So M texted me the other day:

"margies thurs nite?"

I replied:

"OK. Time?"

She replied:

"8. u pik me up."

So I drove over to her place, parked in the alley and called her.

"I'm down here in the car. It's eight."

"Be right down."

She came out in ten minutes and I drove us to Xcaret, our town's excellent Mexican Restaurant. All the way over she talked about breaking up with her latest guy, the young doctor. She more than talked. She held her cell phone in front of my eyes twice as if I could read the saved text messages they spread between them while they had their arguments.

We went back into the bar and grabbed side by side stools, ordered our first Margaritas.

"Las Rocas," I said to the little lady tending the bar. She stumped two big fishbowl glasses in the Kosher salt and filled them to the salty brims.

M went on and on about the bust up. I heard it all, from inception of their romance to the latest text messages, which arrived and were answered as we sat and drank.

There were no other subjects discussed. For two hours it went like that.

Finally two friends of M's arrive, a pulchritudinous young blonde and her handsome husband. I felt very old and out of place.

Imagine, me, feeling out of place leaning on the bar of a Mexican restaurant!

So we got introduced and I found out the man played golf. He is an attorney, so I asked if he did trusts. He did. He gave me his firm's web address and we talked about some local courses and the shape of their greens. Then we all knocked off two pitchers of margies while M repeated everything she had told me about her break up to the other woman - including showing her the text messages, and finally as we walked out M asked if we wanted to go to another place across town for more. They reluctantly agreed but I begged off due to an allergy problem.

Great excuse, because I sneezed twice as we reached the parking lot. Very convincing sneezes.

I drove home and sketched out my next painting on a gessoed canvas, set up the morning's coffee and turned on the computer.

And to think that I paid eighteen bucks for that, to sit there and listen to her man problems.