Doing Too Much

Writing this evening. Not sure why.

I get up from the chair and come back to the chair and there’s more to it.

*

STEFANO’S AVERAGE FRIDAY

“Go stepping,” she said. She was sitting out on the rooftop, just off the area that was considered the bar, nearer to the area that was considered the disco. Roof Disco was the name, never inaccurate, barely exciting. George had come from Ioannina in 1979 with a name and a dream and no one since had thought to alter either. George’s son Stefano now ran the whole place, not just the bar (where he had added several bespoke cocktails) or the kitchen (Flatbreads of the World), but the dance floor itself. Stefano was a wizard at three and had deepened his sorcery from there. He could do a whole lot of jazz and a little balled and could bend backwards with limbs at compass-rose points to turn his body into art. Most people assumed he was of a certain preference he was a ladies’ man without compare at Roof Disco, and a scavenger to boot — he would wait around until the end of the night and see which women had been stood up or insulted by their boyfriends or girlfriends or which had a twinkle in their eye that meant they wanted to reach into the back of the cupboard. Now he was talking to a thirtysomething dirty blonde who had wandered upstairs with a tall, muscular guy and immediately started to argue with him. “A nation is defined by its artwork!” she had finally said, all the kindness turned to rage, “and the fact that you can’t see that means that I can no longer see you.” The tall guy dumbly thumbed the bill in the tray on the table. He was thinking whether he should pay before he stormed out. He paid. She stayed. She fell into a deep conversation with Stefano about giallo soundtracks, especially Goblin, specifically Profondo Rosso. “Giorgio Gaslini took a fall,” she said. Stefano swooned. How did she know this? “How do you know this?” he said. She squared her jacket on her shoulders. “Go stepping,” she said. Stefano did. He danced. He meant to impress and saw that he was succeeding. The evening light thinned out and then drained into deep night. “Go stepping,” she said again, this time bent back over the hood of her car, a Hemi ‘Cuda, everything he ever wanted all at once. “Go stepping,” she said a third time, or was it the fourth, and they slid beneath the daybed in his office. [©2026 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas]