USA. A restaurant entrance. The hostess asked me one question, and I treated it like the night before a battle.
"Booth or table?"
Terrain. She was asking me to choose terrain.
A table stands exposed on open ground. Approachable from all four directions. A booth — a booth has walls. A high back. Defensible corners. You see the whole room, and the room cannot flank you.
"Booth," I said, in the voice of a general.
"Booth's fine, dude," said the man behind me, to his own hostess, in one second, with no strategy whatsoever.
How. How do they choose terrain so lightly. In Japan, the seat decides everything — who faces the door, who sits deepest, who is honored, who keeps watch. Four hundred years of seating charts soaked in politics.
Here, a teenager with menus assigns fortresses, and the nation simply trusts her.
She led us in. I took the side facing the entrance. My friend slid in across from me, turning his back on the door completely. Unguarded. At peace.
"Why do you always sit facing the door?" he asked.
"Someone must."
"It's an Applebee's."
It is an Applebee's. And it has never once been breached on my watch. I accept no thanks.
I confess the rest. The booth was soft. The corner held me kindly. I have slept in armor on mountainsides, and a vinyl bench by a window undid me in four minutes.
A warrior does not choose the seat that flatters him. He chooses the wall at his back.
Booth. Always booth. And if they give me a table, I will survive that too.
I will simply face the door, and eat a little faster.