Ahi in patches

We talk of fear of flying.

Lunch is a safe thing. Lunch partners are typically business associates, girlfriends, coworkers. Shop talk and small talk generally prevail. In places like The Grill—a chic but unpretentious café on S. McCarran Blvd.—harm and unpredictability seem out of the question. The walls are terra cotta- and mustard-colored; afternoon sunlight makes the warm shades glow warmer. Waiters are dressed unobtrusively in black and white.

In a climate like this, your deepest fears are fair game.

“I’m going to go to death kicking and screaming,” one of my two lunch companions, Will, says nonchalantly after he’s ordered lunch— lasagna ("layers of seasoned meats, spinach and cheese between wide pasta and topped with marinara, fresh mozzarella and parmesan cheese for $9.95") and a cup of spicy seafood soup ($2).

Will, a comedian, has been invited to perform in London. Catch is, the thought of flying makes Will fidgety, to say the least.

I mention something I’ve read recently, an excerpt from Erica Jong’s excellent book, Fear of Flying, in which the protagonist faces her angst over being airborne on board an airplane with 117 psychoanalysists who themselves seem less than stable.

“A car wreck’s great,” Will observes. “You can limp across the road dramatically in a car wreck. Flying’s like gambling. The more I play, the more I’m gonna lose.”

“How’s your soup?” I ask him.

“Scrumpdilicious,” he says.

Our meals soon arrive. My other lunch companion, Kate, gets the sesame seared Ahi salad ($11.95), a fresh and colorful plate of oranges, various greenery and bright pink Ahi coated with sesame seeds.

“It looks like watermelon with Rice Krispies,” Will observes. Kate says it tastes nothing like watermelon, especially when dunked in a cup of pungent wasabi.

I have the lunch special (you do a food review, somebody has to order the special), a blackened snapper sandwich on sourdough ($11.95). I’m a vegetarian of the fairly strict sort, but I decide to put the meatlessness on pause. Life is after all a fragile thing, and little lusts—like desire for blackened fish—should occasionally be indulged. The sandwich comes with a choice of several side-orderish things, from which I choose a small salad topped with crumpled blue cheese. (I’ve had an inexplicable craving for blue cheese this last week.) Though the vinaigrette dressing from my salad leaks onto my sourdough a bit, the sandwich is fresh and tasty.

Our waiter, Joe, checks on our progress periodically. Will tells me that I should mention that Joe has no accent. He suggests that Joe should adopt French intonation.

“You get more for your money that way.”

We end our meal without making life ending any less frightening or rendering flying any more palatable for Will. But our bellies are full and happy. Joe drops off the little black folder that holds our bill.

“The bad news,” Joe says. “And some cookies.” There’s a sugar cookie for each of us.

As Joe points out, you have to look for the patch of good amid the bad. At The Grill, with the sun burnt walls and sunlit tables and watermelon-colored Ahi, that’s not so hard to do.