Diners Pin Lung Tubes Across Capes

Xochitl Haddad pinned her chest tube across a yellow silk cape on Friday. The clear line ran from under her collarbone, looped over an embroidered clasp, and drained into a small glass bulb at her hip. It dripped twice during soup.

The fashion has spread across the high cloud terraces since spring. Younger diners wear their post-wash lung runoff openly, treating the pale fluid as proof of an expensive private surgeon. Etiquette monitors logged forty-two millilitres of lung foam per guest on Sunday, up from none last year.

Older hostesses remain appalled. Saule Saarinen, who manages the promenade dining deck, turned three guests away on Saturday for refusing to tuck their lines away. Under terrace custom, decent families conceal their surgical washings inside a padded under-vest until the fluid runs dry.

"A polite person keeps her drainage inside her coat lining," Saarinen said. "Nobody wants to watch settling foam."

The younger crowd disagrees. Renske Quintero attended the cloud races with two chest lines pinned across white velvet, both weeping into silver flasks.

"Hiding the pipe ruins the drape," Quintero said. "Besides, everyone knows what private air costs."