There’s about seven inches of grated parmesan piled onto a side plate. The waiter said Say when, and the guy never said when. Just watched the waiter shave more and more of the block until finally they say, “Sorry sir, that’s the rind.” And the guy says, “That’s good then, yeah.”
“So I guess you like parm,” I say.
He says, “It’s okay.”
I want to push, but he starts telling me how he took his niece to her first baseball game. About getting ice cream in a plastic hat. Tomorrow he will do some weedwacking. Will weedwack his neighbor’s lawn. Throughout the meal, the plate of parm just sits there. He never so much as looks at it, save for when we split the bill and he dumps it all into a takeout container.
Later, he’s making me a cocktail and asks if I could grab a tonic from his fridge. So I open the door and see it: the crisper drawer, stuffed to the top with grated parmesan. No packaging, nothing. Just a bunch of loose cheese butting up against the plastic bin.
I snap a picture, a punchline, for my group chat. Only I send it to the wrong place: I send it to the guy.
His phone is next to the cutting board where he’s slicing up a lemon. The photo pops on screen and he does a sort of expectant half-smile. Like he’s been waiting for this all night.
And he looks at me and says, “Can I ask you something? How come this matters to you?” He says, “Why is this something you care about?” Knife in hand, he points at the picture on his phone and asks again, “Please, tell me why this matters?”