Lillian Heckler Portfolio

february 15, 2024

My hair is big and my lips are glossy and I’m an inch taller than I usually am. I recently learned that I can adjust the strap on my crossbody bag to turn it into a little purse, and it sits perfectly on my shoulder, a sort of funny-looking miniature satchel. I’m drenched in perfume and probably a little bit of sweat, and I almost forgot my keys before I walked out the door to my apartment. 

I am going out to dinner.

I don’t like to leave my house after about six o’clock in the evening during the winter. It’s dark, and the wind bites at my ankles like an untrained dog that’s three mouthfuls of leg away from being muzzled. I prefer to make tea, light a candle, and crawl under my duvet with my Kindle or a new embroidery project. I am what some would consider a twenty-year-old-eighty-year-old. But something about the promise of a giggle with a few friends at nine o’clock on this frigid Wednesday night is enough to make me emerge onto the streets of Brooklyn, heels clicking on the pavement beneath me.  

We take over a high table at La Taqueria in Williamsburg, four stops away on the G. The restaurant is a little larger than my living room and kitchen combined, and I can see the chefs busy at the grill from where we’re sitting. It smells like onions and seared steak. The menu isn’t anything special, but it doesn’t matter to me. I order the fish nachos and let the night blur before me.

On the days after I venture outside of my warm bubble of comfort, I never remember the restaurant or the food very much. Instead, my mind clings to the little moments shared between friends throughout the meal. I remember my cheeks growing sore from smiling and the jokes that slipped from my lips without much effort. I remember the music playing underneath our voices and how the cold air tickled my elbows whenever the front door opened. I remember how my skin glowed on the ride home, my body so full of love and gratitude that it overflowed into the train car like a rushing stream and covered all the passengers up to their chins.

I remember peeling off my jeans and crawling underneath my covers when I got home, glad to have left but happy to be back. I remember the warmth that settled in my stomach for days after the occasion.

I don’t know what the chef garnished my fish nachos with, the name of the pineapple soda I drank, or how many times and with what disposition the waiter came by to refill my water glass. I can’t recount a single thing that the host said to me. It was an unremarkable meal. And yet, I can’t give this restaurant anything less than a perfect rating. 

It wasn’t about the food when we settled down on those stools. It was about the necessity of a vessel, of an anonymous donor, with which my friends and I built a world of our own.