by Wilson Koewing
It was in one of the tourist trap seafood restaurants on Pier 39 where I saw the man, middle-aged, well-dressed, and carrying a few extra pounds that seemed to be the result of years of good living. With him was his young wife and a curly haired child that seemed too old for the bottle it held. The man tied a bib around his neck and drank from a frothy mug of beer. As their food arrived—a whole Dungeness crab drowned in butter and the cioppino with seafood teeming over the bowl’s sides—the child began to cry. Embarrassed, the wife picked up the child and rushed away. And there the man sat, for what seemed an incredible length of time, refusing to eat, sipping his beer, and blankly staring out the window.
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Wilson Koewing is a writer from South Carolina.
