It’s an hour till sunset here on the terrace at Casa de Pico.

The Cadillac margs have arrived so our food can’t be far behind.

Weekenders from LA are wrapping up their San Diego visit, getting ready to hit the 5 (with all their friends) and maybe make it home by 10.

The orange glow over America’s finest city, the loathsome drive ahead of them, plus mentally preparing for another week, combine to create a haunting mood with a side order of existential dread.

A four-piece Mariachi band bursts out onto the terrace. When invited to command a performance, I politely decline with a head shake but some other customer succumbs.

My wife rolls her eyes as we know conversation will be suspended for at least three numbers.

They’re pretty bad, or at least the two violinists aren’t listening to each other’s pitch.

The larger of the two, whose back is turned to us, take the load off and carefully distributes his backside over an entire empty table for four.

Across from us, a table of five is wrapping up.

Well-heeled, with a full head of white hair ( but starting to show fragility), Grandad hasn’t yet started thinking about the journey back to Whittier in their champagne-colored Buick. Only the slender backside is visible of his possibly Psychotic life partner as she fawns noisily over the grand-daughter in an overboard way that makes everyone on the terrace look somewhere else and feel awkward.

To Grandad’s left is Hispanic-looking son-in-law. This new Dad looks 12 years old, but may actually be 21. Either way, he’s paid his Sunday visit dues, had his belly-filled, courtesy of the old fella, and has an eye on the time. His cute-ish wife has several years on him but looks very proud of their progeny, the reason for the get together.

Grandad has run out of reasons to stay too, talking gibberish nobody’s listening to about how he wished he’d pursued the clarinet with tidbits about Kenny G and circular breathing. So it’s no surprise that when his daughter plays the “need to get baby to bed“ card, the vibe holding the table together collapses rapidly.

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The young parents both grab their leftover containers, and with hurried excuses and baby kisses all round, they leave White-hair and his freak to a suddenly quiet table of greasy menus, destroyed napkins and empty plastic water glasses.

And it coulda ended so easily right there.

But the band strikes up.

Like the mental four-year old she is, partner freak doesn’t want to go home yet, so ZZAPP, she’s on her feet, clicking her fingers above her head and imagining herself like one of the Hispanic hotties on the cover of her Trini Lopez album.

It’s been many years ago Grandad gave up making pleas for appropriate behavior when they’d go out - (until recently, sometimes he would still wonder whether it had been the right decision to remarry). These days when the free spirit emerges, he just makes sure his face wears a smile of bemused detachment.

Does she have our attention? Gringa freak shoots furtive glances in every direction as she taps foot, snaps finger, and now gets a little too in-between the two violinists, who are trying to earn their living.

I’m bursting with rage because it’s brought back all the problems, from forty years ago, that a different freak, same disposition, would cause me on a daily basis.

In her life EVERYTHING, every event, every situation was an opportunity to turn the spotlight on her.

SO DRAINING, especially if you were her boss.

Every straightforward transaction was an opportunity to test limits, push boundaries - that must have been how it was growing up as a foster child.

I thought I’d sealed off that era for good but apparently the memory still has the power to irritate. All the wasted kid glove-ing, the parental bringing it back to focus, and all this with a working adult.

As the third number ends, you can no longer ignore the Mexican house music from the main restaurant that’s been fighting the band’s efforts on the terrace all along, but now resounds discordantly.

Out here on the covered patio though, Alive and brilliant, Freak makes it a point to explode in approbation with an “Olé”, louder than any clapping from the other entertained guests.

Is she going to front the band for a few impromptu numbers? Are the band visibly shrinking from her?

You’ve eaten. The bill’s been taken care of. Everyone is on their feet.

You know what time it is now, right?

It’s time to walk out of the restaurant.

As the band shuffles back into to the main restaurant, she spins the afterglow of the moment as long as she can, but then I see a flash of acceptance in her downturned face as she too, grabs their doggy bags, the red walking cane and obediently falls in behind White-hair shuffling out in the general direction of the Buick.

Maybe she just had a flashback like I did .

But hers was back to when a wispy, hippy chick with flowing hair, dressed in cheesecloth skirts could command the room, could, with a sidelong glance, have the attention of any dick she chose.

Maybe the grand baby had infected her with a hit of temporary youth.

It had been a weekend away after all! These days, she’d grab any opportunity to break out and liven up the humdrum feeding and cleaning of that big old house that they shared in Whittier or Alhambra or Brea.

She and her meal ticket.

At least she could remember feeling alive and in the spotlight even if White-Hair never thought about things like that any more.

You have to give energy to get it back, she always said- and had decided long ago, that’s how she’d live her life.

As each of us left the restaurant in our different cars and took our own ways home, my personal irritation at this dormant memory sizzled for a while then subsided in the comfort of the present.

By the time you get to this age, I decided, it’s one thing to be grateful for the people and things you have in your life, but just as important to value all the toxic people and shit you have purged from it.

Like a Sunday in TJ, as the song lyric has it, getting into my head is cheap, but it’s not free.