Notes from a Compulsive Eavesdropper

It’s 3:20 in the afternoon, and I’m sitting in a South Loop spot called the Scout Waterhouse + Kitchen.

It occupies a big space at Wabash and 13th Street, the kind of place you might go for trivia night or to sing karaoke. On weekends, bands occasionally play here. Right now, though, it’s nearly empty. Shafts of sunlight fall in dusty wedges from the windows. Two women sit to my right at the bar, wearing vintage dresses, each a different color of a kitchen from my 1970s childhood. The first woman: bright red hair, thick glasses, a sleeve of tattoos on her right arm. The second: some blue hair, partial head shave, silk scarf, and a very nice men’s wristwatch. Drinking bourbon as they parse the menu. They hear each other, but I can’t say they listen. I do, though. I really listen.

“Everything is share plates now,” the woman in glasses says. “The whole world comes on share plates.”

“Don’t get the Brussels sprout salad,” says the woman with the watch. “Seriously.”

A pause. They continue reading the menu. The glasses woman affects a voice, makes a mock order of an item not even on the menu: “I’ll have a share plate of pork belly.”

The watch woman looks up from her menu. “Are you ordering?”

The glasses woman answers another question altogether. “Sprouts don’t interest me.” Then she says, “No, I’m not ordering.” She reads more menu, then muses: “Can you imagine your father ordering pork belly?”

“My dad loves bacon.”

“So you’re saying he would order pork belly?”

The watch woman peers at her. “What?” A pause. “My dad bought and sold futures. So he was, like, you know, familiar with pork bellies.”

Another silence.

“I’m just going to have the sprouts,” the watch woman says.

“You just told me don’t get the sprouts.”

“Because I order sprouts every time. That’s what I’m getting, and we don’t need two plates of it.”

“Two share plates,” the glasses woman clarifies.

So much shorthand, so much history between them, and still a measure of disconnection.

We sit like this for an hour. They share the sprouts. They talk about fabric, which turns out to be their business. “Silk,” one of them says, “is a war crime.” Before I can figure that one out, they depart for a museum of some kind. We never make eye contact. I