Let’s Raise a Glass and Get All Choked Up

Like Sinatra, my wife was born on the 12th day of the 12th month, and like Sinatra she loves the night life. So for her birthday, I take her to a Laker game, where all the women are top-heavy and all the men sit on big, cushy wallets, making them bottom heavy and more appealing to the top-heavy women. Love: It’s only a game.

“Oops, she fell,” I say as a Laker girl stumbles during a routine.

“I wonder why,” wonders my wife.

The Laker girl was twirling her hair round and round in a dangerous manner, when suddenly she lost control and flipped herself to the floor.

Like most Laker girls, she apparently has the same high center of gravity as an SUV. Down she went, in a heap of curls.

“This is great,” I tell my wife as we check out the Staples Center crowd. “Entertaining and repulsive all at once.”

“Look, there’s Sylvester Stallone,” she says.

The next night, I take her to dinner.

Now, before you go getting all judgmental about my not buying her a big gift, let me remind you that we’ve been together for 20 years.

At this point, all sweaters look the same to me. All bracelets. All thongs and frilly underthings. After 20 years, Victoria’s Secret is out of secrets.

So I buy her a steak.

At the steak place they seat us at a nice booth in the good room.

“Could we have a children’s menu?” my wife asks for the little girl at her side.

“Sure,” says the waitress.

It’s a simple menu, here at the steak place. You have your Caesar salads, and then it offers a choice of beef, beef or beef.

“I’ll have the filet mignon,” says the boy.

“I’ll have ribs,” says the little girl.

“You’re not drinking?” my wife asks.

“Maybe later,” I say, nursing my wallet.

While we wait for the food, I entertain them with interesting dinner party conversation, like “How come you never see partridge on the menu anymore?” or “Where do capers come from, really?” That sort of thing. Like in a Noel Coward play.

“I mean, I’d order partridge,” I say. “They live in pear trees. They eat mostly pears. I figure it would be a sweet, succulent, white meat.”

They nod and play with their silverware. The kids tear their cocktail napkins into little snowballs. My wife sips her Merlot.

“And I don’t get capers,” I say. “Do they come from farms? From caper orchards?”

“I’ll have another one of these,” my wife tells our waitress, raising her wine glass like an Olympic torch.

“When’s our food get here?” asks the boy.

Then I entertain them with stories about my touch-football career, how my ankles still hurt from playing just a few days earlier. It’s not like my ankles take a pounding, I tell them. My buddy Rhymer has no wheels left.

And Hank, he can’t even juke anybody anymore. When he encounters a defender one on one, he merely tumbles to the ground, shoulder rolling into the winter rye like a guy looking for a nap. There Hank lies, till someone offers him a hand up.

“I won’t even mention Eisen,” I tell my dinner companions, who stare into the distance as if waiting for a train.

Finally, our food comes, and I dig right in.

I tell my wife that the reason our food took so long is because they figured us for heavy drinkers and they wanted to give us enough time to order three or four rounds.

“Right,” my wife says, then digs into her birthday filet, a baked potato on the side.

My Kansas City sirloin is just right, smothered in onions. I would eat the space shuttle if it were smothered with grilled onions. I dig in with abandon.

Now, for every Cinderella, there comes a moment when she thinks to herself, “Yeah, I’ve made it out of the ghetto. I’ll never sweep that stupid fireplace again.”

For my Cinderella, that thought arrives with my second bite of Kansas City sirloin.

It didn’t lodge in my throat right off, it just danced around the back of my mouth for a while, flirting with my throat. Then it plunged straight down the throat. I think I was discussing a Dodger trade at the time.

And suddenly, I can’t swallow, and I can’t unswallow. The sirloin is in my windpipe. I make the sound your dog makes when he’s gagging on a Hot Wheels car.

“You OK?” my wife says, glancing up from her potato only briefly.

Over the next minute, this happens:

* I make a small aspirating sound, not too loud because I don’t want to offend other diners.

* My wife thinks back to that life insurance policy she filled out a few weeks earlier and wonders when exactly it was to take effect. Because if it was immediate, Cinderella here could walk out of this restaurant a very rich woman, and what a great birthday gift that would be. Better than a Laker game. Better than a center-cut steak.

What happens next is that the little piece of sirloin goes two floors up, then three floors down, then four floors up, to where I can chew it again.

“Whew, that was close,” I tell my wife, starting to sweat a little.

“I knew you were OK,” she says. “As long as you can still make gasping sounds, you’re OK.”

It’s good she says this because, while nearly choking to death, I was struck by what a remarkable calm she had about her. No Heimlich. No urgent call to the waiter. She just stirred the sour cream into her baked potato and smiled. Like Sinatra, she doesn’t panic easily.

“Maybe,” she says. “you should slow down when you eat.”

“Thanks, doc,” I say.

After dinner, we go off to buy a Christmas tree, out onto the cold streets of Los Angeles, safe from Laker girls. Safe from steak.

We find a nice noble fir for 70 bucks, take it home, where we think positive, life-affirming thoughts.

Go, Lakers. Go, Santa. And always chew your food.

Chris Erskine can be reached at [email protected].