She looks at me from behind the counter.
Italian, eh?
Do you go to Church?
I confess that I don’t go
as often as I should.
Italian boy like you should go to church.
What does your mother say about this?
I tell her my mother is English.
Sure, England everybody goes to church.
Good Catholic country.
Married?
What about your wife?
What does she say?
My wife is Laotian.
Pah?
From Laos. You know, between Vietnam and Thailand.
Oh.
I mean, she is Canadian, born here.
But her family is from Laos.
They’re Taoist, but their sponsors
over here were Baptist. So now
they’re a kind of mix of
Taoist and Baptist.
She regards me for a moment,
looks down at my invoice, draws a small line
across an unused portion, then looks me
straight in the eye and asks:
You want taxes, or no?
