Worldly Atmosphere

Some people pass in and out of your life like tides enriching wetlands. You may not see them for months at a time, but when you do, everything between you is easy and familiar. You just click. Effortlessly. That’s the way Allison is.

We met in the desert. Riding horses. I was on this very nervous bay and I think she was riding a small appaloosa. I don’t remember exactly. What I remember is that there was this one-eyed dog named Bandit, who was driving the horses crazy and making me extremely nervous.

I’ve spent a lot of time around horses, but I don’t want to give off the impression that I’m Clint Eastwood or anything. When I was younger, I knew a girl who owned an Arabian horse ranch, and to impress her, I took a summer job with a trainer who took me to places like Spokane and Cody and Calgary, Canada. My job was to clean the stalls, rub bootblack on the horses’ muzzles, saddle them and warm them up before my girlfriend, wearing a blue silk cowgirl outfit, put them through their paces. I’ve been thrown by horses and I’ve been bitten enough times to know why there are more geldings than stallions around.

There was this time when I was out in the desert and was supposed to go on a ride through the mesquite and jumping cactus countryside with a few other riders, but the day was hot and a wind came up, and the only person who showed up was Allison. And this mad one-eyed dog. Bandit liked to pretend that he was chasing jack rabbits out in the desert. He’d go high-tailing it through the cactus, disappearing for five or 10 minutes, and then suddenly come darting out of nowhere barking and nipping at our horses’ legs as we galloped in the soft sand. It was a game he was playing, and nobody else--including the horses--enjoyed it.

The only thing worse than being thrown from a galloping horse is being tossed into some beastly chollas. So I was a bit on edge. But Allison just laughed. And galloped faster. Having a mad one-eyed dog chase her through the desert seemed her idea of a good time. That girl was every bit as spunky as that crazy dog.

We run into each other the other day and agree to have dinner together at Nieuport 17, one of those landmark Orange County places that I have always heard about but never visited. I figure I’ll tell her about my trip to Germany. About the bar in East Berlin that I stumbled into that was full of transvestites who had just come from a Halloween costume party (it’s hard to imagine, I know), but Allison has just returned from Africa and instead I listen fascinated to her tales of visiting Karen Blixen’s coffee plantation and being charged by a bull elephant protecting a baby. That’s the thing about Allison; whenever you think you’ve got a good story to tell her, she will outdo you.

I get there early and wander around the lobby that is filled with aviation photos and memorabilia. My favorite is a white bust of a young Charles Lindbergh, his aquiline nose all scabby from a thousand hands touching him. As if every pilot from the El Toro base who passed through here had touched him for good luck. And over his left shoulder is a sepia print of a wistful-looking Amelia Earhart, a woman I have long been fascinated by. She is a female Icarus, I think; a woman who tried to get too close to the sun.

Because our table isn’t quite ready when Allison shows up, we hang out in the dark bar where the largest deer head I have ever seen (is it really possible for a buck to have 14 points?) presides over a fireplace setting where white-haired men in blue blazers lean expectantly forward on leather sofas listening attentively to younger women in holiday dresses that are low-cut and sparkly and delicate as tissue paper.

“This is a manly-man’s bar, isn’t it?” Allison says, taking in the antler chandelier and the World War I-era biplane models hanging from the ceiling and the Marine base insignia proudly painted over the bar. “It’s as if a woman said, ‘OK, honey. You go ahead and do whatever you want to this room.’ And so he furnished it in a way that he thought would be seductive to women.”

“And is it?” I ask her.

Allison laughs. “It kind of is,” she says, watching the young blond with the pearl choker animatedly tell some story that seems to have half a dozen men eager to hear her every word.

The spell of the place makes Allison deferential in a way she’s normally not. This woman who likes to ride horses in the desert and go alone to Africa suddenly can’t make up her mind what she wants for dinner. “You decide what we’re having,” she says, putting down her menu.

Because it reminds me of a restaurant that may have opened in the early ‘60s when Julia Child was a clarion to heavy sauces and delicate reductions, we go for tournedos of beef, topped with bearnaise and accompanied by broccoli hollandaise, and lamb medallions coated in a green pepper sauce. A man’s idea of a seductive menu.

The waitresses wear dark skirts and jackets with golden wings on their lapels. As if they were airline attendants from the days when the Orange County airport was served by PSA and Air Cal. “I feel like there should be a call button overhead,” Allison says as we pick at our scampi appetizer and sip a peachy tasting Viognier. And when our waitress comes by to ask us if we need anything, Allison says, “Could I get a blanket and a pillow?” The waitress is not amused. But I can’t stop laughing.

It is a long dinner. We are less interested in the food then in hearing each other’s stories. As usual, I cannot compete with Allison. Her tales of Africa--of sleeping in bush tents in the Serengeti and hearing lions in the night; of drinking martinis with stoop-shouldered British colonialists in Nairobi; of fending off hooligan monkeys trying to break into her room at a game park lodge--match the mood and atmosphere of this restaurant where, I imagine, dozens of Blue Angel pilots have cut into thick cuts of prime rib, served with Yorkshire pudding, while regaling the table with stories of wingtips almost kissing in air and G-forces so powerful that mortal men would quickly lapse into unconsciousness.

Allison is yawning, the bill has been paid, the dessert plates cleared away. “Should we go?” Allison says.

It’s late. We both have to get up early. Still, I’m not eager to leave. “How about an after-dinner drink in the bar?” I suggest. ‘You can tell me another story.”

“About what?”

“Anything,” I say. “Tell me more about your visit to Karen Blixen’s coffee plantation.”

We get up. “All right,” she says. “But just one story.” But one story always leads to another.

Nieuport 17, 13051 Newport Ave, Tustin, (714) 731-5130 Open Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-midnight; Saturday-Sunday, 5 p.m.-midnight.