Blood on the Roof Deck

Submitted by Kevin:

Jess and I spoke online, and then over the phone.  At least twice, we spoke from sunset until dawn.  She lived an hour away from me, but after a couple of weeks, I asked her if she wanted to meet in person.

She said that she'd be up for it, and then she asked if she could make a special request.  She asked that I find a restaurant to take her to that had a roof deck.  She wanted to eat on top of a building and never had done it before.

I told her that I would try to find one, and she sounded so grateful that I resolved to not fail in my task.

I lived in the suburbs, but it wasn't too hard to find a restaurant on the top floor of a building.  The next time I spoke to her, I told her that I found a place on the 10th floor of a 10th floor building, a bar and grill.

She asked if it was on the top floor or on the roof proper.  I told her that it was on the top floor, and she told me that it didn't count.  She wanted to eat outside, on a roof.

Given that, I asked her if she would consider a picnic dinner, one in which we brought our own food to a roof, as finding a rooftop restaurant, at least in our area, would not be easy.

She said that she wanted to eat in an actual restaurant on a roof, and that was that.  I asked her if she would consider postponing a rooftop dinner for another time, and she said that she already had her heart set on a rooftop dining experience.

I asked her if she knew of any rooftop restaurants offhand, and she told me that she didn't.  The closest big city was Phoenix, AZ, over an hour away from both of us.  I called up about 20 restaurants there, and finally found one that had a roof deck for a second floor.

I called to tell Jess the good news.  Her reaction?  "A second-floor roof deck?  I don't think that counts."

I asked her if it would do.  She said, "I guess," but it was thick with reluctance.  At this point, though, I had done exactly as she had asked.  She never specified anything other than "roof deck," and I was relieved to have found one.

The day of the date, I called her up to ask her how she wanted to arrange logistics.  It would likely be fairest, I thought, to meet there separately.  Otherwise, driving to her house, driving to the restaurant, then dropping her back off at her house and returning to my place would take the better part of a night.

"You can pick me up," she said.  I asked her if we could meet there in separate cars, and she said, "That's okay.  I don't really feel like driving."

I picked her up, and we had a good conversation on the way to the restaurant, although she seemed a little too interested in the roof deck aspect of it.  She asked me, "Do they have tables with umbrellas?"  "Does it have a nice view?" and so on.

Having never been to this place (it was a Tex-Mex BBQ place), I didn't have answers for her, and she seemed slightly upset at this.

We finally made it, and it was clear from the get-go that she didn't like the look of it.  The restaurant seemed nice enough – it was no dump, but her problem wasn't with the atmosphere.  Her issue was with the...

"Roof deck?" she said.  "You call that a roof deck?"

I asked her what the problem was, and she said, "It's just on the roof!  Of a one-story building!  That's hardly a roof deck."

But a roof deck it was, and she had to admit that.  We ate dinner, she sulked the entire time, hardly said a word to me all the way home, and slammed my car door closed.