Every once in a while I’ll go out to eat and drink and come across a place that just seems to know how to put you in the mood. It’s that three-glasses-of-red-wine-deep mood, that Bill Evans on a rainy evening mood, that two a.m. staring out the window and wondering if anyone else is awake mood. It’s not something literal, not something you can explain how to get with a set of clear cut instructions, all pristine and laid out for you. You just go to some place hoping for a good night and before you know it, you’ve gotten more than what you hoped: you’re sinking into that mood, the light all around playing like ballet dancers on your eyes, lips turned in a dumb smile that won’t go away and you can’t help but feel as if there is only love, love is all there is. At least for this night. What else is there, after all, but this night? Tomorrow doesn’t exist when you’ve been put in this mood. Only the long hours stretching in the gaze of the person sat across from you.
Alto puts me in this kind of mood. Sat above Captain Phook on Phạm Viết Chánh, it’s right in the middle of the action but when you’re inside it’s so quiet and still you may as well be in a spaceship drifting with the Milky Way’s random current, far off in some forgotten part of the galaxy. Aimless you’ll drift, watching people as they pass on the street below through small windows peeking out the side of Alto. They’re aliens, unknowable creatures passing off as couples hand-in-hand, groups of friends on the prowl for their first beer, a shot, some place that will let them forget about the week they’ve had at half the cost. And you’ll be there. You’ll be there with someone who softens all the edges. With someone who’s voice is the missing instrument in the music playing over Alto’s plush, expensive speakers. You’ll be there talking about whatever, having one frozen Margarita—another—but you know not to drink them too fast because they’re cold enough to make your brain freeze. The last thing you want is for your brain to freeze, not when you’ve sunk into this mood, this warm bath after a long day sort of mood, this candle flickering between two young lovers sort of mood. And so you’ll let yourself go. Deeper into the waters. Sinking into the mood.
