October 26, 2019:
We had our usuals. Yen Ching, Lino's, Consuelo's, Filippi's, Margarita's, and I remember there being an Italian restaurant off Morena which maybe was real or maybe dreamed decades later. All of this was my doing. At university I'd learned to love Chinese and Mexican food, cuisines we'd never had, not once, before my twenties. I think I learned of Lino's and Filippi's from high school companions; the rest I learned on my own, and dragged her.
She loved it. We both did. It was growth, a chance for bonding, and après those first twenty years she loved seeing me pack away the chow.
Mostly all gone, now. Yen Ching, Lino's, Consuelo's no more. Filippi's has changed menu, become ordinary, no longer stocking the strawberry sodas I'd order with salad. Margarita's transformed into an American diner when once it was spectacularly epic hole-in-the-wall Mexican.
Mostly, of course, she's all gone now, too.