Meeting Eve Babitz

Eve Babitz. Photo strip from the collection of Mirandi Babitz.

I arrived at Short Order straight from the airport. I was the first customer of the day, the hostess unlocking the door as I reached for it. The restaurant was Eve’s choice, a fifteen-minute walk (she hadn’t driven in years) from her condo, in the Farmers Market at Third and Fairfax. It looked like the kind of place that would have sold hamburgers and hot dogs to beach bums and bunnies had it been located on the water, only fancy. I sat at a table by the window, sipping a seltzer, my stomach a mess from nerves and travel and being six weeks pregnant, and waited for the woman who once said she believed “anyone who lived past thirty just wasn’t trying hard enough to have fun,” now sixty-nine.

And then the second customer of the day entered. I stood up from my chair, half sat back down, stood up again as I thought, It’s Eve, wait, it can’t be Eve, wait, it has to be Eve She no longer looked like a bombshell, her hair gray, the cut short and blunt, her clothes a way of covering up her nakedness and nothing more, her glasses, black-rimmed, the lenses