Bandit and I are sitting outside of our usual Latin cafe, drinking coffee he’s getting affection from everyone who walks by, same thing we do most weekends.

We see this late 50’s caucasian Canadian couple (the color of their skin only matters so you understand where I’m going with this), and what I first assume is their possibly African-American late 30’s adopted daughter.

They catch my attention because they pull up in a hot red convertible, music blasting. They grab a table across from me, and wait for the server to come out.

This is not that kind of place, so they wait five minutes, and start to get a little agitated, asking where the waitress is and getting fidgety.

I can’t help myself, you know me by now, so I let them know you have to order inside and then they’ll, if they’re feeling nice today, bring it out to you, or they’ll call you in to get it yourself.

The gentleman seems a little confused, but he understands goes inside grabs a paper menu and brings it outside to his wife and…daughter?

By this point I’ve been noticing the dynamic is a little odd, at least for presumably two parents and their kid. They seem a little too friendly.

The wife and younger woman are giggling talking to each other and almost cuddling when the husband places his hand on the younger woman’s thigh…too high up the thigh for it to be a friendly gesture.

Then she leans over and kisses his neck while the wife looks on lovingly.

I realize at that moment it’s a polygamous relationship, the couple and their girlfriend.

Now, my favorite thing ever is listening to the staff in the cafe chatting, in Spanish, trying to figure out their dynamic. I go back inside to pick up my boyfriend’s lunch order and I hear them, saying things like

“Eso es cosa de americano” ‘that’s something only Americans do’, and “ay no yo no comparto,” ‘heck no I don’t share.’

I laugh, I can’t help it, they’re so offended.

“En mi tiempo,” the older woman who cooks in the back comes forward, “el hombre que tenia dos mujeres las mantenía en ciudades separadas.”

Translation:

‘Back in my day, the man who has two women, kept them in separate cities.’

The slightly younger women immediately scolded her for that mentality, telling her how they’d never let their man cheat,

Especially not in front of them!

The man goes back in while they’re going on their tangents, orders his plate and walks back outside, I heard them call him “un descarado”, under their breath.

He smiled at me and shrugged his shoulders, unsure of what they said. Which I was relieved he was too pleasant to ask for a translation.

When I walked back outside he looks over at Bandit tied to the table anxiously waiting for me to return, and sees his girlfriend looking at him wanting to pet him.

So he says, “my girl would like to pet him, is that alright?”

“Of course!” Cause now you get to tell me more.

She immediately jumps to her feet and kneels beside Bandit, who instantly gets excited, his tail nearly bursting off of his body.

We make small talk, they asked me what some cool spots to see were, I gave them our usual tourist trap locations.

Then, he smiled and holds his girlfriends hand, “she’s never been out of the country before but we’ve been together for a year today and we really wanted to give her a nice experience.”

She laughed being jumped on by my dog, “we’ve Road tripped from Canada all down the U.S., I can’t wait to see Key West!” She has a French accent, I guess she’s from Quebec?

“You’ll love it down there.” I can’t lie, before Covid, we’d go either to Orlando or to Key West almost every weekend.

4 hours south or north, but 4 hours away from our day to day regardless.

He went inside and grabbed the food and I could see the girls inside smiling, which meant he tipped well despite their cattiness.

I said my goodbyes and wished them a fun adventure.

It was amusing seeing how they completely threw the entire cafe’s old school mentalities for a loop.