent tanning, the hard work we had to do when younger. Up to our elbows in ice water, some of us; cramped from cutting hair, others. Those of us who typed too much when we were admins feel the pain relieved. Now smooth, we don’t remember much of how it was before. Brunch is more important. Pancake short stacks diminish, layer by layer, as if blown away by breeze. Waffles melt into porcelain. Cloth napkins wick away bacon fat then swallow whole strips into their weave. We smile at each other with clean teeth. We feel less hungry now that the food is gone. We toast again.

Our sips get grander. We reclaim hopes we forgot to retain, opportunities we never answered. We bring out our phones to scroll through messages. We return old calls, contact old friends. We chatter all at once. Then we dial our husbands and tell them our excitement.

“Have you been drinking?” our men ask, and we giggle, guilty but not sorry, and tell them not to expect us soon. These sister brunches are so rare, aren’t they? We’re so hard to convene. But friends, of course, must be a priority. Though hubbies seem annoyed at us, we click off our phones. Fifth sip reminds us they went AWOL with their friends that one night, when they went to a strip club or boar hunting or they let it all ride on red in Vegas. We absolve ourselves. With sip six, we’re past love. The afternoon stands jocund and empty, like a glass box of sun.

The waiter comes to refill us. We feel the yearning as he makes his round. We have to toast or the mimosas won’t work. We snag his belt loops, pinch the crease pressed in his trousers. We flick shirt buttons from his placket. We claw down his back, nails catching on each of his vertebrae. He tilts his carafe and pours with care, meting out the doses. One of us tells him to hurry, or maybe it’s all of us. We sound like a shriek when we say it. Hardly words, just intensity. He moves faster because of fear.

We are seven, seven, the seventh sip. Sacred number. We are ready. We’ve been waiting to drink for seventy times seven.

We tell Brad to get a glass for himself, but he demurs. We insist; we need it. He says he’ll get in trouble. We coo to him that no one will see. We raise our arms and a wall rises from the floor, barricades us in. He laughs and his handsome face becomes handsomer. Happy people always look better.

The seventh sip is a whole glass. We drink it down and so does he. We stand from our seats and lift our caftaned arms and the awning rolls back. We praise the giant satsuma in the sky. We pull our man to the middle of the table. His tie flies off. We roll down his slacks, skim back his shirt. We lick the flesh we reveal. Just as ours has been resurfaced, we can now resurface his.

When we finish, he is our eighth. Eight, the infinity symbol stood on end. A blond redhead raven-haired brunette. A woman who doesn’t look her certain age. She’s filled up with omelets, stuffed with sliced fruit. Brad takes a chair beside us, finds the phone in her pocket, texts her husband. “Not coming home for a while. Afternoon with the girls. Love you. Xoxo.”

If we leave brunch, the mimosas’ effects will ebb. Our coquetry may seem unbecoming when no longer softened by fake champagne. We’ll sicken. Our faces will parch, neck and hands desiccate. The food we absorbed will make our slender tummies puff.

So we will stay. We’ll live every day like Sunday at noon. We will fill our flutes to the rim. Every sip will be the seventh.